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.

Nice Country, How much You Want For It?

In 1868 the USA offered Denmark $5.5 million for Greenland and was told it wasn't for sale and they came back again in 1946 and slapped a cheque for £100 million on the table and were buffed again and when Donald Trump mentioned it in 2019 he was told in no uncertain terms to keep his teeny tiny hands off it but they are expecting him to come back again with another offer during his second term and the Washington Post did a calculation based on what America had paid for land previously and came up with a bill of $1.1 trillion.
Land has been bought and sold by nations for centuries, the Unites States paid France £15m for Louisiana and the Russian Treasury was bolstered by £7.2m dropping into their bank account when the USA bought Alaska off them and Mexico could buy a lot of Taco's with the £10m the USA paid them for present-day southern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico.
Denmark may have no plans to sell Greenland to America but they took £25m from them for the Virgin Islands which was more expensive than the £16m the USA paid Spain for the Philippines.
Hudson’s Bay Company sold Rupert’s Land to Britain for £300,000 and planned to sell it on for a profit to the USA but decided to give it away to Canada instead but England was not so charitable to France, making them cough up £5.3m for Dunkirk just after they had paid £3.3m to Sweden for St Barts.
Germany bought the Caroline, Palau, and Mariana Islands from Spain for £6.7m and the cost to Pakistan by bits of Muscat and Oman  was £1m while the Soviet Union emptied all their piggy banks to pay the £97.7m for Finlands Jäniskoski-Niskakoski territory.
The last land sale i could find was Belgium selling 2.5acres of land to the Netherlands for £30,000 in October 2024 due to the course of a river changing which left the tiny parcel of Belgium in the Netherlands.

Sticking With Labour

The Labour Party have had a bit of a shaky start, i am hoping that they are getting all the bad news out the way in the first few months and then it's all rainbows and lollipops but to be fair they were stitched up royally by the outgoing Conservative Party who knew they were on the way out and nobbled them massively to the tune of a £22 billion deficit.
They way they did it was agree to pay out billions for compensation for the Post Office Horizon Scandal  (£10bn) and infected blood scandal (£11.8 billion) and then put it on an IOU, stuck it an envelope which they locked in a drawer and delayed paying out until after the election, which they comprehensively lost.   
So all of Labour's spending plans flew out the window when they opened the drawer and hence Rachel Reeves bemoaning the Conservatives 'spending taxpayers money like no tomorrow because they knew someone else would have to pick up the bill' and her first budget was tax rises on some, including the Farmers.
Now at the start the Farmers did have public sympathy, until two moments when they slunk away with their tail between their legs.
The first was a question on Question Time which asked: 'Why do Farmers think they do not have to pay Inheritance Tax?' which bought to everyone attention that while everyone else was paying 40% on any estate worth over £350,000, the Farmers were paying £nil and were now being asked to pay 20% on anything over £3 million which still sounds a bit of a raw deal for the rest of us.   
Then big mouthed Jeremy Clarkson came stomping into the argument, setting himself up as the mouthpiece for Farmers and the 'unfair tax' until the BBC unearthed him saying that when he bought his farm: 'Avoiding inheritance tax was the critical thing' in his decision to buy land which saw him quickly retreating and stomping back off again to keep his big head down.
So i say stick with Labour, the Conservatives went down the route of increasing Income Tax and National Insurance and slashing and cutting public services whereas Labour are trying to do it in a way which fixed the mighty black hole they inherited won't see any return to the awful Tory Years of Austerity which did so much damage.

How To Build A Scientifically Perfect Snowman

Traditionally the coldest week in the UK is between the 8th and 16 February but the most likely period for snow is between 24 January and 25 February so the snow forecast for this weekend is a few weeks early.
The MET Office have issued yellow warnings (meaning it is likely to happen) for snow for most of the UK from Friday evening to Monday morning with temperatures around 5C below the 7C average which means its going to pretty nippy out there including here on the South Coast where we generally miss out on the white stuff.    
As the temperature outside drops and snow layers the streets you may find yourself tempted to run outside and build yourself a snowman but not so fast because science has studied snowman building and can tell us how to build a perfect one.
First, so say the scientists with way too much time on their hands, you have to decide where to put your snowman and somewhere in shade is preferable so it doesn't melt too quickly.
Next, make sure you’ve got the right kind of snow so you want between 3%-8% moisture so the snow sticks and doesn't just fall apart when you shove a carrot in it's face although how you can guess the moisture of snow is anybodies guess.
So you got the right place and the correct moisture of snow so you need to roll three snowballs, one of 30cm (11.8 inches) for the head, one 50cm (19.6 inches) for the upper body and the last one of 80cm (31.4 inches) for a perfectly proportioned and stable height of exactly 160 cm (5' 2") which is the standard height for a snowman apparently.
Happy with your hard work it is now time for the finishing flourish with branches in his sides for arms, wrap a scarf around his neck and plonk a hat on his head and add three buttons equally spaced for the snowman’s chest, a carrot nose and more buttons for eyes.
Obviously if you have an enchanted silk hat knocking about then use that and enjoy the laughing and playing before he melts away otherwise you will have to do with a stationery, but a scientifically perfectly built  snowman.
Finally, a word of advice, snow is very cold so before you say 'Duh, obviously Lucy', it is easy to forget that when you are out in the stuff and making snowmen and snowballs so make sure you wear gloves or take a break when your fingers are numb and going a funny blue colour and one more thing, snow is pretty heavy so aim that snowball at your brother/sister/neighbour a bit higher for a decent head shot.

