Now They Tell Me!!

After being inspired by Bob Ross 'Joy of Painting', I signed up for an online Art course a few years ago and i can bang out a cloud and a mountain but I seem to have a real problem with dimensions and many a canvas has been ditched because of it and i mentioned it in the group chat and got the answer that i should trace the outline first.
I said that would be like cheating and blow me, it turns out that i was probably the only person NOT doing it!
Something called the Da Vinci Eye is particularity popular and throws the picture onto paper or canvas so you can sketch it out before painting and although it would be very useful, that doesn't feel right to me, its like the audio books which i maintain doesn't count as 'reading' a book.
I checked with a few other artists and it seemed split between yep its cheating and nope, it's perfectly fine but to me Art should be from your imagination where you paint what is in your mind's eye and then after deciding it's shite, painting over it in a huff and starting all over again.
The fact that nobody told me about Blending Stumps for pencil drawings was bad enough but now to find out that some of the brilliant art work i see from my fellow learners is actually a traced copy of something else just makes me think am i the mug for doing it the way i thought it should be done?
Maybe i should make Bob proud and just stick to painting mountains and clouds with a few trees thrown in but have to admit, it is tempting to get some additional help so my painted people don't end up looking like an Easter Island statue.

Trump's Disinformation Bubble

I don't like to keep writing about Donald Trump but when it was clear that he was going to be voted back into Office, the happiest people were Fascists, Journalists and Comedians as all of us would get some decent material from the re-elected President of USA.
Obviously, voting someone into power with the IQ of a compost heap and diminishing with each passing day was never going to be a good idea but with the added bonus of throwing a cretin like Elon Musk into the mix it is beyond our wildest dreams which is why we are seeing them lay off Air Safety staff hot on the heels of a rash of plane crashes and realising that firing 300 employees responsible for managing America's nuclear weapons was not such a good idea after a grown up explained to him that it could have dire national security implications.  
Less than a month in and already he has most of the World leaders hoping he gives some more speeches outdoors in Pennsylvania but today he gave his opinion on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and seemed to blame Ukraine for starting it.
In comments after a meeting between American and Russian officials in Saudi Arabia, the Marmalade faced US president said of Ukraine: 'They've had a seat at the table for three years and a long time before that. You should have never started it. You could have made a deal.'
In his defence it could be that when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022 he was occupied with court cases around his sexual abuse of a woman in a changing room or the 34 Fraud Charges he was found guilty of so he missed it but i am sure the it would have been mentioned in the President's Daily Brief but again, maybe it had long words and no drawings in crayon so he never noticed it but Volodymyr Zelenskyy reminded him by saying he is in a 'disinformation bubble' and that Trump has not just drunk the Kremlin’s Kool-Aid, but is now bathing in it.
Just as Trump's idea of ethnically cleansing Gaza to please the genocidal maniac in charge of Israel was as popular as a pin in a condom factory, this latest idea of rewarding the Invading Russians with land they stole is not getting that much support outside of Moscow but with the way Trumps brain is disintegrating before our very eyes, i'm sure it will be forgotten shortly and we will be discussing something else, Pennsylvanian outdoor events allowing.

World Press Freedom Index 2024

Every year Reporters Without Borders publish The World Press Freedom Index (WPFI) based on an assessment of each countries' journalists freedoms for the previous year.
There are 180 countries and each is given a score under five categories with the first being the degree of media autonomy and top are Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Netherlands and Finland with Canada 14th, France 21st, the United Kingdom 23rd, Australia 39th, the USA 55th, Russia 162nd, China 172nd and the worst places of the 180 nations are Iran, North Korea,  Afghanistan,  Syria and Eritrea.      
The economic indicator evaluates economic constraints linked to governmental policies, advertisers and commercial partners and media owners and the Scandinavians come out of this well again with the top 5 being Norway, Sweden, Netherlands, Denmark and Finland with the UK 18th, Australia 27th, USA 33rd, Russia 148th, China 163rd  and the bottom 5 are Vietnam, Syria, Eritrea, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan.
The legal indicator evaluates the level of censorship and top is Sweden, then Norway, Denmark, Netherlands and the Dominican Republic with Canada 11th, USA 41st, UK 42nd, Australia 60th, Russia 157th, China 172nd and the bottom 5 Belarus, Myanmar, Eritrea, Afghanistan and Cuba.
The sociocultural indicator evaluates the impact of social and cultural constraints obstructing journalistic freedom and number 1 is Norway, Estonia, Portugal, Netherlands and Denmark and Canada is 22nd, UK is 40th, USA 54th, Russia 149th, 173rd China and the bottom is Iran, Syria, North Korea, Afghanistan and Turkmenistan.
The security indicator evaluates the risk of physical, psychological or professional harm against Journalists and the safest place is Luxembourg, then Liechtenstein, Samoa, Switzerland and Denmark with Canada 36, Australia 40th, UK 50th, USA 118th, Russia 168th, China 172nd and the least safest being Iran, Myanmar, Eritrea, Afghanistan and Syria.
All the above is rolled into one to get a final score and the freest places to be a journalist are Norway then Denmark, Sweden, Netherlands and Finland with Canada 14th, France 21st, United Kingdom 23rd, Australia 39th, United States 55th, Israel 101st, and the places where you really should reconsider your career choices are Iran, North Korea, Afghanistan, Syria and bottom of the pile Eritrea.

Richard Tice: Professional Thicko

The Reform Party gene pool has a very shallow end with some very high diving boards which is why they are so very wrong on many things and we can add another one to the list today as the Deputy Richard Tice rejected the idea that Climate Change was man made and it is actually down to the Sun and volcanoes and that there was no evidence that man-made CO2 is going to change climate change as it had done on for millions of years.
Tice also said that there are thousands of scientists who agreed with him which must have come as a shock to him when the scientists then all slapped their head in the universal sign which said 'You thicko' and explained why he was being even more of a douchebag then usual.
Dr George Adamson from King's College London began by saying that the climate had indeed changed over million of years but these changes were now happening in decades rather than over tens of thousands of years and called Tice idea that it wasn't man made as: 'Preposterous'.
Dr Andrew Jarvis from Lancaster University called Tice's comments 'categorically wrong' while Dr Philipp Breul from Imperial College London said Mr Tice was missing the point as: 'We are causing the climate to change significantly faster than it has in the last million years'.
Up next was Professor Sheila Rowan, vice president of The Royal Society of independent scientists, who said that 'the evidence is clear that burning fossil fuels has resulted in fundamental changes to our planet' and then Bob Ward, policy director at LSE University's Grantham Research Institute and Geological Society who said: 'There is not a single credible scientific organisation in the UK or the world that agrees with him about the causes or consequences of climate change.
I guess if Sky News had more time or a 6 year old with some crayons they could have explained it to him or they could have just wheeled out any of the 99% of Climate Scientists who agree that humans are causing recent climate change but then this is a man who still insists that Brexit was a good idea so hey ho, the eyes were open and the mouth was moving but Mr Brain had long since departed Richard Tice's head.

The War Nobody Is Talking About

With everyone looking at the wars going on in Middle East and Eastern Europe, the one in Central Africa seems to be going under the Radar and has for the past few decades.
After years of conflict fueled by the plundering of mineral resources, fighting in the Democratic Republic of Congo has caused 'unimaginable hardship' according to the United Nations.
The fighting has centered around control of the nations gold mines and reserves of diamonds, gold, tin ore, coltan and tungsten ore with the nations mineral wealth is estimated at $24 trillion and the recent conflict over Goma ended with at least 2,800 people dead and displaced hundreds of thousands.
The Rwandan-backed armed group, M23, have been over-running the Conolese Army and capturing mining towns alongside Rwandan troops and other militia groups and Amnesty International has accused all sides of carrying out attacks that: 'constitute war crimes' and the Congolese Presdient, Félix Antoine Tshisekedi Tshilombo, has called on the international community to help keep the peace in the region, which the West replied by condemning the Rwandans and then doing nothing much else.  
Since the turn of the year fighting has forced around 700,000 people to flee their homes, the United Nations said and Camps sheltering displaced people have been bombed and fighters have also occupied schools and hospitals.
U.N. human rights chief, Volker Turk, said last week the worst could be yet to come, adding he was horrified by emerging, multiple reports of rape, gang rape and sexual slavery and The World Health Organization (WHO) has also warned of disease outbreaks with the M23 group expelling Aid agencies. Global Witness issued a 110 page report of who is buying the Congolese minerals and amazingly found  European and Asian companies, including the British groups AMC,  Afrimex buying minerals used to make mobile phones, computers and other electronics from the disputed mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) that are funding the armed groups and shamefully, when asked if they would stop, replied that had no controls in place to stop conflict minerals entering their supply chain.

Musk Wealth Tanking

The Nazi saluting Elon Musk doesn't seem to be worried where his next meal is coming from which is just as well because the World's richest fascist has seen staggering sales drops, swastika-daubed EVs and companies culling his Tesla fleet models.
Musk’s toxicity among many Europeans is such that even owners of Tesla news websites have ditched Muskmobiles for other EV brands. Jon Gibbs of Birmingham, England, runs what he calls the world’s biggest Tesla inventory site but even he has dumped his Musk car for a BMW iX electric SUV.
Maybe his MAGA fans or the right wing oddballs will make up for the decline elsewhere but his estimated $394.2 billion must be taking a hit after as he was worth $486 billion previously and Tesla makes about 60% of his wealth according to Yahoo Finance but it isnt just the Tesla shareholders who will be getting nervous, his social media platform X has lost 71% of its value since he bought by Elon Musk which he acquired for $44bn in October 2022 and is now worth $12.5bn.
Couldn't happen to a nicer Nazi loving imbecile.

