Lower Electricity Bills..But Not Until 2030

According to the regulator OfGem, UK Wind farms are becoming cheaper to build with turbines more efficient and generating more electricty causing the Government to reconsider building new nuclear power plants so with a 6% increase in bills, the obvious question has to be why are our electricity bills still going up rather than down?
Seems an easy enough question and the Economist Intelligence Unit may say that: 'The trajectory of cheaper renewable technologies is irreversible' but  it appears that our bills won't come down until 2030 because of what was agreed in 2015.
For some reason the price for wholesale electricity is set in 15 year cycles, with each generating company saying what it would be willing to accept to produce a unit of electricity for the next decade and a half and they base their price on Gas which they use to generate the electricity.
So it is the price of Gas which sets the electricity price  which is agreed for the next 15 years into the future so we are paying up to 2030 for what Gas cost in 2015 (123p in 2015 compared to 83p this year).
OfGem say that as more renewables are connected there will be a time when gas is not setting the wholesale price but that brings us to another reason why electricity bills are not coming down, the infrastructure is old and unable to handle more electricity.
UK Energy say that the UK has an ageing electricity grid, which needs upgrading, partly to accommodate new renewable power sources and there are actually times when wind power is actually paid not to generate, because the grid cannot handle all the additional electricity that it could produce.
The government are now saying that they are reviewing the structure of the electricity market, alongside its push for clean power through renewables and state in the long term, with less  dependence on gas, renewables will be bringing down overall energy bills, and specifically electricity bills, for the UK.
Can't say i understand why anyone would agree to pay 15 years in advance for something when the price could go down (and also up), but it does me wish that we had started the rush to renewables much earlier and also that the Privatisation which Margaret Thatcher promised would lower bill, had been pushed back against much firmer.

Goodbye, Farewell And Amen Hotlips

As MASH ended 42 years ago in 1983, the stars of the show are all way into old age by now and it is sad that it has been announced that Loretta Swift who played Margaret 'Hot Lips' Houlihan has died aged 87.
Every now and then we do hear of the death of another of the stars fro the show which is still shown on TV now and i do still catch the occasional episode and wonder just how many of the actors are still alive and found five from the show and to use their more familiar show names, the cook Igor (78), Hawkeye Pierce (89), Radar O'Reilly (82), BJ Hunnicut (86) and Maxwell Kilinger (90).
Bugged out are Lt. Colonel Henry Blake who died in 1996,  Frank Burns who died in 2000, Capt Flagg died in 2001, Col. Sherman T. Potter    died 2011, Mayor Sidney Freedman died 2013, 'Trapper' John McIntyre died 2015, Father Francis Mulcahy died 2016,  Major Charles Emerson Winchester III died 2018, Nurse Kellye died 2020 and now joined by Margaret Houlihan died 2025.    
I always thought that it was strange how i didn't see hardly any of them in anything other than MASH but maybe they were in American shows and i just didn't catch them over here.

Wary Of Trump Bearing Peace Deals

I'm not a negotiator but if i was to give some advice to someone i would say if the other side agrees to the conditions immediately, you can bet it is because it is weighted in their favour.
Donald Trump's team tried to bounce Ukraine into an agreement which heavilly favoured Putin who said he was all for it but Zelenskyy was too street wise for that and dug his heels in and refused to sign up to it.
The Americans then put forward a peace deal to end the war in Gaza which Israel agreed to immediately but Hamas are at this moment, continuing to mull over and the mood music is that it is very much a reward to Israel for their genocide and Hamas will make a counter-offer to balance things up.
It could be that Donald Trump is genuinely keen to end wars whenever they flare up but Hamas and the Ukrainians do no appear to trust him and with good reason, everything so far has been to bring an end to the wars by making the victims lose more than the perpetrators, less so in the case of Hamas, but certainly the Palestinians will stand to lose out with Israel continuing the genocide and controlling Gaza while snatching away their land, a return to the status quo which has seen Israel eroding the Palestinians over the last 70 years.
One view is that Trump will do anything to secure himself a Nobel Peace Prize, including stitching up the Ukrainians and Palestinians with Ukraine losing as much as a quarter of its land and the Palestinians returning to the position of being murdered and their land stolen which saw them turn to Hamas in the first place.
We can only hope that Trump is authentic in wanting to end these wars and if he can bring a lasting peace then he fully deserves the Noble Prize but he has proved to be nothing more than a  narcissist who has a strange crush on despots and blatantly backs Israel and Russia, i would be very wary of signing up to anything he proposes because it may bring a temporary belief from the slaughter, but without deeper and more thoughtful resolutions, they will flare up again.

Bye Bye Elon

Elon Musk went into the US (non) Government Department called DOGE (Demented Orange Geriatric's Experiment) with most people thinking him an utter douchebag but is leaving it with people KNOWING he is and he kindly let the World know that he is returning to his day job with a Tweet which thanked Donald Trump for: 'The opportunity to reduce wasteful government spending' which he did by reducing it by $140 million which means he just missed by a whisker his promise of slashing it by $2trn by $1.86trn.
Maybe there just wasn't as much Government waste to slash as him and the Orange Oaf although what he did slash was his own and his businesses reputation with the smell of burning Tesla's in the air and investors saying what the hell happened as their shares go so low that you would need a submarine to find them.
Space X had problems this week as once again Musk can't even get his rocket up (ooer missus) but now the sad little nerd is back from his job with the senile Marmalade faced moron and will be attempting to put things right again but that horse may have already bolted but he does have plans to colonise Mars so that could be how he saves his reputation, bugger off to Mars for a few years until everyone forgets who he was.

Special Guest Blogger: Crazy Horse

How Kemo Sabe. The Lakota tribe have custom of changing name as one gains in years. I am named Curly Hair at birth, then Horse Stands in Sight after I become good at catching untamed horses and then when I fight with great bravery at battle with the Arapahos, my father pass his name Crazy Horse on to me.
One of the great Indian warriors, a guy named Hump, took me under his wing and I save Hump’s hide in battle against Gros Ventres when I am sixteen years of age and when we return to camp, Hump pronounce me next great warrior.
Not long after i had first run-in with the white man and the U.S. Army. Lakota tribe members capture abandoned cow, and officer tell us to return beast. Push come to shove, and we kill thirty soldiers. Army return one year later, kill many Lakota women and children.  
I often refrain from killing when possible and instead of striking with weapon, I strike with switch, showing enemy I do not fear them and nor do I wish to make my hatchet bloody by smashing it into their thick skull.
I was chief of the Oglala Sioux tribe and the fiercest warrior the white man ever met but our main problem was never the army or other tribes, but the rapid disappearance of the buffalo from overhunting by new settlers so realising we would soon starve or freeze, I and several thousand braves surrendered to troops and though we agreed to give up our guns, hunts, and horses, the government never lived up to their part of the bargain, and life on the reservation sucked.
Black Buffalo Woman moved in with me but she was already the wife of No Water but Lakota custom allow woman to divorce husband at any time and woman signals divorce one of three ways, she moves in with relatives, move in with new man or toss husband’s belongings outside teepee and the Husband that is dumped expected to accept wife’s decision for good of tribe but No Water was not accepting and tracked me down and shoot me in shoulder. He had to give me three horses as compensation for that.
After many years on the reservation and the chiefs say that we no live happily ever after and white invader building forts and fences to take our land and we agree time to defend rights and land by force and we attack fort of White man.  
White man not like that much but i refuse to sign treaties and got stitched up by an idiot translator who take my words of how we did not ask you white men to come here and how Great Spirit gave us this country as a home and gave us plenty of land but you have come here, take land from us as 'We fight until not a white man is left'  so thinking we were to kill all pale faces so I go to Fort to meet commander and ask to sit down with me and explain the mistake but Guards try to arrest me and they have the nerve to stab great warrior with bayonet.

