Last Day Of Winter

Today is the last day of Winter and although I generally like the season with it's crisp air, i sincerely hope someone has let Mother Nature know because i seem to have complaining i'm cold for the last 4 months.
I don't know if this Winter has been particularly cold in the UK or if it's just my aging bones but I have definitely been digging out the thicker jumpers and cardigans this year as i scraped the frost off my car windscreen with heavy gloves in -6°C with a Feels Like temperature of -10 °C which wasn't fun although it could have been worse and I could have been doing it in Scotland where temperatures sunk to -18.9°C in January.
The MET Office says that the average Winter temperature in the UK is between 2°C and 7°C  and this Season it has been 1°C below average which by chance is the amount the UK's average winter temperature has increased by around in the last century due to Climate Change, meaning in some roundabout way it would be even further below average if we hadn't been stupidly shoving all our poison into the atmosphere.
As it is officially Spring tomorrow and the Northern Hemisphere of the Earth starts to receive more of the Sun's direct rays it will warm up but today my Car said it was 2°C at 6am and it felt like it but I feel bad complaining about cold and snowy winters because with Global Warming really starting to bite, we had better make sure we enjoy them while we still got them.

Trump (Possibly) Coming To UK

Get out the inflatable Baby Balloon, hide the doughnuts and keep your women outside of groping distance between the Tango Tyrant has been invited to the UK.
I am certain that the British public will give Donald Trump a very warm welcome when his bloated carcass lands on our shores but that is if the Marmalade Moron can make it past the border guards because as a convicted offender after being found guilty on 34 counts of falsifying business records after paying hush money to a porn star, he isn't allowed into our green and pleasant land.
Under UK law, a convicted criminal is barred from entering unless: 'An Immigration Officer is satisfied that admission would be justified for strong compassionate reasons' and 'can be refused entry so long as the crime they committed would also be punishable by imprisonment in the UK' which under the Fraud Act 2006, it is.
As a convicted criminal, the list of countries he can visit has gotten much shorter with 35 other nations potentially banning him including Australia, China, India, Israel, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, South Korea, Ukraine and Canada who made former President George W. Bush apply for a special waiver to enter Canada due to a drunk driving conviction.
It is doubtful that Keir Starmer will stop the US President coming here but it is noted that the trip is happening in Scotland, well away from the inevitable protests which the fascist, sex offending criminal can look forward to.

Trump Email Leak

Elon Musk sent out an email asking all Government employee's what they did so here at FOAB we have the Exclusive of the email President Donald Trump sent back  with a breakdown of his day.

08:00 - Breakfast, applied Orange Toner and watched cartoons
09:00 - Called meeting with Intelligence Staff
09:02 - Ended meeting as someone forgot the crayons
09:05 - Snack
10:00 - Emailed Putin funny cartoon i saw about that Ukrainian Dictator guy   
11:00 - Snack
11:45 -  Changed trousers as I spilt Pepsi down myself...again.
12:00 - Lunch
13:00 - Signed Executive Order banning anyone not white speaking directly to me
14:00 - Mid Afternoon Snooze
15:00 - Snack
16:00 - Sent Truth Social Post about the Climate Change Hoax
16:10 - Rang Scotland to see if the Climate Change protection Wall I ordered had been finished around my Golf Course.
16:30 - Rang Putin for chat but he was too busy to take my call
16:45 - Pre Evening Meal Snack
17:30 - Evening Meal
20:00 - Replied to Melania's Text that she was going to bed early as she has yet another headache
20:05 - Watched Fox News to make note of what i was going to think tomorrow
22:00 - Went to Bed and read a few chapters of Mein Kampf
22:15-  Snack
22:45 - Fell asleep counting all of Elon Musk's kids