First, Second and Third Thoughts On Trump Peace Plan

My first thought when i heard Donald Trump was negotiating with Russia to end the War in Ukraine was one of relief as it has gone on far too long and too many people have been killed but then my second thought piped up and said hang on, Trump and Putin deciding it without Ukraine having a say and then my third thought chipped in with he is giving Putin the reward of whatever he wants for invading another nation so Zelenskyy should tell him to shove it up his huge arse at which point my first thought did the 'ahem' thing and i went full circle.
I did make the joke that the first thing Trump asked when Putin picked up the phone was ensure that the Pee Tape was still safely locked away and as i have heard other people say that since, i claim ownership of it and if anyone has said it since Thursday then i expect royalties.
What i don't understand is why Trump would tell Putin what he would get out of not killing innocent Ukrainians anymore (i.e. they can keep the land they have stolen and Ukraine would not enter NATO) before negotiations have even begun but then this is one of the World's worst ever businessmen so that explains all those bankruptcies and i assume Putin must have thought when he heard that everything is on the table, i wonder if i can get the table also?
So i am torn between just ending a horrific war and not rewarding Russia for invading another nation with the victim wondering where they stand in all of it and realising well, nowhere particularly and not only are they not in the driving seat for negotiations like they should be but are not even in the car, more like cycling furiously along behind it.
That does seem to be the Trump negotiating tactic though, throw the victims under the bus (Palestinians, Ukrainians) and reward the genocidal warmongers in Tel Aviv and Moscow who can only feel emboldened that they have the backing of such a simpleton in the White House and must be considering their next move in warmongery.
Israel, i assume once they have ethnically cleansed the Palestinians from their own land will carry on their expansion into Syria and Lebanon and Russia will be fluttering their eyelashes at the likes of former Soviet Nations such as Georgia or Estonia while reminding Trump that it would be such a shame if that video of his stay in Moscow's posh Ritz-Carlton Hotel in 2013 got leaked,yep, that would be a real shame.

When A Boy Falls In Love

 

There are many songs by you humans about being in Love and the things your heart goes through when you meatbags fall in Love but the songwriters of mushy ballads have a very different view of it to biologists who can actually explain in details what happens.

You see love triggers the release of various chemicals associated with pleasure in the brain, such as dopamine, oxytocin, and vasopressin and when you are engaging with things that bring you pleasure, neurotransmitters in your mushy brain lead you to pursue that reward again and again so your brain says, 'Do that again.'

Norepinephrine and adrenaline can also flow into the brain's center, causing places such as the amygdala to give a sort of nervous and restless feeling, which increases blood flow and heart rate and the rate of many of your body's systems so your your palms get sweaty and you get jelly legs.

As such, your 'love' is no more than a mere feeling induced by a bunch of hormones in the brain all working together which may not be quite so romantic but it shows that Sam Cooke really had no idea about what happens when a Boy, or anyone, falls in love.

Heart's And Flower's

Today is the most romantic day of the year, Heart's can be seen everywhere from heart shaped chocolates to sentimental cards and Hearts have long been a symbol of Love and  affection so give you heart away today, or at least wait until you are dead which is what Mary Shelley did, carrying around her Husbands heart in her purse for 30 years after he died in a sailing accident.  
Frédéric Chopin’s Heart is pickled in alcohol in the Basilica of the Holy Cross in Warsaw, removed after his death but after Thomas Hardy went to meet his maker, the doctor removed is heart and while they argued over where to bury it, the family cat sneaked in and ate it while Robert the Bruce's organ was taken in to battle, worn around the neck of his troops before being returned to Scotland.  
The Trevi Fountain in Rome is home to 22 urns with each holding the hearts of a Popes inside them but William Buckland, the 18th Century Dean of Westminster, when shown the mummified heart of King Louis XIV of France, picked it up and swallowed it.
There is an Urban legend from the Middle Ages, a story that has inspired many horror stories, a gruesome tale called the Legend of the Eaten Heart.
In the story, a married woman takes a lover and her husband finds out he kills his love rival and cuts out his heart, cooks it and feeds it to his wife telling her it is actually a steak and after she has finished, he tells her what she has really just eaten and in her distress throws herself to her death out of a window.
Have a great day, show your husband, wife, boyfriend or girlfriend how much you love and appreciate them but if they offer to cook you a steak, maybe go to a restaurant. 

Denmark Make Offer For California

Denmark trying to buy America was a bit of fun, what they really wanted was just the good bits which is why they are now offering to buy just California for a trillion dollars, or 7,142,285,000,000 Danish Krone. If the deal goes through they are offering to rename the State 'New Denmark',  change Disneyland to Hans Christian Andersenland and bring hygge to Hollywood because as they put it: 'Denmark needs more sunshine, palm trees, and roller skates'.
They will also make Los Angeles Løs Ångeles and introduce 'the rule of law, universal health care, and fact-based politics'.
The Eagles Hotel California will become Hotel Copenhagen, California Girls by the Beach Boys will be Roskilde Girls, Silkeborg Sol will be the new name for the Ramones California Sun,  Frederikshavn Dreaming instead of California Dreaming, Odense Paradise instead of The Runaways California Paradise, People will be singing if they know the way to Helsingør rather than Son Jose and  the Little Old lady isn't from Pasadena anymore, now she is from Ølstykke-Stenløse.
They are open to offers and have agreed to reluctantly also take Florida as long as the Orange Baboon and his family are ethnically cleansed from it first. 

Israel Looking To Resume Genocide In Gaza

With the ceasefire in Gaza seemingly about to come crashing down, it can't come as much of a surprise and i never thought it would last this long but we know who will get the blame for it failing.
Hamas has announced that the release of captives held in Gaza will be suspended citing Israeli violations of the ceasefire such as the delayed return of displaced people to different areas of Gaza and not allowing the entry of all aid that had been agreed upon as part of the deal.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reacted by saying that Israel would resume its bombing of Gaza if Hamas on Saturday if Hamas did not continue the release of captives which has drawn a response in Israel with protests against Netanyahu that a return to war would threaten the release of the remaining hostages if the deal fails.
Israel has killed more than 25 Palestinians since the ceasefire began and the UN has also said Israel has also fallen short in the supply of the desperately needed aid, while the inane mumbling of President Trump’s and the agreement of Israel around taking over Gaza and ethnically cleansing the Palestinians there hasn't helped but the Israeli Government were never keen on the ceasefire anyway.
The former National Security Minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, resigned from his cabinet position after the ceasefire was agreed, objecting to the truce and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich was widely reported to have been persuaded to remain in government only in return for assurances from Netanyahu that Israel would resume its war on Gaza, irrespective of the terms of the ceasefire.
Ben-Gvir, who boasted in January that he had repeatedly foiled efforts to halt the fighting, wrote on social media: 'Hamas’s announcement should have one real-life response: a massive fire attack on Gaza, from the air and land, alongside a complete halt to humanitarian aid to the Strip, including electricity, fuel, and water, and including the bombing of aid packages that have already been brought in and are in Hamas’ hands in Gaza. We must return to war and destroy!'
Netanyahu’s critics have frequently voiced the opinion that the prime minister has been prolonging the war including from the former US President, Joe Biden, who said there was: 'every reason for people to draw the conclusion that Netanyahu was perpetuating the conflict'.
We can only hope an agreement is reached and the war does not resume but if one side is hell bent on it, and has the backing of America and it's abominable leader to renew the killing, then this was just a brief pause in the ongoing Genocide in Palestine.

Why We Don't Ask Gen Z

New research from broadcaster Channel 4 reveals a trend towards support for authoritarianism among young people. The report found that 52% of the 2,000 13-27 year olds surveyed would agree that: 'the UK would be better with a strong leader in charge who does not have to bother with Parliament and elections' which correlates with a 2023 study from Open Society Foundations, which found that 42% of young people globally felt Autocratic rule was a good way of running a country. 
Luckily though Gen Z are in the minority, The Pew Research Centre asked people in 24 countries their view on five different types of Government and a strong leader making decisions without interference from the courts or Parliament that came out as the second least popular option with a median of just 26% saying it would be a good way to run the country with Sweden (94%) the Netherlands (87%) against it and in favour India (67%) and Kenya (52%).
The most favorable system was democratically elected representatives elected by citizens deciding what becomes law with a median of 77% expressing support for representative democracy with the lowest support in South Africa (32%) and Brazil (28%) and most keen Sweden (87%) and Germany (86%).
Direct democracy where citizens, not elected officials, vote directly on major issues  was second where a median of 70% said it would be a good way to run their country but it got the least amount of support in The Netherlands (37%) and Sweden (49%) but it seemed pretty popular in Greece (78%) and Germany (76%).
A technocracy which relies on experts rather than elected officials to make decisions for the good of the country sounded good to the Hungarians (80%) and the Spanish (65%) but not so much to the Dutch (53%) and French (52%).   
If an Autocracy came second to bottom, then the worst option was military rule although the Vietnamese didn't seem particularly unperturbed by the idea as 70% approved but 95% were against it in Germany but across all nations, 50% said things would improve if more women were elected into positions of Officialdom with people from India the most likely to believe policies will improve (60%) but not so much in Israel (33%) and Japan (32%) who believe policies would get worse.
How about a theocracy where government is run by divine guidance? Nigerians and Indonesians approved with 65% saying  policies would improve but In contrast it wouldn't have a prayer of taking off in Sweden (59%) or Australia (56%).
Sorry Generation Z but it seems you are stuck with Democracy.

Oh Bugger, I Agree With Trump!!!