Special Guest Blogger: Tsar Alexander II of Russia

By 1881 I had been the target of more assassination attempts than probably any other leader. And I was one of the better Russian emperors.
When I took the throne, Russia still had 30 million serfs or peasants who could be bought or sold and were little more than slaves. I gave them their freedom, and still the revolutionaries weren’t content. They wanted me dead.
They shot at me in the royal palace, in the royal train and in the royal carriage, and missed though they did kill a horse that got in the way. They even tried to bomb me in my dining room  but only succeeded in killing soldiers and servants.
Finally the revolutionaries came up with a double-bomb plot that reached the parts other bombers failed to reach.
I had just signed the document that would let my people vote for the Council of the Empire when the commander of the guards sidled over to me and whispered in my ear 'Don’t go to the army parade tomorrow. It’s too dangerous'.
I ignored the advice and set off in my carriage and inspected the troops and drove off to lunch with my cousin. I remember thinking it was all very pleasant as we drove along the street, nobody had tried to kill me for a change and the crowds had come out to cheer me,  one woman waved a handkerchief so enthusiastically, i cheerfully waved back at her.
As i found out later she wasn't waving at me but waving a signal to her Revolutionary friends and a man ran from the crowd and threw a bundle, wrapped in a newspaper, under the horses’ feet where it exploded in a cloud of smoke and snow.
When the snow settled it was stained with the blood of two horses, two guards and an innocent butcher’s boy who’d been watching the procession but most importantly I wasn’t hurt.
I wanted to speak to the injured and as i stepped down from my broken carriage and that’s when the second bomber stepped from the crowd and flung a second bomb and this one did hurt and i died a few hours later.
The irony is that I was a reformer and when my son took over all my reformist pans were scrapped so the revolutionaries got themselves a worse life which was still more than i had as I no longer had any life at all.

Whinging White men

Is there anything more pitiful than an older white man  whinging about how he is apparently terrified of doing the wrong thing at work.
'Millions of men are walking around on eggshells at work too scared to speak freely, while knowing that being male can now be a disaster for your career' according to the YouTube show called 'White Men Can’t Work' which launches this week.
According to the poor dears, female colleague's are out to obliterate the white, privileged and male who are apparently suddenly realising what a disaster it is to be wearing the trousers with a poll showing 41% of men anxious that as a white man they can be sacked over doing or saying the wrong thing while 24% felt their mental health had suffered as a result of diversity.
Poor lambs, white men are the official victims now anxiously glancing over their shoulders, constantly wondering if they’re about to be replaced by someone without testicles and feeling 'very despondent about their sons futures in a female world' which is interesting that the poll did not ask them what they felt about their daughters’ prospects.
A third of white men are convinced they would be passed over for promotion because of their maleness and undoubtedly it is a worry to constantly having to second-guess yourself or worry about getting things right as women and minorities know only too well and have had to for decades in order to fit in to male-dominated offices.
So if white men genuinely don’t think work is working for them, welcome to the club, boys, a club that 50% of the population have been in a lot longer than you.

Nice Sculptures We Got At The Museum

If you ever take a trip to the British Museum, you might notice that a lot of the stuff on display that hasn’t got much to do with Britain but over the years, Britain has managed to acquire a lot of items and although the proper home of the treasures ask for them back, they are still here so what have we got here that should really be there?
Probably the most famous are the Elgin Marbles which from around the 5th Century BC adorned The Parthenon as a tribute to the gods and goddesses of Greece but since 1805 they have been displayed more as a tribute to Lord Elgin nicking them off the Greeks.
The Rosetta Stone made its way from Egypt to Great Russell St, London WC1B 3DG via Napoleon who took a break from trying to take over the World to pilfer them only for them to be pilfered off him in return by the Brits when they defeated him at Waterloo and rather than hand them back to the Egyptians.
The Amaravati Stupa Marbles stood proudly in India as a shrine to Buddha but in 1840 British colonisers dismantled it and took it back to Blighty as a shrine to our light fingers but at least we only took one of them, the poor people of Benin woke up in 1897 to discover a gap where 200 bronze sculptures had been standing since 1200 but now stand in the British Museum but as we are a much kinder and less kleptomaniac nation now, we do occasionally lend them back to the Nigerian Museum with a stern: 'Oi, don't get any ideas, we want them back' note attached.
When the Brits landed in New Zealand in the late 1700s, they saw the preserved Maori Heads which were an important cultural symbol of the indigenous people of New Zealand and so shipped them back to the British Museum for that important cultural symbol of £'s and although Britain has its fair share of people with swollen heads but not so many on Easter Island because in 1868 members of the British Royal Navy took two of the heads back home where they have remained to this day.
The Taino were the first people to inhabit Jamaica and they did create some lovely wooden figures which were so lovely that in 1799 the Brits decided rather be displayed in the original country, they would look much better on a Museum shelf in rainswept England alongside the artwork, vases and sculptures pinched from the Chinese Summer Palace when it was looted by the British in 1860 who then went on to burn the Palace to the ground for good measure. 
In 1896 the Sudanese were not particularly keen to become a British colony so the Brits said fair enough and walked away...sorry, they brutally massacred them and took the armor, weapons, skulls, and even the military banners as trophies and displayed them in the British Museum.
All the above items remain on display at the British Museum but if you haven't visited them yet then no rush because they are not going anywhere.