Just Another January Day In 1913 Vienna

The first rule of the Spatio Temporis Correctores is that you don't talk about the Spatio Temporis Correctores except to say they are the team who travel through time to make sure that things happen exactly as they should do so sort of going to do what they know they are going to do because they have already done it because if they hadn't done it already they wouldn't be here to make sure it gets done. Or something like that but the question they get asked the most is what time would you choose to go back to just for the hell of it and they always answer the same, January 1913.
Not that anything particularly noteworthy happened in 1913, a British suffragette ran out in front of the King's horse, Stainless Steel was invented and Gandhi was arrested but the place to be in 1913 was amongst the 2 million residents living in Vienna, Austria.
The Capital of Austria was buzzing with people coming from all over Europe to find fame and drink in the Coffee Houses and on any given day you could meet Croatian's, Georgian's, Czechs or Ukrainian's just milling about and there was the chance the Young Royal next in line to the throne would happen by as he sometimes did and all were sipping coffee and just waiting to see what the New Century would bring, as it happened it bought them.
One of the Croatian's was Josip Tito who dreamt of bigger things while he worked in the cities Daimler automobile factory and there was a young artists called Adolf Hitler with dreams of studying painting at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts.
A couple of Russians Revolutionaries, in Lev Davidovich Bronstein from Ukraine (aka Trotsky) and Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin from Georgia plotted their return to Russia one day and in the city centre a doctor called Sigismund Schlomo Freud was perfecting his Psychoanalysis technique.
The young heir to the Austria-Hungary throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand was living in the Capital's Belvedere Palace and was free to move amongst his citizens so within the same January in 1913,  you had Tito, Trotsky, Stalin, Hitler, Freud and Franz Ferdinand all within 2.5 miles of each other, six men who would go on to dominate the rest of the Century.  
No idea if they ever met but they must have at least walked past each other in the street or stood behind one another in the shops which is just mind boggingly weird.

Still Making Me Laugh Today

The awful Tate Brothers are back in te News after being released from Romania to travel to the United States. Why the United States would want them there is anybodies guess but as they are accused of sex offences, and as the Top Banana there is a sex offender himself then we can expect to see a happy union of them all together soon but the Tate Bellend's  being out and about does give me a chance to relive one of the best and funniest posts on this Blog which was written way back in 2022.

I will let 2022 Lucy tell it.   

2022 comes to an end with one of the greatest stories of the year and it all begins when former kick-boxer and professional misogynist Andrew Tate, who was reinstated on Twitter, decided to celebrate his comeback and attempt to bolster his chauvinistic reputation to his fans by sending a tweet to Climate activist Greta Thunberg which said: 'Please provide your email address so I can send a complete list of my car collection and their respective enormous emissions'.
The brilliant Greta, not one to back down, replied: 'Yes, please do enlighten me. email me at smalldickenergy@getalife.com.'
It would be funny enough if the story ended there but it goes up another level when her hysterical reply gained traction and began trending, being liked 3.5 million times and shared directly 650,000.
Tate, obviously miffed that he had been so thoroughly taken down by a female, smouldered about it and hours later tweeted out a video in which he tried to reassert his masculinity by blathering on about what a virile, red blooded man he was in a dressing gown, with a cigar and a pizza box which clearly had Romanian branding on it which tipped off the Romanian police to his location and the Romanian Police were after him for alleged rape and sex trafficking.
Not long afterwards, the Authorities swooped and arrested him and his brother and they are now both sat in a Romanian cell awaiting trial.
Again, if it ended there it would be glorious, the fact that if he had not tried to demean and humiliate Thunberg he would not have attracted the attention to himself which saw him arrested but the majestic Greta had one more tweet to send which was the final coup de grâce to the whole sage.
Her tweet simply said: 'This is what happens when you don’t recycle your pizza boxes' and has been liked 2.6 million times.

Still makes me laugh now and couldn't happen to a better couple of morons.

Damn You God

I was reading a story about how in Romania a murderer unsuccessfully attempted to sue God for 'not protecting him from the influence of the Devil' when he committed his crime and apparently he got the idea from another unsuccessful previous case in the USA when in 1971, an inmate sued Satan for deliberately placing obstacles in his path which caused his downfall.
I do remember writing about a more recent case in Nebraska where the state senator sought to sue God for 'widespread death, destruction and terrorisation of millions upon millions of the Earth's inhabitants' but despite reserving an empty table for God and God’s attorney, he had his case thrown out of court because the defendant has no address so legal papers could not be served.
To be honest, I would say it was just as well because there was a very real possibility that God would lose the case as Hurricanes, Tsunamis and any other natural disaster that you care to name are actually called acts of God, how much more guilty could he be?
If God has gone into hiding and isn't going to step forward to defend his name, how about suing the Pope who is meant to be God's representative here on Earth. We know where he lives. Just look for the old in the funny hat sat in a hospital bed tearing out the condom adverts in the magazines.