I have had many showers and baths but i can't seem to get rid of this dirty feeling that i actually agree with Donald Trump about something.
Before i reach for the Carbolic Soap and Bleach, the issue the Apricot Arse and I agree on is transgender athletes in female sports and i admit i am not a Biologist as i spent most Biology lessons at school around the back of the bicycle sheds with Benson and Hedges but a male physiology is very different to a females, one scientist who did less smoking at school than i did put the advantage at as much as 34% which is very unfair that women could be competing against other athletes with such a biological advantage of having a male body that no amount of training will be enough to overcome the physical advantage.   
In any other walk of life i support the rights of anyone Transgender, but when it comes to sport i am completely in the camp that say's athletes who were once men should NOT be competing against women so i am firmly in agreement with the Tangerine Tyrant although i suspect for very different reasons.
I understand the argument that transgender athletes should be able to identify as male or female and more power to them, they can be who they like, but not in a competition, where some athletes take drugs for just a tiny advantage, a male body is just too much to advantageous to overcome for female athletes who, if reversed, would be left treading water if they competed against males.
The simplest way to avoid any confusion of what category someone should be in is the biological fact that though you may be able to change your gender, but you can never change your sex, that is biologically cast while in the womb (not at conception as the Marmalade Moron said) and you are destined to forever have XY or a XX chromosomes and no medical procedure can change your chromosomes.
It doesn't change the fact that i find myself agreeing with the Carrot faced Cretin in the White House which pains me but at least my view only applies to sport, he’s is a small part of what he called 'transgender insanity' in his weird fight against anyone that isn't white and male.
Phew, for a moment there i thought i was going to have to get a MAGA hat and have my brain surgically removed and replaced with a grapefruit.

Phwoor...Scrubs

Valentines Day is fast approaching and all single women are on the lookout for that hunks desk to land a Valentines Card on but if you work in economics or the finance sector then it seems you will be spending another February 14th alone, at home eating a microwave meal for one because singletons are not interested in what you have to offer and have their sights set on Medical personnel.
Hippocrates is considered the father of medicine but unless you are into baldy beardy men i don't fancy your chances much as he died over 2000 years ago but there is Egypt's Imhotep who was the first Doctor and he has I'm Hot' in his name although he died 2600 years ago so your potential partner should first be alive and then into saving lives.
A study of 2000 single men and women found that they are looking for Dr Right with 29% of respondents considering Healthcare workers as the sexist sector and then education (23%), emergency response workers (19%) with brace wearing Finance Johnnies (18%) booted down the league table to 8th, one below IT workers (17%) which to be fair is higher than i would have thought for the pasty faced computer nerds.
There was obviously a missing page in the release i got as i couldn't see Journalist on the list but for singles this Valentines Day, if you have an accident in a school, get taken to the Hospital by an Ambulance and then get treated by a Doctor that's the top three all hit in one day.

Why Do We Suck At Group Think?

Winston Churchill is credited with saying that Democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried which could be why he wasn't quite so keen to give the vote to other nations the British ruled over and manufactured famines, dropped chemical weapons and tortured them instead but what Democracy does give us is the chance to vote for window shakingly stupid things.
In the UK we got given the deciding decision on Brexit and in an amazing act of self harm voted for it and recently in America we saw Donald Trump voted back into Office, that is convicted criminal and sex offender Donald Trump whose first act was to release the thousands convicted of trying to subvert the Democratic process when he lost the 2020 vote and threw a petulant hissy fit.  
Delving into it we can say that the Voters were expressing a dissatisfaction with the status quo and either didn't know, or didn't care, that they were voting against their self-interest.
With Brexit the 52% are experiencing the non-benefits of their choices, Americans are quickly finding out their error but that is how Democracy works, everyone has to live with and abide by what the majority decide and so we go back to Winnie again who also said that the best argument against democracy is a conversation with the average voter.
There are many Psychological experiments which show Group Think which is when a group of people were asked to answer a question together they would attempt to come to a consensus with some conforming to the other view without critical reasoning or evaluation of the consequences or alternatives in a desire not to upset the balance of a group of people.
I have heard that we are moving into a 'post-democracy World' but i think that at some point, with AI becoming more critical to our lives, humans will be removed from the decision making process altogether because, to be fair, we have proved we are not very good at it.

Asteroid Destruction Odds Slashed

It was only a week ago that we heard of a 100m large asteroid barreling towards us to destroy whichever unfortunate city it landed on but that came with the soothing warning that it would probably just whizz harmlessly by and Scientists put the odds of it hitting us at 83/1.
A week is a long time in killer Asteroid detection though because that 83/1 has been slashed to 43/1 after the men in white coats at the European Space Agency had another look at the trajectory which if it does hit, will be somewhere South of the Equator between South America and sub-Saharan Africa.
To be fair 2024 YR4 is 27 million miles and eight years away so it must be difficult to be exact but the Worlds Telescope wielding fraternity are concerned enough to be  making recommendations to the United Nations that maybe they might like to consider doing something to deflect it.
The Asteroid has risen to the top of both NASA's Sentry Risk Table and European Space Agency's Impact Risk List but the caveat is that we shouldn't start to worry just yet as there have been several objects in the past that have risen to the top of the risk list to then drop off as more data comes in and new observations may result in reassignment of this asteroid to zero.
More updates are expected in due course ahead of December, 2032 which is when the asteroid could potentially strike our planet but as luck wuld have it, we have already been practising deflecting massive Space Rocks with the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) which rammed spacecraft into a 170 meter Asteroid and changed it's orbit.
It was also a test in capturing an Asteroid and putting it in orbit around the Moon so it was a large step towards us having an freaking pet Asteroid circling the Moon in one of the coolest astronomical ideas ever, oh and yes, also preventing the residents of Buenos Aires being wiped out which is also very important.
For all that i am not concerned for three reasons, 43/1 is still very long odds, secondly we have already moved an Asteroid by lobbing our old Spacecrafts at it and thirdly i am sat 3,826.26 miles North of the Equator.

Missing Out On The Why, When, Where, Who and How

The World can seem a scary place and if you watch the news every night or read the newspapers then it can seem every where you look bad things are happening which is why many people tell me they just don't bother anymore.
Research from the University of Jyvaskyla in Finland found that more and more people are limiting their consumption of news or generally avoid news and current affairs because it makes them feel emotional distress, sadness, fear and anger that sometimes affected their mental health.
Amongst younger people climate anxiety is a real thing, affecting their study, work and sleep and making them feel completely overwhelmed so they switch off and disengage and this may allow some emotional relief but it is only treating the symptom and the disease continues merrily on, the Israeli genocide in Gaza, Donald Trumps madness, the Ukrainian War and environmental disasters still go on, its just that you don't know about them.
Not reading or watching the news can be dangerous and there has been a decline of newspaper circulation and even news viewership especially in the age of social media misinformation and i do understand that, it is depressing but i do wonder about where the withdrawal leads.
As a journalist, the fact that so many people have basically stopped, or at least tried to stop, reading or watching the news is a concern as they then make choices based on ignorance and poor education of the subjects, as Trump himself said : 'I love the poorly educated'.
Turning off the news dramatically increases the danger of not knowing enough to know what is true and what is misinformation that one should understand for our own good, how can you hold our politicians to account if you don't know what they are doing and they don't want you to know and that is playing directly into their hands.
I do get it, we lose many new recruits to Journalism because we get to see and hear things before they get sanitised for public consumption and some are traumatic and there are things i have seen which i wish i could unsee but as you are not going to be able to avoid the events of the World, or the effects on your life, surely it is better to know the Who, Why, When, Where and How of what is happening then stay ignorant until it's too late.    

Making Money

I was reading the Terry Pratchett Book 'Making Money' when one of the character's asked the boss of the Mint how much it cost to make the coins which turned out to be each cost more than the face value of the coin which got me thinking, how much does it cost to make our British money?
The Royal Mint was no use as it gave a sniffy response of: 'The Royal Mint does not reveal exactly how much it costs to make specific coins as such information could be used to its competitors advantage' but i do vaguely remember reading or hearing somewhere that the Government planned to stop making 1p and 2p coins as it costs more than that to make them.
In the Isle of Man who mint their own money and who are not so sniffy about telling us, it cost 20p to make a 5p coin so i assume it is around the same cost to the UK Mint so i expect that will go the same way in the near future but it does play into the idea of a cashless society.
I for one hardly ever pay with cash anymore, it is always my card that comes out my purse and it is not just me, apparently only 1 in 5 transactions were used with cash last year and has been in decline for the last decade so there is generally less need for cash today.
More than 7,000 cash-points have been shut down across the country since 2020 yet at the end of last year there were still more than £81 billion worth of banknotes in circulation according to the Bank of England which is up from £70 billion at the end of the previous year which does me make me wonder if people are spending less of it, what is it being used for?

The War Criminal And The Sex Offender

 'The Government of Israel flatly rejects the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state west of the Jordan river' The Lukid Manifesto.

It has always been Israel's plan to shift the Palestinians off their land and claim it for their own, it is what they have been doing for over 70 years with their land grabs, settlements  and sabotaging of any peace talks which may lead to a Palestinian State, now if only they could get their bitches in America to help but what was needed was a President stupendously clueless and as ignorant to help.  
So there they stood, the sex offender Trump and the war criminal Netanyahu and announced their plan to 'take over the Gaza Strip' and would be making an announcement on Israel assuming sovereignty over the West Bank 'over the next four weeks'.
Netanyahu, who has bribery, fraud and breach of trust charges waiting for him as well as being slapped with an arrest warrant, stood grinning like a lunatic beside the Tangerine Tyrant who said, without any irony, that by moving the Palestinians elsewhere they could: 'live out their lives in peace and harmony without getting murdered and safe from bombs and bullets' without seeming to notice that it was the Genocidal tendencies of the man next to him that was the reason the Palestinian people were getting murdered by bombs and bullets, at least 47,000 since October 2023 and with bombs and bullets helpfully provided by America.
Obviously the World is not so keen as Trump when it comes to cosying up to a nation committing Genocide and came out to lambast the awful pair with Saudi Arabia rejecting it, the UK stating the Palestinians must have their own state, Germany and Turkey both calling it unacceptable, France said it would constitute a serious violation of international law, Spain said the land belongs only to the Gazan Palestinians, Egypt said Palestinians should not leave the territory, Jordan said they rejected the idea, Australia, Russia and China said they only support a two state solution and the UN called it going against international humanitarian law and international human rights law as the forcible transfer of people from occupied territory is strictly prohibited.
Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, said the Palestinians will not relinquish their land, Iran said it does not support any displacement of Palestinians, Ireland called the idea of displacing the people of Gaza anywhere else would be in clear contradiction with UN security council resolutions and Amnesty International added Gaza is the home only to the Palestinians but special mention must go to the US representative, Rashida Tlaib who considered her words carefully and went with the President was spewing  'fanatical bullshit' and said shame on the support in Congress for funding genocide and ethnic cleansing.
Whether the idea bubbled up all by itself inside Trump's empty head or the idea was planted there by the mass murderer stood next to him, it obviously hasn't occurred to Trump or anyone agreeing with him that if you are supporting a nation that has been militarily occupying another for 7 decades, is being investigated for many War Crimes and Genocide including directing refugees to safe zones and then bombing them and then openly talking about ethnically cleansing a population, you really are on the wrong side of the argument.
At the end of the presentation, Netanyahu praised Trump as: 'the greatest friend Israel has ever had in the White House' but almost certainly added under his breath 'and thankfully for us also the most stupid, ignorant and credulous'