Special Guest Blogger: Julius Caesar

My lineage may go all the way back to the goddess Venus, but i wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth but what I did have was the drive to rule the world which will get you far especially if you’ve got an army to back you up.
I started as a prosecutor, accusing sleazy governors of corruption and I sponsored bills to pay soldiers and veterans and punish misconduct by governors, I gave Roman citizenship to new groups (ergo more taxes), planned a mega building program of Aqueducts, and adopted a spanking new calendar and if the Senate didn’t go along with my whims, I just rewrote the constitution and with the Triumvirate which included Rome’s richest man (Marcus Crassus) and a brutal general (Pompey) backing me, not many argued.
I never set out to be a leader and was actually going to study oratory at Rhodes but on the way I was captured by Cilician pirates which was a grave mistake on their part. Once I arranged for my ransom to be paid, I had them increase it first from twenty talents to fifty, I gathered some men, went back and overpowered them and had them crucified.
Against the Senate’s orders, I marched on Rome in 49 B.C. and instigated a civil war that lasted four years which as I was later appointed dictator for life and they named a month after me, went pretty well.   
A good way to keep the public on side was to organise all kinds of sporting events, I was in charge of the Roman games in the Circus Maximus in 65 B.C., of course it almost bankrupted us but you fudge some numbers and get back on top.
Vini Vidi Veci, or I came, I saw, I conquered and in my time I left an estimated three million dead on the battlefield, conquered eight hundred cities, three hundred tribes, and sold another million into slavery but my biggest fault was that I was too damned nice. Gaius Cassius Longinus and Marcus Junius Rutus, both former enemies, were forgiven for trying to plot against me and wound up literally stabbing me in the back. Of course, if it hadn’t been them, it would have been one of the other sixty conspirators that were in on my murder.
 I was a military genius and one thing I liked to do was sneak up on the enemy and attack from the rear, I really loved the rear assault and not just in war because this was 45bc and men and women could love whoever the hell they wanted and I did as often as possible and when you have someone like the 18 year old Egyptian Queen, Cleopatra waiting for you and smelling of ass's milk, ..let's just leave that there shall we but it was one of history’s great love affairs.
Bringing her to Rome in 46 B.C. was politically a risky move, my wife Calpurnia wasn't best pleased and the Roma public were not amused and that was when it all started to go wrong and ended with the whole 'Et Tu Brute' thing.  
I can't say I wasn't warned as a soothsayer told me to beware the middle of the month but I shrugged it off and went ahead with the Senate meeting where some my Senators, fed up with my behaviour, decided to do something about me.
They grabbed me and dragged me to the floor but if that never got the point across that they were not best pleased with me, the fact that the follow up action was for forty of them to stick knives into my naked body definitely did.

Chemical Castration

When the words Chemical Castration is uttered, the vision in my head is of a man having his bits dipped into Bleach or Acid, presumably held tightly and with lots of screaming so when Shabana Mahmood, the Lord Chancellor, said she was is considering mandatory chemical castration for the most serious sex offenders i did decide to find out exactly what it involved so looked it up on Wikipedia.
No pictures of men being held over a bucket and being dipped whatsover but it did explain that drugs are injected to lower the bodies Testosterone and reduce sex drive and the capacity for sexual arousal which sounds much more humane but isn't really castration so that name seems  a bit misleading.
The Government are now planning a pilot scheme and if successful, a national roll -out with chemical castration mandatory rather than voluntary, for the most serious offenders in what they said was part of a look into Penal reform which sounds more like what i had in my minds eye.
I did know that computer scientist Alan Turing was charged with gross indecency for engaging in homosexual acts and accepted chemical castration as a term of his probation, thus avoiding imprisonment because in the 1950's (and with some religio's today) being gay was considered 'gross' although 60 years after his death, the then Prime Minister Gordon Brown issued a public apology for the appalling treatment of Turing and was given a posthumous Royal Pardon because that obviously made everything okay.
Obviously we will need to see how the trials go before it is decided if Chemical Castration will become a thing although most people would prefer it was proper castration of sex offenders using two bricks or a rusty, blunt knife but this is the 2020's and we are more tolerant and considerate so maybe give the knife a wipe with wire wool first.

Women and Girls, Men and Boys

Not sure how i do it because i don't have a system for when i call someone a girl or a woman or a boy or a man, it is something that just happens but apparently it can be a minefield to some people who deem it patronising but a YouGov poll found that most Britons see it as acceptable language, whether to describe a male or female.
A majority of Britons (58%) think it is always or usually acceptable for men to refer to women as 'girls' with the biggest  difference between generations with 70% of people aged 60 and over think it is unacceptable language and 48% among those aged under 24.
Referring to men as 'boys' is fine with 70% of Britons who think it is generally OK to refer to men as boys but something i had seen creep in, and doesn't bother me in the slightest, is a group of women being referred to as 'guys'.
I don't bat an eyelid when the waitress or someone asks 'Do you guys want another drink?' or 'Are you guys all okay?' but apparently some people, women especially, don't seem to like it with 38% not finding it acceptable to be referred to as 'guys'.
Again, seems to be an age thing with  72% of under 29 year olds think it is acceptable to refer to a group of women as 'guys' but this figure falls to just 46% among those aged over 60.
I don't really do the guy's thing, not aware it is a phrase i have ever used, but I do refer to men and boys and women and girls and i don't know what causes me to make the definition between them but as most of us think its okay, i don't have to worry about it thankfully.

Brilliant

Hmmm....not much happening today, well not much unless you are a Arsenal fan because ARSENAL LADIES JUST WON THE EUROPEAN CUP!!!!

Special Guest Blogger: Richard Ameryk

Who is America named after? Go on, have a guess. Amerigo Vespucci you say? Nope, it was named after me, Richard Ameryk.
At the end of the 15th century knowledge was a scarce commodity, we knew nothing about almost everything including geography and most people didn't know or what went on over the other side of the horizon.
I was a Customs Officer and the Sheriff of Bristol when I met Cabot who had a reputation of being a skilful mariner, he explained that he considered the World to be round and was convinced that by sailing westwards he could explore unfound riches, if he could find a sponsor.
Never one to look a gift Italian in the mouth, I introduced him to my businessmen friends and we arranged an audience with King Henry VII who handed him a letter of authority to make a voyage and claim lands on behalf of the monarch although he did say agree that as the main sponsor, any land discovered would be named after me.
I donated more money than anyone else to fund the construction of the ship, named the Mathew, and even donated the wood from the Oak trees on my estate to build it and so there we stood, waving goodbye to this guy with a crew of 18 bobbing away from us on a ship only 70 feet long.
To our surprise he came back a few months later with tales of what he had found and provided maps he had sketched of the coastline and a needle for making nets, a snare for catching animals and the jawbone of a whale but most importantly, a land which was now to be called 'Ameryk' after me.
He also said that he found 'A New Found Land' at the top of Ameryk but i ignored that and scratched '24 June, 1497. The land of Ameryk was found by the merchants of Bristowe, in a ship of Bristowe called the Mathew. Buy bread and milk' to record it for posterity.
Cabot became the first recorded European to set foot on American soil, pre-dating that slow-coach Vespucci by two years although so impressed was the King with Cabot that he granted him another patent and sent him out again but he was never heard of again which is tough for him but I had a whole new continent named after me.
So ignore anything you hear about Amerigo Vespucci, new countries or continents were never named after a person’s first name, but always after the second so Ameryk, or America as it is now known because they do like to mangle our language over there, would have become Vespuccia which is a silly name.