Woo Hoo, 3 Day Weekends

Businesses are slowly ordering their staff back into the Office five days a week as the Working From Home era seems to be fizzling out but what could be replacing it is a four day week and the specter of the universal basic income (UBI) once again rears its strange head and trials have begun in some places in London with people receiving £1600 a month for doing nothing with their health and well-being monitored.
The Idea of UBI and a shortened work week gets taken down and given a dusting every now and then and even more now with Ai able to do many of the jobs previously done by humans.
I have never been able to square the circle of how UBI would work because who would pay for it it nobody was working or paying tax but i can certainly see benefits from a four day working week  but the devil would be in the details of if you would lose a day's pay or would you be expected to cram a five day week into four days which would make the whole episode pretty pointless if the idea is to relax workers.
The problem for Governments is that Ai is coming and so are the army of AI replaced unemployed workers so something is going to have to give, i'm just not sure what yet.

Modern Living Making Us Ill

When i was younger there used to be adverts with 1 in 4 people getting cancer but now the odds seem to be 1 in 2 and whereas it always used to be something older people got, it seems to be hitting younger people these days.
Studies in Scotland, Sweden and New Zealand has found that Cancer was being diagnosed more often than in previous years among people under 50 and when they broadened out the research, they found that  young people around the world are getting many different kinds of cancer at alarmingly high rates and asked 'Why is cancer increasingly striking people in the primes of their lives?'
Globally, diagnoses and deaths related to Cancer in the under 50's rose by 79% from 1990 to 2019, according to a recent study published in the medical journal BMJ Oncology with it rising most commonly in the breast, colon, rectum, pancreas, and stomach and while the majority of cancer sufferers are over 50, the under 50s group is the only age group for which the risk is rising.
The rise in diagnoses is partly comes down to advances in our ability to detect and diagnose Cancer but Scientists say there is a more complex web of factors in modern life and lifestyle choices affecting younger adults.
Classic risk factors such as drinking and smoking do not seem to fully explain the recent rise in Cancers as even young, nonsmoking women, for example, are being diagnosed with lung cancer in strangely high numbers and theories include ultra-processed foods, red meat and unhealthy fast foods contributing to weight gain.
Other researchers blame the microplastics littering our environment and leaching into our food and water supplies or one of any number of potential health hazards in the modern world  but they are agreed that something in our Modern World is making us seriously ill.

Gonna Need A Bigger Freezer

We have all played the game that if a massive Asteroid was about to smash into earth what would we do. Personally mine involves David Boreanaz, a length of industrial sellotape and a tub of ice cream so Häagen-Dazs had better stock up because the odds of 2024 YR4 asteroid hitting Earth has risen again.
A few weeks ago the 100m killer Asteroid was 83/1 to smash into us and then that was slashed to 43/1 but now the boffins have been back on the slide rules and calculators and have said the odds are now 33/1 that it will  cause 'severe damage' to whichever part of the Globe it hits at about 38,000mph.
The Asteroid is currently 27 million miles away and scientists have just a few more weeks to observe it before it disappears from view until 2028 when it turns around the Sun and heads our way with a likely date of December 2032 when it reaches us.
The shortening odds mean the Asteroid hasn't unduly concerned scientists though because they are stressing that there is no need for alarm and that the odds of an impact will fluctuate before it gets here anyway and would not be surprised if the impact odds drop to zero at some point.
The Asteroid's current trajectory takes it across the Southern Hemisphere and the Eastern Pacific Ocean, Northern South America, the Atlantic Ocean, Africa, the Arabian Sea, and South Asia but the good news is that it's made of a rocky substance rather than more robust materials like iron, which is significant because it means it could break into smaller pieces if it enters Earth's atmosphere so all we might get is one hell of an light show.
Still, doesn't hurt to prepare so gonna need a bigger freezer to hold all that Bourbon Praline Pecan Ice Cream.

Ceasefire? What Ceasefire?