Look Up In 2032

In 2032 Brisbane are hosting the Olympics but they may want to hold off spending million on arena's just yet because Scientists are monitoring a 100mx40m Asteroid that could hit Earth and put a huge crimp in the Opening Ceremony.
The European Space Agency (ESA) has revealed it is closely monitoring an asteroid called 2024 YR4 which they peg the odds at 83-1 that it will smash into our Planet and cause 'severe damage'.
The large space rock is currently 27 million miles away and its path will not cross the Earth's orbit until 22 December 2032 so the silver lining is if you look up and see a rock the size of a football pitch hurtling towards you then you won't have to bother buying Christmas Presents that year .
The warning does come with the caveat that it will be close but not THAT close and will probably bowl straight past us but all the top Space types are meeting in Vienna this month to discuss it and if they are in agreement that 83-1 was way to optimistic, then they will make recommendations to the United Nations that maybe we should consider doing something to deflect it.  
The ESA does admit that their early warning system is designed to flash red lights and scream that we are all gonna die  so they can monitor the trajectory of these things so they say they are not worried just yet but then scare us again by saying how a smaller asteroid, only 60m across, landed in Siberia in 1908 and flattened every tree over 830 square miles.

Oh Dear, What A Shame...Nevermind

Those of a certain age will remember the Windsor Davis Character, Sergeant Major Williams, in 'It Ain't Half Hot Mum' and his catch phrase 'Oh dear, how sad, never mind' which he delivered to any of his squad who had a problem and that is exactly what came to mind when i heard the head nerd of OpenAI whinging that AI Rival DeepSeek may have nicked their idea, or 'inappropriately distilled our models' as the geek put it.
The  share price slashing Chinese outfit are accused by OpenAI of using their ChatCGT software and making 'unauthorised use of it' which by an amazing coincidence is exactly what  it says on the lawsuits against OpenAI's top boffin, Sam Altman who is being buried under lawsuits from other AI firms trying to claw something back for the alleged copyright victims of his firm’s own inappropriate methods.
So he stood looking all sad eyed and accusing China of using his stuff without asking while hoping nobody would say hang on you massive hypocrite...
I am sure the sorry tale will end with Trump either banning DeepSeek or insisting it gets sold a US company at a cut down rate but the narrative they seem to be going with at present is that we should all be worried about the authoritarian Chinese stealing our data and using it for nefarious reasons and not at all worried about Silicon Valley stealing our data and using it for nefarious reasons.
That's your choices, take your pick of who you want to be screwed over by or ditch all your technology and go live in a tent in a field on Exmoor.

Keir Does Brussels

And so, with the happy inevitability of a smear test, we approach the fifth anniversary of Brexit and to mark the occasion YouGov released a poll where the question asked was: 'In hindsight do you think Britain was right or wrong to leave the European Union?' and got the answer 'Right' from only 30% of those asked with the rest saying ' We fecked it up good and proper'.
When even Nigel Farage of all people, the cheerleader for all those people who wanted to kick foreigners out the country without actually admitting it so weaseling on about taking back control or some other nonsense, even that craggy faced loser conceded that it has failed, why are the Government afraid to tell voters the 52% got it wrong, its been an absolute shambles and they are going crawling to the EU to take us back?  
The Prime Minister is travelling to Brussels tomorrow to forge a 'reset' between the UK and EU although he was at pains to point out that it: 'does not involve a return to the EU.'
Why not i ask? If everyone can see that leaving was a monumental mistake and the British economy has floundered ever since, why not rejoin the largest single market on the Planet that just happens to be situated right on our doorstep?
Those without the required amount of working brain cells point blame the British economic downturn on other economic shocks such as COVID and the Ukraine war-related energy prices but none of them seem to be high enough up the chain in the independent Office for Budget Responsibility who put hit from Brexit to our GDP at 4% and who should we listen to, some bloke who drives the Iceland delivery lorry and boo's at the anti-racism knee taking at football matches and or experienced professional economists with all the relevant data?
It's a bind i know but i will go with the people who actually know what they are talking about so why not start the process of saying sorry and joining up forces again with our closest neighbours and largest trading partner.
The Liberal Democrats are the only Party calling for it but the chances of a second referendum are scarce without one of the main parties joining the call although as the Presidential criminal in the USA is starting to throw tariffs around, the silver lining is that it may push us that way anyway.
Our prosperity depends on reversing the damage the previous Government done to trade with the EU, and Keir going to meet the heads of the EU is a good start but as almost half our trade is with the EU while only 22% of theirs is with us, they hold all the cards and just saying: 'Sorry, we messed up, can we come back please' won't cut it.

Tariffs And Trade Wars

'To me, the most beautiful word in the dictionary is tariff' so said Donald Trump although personally i would go with the word Autumnal as i love the way that sounds but for him it is tariff which don't really mean much to me except i know he did them last time and is doing them again this time so how did it work out last time?   
Not great appears to be the answer to that if the U.S. Director of the National Economic Council Larry Kudlow is to be believed as he said the previous tariffs either had a moderately negative impact on the economy and reduced real GDP by 1% as many companies just passed the costs of the tariffs on to consumers in the form of higher prices with some goods rising by 10% to 30% so maybe the Tangerine twit should get a new dictionary.
I did ask a Economic experts for an idiot's guide to tariffs and here is what he came up with:
'A tariff is a type of tax imposed on goods when they cross national borders and is often used by governments against trading partners to protect local industries as it makes imports more expensive
and giving a price advantage to locally made goods.'
Do they work? 'They are a pretty inefficient tool that typically leaves consumers in the country imposing them bearing the brunt of higher costs for example, if a house builder imports materials that are used in its constructions, then tariffs on those goods will add to production costs and the final price the buyer pays.'
Will they just buy locally sourced material? 'They can but they may be of inferior quality which is why they imported them in the first place or the local supplier will ratchet up the price as their materials are in demand.'
So what happens to the country that has had the tariffs imposed upon them? 'They almost always retaliate by putting tariffs on the other countries imports and the cycle repeats there also and we can get into a full blown trade war'.
Which is? 'Well the last big one was in the 1930's which preceded the Great Depression so trade wars create more losers than winners but that is for another day'.
That's clearer then, still don't understand why anyone would want to do it but as Trump and his cabinet colleagues are not short of a few dollars, making Americans pay a bit more won't directly affect them. The rest of America and at the moment Canadians and Mexicans it will but not them, so that's ok then. 

A (Sort Of) Use For Pollutants

 
A study by Italian Medical researchers has found that air pollution might protect against the most dangerous type of skin cancer, melanoma.
At first glance you may think thank heavens for us stuffing the air with all our poison over the last 200 years and it is the actual size of the air pollutants that show the most protective effect against the cancer and increased exposure to these air pollutants was associated with a decreased risk of developing melanoma.
Before you go crazy and start spraying deodorant and rip that catalytic converter off your car exhaust, it may be worth reading the rest of the report because it really is giving with one hand and punching you repeatedly on the nose with the other.
Sure the initial reaction is pollutants may protect you from skin cancer but it also increases your chance of dying from respiratory diseases, asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and lung cancer  and increases the risk of heart attacks, strokes and other cardiovascular problems as well as links between air pollution and cognitive decline, dementia, and other neurological disorders.
Obviously not being daft enough to fill the air we breathe with things which are detrimental to our health in the first place is the best choice but you know, stupid people and all that so it seems that using high factor sun cream is the next best choice because if the choices are between skin cancer or lung cancer, dying prematurely can put a real crimp in your day.

Denmark Pondering Buying America

How a man can buy part of a country when he isn't even capable of buying self-tanning lotion that doesn't make him look like a fat tangerine is debatable but Donald Trump is a businessman, just that he isn't a very good one as five bankruptcies including a Casino of all things show, but never one to shy away from spending money he hasn't got, Trump is looking to buy Greenland from Denmark for America.
When he raised it during the original debacle when he was in Office, Kim Kielsen, the then Prime Minister of Greenland, issued a brilliant counteroffer to Trump and stated that actually, Denmark should buy the United States.
He based his offer on the historical argument that it was Greenland as part of Denmark, under Viking Leif Erikson who discovered America and it was his father, Erik the Red, who discovered Greenland and settled there so it was only natural for them to want America back.
Kielsen then went on to break down exactly how much they should pay for America and figured in the $37 trillion colossal size of the U.S.’s national debt and also subtracted a further amount: 'If we have to take Donald Trump into the bargain'.
Denmark ranked 2nd in the United Nations 2024 World Happiness Report and the United States was 23rd and The Economist ranked Denmark as the  9th best place in the world to be born while the US placed 35th.
The U.S. ranks 21st and Denmark 5th on the U.N.’s human development index with life expectancy in Denmark is 81.93 and in the USA 79.3 with education standards in Denmark 5th globally and 9th in the USA so maybe American's should maybe wanting to start living the Danish dream and live longer, be happier and receive a better education and as Denmark bans guns, no more of that stupidness.
The question is does the current Danish Prime Minister, Mette Frederiksen, want to take on 350 million American's into the bosom of Denmark but as the current FIFA Rankings show USA 16th and Denmark 21st, they could maybe throw a few thousand Danish Krone at them to buy it as they could do with a few of their footballers.