Final Destination In Real Life

Of all the the horror film franchises Final Destination is one of my favourites so very happy to see a sixth film arriving at the cinema but while the films are set around people cheating death only for Death to make sure the delay is only temporary but it seems that it doesn't only happen in films but in real life also.
In 1977 the entire basketball team of the University of Evansville were  killed in an airplane crash and the only team member who did not board the plane due to injuries to his ankle was David Fur, only to be killed two weeks later by a drunk driver.In September 11, 2001 when the World Trade Center suffered the  terrorist attacks, restaurant worker Hilda Yolanda Mayol was lucky enough to make it out alive but she wasn't so lucky a month later when  her plane crashed killing all passengers.
In 2011 a Russian woman was pronounced dead by the doctor and while friends and family gathered to mourn at the woman's funeral, the coffin flew open only to reveal that Mukhametz was still  alive and when she sat up and screamed in horror in front of everyone, she collapsed 10 minutes later and died of a heart attack due to shock.
In 2007, a father and daughter survived a plane crash after their homemade aircraft caught on fire and four years later, while preparing a plane for an airshow,  the plane crashed in a ball of fire and both of them lost their lives.
A college student was selling tickets to a nightclub in 2013 but she fell ill and was unable to attend herself so she missed the fire which killed 238 that night. Five days later, she was picking her boyfriend up from work, when their Volkswagon collided head on with a truck, killing them both.
Jessica Redfield survived a shopping center shooting at a Sushi bar in Toronto when she stepped outside minutes before the attack but a month later she was killed at the infamous Dark Knight Rises movie theater massacre in Aurora Colorado.
After surviving a tornado that destroyed his home, the parents sent their 5 year old son to their relatives while they stayed back to pick up the pieces but their relatives bull mastiff launched towards the boy and  fatally mauled him.
A french woman was holidaying in Brazil with her husband when they arrived late to the airport to catch their plane back to France, the plane crashed into the Atlantic, killing all 228 people aboard. Two weeks the woman's car veered across a road and into an oncoming truck, killing her instantly.
In 2013, a plane crashed on take off at San Francisco Airport and firefighters were dousing the aircraft in foam in order to control the flames and one survivor got covered in foam which made her invisible to the fire engine which ran her over and killed her.

Foreign Language Songs

At The Lucy Museum of Musicians who deserve entry to Lucy's Museum of Musicians we are nothing if not multi-cultural but it has been pointed out that almost every one of the songs and singers installed within are English speaking.
Of course i denied it and pointed out that we have Scots and Australians included and you can't hardly call what they utter as English but they meant proper foreign songs sung entirely in another language and that is true but the problem is there is not that many.  
Blondie went all 'Hey, j'ai vu ton mec avec une autre fille' in Sunday Girl but that was just repeating the earlier verses which was sung in English so that doesn't count and the only other one that springs to mind is the excellent 'Ca Plane Poure Moi' but that song is already in the Museum on it's own merit so i was struggling to think of many more.
There are novelty songs such as Gangham Style, Macarena and The Ketchup Song but i wouldn't touch them with a ten foot microphone stand so they are out as is that weird one by the nuns, Dominique
and Gaudete by Steeleye Span which is in Latin and nobody can sing along to, Tempus ad est gratiae hoc quod optabamus and all that but i did manage to scrawl through my MP3 collection and come up with 5 which are now proudly positioned under the Foreign Langue sign somewhere at the back by the toilets.  
Enigma's 'Sadeness Part 1' is sung in Gregorian Chanting apparently but its a pleasant tune as is the Romanian language 'Dragostea Din Tei' by O-Zone although you guys would have to wear some VERY tight under-crackers to get as high pitched as the singer.
My Top 3 would then be 'We Speak No Americano' by Yolanda Be Cool & DCUP sung in Italian about not speaking American (clue in the song title) and with a hook that will stay in your head for the rest of the week and then Falco's German language song 'Rock Me Amadeus' about Mozart who according to him was the first punk but number one has to be 99 Luftballons which explains a series of events which starts with the releasing of balloons to a World War which probably makes more sense in German.  
One song which i really should give an honorary mention to is 'Da Da Da' by Trio because when you make something this insane that breaks through the threshold of being so awful that it becomes amazing in any language, that has to be recognised.

Wary Of Weight Loss Jabs

According to the Lancet Commission on Adolescent Health and Wellbeing, the main drivers of ill health among teenagers will be weight gain with almost half a billion teenagers around the World expected to be be overweight by 2030, 143 million more than in 2015.
A 2022 report from The World Health Organisation put 1 in 8 people in the world were obese, 2.5 billion adults overweight and of those, 890 million were obese but Science could come riding to the rescue once again as there are a plethora of Weight Loss jabs coming onto the market.
Many different types of anti-obesity medicines have been tested in clinical trials but the only ones that have proved to be safe and effective for use on the NHS are Orlistat, Liraglutide (also called Saxenda), Semaglutide (also called Wegovy)and Tirzepatide (also called Mounjaro) and they all work by making you feel fuller so you don't eat so much and by reducing cravings.
The NHS website shows that about 50,000 people are receiving weight-loss injections on the NHS and Health chiefs are calling for a greater roll out as the drugs,  originally developed to treat diabetes, have been shown in trials to show benefits on heart disease, cancer, liver and kidney disorders, and potentially even dementia.
Some are calling this is a 'golden age of medicine' and although we all sincerely hope it is, i am a little wary of the hyperbole surrounding these injections and despite them being available on the NHS, the UK's National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) declared that it is: 'unable to make a recommendation about use of the jabs on teenagers because of a lack of evidence of their impacts' which makes me pause in declaring them a certified scientific breakthrough.
Despite Nice not feeling able to make a recommendation for children, there is research which claims weight-loss jabs for obese children could be effective but i would wait until everyone is in agreement that it is 100% safe before subjecting any children to weight loss injections. 