Trump Was Wrong About Everything

The problem with voting for a spanner is if they actually then go on and win the election, you then have a complete spanner running your country which is why America has the incoming Donald Trump due to land his ample backside in the reinforced Oval Office chair.
Hours after the horrors of 15 people being killed in New Orleans, Trump's teeny tiny little fingers were working to send a message out on Social Media that went: 'When I said that the criminals coming in are far worse than the criminals we have in our country, that statement was constantly refuted by Democrats and the Fake News Media, but it turned out to be true' and then went on to blather about the crime rate and how his heart was with the victims.
I can only imagine that Trump, being a nasty fat racist saw the name of the terrorist, Shamsud-Din Jabbar, and what passed for his brain under that mop of weirdly coloured hair went 'That's a foreigners name' and sent out the wholly incorrect message that  it was perpetrated by johnny foreigner migrant  who had arrived in the USA.
As it turned out to someone born and raised in America, someone who had served in the US Military was a bit awkward for him, especially as he MUST have been told it was done by an American, but not one to make himself look a tool once when he can do it twice, he then went on to reiterate the points he made earlier when he was wrong about everything saying: 'Our Country is a disaster, a laughing stock all over the World' which to be fair, it is when a big orange moron like him is judged the best man to lead them but anyway, he then went on to bleat about Open Borders and finished with: 'only strength and powerful leadership will stop it' which isn't a great line from someone who is widely considered a fascist.
The issue i have is the same one we had over here following the Southport terror attacks where right wing loons such as Nigel Farage and Tommy Robinson put out messages blaming migrants which led directly to the hard of thinking attacking migrant hotels and rioting for a week and ignoring the fact that the attacker was not an immigrant, but Welsh.
Unfortunately, it is where we are now with dimwits with social media accounts sending out inflammatory posts trying to make a link between the awful events and migrants to justify their own racist and hurtful agenda because they know their 'fans' will believe anything they say and will not fact check for themselves and then just shrug and move on when it turns out they were 100% wrong.

The Journalist's View Of 2025

Journalists are at the heart of the News stories so who better to ask what they expect to happen or at least keep an eye on in 2025 and they are expecting a bumpy year, so let's do that.
First looming on the horizon is Donald Trump will become America's 47th president on 20 January and although he is known to say one thing and then following through, he has pledged some dramatic changes with numerous presidential 'executive orders' which will undo as much of Biden's legacy as possible and set the direction of America for the four years ahead with new immigration policies, mass pardons and probably going after those who tried to take him down as well as withdrawing the US from the Paris Climate Accords again.
Two of Europe's big beasts, France and Germany, could very well have new people at the head of Government following elections and the simmering tensions between Serbia and Kosovo will remain high and look out for flashpoints in Moldova, Azerbaijan and Armenia.
In the Middle East Israeli will continue to collectively punish Palestine and with a friendly US President now in charge, could resist the calls for a ceasefire and begin the emptying of the people from it's devastated neighbour into neighbouring nations to claim the land for Israel which will only further isolate Israel who's international reputation will continue to suffer as the International Court of Justice pushes on with its accusations of genocide.
Netanyahu could be tempted to strike a target he has long had his eye on, Iran's nuclear program, where the elderly Iranian Supreme Leader's health has been the source of much speculation which could have implications if the man who has been there for 30 years is replaced, probably by his son.
Syria's new leaders face a civil war unless they can bring together the many different factions in the country and if Trump puts his trade threats into action, it could spark a global trade war and economic meltdown which could force even closer relations between China, Russia, North Korea and Iran diplomatically, militarily and economically.
In the UK, after a tough first 6 months where they seemed to get all the bad news out immediately, Labour policies should begin to bear fruit but much of that will depend on whether any upcoming trade war and subsequent recession derails his plans in which case, he will be spending 2025 fighting for his survival as Party Leader.

Oi Farmer, Get Off The King's Land!