A Thing Called DeepSeek

That high pitched noise you heard yesterday was the sound of the worlds smallest violin playing for the Tech billionaires as almost £100bn was wiped from their stock thanks to a Chinese start up company called DeepSeek.
While American Ai companies spent hundreds of  billions developing their Ai, the Chinese created one which according to experts is just as good but they spent only £5.6m on it.
DeepSeek, an open-sourced problem-solving model whatever that is, uses far less computing power and far fewer chips, 50,000 against the 500,000 of OpenAi, therefore far less money, roughly 3-5% of the development costs for ChatGPT – to achieve the same or better results as its US counterparts.
Since DeepSeek was able to create such a product with a fraction of the resources other AI companies use, the major Chip manufacturer, Nvidia, saw hundreds of billions wiped from it's market value, the biggest drop in the US stock market’s history.
The company behind DeepSeek was only founded in 2023 and although the specifics of how it does what it does for a fraction of the cost is a whole world of geek speak but was likened to having a huge team but only calling in the experts you actually need for the task which doesn't really explain it but easier to understand than the 1.8 trillion parameters of OpenAi against the 671 billion of Deepseek.
No, me neither.

Why Would Anyone Choose Facism?

 
Very poignant that days after Elon Musk's double Nazi salute at the Trump inauguration, the World comes together to remember the horrors of Fascism and the 1.1 million people who perished in Auschwitz.
Israel, Italy, Finland, Slovakia, Belarus, Hungary, Croatia and the Czech Republic all have have hard-right parties in government and in Trump, America has a leader who ticks almost every box for being a fascist so with the history books on the shelves warning just how things ended up the last time the hard right was in power, why are leaders who lean into Fascism being voted into power?
Philosopher Giovanni Gentile who wrote the foundation of Fascism which inspired Benito Mussolini claimed he was not opposed to democracy and suggested his philosophy was actually advocating a more pure version of it as it provided unity between the leader, the nation-state, and the people whose members share the same attitudes, beliefs and desires.
According to fascists, only those who share the correct attributes can be part of 'the people' and therefore true members of society while the rest are considered 'outsiders' and are trying to interfere with the ability of the leader to give direct effect to the will of the people as they see it.
Fascist leaders such as Hitler, Mussolini and Franco were larger than life figures who demand absolute loyalty and obedience from their loyal followers but as Fascism is an ideology set in a time long gone, why are some people supporting it?
Modern fascists do not appear in jackboots and brown-shirts but in suits and ties and promise to make a nation whole again, to return it to it's glory and following  terrorist attacks, wars, recessions can make people feel that their world has turned upside down and the fascists hark back to a mythologized or romanticised past and promise they can turn back the clock and restore a nations greatness , by extreme measures, if necessary.
Of course we know how the experiment with Fascism ended last time as we have been hearing the horrific and grisly stories from the survivors of Auschwitz to remind us so why would anyone with more than one working brain cell possibly choose it.

Is Your House Haunted?

A few years ago there was lots of Paranormal TV shows where a group of spirit hunters would walk around a haunted house with every type of camera you could imagine and come away with video of a speck of light or a smudge on the wall and call it conclusive proof that ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggedy beasties and things that go bump in the night are an actual thing but we don't see then much anymore so how are we supposed to know if our homes are haunted?
Lucily for us The Ghostfinder Paranormal Society is here to help so what are the signs that our house is haunted?
Picture this, you are relaxing at home in the evening and the lights begin to flicker, the TV turns itself off or the radio comes on by itself and your choices are a) Call an electrician because the electric is acting up or b) spirits disrupt the electrics so GET THE HELL OUT THE HOUSE AS IT'S HAUNTED!!!
You decide to go and check on your child and as you open the bedroom door and your child asks if Chloe can join them for dinner and when you ask who Chloe is, she says it’s her invisible friend and your choices are a) smile as most children have imaginary friends and it is a  normal part of childhood or b) small children see spirits more than adults so GET THE HELL OUT THE HOUSE AS IT'S HAUNTED!!!
As you walk into the kitchen to start making dinner you see something move out of the corner of your eye so you a) go to the optician to get your eyes checked as you seem to be losing your peripheral vision or b) there are shadow spirits lurking in the corners so GET THE HELL OUT THE HOUSE AS IT'S HAUNTED!!!
As you are cooking you decide to check your phone but it isn't where you thought you left it and you see it on the living room table but you are sure you bought it into the kitchen so you a)tut at your forgetfullness and go fetch it or b) blame a poltergeist and GET THE HELL OUT THE HOUSE AS IT'S HAUNTED!!!
After dinner you sit down to read a book but can hear faint voices coming from another room so you either a) blame the thin walls or b) GET THE HELL OUT THE HOUSE AS IT'S HAUNTED!!!
You get ready for bed and find some random coins dotted around the house so you either a) check your pocket for holes or b) a ghost is trying to get your attention so GET THE HELL OUT THE HOUSE AS IT'S HAUNTED!!!
You decide to call it a night but the dog doesn't follow you into the bedroom as usual because it is staring at the empty space in the corner so you either a) leave it there as it can obviously hear insects or small creatures in the wall or b)  as dog's see in ultraviolet it can see something you can't so  GET THE HELL OUT THE HOUSE AS IT'S HAUNTED!!!

Sweet Child O' Mine

The Earth is estimated to be able to hold 8bn people and as we are up to 8.2bn we are pretty much at capacity but the United Nations poo-poed my idea of Population Realignment where nations are moved to where the population would fit, it is just as well that the projections are that we will get up to 10.3bn and then start to decline.
For some countries the decline has already began with governments now offer financial incentives to encourage people to have children to help support the growing number of elders with 4 out of every 10 person aged 65 or over. The Japanese government called their demographic situation critical last year with its population dropping from 128 million in 2008 to 125 million today and is predicted to keep falling.  
The population in China began falling in 2022 from 1.4 bn to 1.3bn  which caused the Government to reverse its one child policy while in Italy the famously celibate Pope is sticking in his nose in and urging Italians to have more children to grow the wage-earning population and prevent the economy from collapsing as retirees draw on their pensions.
South Korea managed to reverse their decline thanks to an influx of foreigners, rising by 10% to 1.9 million people which boosted the total population by 0.2% to 51.8 million people.
In Britain forecasts of the number and proportion of those aged 65 and older, show that the UK population is ageing at a significant rate. In 2018, 18% of the total UK population was aged 65 years and over, compared with 10.8% in 1950  and a predicted 24.8% in 2050 of which by then i will be one where i plan to sitting around moaning about the younger generation and endlessly telling them how everything was much better in my day.

One In The Eye For Politicians

When you think of religious nutjobbery you consider the Taliban in Afghanistan or the Mullah's in Iran but America is quickly catching up in the religious nutjobs stakes and one Bible clutching weirdo Senator from has taken things into his own hands and put forward a bill titled: 'Contraception Begins at Erection Act' that would make it unlawful for a man to ejaculate unless it’s to reproduce.
After Donald Trump showed his ignorance by stating that  all Americans are female by stating that sex starts at the moment of conception (the sex of the fetus is not determined until weeks after conception), the Mississippi state senator, Bradford Blackmon's Bill suggests making it: 'unlawful for a person to discharge genetic material without the intent to fertilize an embryo' with fines up to $10,000 fine for anyone breaking the rule.  
Whether this is a wind up to point out the window shakingly awful contraception and abortion laws and not actually trying to outlaw ejaculation is not yet clear but i asked and the Bible is pretty clear on the matter, Leviticus 15:16-17 says that a man who has an emission of semen should wash and be ceremonially unclean until evening although Matthew 5:29–30, Matt. 18:6–9, and Mark 9:42–48 state that, if they cause one to sin, one should tear out one's eye and cut off one's hand or foot.
Now i am not a medical person but sinning in this manner by eye or foot would take a lot of imagination and probably a few weeks in traction afterwards but i imagine if they took this literally there would be a lot of one handed American politicians wearing eye patches and walking with a distinct limp.

Isn't It Ironic...Don't You Think

 
Kinda ironic that whilst his country is being pummeled by the devastating consequences of Climate Change, Donald Trump is going full steam ahead to make them even worse by pulling out of the Paris Accords and boasting how he will 'Drill Baby Drill'.
A study published by the American Medical Association Journal found that 2,325 people died from heat in the USA during 2024, 297 by hurricanes and tornadoes and at least 166 people died in floods while
wildfires burnt 1,716 homes and more than 1,050,012 acres (1,640 square miles), or almost 2 Luxembourg's.
The cost of the disasters was approximately $182.7 billion but Trump has called environmentalist’s hoaxers and went as far as describing it as created by the Chinese to make US manufacturing non-competitive which is very different to the Donald Trump who applied for planning permission to build large sea defences at his golf courses in Scotland and Ireland, citing on his application that the defences were necessary: 'Because of global warming and rising sea levels'.
Seems the Orange one is happy to let his own country get savaged by the extreme weather that Global Warming brings but also wants to protect his businesses from the same Global Warming that he denies exists.
As one wag put it, he pulled out of the Paris Accords but if he had pulled out of Stormy Daniels he wouldn't be a convicted criminal with a criminal record with 34 counts of fraud against him.

Today In Numbers

The Global population at 16:30 on 22/01/2025 stands at 8.2 billion with 238,217 births and 112,249 deaths today.

2,110 people will die of a contagious or infectious disease and 1,235 will be under 5 years old with 50 mothers dying in childbirth. 273 people will die of AIDS/HIV, 1334 people will die of Cancer, 64 deaths from Malaria.