Special Guest Blogger: Titus Oates

Why did the Brits hate the Catholics? Because they believed they were plotting a Catholic take over of the country.
Why did they believe that? Because I said so and some people are daft enough to believe anything from anyone, even me.
I was named after the Roman emperor Titus, that one who built the Colosseum, and born the year that Charles I was executed for being too Catholic and I was expelled from school for my potty mouth, and then the next school and then also expelled from Cambridge University for stealing and being drunk.
I falsely claimed to have a Theology degree and became a Protestant priest but when i was sacked for lying I switched to being a Catholic for a while and then changed back before changing careers and becoming a sailor but got into trouble for accusing the Captain of theft and had to run away so went back to the priesthood and once I remembered which side i was on, began plotting against Catholics because, well you know, they were Catholics.
I went to Catholic colleges in France to spy on them but got expelled from there for accusing a teacher of buggery so came back and came up with the idea of spreading  rumours that the Catholics were plotting to King Charles II and the Catholic King Louis XIV of France will invade Britain and named 90 Catholic priests and dozens of noblemen as plotters.
We had no proof at all, but I did have two pieces of amazing fortuitous luck. Firstly, I named the King’s doctor as one of the plotters, and it was discovered that he really had been writing to the French and then a magistrate who was investigating the case went missing and was found five days later, somehow beaten and stabbed to death with his own sword. The Catholics got the blame, of course and suddenly everyone believed me and my outlandish Popish plot.
Blimey, I was a national hero and almost any Catholic was a suspect and imagined they saw plotters everywhere and the cellars of Parliament were even searched for another Gunpowder Plot and the treason trials went ahead and the King’s doctor was found guilty and hanged till he was half dead, revived so he could see himself being cut open and his intestines burned on a fire. In all, 35 innocent people died horrible deaths because of what I said.
After two more years of this terror Charles II died and like the bubonic plague, smallpox and flares, Catholicism was one of those things that you hope once gone will stay away forever but nobody seems to have told his Catholic brother James II who came to the throne and it was time for revenge and I was dragged to the pillory where I was pelted with eggs and rubbish for two days.
On the third day I was stripped to the waist, tied to the back of a cart and made to walk behind it while I was whipped. and this was repeated the next day when i was dragged on a sledge while being whipped because i was too weak to walk.
I spent three more years in prison before being released when James II fled from England and the Protestant William of Orange and Mary pardoned me and and granted a pension of £260 but the British people still hated the Catholics and I had been part of the ‘Glorious Revolution’ that got rid of hopefully, Britain’s last Catholic king.

UK Finally Notices Israeli Genocide

With over 53,000 dead and the International Courts labelling it Genocide, the UK Government is very late to the table but they have come out and said that Israel has 'gone beyond just self-defence with intolerable attacks in Gaza' and are calling for Israel to commit to an immediate ceasefire.
Following the British, Canadian and French Governments issuing a joint statement condemning Benjamin Netanyahu's 'egregious actions in Gaza' and warning that the UK and allies will take: 'concrete actions unless he changes course', the UK has suspended trade deal talks with Israel, summoned its ambassador and sanctioned West Bank settlers in a bid to ramp up pressure on the country.
Attacks have accelerated in the Gaza Strip and international aid has been restricted for the last 11 weeks and Ministers are looking to go further, stating they are looking at further steps including sanctions against Israel and members of the Israeli Government.  
Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is tabling a Bill regarding the Royal Air Force (RAF) flying surveillance flights over Gaza, saying: 'We are witnessing a genocide, live-streamed before the entire world, and Britain's continued military co-operation with Israel is utterly indefensible and  the public deserves to know the full scale of the UK's complicity in crimes against humanity'.
Some Pro-Israeli MP's are warning that the Governments actions are sure to damage relations between Britain and Israel and i say good, hope it does because if you are siding with a country that is committing genocide and is openly declaring ethnic cleansing as a objective, then you are on the wrong side.
I fully expect the Israeli response to include the usual word 'Antisemitism' which they usually bandy about to try and shut down discussion of their murderous actions and how the UK is siding with Hamas but trying to stop the wholesale slaughter of a population has nothing to do with religion or even who is doing it, it is just morally bankrupt to not want to stop genocidal maniacs whoever they are. 

A Welcome Labour U-Turn On Winter Fuel Payments

The cutting of the £300 Winter Fuel Payments for 10 million pensioners was always a massive own goal for the Labour Party and after months of denying they were going to scrap it, Keir Starmer today announced U-turn on the payments although no details have emerged except they will change the threshold to ensure more pensioners are eligible so we may not know of the detail until the budget in October or November.
Before the change, all pensioners got the hundreds of pounds of cash, and the government claimed it was saving £1.5bn by changing things which in a £2.7 trillion economy is a drop in the Ocean and inevitably the Government are trying to save face by spinning that the decision has been taken now because the economy has improved, allowing the government more financial spending power.
For once I find myself agreeing with the Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, who said that the Prime Minister's decision to roll back cuts to winter fuel payments was: 'Inevitable as this was a bad decision right from the get-go', which it was but no so much the decision, but at the extremely low £12,000 threshold it was set at.
The new level is expected to be pitched at the 1 million pensioners who are in the higher rate tax band of £50,000, the same level at which Child Benefit is capped, but apart from the EU deals which was recently announced, Labour have not covered themselves in glory over the past year so now hopefully they will look at U-turning on not scrapping the two child benefit cap and the changes to personal independence payments.

Trump Stepping Away From Peace Talks

Ending Russia’s war in Ukraine on Day One of his administration was one of Donald Trump’s famous boasts but he has been sat behind the big desk with the Pepsi button for more than 100 days and the fighting goes on.
Military attacks have continued despite numerous meetings between senior Russian and US officials and phone conversations where Trump and Putin have spoken directly and despite the Americans even repeating parrot fashion the false Russian line that it was somehow all Ukraine's fault, the end of the war hasn't even made it off the starting blocks as Russia created obstacles and deploy delaying tactics, so much so that the Russian President never even showed up to the Peace talks in Turkey that he himself requested.
When Trump proposed a 30-day general ceasefire to prepare the way for broader peace negotiations, the Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, agreed to this immediately while Putin made a counter proposal of agreeing only to not attack energy infrastructure which suited Russia as it relies heavily on the export of oil and Ukraine has been targeting Russia’s oil refineries and storage facilities therefore shielding Russia’s energy production while continuing to attack Ukraine.
Moscow has openly stated it's goal is control all of four regions of Ukraine and Russia and have demanded Kyiv give up its claims to the territory Russia currently occupy as well as Zelenskyy stepping down as President and while Russia places obstacles in the path of peace, Trump and his officials do nothing to remove them.
As we saw and heard in the White House ambush of Zelenskyy in March, Trump blames Ukraine for starting the war and not wanting peace while demanding nothing from Russia and even pursuing the prospect of lucrative deals involving trade and investment, Kirill Dmitriev’s visit to Washington at the beginning of April included discussions encompassing possible deals involving rare-earth metals, exploiting resources in the Arctic, and resuming direct flights between the US and Russia which meant that the prospect of the Trump administration negotiating a peace agreement that the Ukrainians would accept seems remote.
Now after another two-hour phone call between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, Trump is appearing to withdraw from mediating the peace talks altogether as he has been unable to force Ukraine into a deal on Russia’s terms but Putin has no interest in genuine negotiations, and likely never will as Putin's dilemma is that whilst he probably can't win this war he definitely can't afford to lose it. With the staggering amount of men and military materiel lost he just wouldn't survive politically if Russia came out of the conflict with nothing..
The Ukrainian President has forged an impressive international coalition which has withstood Russia’s assault and European Nations are vowing to continue arming Zelenskyy but they will now need to step into the peace talks void left by the self appointed negotiator Trump who it is expected, will soon abandon attempts to reach a negotiated settlement to the war and go straight to re-establishing normal relations with Russia.