We went for a New Years Day walk through the beautiful South Down's today and as you walk around the rolling hills and winding pathways you see notices nailed to walls and fences everywhere saying Private Property and generally telling you to keep out of this bit of the land else you can expect to be chased by an angry farmer telling you to get off his land and i wondered who decided what bit of the country is free for everyone to wander around and which parts are no-go zones?
Apparently it all goes back to 1066 and William the Conqueror who decided as he was now the English King, he should own absolutely everything in the country and declared himself absolute owner of the entire country and set about making the laws which stated that land cannot be owned by anyone except the Monarch.
As the chief landlord, he then began distributing vast swathes of it to his supporters giving them rights over the land, but not ownership but as they could hardly manage a county-sized chunk of land on their own, they would create lesser tenancies who paid him rent and these sub-tenants could then create their own sub-sub-tenancies, and so on so there was soon a whole chain of nested tenancies paying rent to each other, from the king at the top to the serfs toiling the fields at the bottom.
To answer my own question about the South Downs then, a bit of digging found that the vast majority (95.8%) of the 402,040 acres of land is owned by 3 Viscounts, 2 Dukes, a Baron, 2 knights and a couple of families and the remaining 4.2% (16,951 acres) owned by the National Trust after it was bequeathed to them on the death of the former owner.
Ultimately then, next time you enter a field and some angry inheritance dodging farmer runs across the field waving a stick at you and telling you to get off his land, you can politely explain to him that it isn't his land and unless he is King Charles, he can go stick his head in a cow pat.

Hopes For 2025

The Ipsos Predictions Survey is a 33-country study which looks at people’s expectations and predictions for the year ahead so what are people expectations for 2025?
Two-thirds (65%) say 2024 was a bad year for their country which isn't great but it is the lowest figure since 2019 but seven in ten (71%) say they are optimistic 2025 will be better and are positive that the global economy will be stronger than in recent years with Indonesia (88%) and China (86%) leading in this category and Japan (38%) and France (25%) the least positive.
47% of people think there should be greater regulation of the tech industry and fear technology leading to AI-driven job losses (65%) with Sweden (46%) and Great Britain (46%) and the USA (45%) more skeptical on such a reality. 37% are intent on reducing their social media usage and 35% fear significant disruption caused by technology.
Fears of another Global pandemic are subsiding (47%) but 49% fear the threat of nuclear conflict with Indonesians (79%) and Malaysians (67%) feeling particularly worried and resolutions to the wars currently raging around the Globe are down on the previous year, with only 27% expecting the Ukraine/Russia war to end and expectations for peace in the Middle East during 2025 are even lower (22%).
Environmental concerns persist with 80% expecting global temperatures to continue rising, 72% anticipating more extreme weather events while 52% are skeptical that World Governments will introduce measures to reduce carbon emissions.
Hopes for gender pay equality remain with 49% globally believing it will be achieved in 2025 and 33% of people believe their own countries will become more tolerant of one another while expectations for a four-day working week are low, with only 32% globally predicting its widespread adoption.
Taken as a whole not a brilliant assessment of hopes for 2025, most think the current wars will continue, the growth of Ai will lead to unemployment and Mother Nature will kick us around yet again while the people who could do something about it, continue to do nothing.

Happy New January 1st

Today is the first day of 2025 so Happy New Year and hope this year brings everything you wished for but January 1st has only been the start of the year for a few hundred year, at various points it has been 25 December, 1 March the 25 March and whenever Easter fell in the year.
The original Happy New Year celebrations were conducted as per the Babylonian Calendar and the cheer would go up as the 20th March turned into 21st March but then the Roman's and their 10 month Calendar took over and declared the 1st March as when the New Year began but then they jiggered around with the Calendar and tagged on January and February and decided to make the 1st day of the new year in the new January as it was the day they elected public officials to the Roman Republic anyway so as they were all getting tanked up and holding orgies to celebrate that, they killed two birds with one stone.
Medieval Christian Europe, in an attempt to move away and distance themselves from their Roman origins tried celebrating the new year on 25 December in honour of their small baby Jesus and 25 March in honour of the conception of the even smaller Jesus and on the movable feast of Easter but as everyone was confusingly celebrating it on a different day, the Catholic Church decided that the first day of the year was to be January 1st and would become official with the introduction of the Gregorian Calendar in 1582.
Nations slowly changed their calendars and would do the Auld Lang Syne on 1st January but as usual the Brits and American Colonies had the draggiest feet and carried on having New Years Day on 25th March until 1752 when they decided 170 years later that having a different calendar and being in a year 3 months longer than the rest of the World was a bit of a drawback and began their Calendars in January and we have been both making New Years Resolutions and breaking them on 1st January ever since.