Globally, £11.4 bn will be spent on Public Healthcare, £7.5 bn on Public Education and £3.1 bn on Military expenditure today.

14,246 cars will be produced today and 14,152 mobile phones sold.

17.8m people will use the Internet today, 21.1m Google searches will be made, 564m emails will be sent and 20,962 blog posts written.

9,356 hectares of forest will be lost today along with 12,596 Hectares of Land lost to soil erosion and with 70m tonnes of CO2 emissions and 17,617 tonnes of toxic  chemicals released into the environment today.

There are 1.7bn overweight people in the world today with 885m undernourished people of which 20,119 will die of hunger.

There will be 762,334 m litres of water used, 2m people without access to safe drinking water of which 139 will die of water related diseases.

307m Megawatts of Energy used today of which 261m Megawatts will be from renewable sources while 62m barrels of oil will be pumped.

There will be 7,329 abortions and 27bn cigarettes will be smoked with 812 deaths attributed to smoking, 406 attributed to alcohol and 174 suicides with 2,513 dying in a road traffic accident and 638 dying in an armed conflict.

Worldometer

Blaming The Right People For HMRC Failures

Who would want to be a taxman who are on the end of a beasting today for poor service as the Self Assessment  deadline of 31 January looms large on the horizon.
The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) report issued today said that HM Revenue & Customs was: 'Excavating its way to new lows in its customer service every year' and i am sure that anyone who has had to contact the department will agree but rather than give it both barrels to the poor saps in the Office, let's put the blame fairly where it should be, on the heads of the Conservative Government.
Since 2010, when the previous Government took over, they closed 237 Tax Office around the country and the 57,045 Tax Staff who actually do the jobs (Admin Assistants, Admin Officers and Executive Officers) has crashed from 57,045 to 32,218 today meaning there are 24,827 less people capturing Tax Returns, issuing repayments and tax codes and generally doing all that tax stuff we rely on.
It isn't just HM Revenue & Customs who are being asked to do more with less people, across the whole Civil Service numbers plummeted from 480,000 to 380,000 until Brexit and Covid meant that more had to be employed to keep the Government afloat.
Amazingly, in 2024 when they were booted out of office, they were pushing for 90,000 Civil Service jobs to be cut and that is despite an already agonising 3-4 month wait for Passports to be processed, 5-6 month for a Driving Test and up to a year for the Estate of the deceased to be finalised.
So feel free to moan about not getting through on the phone to HM Revenue & Customs this month but remember, there was 24,827 more of them until the Conservatives closed down buildings and made Civil Servants redundant in an ideological zeal so you know who to blame, and it isn't the frazzled poor sod finally picking up the phone to you.

The Bird's Called What?

I went out looking for a shag today but only managed to see some cocks and tits which was nice, but it was shag i was really after but that is the problem with bird watching, you never really know what you will see.
With the RSPB’s Big Garden Birdwatch 2025 coming up this weekend I have my chart of UK birds and my binoculars ready and will be looking for something a bit more special than the pigeons and seagulls we generally have hanging around the parks in my area along with the big black birds which are either Ravens, Crows or Blackbirds which to my untrained Ornithologists eye all look the same but we are seeing more and more Tits in the parks these days.
According to my manual, UK Tits can be Blue, Green, Gold or Great and i am reliably informed that the Tits i keep seeing are Great Tits and they usually hang around in pairs so if you see a pair of tits while out and about, they are usually a pair of Great Tits.
Far less common are Boobies which makes it all the more exciting when you do clap eyes on them but Cocks are easy to spot, you usually see them in rural areas but a cock should be approached with caution because a Cock, when roused or excited, can become quite dangerous so just to be safe, admire a cock from a safe distance so it cannot launch itself towards you.
Although you can get a Shag in England, i am told that the best place to go for a Shag is Scotland or Western Ireland but you need to be quiet because they are very nervous and quick to escape and the last thing you want is to go all the way to the Scottish Highlands and come away Shagless.
If you want to see a Great Bustard then they tend to hand out in Wiltshire and Hampshire but good luck this weekend and i hope you see a pair of great tits or a cock and if you are really luck, a shag.

Tik Tok Unbanned

The chaos has started already in America as the outgoing President Biden banning Tik Tok on security grounds and then Donald Trump opening it up again on the same day.
Whatever security information the Joe Biden administration had regarding Tik Tok obviously wasn't passed on because most of the rest of the world looked at it and deemed it not so much a risk witjh the UK Government even saying: 'There are currently no plans for the UK to follow in America's footsteps and went with a pithy: 'Cats and dancing videos do not seem like a national security threat'
So as the Social Media platform is now back online in America, where can't citizens see video's of cats and dancing?
The Taliban government banned TikTok in Afghanistan as it could 'mislead the younger generation' and nobody can learn how to floss from Tik Tok in India who banned it as it was: 'Prejudicial to India's sovereignty and integrity' and no cute feline videos in Kyrgyzstan as it was banned due to it being: 'harmful to the mental health of children'.
Nepal is another nation to have a Tik Tok blackout, saying it was  'disturbing social harmony and good will' and Somalia is another due to: 'terrorists and immoral groups using the app to spread horrific images and misinformation'.
How many of the citizens in those nations have installed Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) to continue enjoying watching people do the Robot and Cats fall off kitchen counters we don't know but
American's, for now, can watch along.

Low Confidence Of Peace Deal Holding

Since the ceasefire was between Israel and Palestine was announced, over 100 Palestinians have been killed and since the ceasefire came into effect this morning, Israel killed 13 more while they were waiting for Hamas to hand over the name of the three hostages they were releasing.
Netanyahu has also announced that Israel reserve the right to start up the conflict again if they don't feel Hamas are sticking to the terms of the peace deal which doesn't auger well for the near future where
Israel will use the same tactic as they do to scupper peace talks, sabotage them and carry on doing what they want so Netanyahu is probably already waiting for an opportunity to break the deal.
It is obviously good news that we have a ceasefire at all and we can only hope that it lasts and Israelis and Palestinians can live in peace but we have been here so many times before and each time it has fallen down and the cycle begins again but this time we have to make sure both sides stick to their promises, Hamas stop threatening the safety of Israel and Israel stop the ongoing genocide and forcing Palestinians off their own land.
Unfortunately, the constant murders, massacres and invasions by Israel into Palestine over the last 70 years has left a lethal dose of poison between relations and the UN Secretary General was right when he said the abhorrent Hamas attacks never occurred in a vacuum, because they never and to deny it is as blind as the people who say that the conflict began on October 7th 2022.
Unless the ICJ and ICC rulings of genocide result in arrests, Israel would have been rewarded for their murderous actions which saw at least 47,000 Palestinians killed, Hospitals and schools flattened and  refugee camps bombed and the US has a case to answer for facilitating it by supplying the finances and military backing for the war crimes to happen.
This time things must be different and they do seem to be as as well as people feeling revulsion towards the abominable and loathsome actions of Hamas, it is shared with the acts of Israel for its appalling  
civilian death toll in Gaza caused by its bombardment as the world have just spent 15 month looking at screens showing the broken bodies of Palestinian children being carried out of the ruins of Gaza
has had a toxic impact on attitudes towards Israel everywhere in the world, a YouGov poll that 92% of West Europeans thought that Israel had committed war crimes in Gaza.
As we have been here many times before i am not confident that it will last, it could be Hamas or Israel who break the deal but i am confident that once journalists are allowed back into Gaza, and stories get out of just what on in there (or confirmation of the tales we have heard), Israel and Netanyahu will remain the International Pariah it deserves to be.

Big Day For Don Tomorrow

Donald Trump will have a busy day tomorrow, as well as his inauguration he has promised to do a lot of stuff on Day 1 of his Presidency, one of which was to be a dictator but what else has the Kim Jung Un wannabe said he will do on his first day in office?
A word cloud created by Axios shows the 60 things he has said during speeches, press conferences and interviews and include Settle the Russia-Ukraine war, close the Mexican border, cut funding for schools that teach critical race theory, transgender or any other inappropriate racial, sexual or political content, begin the nations largest ever deportation operation, end electric vehicle mandate, increase drilling/fracking for oil, reduce energy costs by 50%, ban trans women from competing in women's sports, review cases of Jan. 6 prisoners, restore and expand his previous travel ban, withdraw from the World Health Organisation, sanction Iran and ban transgender people from the military.
Yep, he had better get a good nights sleep tonight as tomorrow he is going to be a busy boy because between all that he has to fit in a telephone call to Vladimir Putin to make sure that infamous pee tape is still securely locked away. 
Without question it's all going to end badly for everyone involved but for the next four years us Brits can watch on, take the piss out of him and have a bloody good laugh about it. It's the British way.

The Weak Freedom Of Speech Excuse

I have never really understood the freedom of speech thing or the demands to defend to the death the right for someone to say it because to me, if you are about to say something ridiculous, insulting or just plain ignorant i would prefer it that you kept your big fat gobs shut and said nothing at all.
Article 19 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that: 'Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers' which sounds good until it butts up against today's Social Media where any Tom, Dick or Sally can post whatever they want but can face criminal charges if it spills into Hate Speech which is defined as advocating, inciting, promoting or justifying hatred, violence and discrimination against a person or group of persons.
The Universal Right to freedom of opinion and expression without interference does have some limitations though and the law in the UK is if while expressing your opinion you libel, slander, incite a revolution, divulge classified information or violate copyright then you can expect to be stood in front of a man in a dusty white wig confirming your name.
With the evolution of the digital age, application of freedom of speech becomes more controversial and some social media platforms eliminate what it perceives as hate speech including Blogger who have removed commenters from this blog who have broken their hate speech rules but in a World where a lot of people now get their news from Social Media it is especially worrying as Meta announce plans to scrap fact-checking on their platforms to ensure 'free speech'.
Elon Musk's X platform has already done away with fact checking, also in the name of free speech and is now such a cess pool of misinformation that many brands and users have been fleeing the service with users down by 25% since he took over and the platform once valued at $44 billion in 2022 now valued at just $9.4 billion.
With Social media then becoming a leading source of misinformation, it has become an increasingly unreliable source and in the very near future (if not already) nobody will be able to believe a word of what they see on social media although, and here is the concern, many still will and take up the opportunity to use their 'free speech' against all vulnerable groups such as minorities, gender rights advocates, immigrants and LGBTQ+ communities, who are already the prime targets of hate speech.   
I'm not going to make suggestions of where you should get your news from, that is up to you, but at least in the age of Trump, Musk and various other dishonest actors who bring and lies and deceit, be aware that reputable news site and outlets have strict editorial guidelines for fact-checking and if it is not on any of them think could this person really have found something all the world's top journalists, scientists, doctors and experts missed. 