Rising Autism Rates

I read a disturbing stat today that the number of Autistic people is rising rapidly with the definition of autism, being: 'persistent difficulties in social life and in social communication' and NHS data does seem to bear this out with the rates of autism diagnosis in the UK over the last 20 years increasing sharpy from a sample of 9 million  patients who were registered at GP surgeries.
The chart shows the rise in new autism diagnoses from 1998 to 2018 with diagnosis levels eight times higher in 2018 than in 1998 and it isn't just happening in the UK as the same is being seen in other European countries also.
There is some debate over why this is happening with some pointing towards changes to who we count as autistic as the definition has broadened to inlcude other things such as Asperger's syndrome
and other developmental disorders and others persisting with the disproven MMR vaccination and some argue that there must be something in what we eat, drink, or breathe that's causing more autism.
Also now included are women and girls as previously it was virtually all males that were coming forward for diagnosis as Autism was originally seen as something that affected mainly boys.
As women are now having children later in life and there is a link between autism and the age of the parent, 20 years ago the average age for a woman to give birth was late twenties but now it is early thirties and if the parent is older they are more likely to have an autistic child but most scientists believe that the increase is due to more diagnoses which isn't a bad thing if you are diagnosed as an adult it would explain why you may have struggled with social interaction al your life.

Special Guest Blogger: John Ruskin

I wrote on subjects as varied as art, architecture, political economy, education, museology, geology, botany, ornithology, literature, history and mythology but what i am probably most remembered for is what my wife, Effie, called at the divorce proceedings my  'incurable impotency'.  
There was a rumour that I was shocked into impotence by the sight of my wife pubic hair on our wedding night. The story was that, as the most influential art critic of his day, AKA me, all my knowledge of the naked female form derived entirely from the pubes-free marble of classical sculpture and painting which is obviously false and that was in no way the reason why we did not consummate our marriage during the six years we were wed.
On a painting expedition, I left Effie alone in a rustic cabin with my friend, the painter John Everett Millais who had no qualms about disgusting pubic hair and Effie enjoyed it so much she filed for divorce. She married him and I became the first Slade Professor of Fine Art at the University of Oxford until the University began allowing  vivisection in the medical school so I left.
With fans such as Charlotte Brontë and Elizabeth Gaskell and a prestigious Newdigate Prize for poetry under my belt, I was a huge influence on Victorian art and architecture wrote 250 books and taught art to Oscar Wilde but by now my views had changed and I was starting to move into the sphere of politics, although i did still dabble in Art which saw me sued for libel by Whistler after saying his art was over-priced.
Always a very right wing Conservative, i began noticing the large equality in Britain and started to lecture against the dangerous ideas of people like Adam Smith and his awful The Wealth of Nations, saying that it increased the societal differences and inequality and would lead to resentment amongst workers so Capitalism should be abandoning in favour of a co-operative structure of society which saw me mentioned in the same breath as Karl Mark and inspired many Christian socialists and even got me a letter from some Indian chap named Ghandi who cited me as the greatest influence in his life.
I also threw in that the Industrial Revolution would knacker the planet but nobody seemed to have picked up on that but just as my political star was rising, i suffered a bout of worsening mental illness and retired to live out a life of solitude with only my cook for company, I say my cook, i believed she was Queen Victoria serving me up cornflakes  every morning so my legacy would be a love of art, socialism and shaved lady gardens.

Trio Warning Israel

Keir Starmer has issued a joint statement with leaders of France and Canada condemning Benjamin Netanyahu's 'egregious actions in Gaza', warning that the UK and allies will take: 'concrete actions unless he changes course'.
The statement, made alongside Emmanuel Macron and Mark Carney called Israel’s expansion of military operations in Gaza as 'wholly disproportionate', adding that 'the level of human suffering in Gaza is intolerable'.
'We will not stand by while the Netanyahu Government pursues these egregious actions. If Israel does not cease the renewed military offensive and lift its restrictions on humanitarian aid, we will take further concrete actions in response' the trio announced.
It describes the Israeli government’s denial of essential humanitarian assistance as 'unacceptable' and says it risks breaching international humanitarian law.
In addition, it condemns the 'abhorrent language used by Israeli politicians' who are threatening civilians to relocate from Gaza.
No expansion of what concrete action will be taken, Arrest warrants have already been issued by the International Criminal Court for the arrest of Netanyahu and some of his cabinet for the Genocide in Palestine if the coward ever dares shows his evil face outside of Israel but hopefully whatever they have up their sleeves, it will stop the mass slaughter of innocent civilians and bring one of the greatest atrocities from the last 70 years to an end.

Undoing The Madness Of Brexit

A YouGov poll released today shows that just 30% believe that Britain was right to leave the EU which makes me think what are the 30% looking at to think that Brexit has been anything other than the dogs dinner it promised, and turned out to be.
I would go further and faster than Keir Starmer did today in his UK/EU Brexit reset deal and rejoin the Single Market and the Customs Union but this is an initial great deal that will start to repair the damage the Conservatives done when they so recklessly wrenched us away from our largest trading partner to the tune of 4% of our GDP.
You would be hard pressed to find anyone in business who is not celebrating with the Federation of Small Businesses saying it is very welcome and Supermarkets calling the UK's new deal with the EU as being good news for shoppers as it will reduce prices and even Farmers calling it a success while Trade Unions are saying it is a win for British businesses, British jobs and people's pockets.
Weirdly, the only people speaking out against it were the Brexit lunatics ones who took us out so painfully and who were voicing their dissenting opinions long before even the deal was announced and the (for now) leader of the Conservatives said that she would reverse any Brexit deal which was announced, clinging forlornly to the idea that 52% of Brits had voted to make themselves poorer and ignoring that most Brexit voters now think Brexit was a bad idea and they just want things to return to how they were without anyone reminding them that they had voted for it.  
We are entering a new era of post-Brexit relations with shiny new security and defence partnership, a deal on energy, fish and food and the youth experience scheme and after the start they made, Labour really needed a win and this is a great one.