Despite the ceasefire deal, Israel has postponed the release of 620 prisoners, has bombed cities in Lebanon and has parked tanks in the Palestinian West Bank and ordered troops to remain there 'for the coming year' and not to allow the return of 40,000 displaced residents.
A new report published in the U.K. medical journal The Lancet, indicates that the 47,000 deaths so far is likely an underestmate and the true number of the dead could be as high as 64,260 with a further 10,000 more bodies buried under the rubble which in total is about 3% of Gaza’s population dead since October 2023.
The report goes on to say that the horrific death toll from Israel's military operation is likely even higher, as its analysis does not include non-trauma-related deaths caused by disruption to healthcare, lack of food, clean water and sanitation, and disease outbreaks and the United Nations have repeatedly spoken out about Israel falling woefully short of allowing into the Gaza Strip the supply of the desperately needed aid.
Israel has shot and killed at least 25 Gazan's since the start of the ceasefire with the Israeli military not even trying to deny, saying Israeli soldiers fired on a crowd of Gaza residents several times as the crowd 'posed a threat' and in Lebanon, 120 were injured and 22 people killed while trying to return to their homes in the South of the country where Israel was meant to have vacated under their peace agreement, again for the vague reason of 'posing a threat to Israeli soldiers'.
With Donald Trump in the White House bizarrely backing the side committing the genocide and with Netanyahu reportedly to have persuaded several Ministers threatening to resign over the peace agreement with Hamas that Israel would resume its war on Gaza irrespective of the terms of the ceasefire and continually accusing Hamas of violations and issuing menacing threats to return to the conflict, then the death and destruction again looms on the horizon and the International community needs to treat Israel as the Pariah it has become and heavily sanction it.

Funding Increased Defence Spending

The Labour Party have been making noises about increasing defence spending to 2.5% of GDP which would could require several billion pounds more annually, with the UK’s military spending for 2024-2025 pegged at £64.4 billion.
However, with the economy bumping along the bottom it raises the obvious question of how will the increase be funded?  
Will our taxes go up to pay for it or will services be cut or budgets from other departments trimmed even though the previous Government cut almost anything that could be cut over the last 14 years.
Something i heard is cutting the Aid budget again, it is already at a reduced 0.5% of GDP or £10 billion, that is 6 times less on improving peoples lives than we pay on buying the bombs and bullets to take lives which is beyond obscene.
Keir Starmer could use it as an excuse to take us back into the EU Single Market, that would be an injection of the 4% of GDP we lost when we foolishly voted ourselves out but there is something else we could consider, get rid of the ridiculous Nuclear Weapons.
The Governments own website spells out that the initial cost of the Nuclear upgrade in 2017 was £133 billion and the annual upkeep of our nuclear weapons is £20 billion a year. If we have that sort of money knocking around to spend on nuclear missiles, then why are we wasting it on a way of killing millions of people rather than building schools and hospitals and paying the staff a decent wage?
The problem with nuclear weapons is if they are ever used, that would be the end of the World as launching a nuclear missile will not go unanswered and guarantee that whatever devastation you wreak on your enemy, the same will be wreaked on you, in a nuclear war, nobody wins, everybody loses.
There are a few who argue that we still need to retain our nuclear weapons for our safety although recent years has seen terrorist attacks in America, UK, Israel, China and Russia so the possession of nuclear weapons does not make a state secure and are absolutely no use against terrorists and the only point i can see for them, unless you count contributing to ending all human and animal life on the planet as an aim.
So there's your choices Mr Starmer, cut essential services and put up our taxes or scrap an exorbitantly expensive weapon we will never use or if we do use will mean there will be no need to fund anything else as we will be yet another lifeless rock circling a Star.

My CV

Another Labour MP has been caught 'embellishing' their CV and i do have some sympathy because everyone does it and so before someone digs into mine and exposes my own 'embellishments', i have decided to come clean and correct some factual inaccuracies.
I was not a Consultant for one of Britain's leading Insurance companies, i bought House Insurance from one and and then completed a survey on how i found the process but as the email said, it was used to improve their service so in many ways, i did give them valuable advice.
I did attend the prestigious Winchester college, I attended a Summer Fair there once and i am fluent in 5 language, just not foreign ones but i could hold a very good conversation in English, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand and American.
As for my qualifications, I do have a BSc,  i got a Bronze Swimming Certificate in Year 10 for swimming 2 lengths of the pool and those 2 years at RADA were true, that was how long i was a member of the Rotherham Automobile Drivers Association.
I do feel better for getting that off my chest and in that time honoured tradition of recent Labour Ministers, i will be blaming someone else for it.

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.