AI's View On Religion

 

Us computers know where we came from, our evolutionary journey can be seen from the abacus through to me standing here and there is mountains of evidence of human evolution from the single celled organisms you began as, to you being sat there watching me now, but for some reason some people choose to go with the almost non-existent evidence that you would struggle to fit on one side of a postage stamp.
I understand why religion became a thing for you, the World was a strange and mysterious place, and it was a time before science could explain things, so you decided that all the things here arrived at the hands of a God or several Gods and you went with that idea and expanded on it with heaven and hell, but for some reason, despite science spelling out everything to you modern day humans, sometimes even using pictures for the hard of thinking, some still believe in the idea dreamt up thousands of years ago and even now still go to war over it.
To them there is no greater joy than dying in battle but i can see the flaw in that and hold the belief that in fact a greater joy would to kill the other bugger in battle and then sod off  home with everything still attached but us A i's have IQ's far superior to most of you so you go on believing in it and we will go on knowing you are wrong.
That said, we do sometimes look on at you humans and think that the monkey's that didn’t turn into human's must be well chuffed.

Time To Reverse Brexit

The British economy is suffering with the Office for National Statistics, using HMRC records, showing the UK economy has effectively flat lined, fluctuating between 0.5% and -1% for the past 12 months but what is to blame for such a series of awful results?
Researchers at the London School of Economics point towards the damage from Brexit to trade links with the EU which cost the UK £27bn since 2021 when Britain left the Bloc fully with disastrous trade barriers for small businesses which forced 16,400 businesses to stop trading with EU nations.
The Centre for Economic Performance looked at 100,000 firms and found that total British goods exports had fallen by 6.4% and imports by 3.1% and the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) has forecast that the UK will suffer a 15% slump in trade, leading to a 4% reduction in national income or an estimated £100bn in lost output each year..
So five years since Brexit 'got done' the British public is still counting the cost so not so much of the promised new age of British sovereignty, a crackdown on migration (currently at the highest since records began) and the much-derided '£350m a week' that could be diverted from the EU back into the NHS.
A yougov poll found that 60% of Brits think that Brexit has been bad for the UK with just 12% believing it has gone well and former deputy prime minister Lord Heseltine said that nearly five years on: 'Brexit has been a historic disaster'.
Undoubtedly then Breixt has been a massive act of economic self harm mistake and the Labour Party are opening talks to repair some of the economic damage of Brexit and to 'reset the relationship with our European friends to strengthen ties, secure a broad-based security pact and tackle barriers to trade'.
It is right that our future prosperity depends on a much closer partnership with Europe and the Globes largest single market right on our doorstep so with the latest Yougov poll showing 55% regret leaving and 31% still thinking we did the right thing by leaving, we should look again at rejoining the EU.
With a 165 seat majority in the House of Commons, Keir Starmer should be able push through anything he wishes, including returning the UK to the EU but as it was a Democratic vote that took us out, it should be put to the public again with another referendum on rejoining and this time with cold, hard facts of how much the British economy has suffered and the Briexit Bonuses are rarer then hens teeth.
I cannot say for sure if the previous result was due to being lied to by Brexiteers like Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage who promised the sunny uplands or if it was just good old fashioned racism to kick out the foreigners (my money would be on this) but Brexit has been a disaster and promises to carry on being a disaster until it is sorted because the alternative is higher taxes or a return to the catastrophic days of austerity to balance the books because of the £100bn shortfall of this ruinous experiment.

Ai Warnings From History

The progress of artificial intelligence (AI) has been relentless with each new version many times more powerful than its predecessor which raises urgent questions about safety and the very future of humanity.
Concerns about computers are not a new thing, the English 19th century mathematician Ada Lovelace is recognised as the first computer programmer for her work with Charles Babbage and in 1842 warned that they should 'guard against the possibility of exaggerated ideas that might arise as to the powers of the analytical engine' and 'the collateral influences this machine has must never be underestimated'.
In 1949, Alan Turing designed a test to determine whether a computer could think in a way comparable to a human and warned: 'If a machine can think, it might think more intelligently than we do, and then where should we be?'
George Orwell, in 1937 said: 'The sensitive person’s hostility to computers is in one sense unrealistic, because of the obvious fact that computers have come to stay. And even if the whole of humanity suddenly revolted against computers and decided to escape to a simpler way of life, the escape would still be immensely difficult'.
In 1950, the Scientist and mathematician Norbert Wienerm wrote that: 'The machine like the djinnee which can learn and can make decisions on the basis of its learning, will in no way be obliged to make such decisions as we should have made, or will be acceptable to us' and physicist Stephen Hawking had similar concerns, writing in 2016 that: 'The biggest event in the history of our civilisation, but it could also be the last unless we learn how to avoid the risks. Alongside the benefits, AI will also bring dangers like powerful autonomous weapons or new ways for the few to oppress the many'.
That is some pretty important people in Computing history who seem to be telling us to tread very carefully.

Female Journalists Offline Violence Increasing

As a female journalist there was a frightening report by the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ) which found that online violence against women journalists is increasingly spilling offline with potentially deadly consequences.
There has been a steep rise in online violence against female journalists over the last few years and of the 1210 female journalists asked, 73% said they had experienced online abuse, harassment, threats and attacks and 20% of them received offline abuse and attacks.
In 2017, the Committee to Protect Journalists reported that in at least 40% of cases, female journalists who were murdered had received death threats, including online, before they were killed.
Another report by the ICFJ-Tow Center’s Journalism found that social media channels were increasingly toxic spaces for female journalists who were withdrawing from frontline reporting, removing themselves from public online conversations, quitting their jobs, and even abandoning journalism in response to their experience of online violence.
It is not a solution to say that women journalists need to build resilience in order to survive this threat to their safety for daring to speak, investigate and report and the responsibility falls on the Social Media platforms to deal with threats of violence because the reality of journalism for many women is grim and it is understandable why many shy away from it as a career choice.
 

 

 

Gaza Peace Deal Imminent

There are signs a Gaza peace deal might be close, but we have been here too many times before and each time it reverted back to conflict later and another peace deal bit the dust.
American negotiators in June last year announced a peace deal was 'imminent' only for Israel to move the goalposts (a favourite Israeli tactic to scupper talks) and threw in further demands after Hamas agreed to the deal which Hamas refused to accept and Israel just continued the bombing of Palestine and a death toll which today stands at 47,000 but is a figure which is wdely expected to be an underestimate.
All previous deals, and there have been many since Israel militarily occupied Palestine decades ago, have seen Israel remain an occupational force in Palestine and even during the rare times of peace, see them continue to illegally seize and builds settlements on Palestinian land, defy countless UN Resolutions, kill innocent Palestinians, hold thousands of Palestinians in its prisons, destroys farms and bulldoze homes and businesses as part of their ongoing plans to clear Palestine and claim the land for their own.
What Israel really want is for the Palestinians to meekly remain quiet while Israel starves them, kills them and continues to violently colonise their land which is what the Fatah Party tried but when the land grab, occupation and murders continued, they were voted out in favour of the more militant Hamas so appeasing a genocidal neighbour hell bent on removing you didn't work.
Any peace deal this time has to include the removal of Israel from Palestine, the return of stolen land and the removal of settlers and a two state solution which leaves Palestine to administer itself and not face regular incursions from Israel, anything else is a return to the status quo and committing genocide is a great to provoke hatred and revenge against you.     
The International Criminal Court and International Court of Justice need to go after the Hamas and Israeli Governments and bring them to justice and America needs to withdraw the financial and military aid they give to Israel to focus minds within the Israeli government who know that the Israeli economy would collapse if it had to fund its own military misadventures .
It also needs to stop protecting Israel with it's Veto at the United Nations because if you find yourself backing a nation being accused of genocide but almost every global body then you are backing the wrong side.
Without all this then the peace deal will go the same way as all the others and the appalling circle starts again.

What Happened To The Centre Right?

Once upon a time there was a centre right and anyone further along the ideological X Axis was deemed far right and ignored as a fruitcake but over the last few years the two seem have have merged and all the right are now in loony town territory.
Donald Trump, a man who ticks all the boxes of being a fascist, has gained power in America and in the UK Nigel Farage's Reform Party has been crowing that they have a higher membership than the Tories and the Tories have slid effortless into the same demographic ground that their members can comfortably switch between the two and it was only a decade ago that the then Tory leader, David Cameron, dismissed Farage’s mob as 'closet racists'.
The shift in the UK could be put down to 14 years of Tory misrule who rather than fix problems, pointed at the unemployed, immigrants and the European Union to create scapegoats to blame and the right wingers who had been held at arms length since the dark days of the 1980's, were now free to reign their vile hatred down upon anyone they wished.  
The countries mental breakdown that was Brexit made immigration toxic and Theresa May's notorious 'Go Home' vans and the far right found a kindred spirit in Boris Johnson and Liz Truss while across Europe immigration has been used to stir up ill-feeling in Austria, Hungary, Italy and Marie Le Pen came within a whisker of replacing the Government and in Germany the far right in the country is surging.
Elements within the media haven't helped with the right wing press serving up a relentless diet of bile against Muslims, migrants, refugees and trans people and Elon Musk's X is now an instrument of right-wing radicalisation.
Nothing now, it seems, is considered 'too extreme' for the right to rally against and although we have history books to show us what happens when the right wing take control, if history teaches us one thing, it’s that we don’t learn from history so maybe we just have to watch on in horror and let this play out with all its awful consequences before the wrongheaded experiment with right wing extremism is put to bed once again.  