Special Guest Blogger: Aztec God Xolotl

Normally, when it comes to us Aztec Gods, my twin brother Quetzalcoatl gets all the fame and glory, but I think that I should be getting my share  because one of my jobs was to  guide the dead to Mictlan, the Aztec Underworld.  
Sure my brother is better looking than me, not hard as I had the head of a dog with empty eye sockets and skeletons feet but looks are not everything but suddenly finding yourself deceased is no fun especially as nobody tells you any of these things so while you are wandering around feeling confused and wondering what are you supposed to do and where do you go, that's where I step in, Xolotl to the rescue.
When I'm not guiding souls to the afterlife I can be seen hanging out in the nightime sky as Venus and helping to guide the Sun on its journey through the Underworld every night and also at all the big sporting events matches because i am also the God of Ball games and can play my part in ensuring victory for my favoured side or player in any game which uses a ball.
Your team got a big game coming up? Sacrifice a virgin or two before kick off and i may find my way to tripping up the left back at a vital moment or 'accidentally' tipping off the bails of the cricket wicket. As a twin myself, i do hold a great affection for twins and even more so if one is born with a dogs head which kinda narrows it down a bit but i do try and do my best.
I do pride myself on being quite approachable so next time you see a golf ball roll around the rim of the hole and inexplicably not drop in or see me up in the evening sky, give me a little wave and say hi because after all, it's certain you’ll be needing me when you’re dead and standing there looking at your lifeless body all confused.

Eurovision 2025

 

This is the 69th time that Europe has come together as one united continent and sang about whatever was troubling us and this year we have an Estonian singing about Italian Coffee and a Norwegian singing Ireland's entry about a Russian dog but sorry Australia but your Milkshake song just didn't cut it but feel free to try again next year.
The favourite is Sweden and then Austria and France, the United Kingdom is expected to finish 11th which is on the left hand side of the board so we will take that but the nations looking at Nul Points direct in the face are Armenia, Portugal and Iceland which seems a bit harsh on Iceland, fair enough the Armenian and Portuguese entries are not great but the Iceland is a very bouncy EuroPop song and surely one of it's Scandinavian pals will throw it some points.  
With 7 each, Ireland and Sweden have won the contest the most times then France, Luxembourg, UK and Netherlands with 5 wins each but there are 7 countries that are still virgins when it comes to Eurovision wins and they will be hoping to have commentators diving for the atlas to work out what the capital is so they know where we are going next year.

Special Guest Blogger: Raoul Rigault

I was a journalist with a penchant for good wine, shouting and filling my nose with snuff before i became the leader of The Communards who were the workers of Paris who rebelled against the Emperor’s government.
We had no real organization and not much idea about how to fight a revolutionary war against the Emperor’s army but what we lacked in skill, we made up for in cruelty.
I had been a revolutionary with a particular hatred of religion since my youth, I was arrested at a meeting of revolutionaries and escaped and was while on the run , I was hidden by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, the famous painter, but when the authorities caught up with me I served three months imprisonment for publishing a journal on Atheism.
Wisely at the start of the Revolution we pinched 200 of the Emperor’s cannon and took them up to the top of a hill so we could bombard the city below. The Emperor sent a troop of soldiers to recapture them which they almost did because all the stupid sentries were asleep!
Luckily the  Emperor’s men were just as stupid as us because nobody had brought any horses to drag away the guns so as they waited they were soon surrounded by the Communards who  made them an offer of being taken hostage or joining us.
The leaders,  General Lecomte and Thomas , were not given that choice and were dragged from their horses and taken for execution and then for a bit of je ne sais quo, we mutilated the bodies.
We particularly detested the Catholic Church and set out to eliminate all the priests in Paris and when we executed the Bishop of Paris we threw his body into a ditch and in revenge the Emperor’s army took 147 Communards to the cemetery and shot them but they were better shots than us, when we  took four policemen into a courtyard to be shot, we only managed to hit one of them and another one escaped.
Being crap shots didn't deter us from executing those we caught though, thousands died and probably thousands more would have done if we could have shot straight but our executions did give me a chance to return the favor to Renoir when i noticed him destined for the firing squad in the Paris Commune, and had him immediately pardoned and released.
A socialist with a large slice of charm, I became, in effect, the head of the Commune's police force and our stronghold was the slums of Paris and we built barricades and would pour boiling water on any soldier that tried to scale them.
Being not very good at Revolutions, it quickly began to unravel and when we realised it was all over we took the prisoners out of their cells and shot them but my days of power were short lived, I was dragged away and shot by enemy soldiers and my naked body was left in a gutter for two days to be kicked and spat on until my girlfriend finally covered it with a coat so my one tip to wannabe Revolutionaries is make sure you can shoot straight and pick a cool name and in 100 years time you too may have a band named after you.

We Were Warned

Back in the mid 80s when i began joining the Environmentalists in making people alert on Climate Change, there wasn't that many people who  argued against it. Well, they couldn't argue against the science as the evidence for a warming climate was conclusive and almost every scientist who wasn't in the pay of the fossil fuel lobby agreed but the more denser amongst us wanted to rage against something because they saw saving the planet as a Green, lefty thing.
They tried denying it but couldn't so they tried to deny it was man made and the climate changes over time anyway but again science proved that was rubbish and recently there has been the view that it is happening and nothing we can do about it anyway but the latest thing is raging against Net Zero.
Interestingly when i have queried these people exactly what Net Zero is they don't actually know, just parrot fashion repeating what loonies like Nigel Farage of Reform UK is saying, the same Reform UK that received £2.3 million from oil and gas interests which could explain why they are keen to rubbish anything that their paymasters feel will harm their profits  
The moronic useful idiots then have jumped upon a bandwagon that will see some businesses continue to make obscene profits while the World literally burns and what would otherwise be amusing it it was so catastrophic, they don't even understand why.
For the hard of thinking, Climate Change is the direct result of there being too much Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere so we must stop emitting more and even remove some of it and that could be through mass tree planting and carbon capture devices that suck out carbon dioxide from the air so if we deploy carbon dioxide removal techniques at the same time as reducing our burning of fossil fuels, we can slow global warming.
Hopefully around the middle of this century we will achieve 'net zero' which is  the point at which emissions of greenhouse gases are balanced by technologies removing them from the atmosphere.
The first mention i could find of Climate Change was in 1824 when French physicist Joseph Fourier warned of the Earth's natural 'greenhouse effect' and in 1861 the Irish physicist John Tyndall showed that certain gases such as Carbon create the greenhouse effect.
In 1958 Environmental scientists begins measurements of atmospheric CO2 and show that at 315ppm, CO2 concentrations are rising and in 1965 (320 ppm) a US President's Advisory Committee panel warned that the greenhouse effect 'is a matter of real concern' and in 1990, an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report said with CO2 at 354 ppm, temperatures have risen by 0.3-0.6C over the last century due to humanity's emissions.
Since then we have been through numerous Earth Summit's, Kyoto Protocols, Climate Change Conferences and Environmental agreements but still the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere continues to grow and each wasted year meant humanity was rapidly running out of time.
If we had acted on the first warning at the time, we would have been able to decarbonise our societies at a rate of around 2% a year to limit warming to no more than 1.5°C and if Governments had acted in 1861, 1958 or even 1990 then we would have had a fighting chance of slowing Global Warning but here we are in 2025 and at 425ppm, and the number of lives lost to more intense storms, fires, heatwaves, famines and floods are significantly increasing.   
The fact that we have done nothing to limit the CO2 being pumped into the atmosphere means that we have to act now and in as quick as possible because our lives literally depend on it so blame the previous World Governments for it being so urgent now because nobody can say we haven't been warned over the past century, they have just selfishly and ignorantly done nothing about it.