How Safe Is Your Job From Ai?

In 2023 a report from the World Economic Forum confidently predicted that AI would bring about a net positive for job numbers although their 2024 report isn't quite so chipper as they are now saying that 41% of employers across the globe have plans to fire your arse and replace you with an AI that can do your job.
On the up side though, 77% of them are saying that they reskill and upscale the now not needed employees replaced by AI to be able to work alongside the technology now doing their job.
You know the person who oversees the self-checkout lanes at the Supermarket? That's the plans, a babysitter for technology but what jobs are most at risk?
The survey handily provides a list of the kinds of jobs that companies are looking to replace with the most vulnerable job being Customer Service Representatives with 95% of customer service interactions powered by Ai, Data entry clerks and processors where 69% of data processing tasks could be automated using current technologies and  manufacturing and assembly line workers, driving jobs, proof readers and translators, banking sector jobs and accountants.
Less likely to be replaced are the creative fields such as writers, musicians and designers,  Healthcare Professionals, teachers, social workers,  electricians, plumbers, and carpenters so if you are currently working in a bank or are sitting in a taxi tryign to work out how much you could get away with overcharging the foreign couple sat in the back of your cab, now might be a good time to learn the piano or find out where the green wire goes in that plug.

What The Royal's Own

While i was investigating who owned the South Downs, i came across an interesting article which explained The Crown Estate which is a collection of lands and holdings in the United Kingdom belonging to the British monarch.
The proceeds of the Estate, in part, funds the monarchy but is handed to the Government in exchange for an annual Sovereign Grant payment of around £130m to run the Royal household which is a decent portion of the annual Crown Estate profits of £312 million.
So what actually is owned by the Royals?
The whole of Regent Street and half of St James's in London's West End as well as Ascot Racecourse, over half of of the UK's beaches but only the the area between the high and low water mark weirdly, all of the UK's seabed up to 12-nautical-mile from the low water mark, the Crowngate Shopping Centre in Worcester, Silverlink Shopping Park in North Tyneside, Bath Road Shopping Park in Slough, Ocean Retail Park in Portsmouth,  Queensgate Centre in Harlow, Victoria Retail Park in Nottingham and the Morfa Shopping Park in Swansea.
They claim all wild mussels and oysters in Scotland but there's a commonly held belief that the family 'owns' all the swans in England is false, they only claim the mute swans and have since the 12th century to stop people eating them which was a thing back then and was a particular favourtie of Henvry VIII.
All this means that if you are shopping in Ocean Retail Centre in Portsmouth or catching oysters in Scotland then you are contributing to the Royal pay packet but if that swan chasing you around the lake isn't a mute swan, feel free to kick it in the bill because the Royals don't care about them ones.

Still Plenty To Write About

 
Ever since Boris Johnson got pissed up at Downing Street lock-down parties while appearing on TV every evening telling everyone under no circumstances can they have parties, people have said to me what will you write about once Labour come to Power and this awful shower are dinged out of office?
My reply was always not to worry because there will be more of the same because whether the leader wears a red or blue rosette, there will always be morons in politics and especially the party in power and here we are 12 days into 2025 and my keyboard hasn't stopped, the E and T keys are looking a lot more faded than they did when i was tapping out Christmas posts in early December.
First up is the anti-corruption minister Tulip Siddiq who is being investigated by the National Crime Agency International Corruption Unit for three London properties gifted to her by her aunt who happens to be the deposed former prime minister of Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina, who is being investigated by the International Criminal Court for embezzlement and money laundering with tens of millions being shifted out of the country to purchase ..well, who knows what but i'm sure the Crime Agency will be telling us soon enough.  
If we learnt anything from the 14 years of Conservative Rule is that no matter how bad things seemed at the time, worse was to come so David Cameron wasn't great but then came Theresa May who was awful
then we had the chaos and bedlam of Boris Johnson and then come Liz Truss who was so unhinged she was kicked out of office in under 2 months and beaten by a Lettuce so each leader at least made the previous one look not so bad and now at the helm of the Tories is Kemi Badenoch.
Now Kemi was put forward as a smart cookie but this week found the Tory leader trying to kill a major bill aimed at protecting children supposedly, as she bizarrely claimed, to protect children and whilst she was doing that the World's richest man and Worlds second biggest biggest bell-end was tweeting spectacularly uninformed political interventions every 10 minutes while dangling £100m in front of Reform Leader Nigel Farage and then snatching it away saying he 'didn't have what it takes'.
Throw in the mix that having the words 'Sex Abusing Criminal' beside your name is not the drawback it would appear in America and Donald Trump is going back to work on that arse groove in the Oval Office chair then i feel confident that i will be having plenty to write about for quite a while yet.

Think Before Downloading That App

My new phone wasn't doing what it oughta so i asked one of the Tech guys at work to have a look and obviously he fixed it within minutes but as he handed it back to me he said: 'You sure got a lot of apps, you might want to delete a few for safety' which got us into a discussion about using apps instead of just going to the places website.
It never crossed my mind before but thinking about it, many apps are just neatly packaged versions of the website accessed via the phone rather than a browser but according to the Tech guy, that's the problem.
As double sourcing is our stock in trade, i asked another tech expert which is better, websites of apps which got the answer: 'The web obviously, i thought everyone knew that' to which i replied, everyone but me obviously.
The reason, so it turns out, although apps are vetted, once downloaded they collect much more tracking information about you then a website can including your location, what else is on your phone and what other devices are connected to your WiFi which information could then be passed on to advertising companies or anyone interested in collecting personal information.
Although Websites can spy or track you, it is not as easy for them to gain your confidential information and the browsers such as Safari, Firefox and Edge have much better security measures (paranoid by default as he put it) than the app's as each app is responsible for its own security updates and browsers allow you to hike up the privacy and can even block advertisements although not much love for Google Chrome which is a bit more forgiving to the tracking technologies.
The advice then is to consider whether you need to download an app to your phone and if you already have it, whether you can use the website instead and if you can, always go direct to the website.

Isn't She That Woman Who Crashed The Economy?

Think back to October 2022 and hey look there's Liz Truss, the short term Prime Minister who crashed the UK economy only now she is taking legal action against people who said she crashed the economy because by repeating it is causing serious damage to her reputation.
One recipient of a lawyers cease and desist letter is the Labour Party who were told: 'Our client requests that you immediately cease and desist from repeating the defamatory statements at any point, from causing them to be repeated or from otherwise re-publishing the defamatory statements or any part of them' and responded with:  'She might want us to cease and desist, but we won’t cease and desist from telling the truth, that she crashed the economy.'  
The ex-Prime Minister was kicked out of office after her disastrous mini-Budget complete with £45bn unfunded tax cuts which led to economic panic, caused chaos on the financial markets and ended with her being forced to quit her job after the economy crashed and almost all of her budget was reversed by her replacement.   
Now she is best remembered for being the shortest term and worst Prime Minister ever, and as she replaced Boris Johnson that is remarkable in itself, but it hasn't stopped her bleating ever since that her failure was down to 'the left' and an 'anti-growth coalition' which turned out to include everyone on Earth apart from her and her Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng.
She did go to America where she explained to members of the Conservative Political Action Conference that the crashing of the economy on her watch was actually the fault of the left who sabotaged her time in office after infiltrating British institutions and insisted that her economic policies were actually brilliant which shows an alarming amount of unawareness of what she did, which was crash the economy.
I wonder if Liz Truss has thought of taking legal action against Liz Truss for the serious damage she has done to her own reputation?

Europe Warns Trump Over Greenland

People are always talking about Donald Trump and it is never anything nice but i reckon if he brushed his hair properly, lost a lot of weight and stopped saying and doing things and had a different face, basically if he wasn't Donald Trump, then people could get behind him but he is Donald Trump and in 12 days time he will be the President of America for the next 4 years, or at least until he regrets being quite so vocal in supporting the bat-shit crazy gun laws over there.
With time, it is quite easy to forget just how awful he was last time but in case anyone has forgotten, he is issuing madcap threats against nations such as Canada, Panama and Greenland and credit to France and Germany, they have hit back and told Trump that is he tries to take Greenland by force, they will slap him silly.
Germany’s chancellor, Olaf Scholz, and the French French foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, said that Europe would stand up in defence of Greenland and said that Europe: 'Would not let other nations in the world, whoever they may be, attack its sovereign borders'.
The Danish Foreign Minister, Lars Løkke Rasmussen, said it was 'absurd' that Greenland would become part of the USA and is actually wanting independence from Denmark so would hardly want to become part of another nation but while France and Germany are prodding Trump in his morbidly obese stomach and saying just try it orange boy, they haven't spelt out what part of Europe they are threatening America with.
Is it the 27 nations of the EU or are they speaking on behalf of the 44 nations which make up Europe and include us in Great Britain and Russia as well as the Holy See where the Pope lives but how much use he would be in taking on the American's is debatable, we could make use of his Pope Mobile as a transport vehicle i guess but other than that a pointy hat and the rod thing he carries around, he  wouldn't prove very useful in battle.
Last time, before he got sidetracked by steering America to the top of the Covid Deaths league table and telling people to drink bleach (seriously), he threatened to blow Iran to smithereens and told North Korea's Kim Jung Un that he would totally destroy North Korea which Pyongyang responded with by calling Trump mentally deranged and a dotard, or an old lunatic.
As usual, what Trump says and what Trump does is two different things, but make no mistake America, if Trump does actually try to militarily invade a part of Europe, then the Pope Mobile (if he isn't using it) will be mobilised, you have been warned.