What The World Thinks Of Brits

A recent post included details of the most hated nations and there sat Britain at number 11 between India and Japan and i thought , 'Phew, got away with that then'  because some nations are hated for their past actions and Britain did not covered itself with glory when it ran an Empire so why then, if it isn't our past, what do others hate about Britain?  
The British Council put out a report a little while ago called 'As Others See Us' which was a poll by 5,000 18 to 34-year-olds from all around the world who gave an assessment of what they think of Britain.
The most negative things they could think of about this sceptred isle included drink too much alcohol,  bad eating habits, rude, unfriendly, ignorant of other cultures, lazy and Complain Too Much' which all seems a little vindictive so lets dive into each of the top thongs other nations dislike about us Brits
Worst trait was that we drink too much alcohol (27%) which is nonsense, we also drink tea and sometimes put whisky in it so how can they...oh i see, moving on to the second worst trait that we have bad eating habits which 23% said.
I did wonder exactly what this meant at first and assumed it was eating ice cream with our hands or licking our plates but it's to do with the way we just chuck all our food onto a plate so it is one big mix, and then smother it in Mayonnaise or Tomato Sauce which is fair because go to a restaurant, and unless it is one of those posh ones where you pay £568,000 for a single slice of chicken in some French sounding sauce, it will arrive at you table 'mixed'.
Next up is we are too nationalistic according to 22% and as we gave the World trains, television, the first computer, DNA, gravity, evolution, Slash, the industrial revolution and the telephone, us Brits do feel they we have basically won history and feel smug about it and nobody was smug until we Brits invented it so add that to the list also.
Another 22% east of Kent said we are intolerant of other cultures which will be much higher if Nigel Farage and his right wing buddies get their way but the next two, Rude (17%) and unfriendly (13%) we should lump together because it is very much a British trait that most of us would really rather you didn't try and strike up a conversation with us unless you are holding us hostage. Sure it may come across as rude and unfriendly but in our minds if we show any interest in a conversation it will lead to an 8 hour discussion on your trip to Dover Castle along with photos.    
Brits complain too much is what 13% thought which again is something i don't recognise or rather i don't because who has the time with all i have to do and with the trains being  so lousy and expensive and don't get me started on the weather, seems to be raining so hard you could swim home some days or it's baking and we have to look at men in shorts two sizes too small so the belly hangs and who wants to see that? Not me because after work i have to do the housework although the last thing i want after a hard days graft is to run around with a bloody vacuum cleaner but anyway, i digress and the last trait other nations dislike about us Brits is that we are lazy (10%).
Lazy! LAZY!! They think that British people employ foreigners to do everything they don’t want to do which is an outrageous slur and not one that my Indian house-cleaner or the Greek lady who comes in twice a week to do the ironing agreed with when i asked them.  
So there you go Brits, that's what the rest of the world thinks of us.

An Island Of Strangers

Keir Starmer has quite rightly been getting a kicking for his comment that Britain risks becoming an 'island of strangers' due to immigration although two people backing him was Nigel Farage of Reform and Kemi Badenoch of the Conservative Party.
As soon as Keir had finished, Kemi was on Social Media explaining that under her leadership she would have been a lot nastier to immigrants, we can only hope that she might be so strict that she may even deport herself.  Fingers crossed.
Farage, the non thinking man's racist, when down the usual route of damn cheek of them foreigners coming over here, working for the NHS and paying their taxes. Whatever next?
While Keir may be doing some weird lurch in to a level of nastiness about immigrants that had always been the preserve of the racist right wing, a series of Labour MPs have stepped out to criticise Starmer for his rhetoric which is an echo of language used by Enoch Powell in his infamous 1968 'rivers of blood' speech.
Nobody has yet explained what would happen if foreigners stopped coming over here to do jobs us Britons refuse to do, leave the job vacancies unfilled possibly as they consider it better that our care homes and hospitals are understaffed than fully staffed with the wrong people?
Keir even started his lousy speech with: 'It’s time to take back control' but failed to mention that it is his Government that had out the work visas, so exactly who he wants to take back control from is a bit of a head scratcher.
Anyway, unless being British is all about feeling mistrustful, overlooked, isolated, powerless, and petrified of 'losing our identity’, i don't recognise it but i do recognise ugly nationalist politics and ugly nationalist politics where misguided souls cling to their national flag and look back to a better time when they will tell you that Britain was supposedly better, allegedly friendlier and purportedly more peaceful but certainly more white.  

Special Guest Blogger: King Vortigern

Around 410 the Romans had abandoned Britain as they pulled back their armies to fight in defence of the homeland and this power vacuum was partially filled by me but the Picts and Scots were attacking the former Roman territory south of the border along Hadrian’s now defunct Wall. I  had no effective standing army to defend the south of Britain so I needed mercenaries and invited some warriors, a pair of brothers called Hengist and Horsa who had the reputation of not so much wearing their awfulness on their sleeves more than having it pinned to their foreheads.
So with the invite sent , the brothers and their army arrived over from Saxony to fight our battles and landed in Kent and quickly defeated the Picts and Scots, and i rewarded them with some land at Thanet in Kent.
Such was their gratitude that they offered Hengist’s daughter, Rowena, in marriage and my son warned me that it could be an outlandish plot to overthrow me but I refused to listen and we were wed and in exchange for her hand i let her brothers expand their lands from Thanet to the whole of Kent.
The Saxons made themselves at home and liked it here in our Green and Pleasant land so they invited their fierce and ungodly mates to join them and began to plunder the area so I suggested a peace conference on Salisbury Plain.
Now with hindsight only a mug would go to meet an enemy unarmed and I was obviously was a mug because what happened next became known as ‘The Night of the Long Knives’ … so you can guess what’s coming.
We sat down and the Saxons seemed very friendly and very sociably then Hengist, stood, waved his hand and within minutes 300 of my men were slaughtered and i was taken prisoner and it cost me most of Eastern England which is why i lived out my days at the opposite side of the country in Wales.

Special Guest Blogger: Percy Spencer

I was a physicist, electrical engineer and inventor and if you have ever nuked a Pot Noodle or used your microwave to warm up some leftovers, you have a comedy of errors to thank for the convenience.
The microwave came down to an accident involving an experiment with some radar equipment, and a chocolaty peanut chocolate bar.
I had an affinity for electrical systems and continued to expand my knowledge of them when I joined the Navy and then onto Raytheon who had the contract to find a use for all the radar equipment we had left over from World War 2 and one such piece of equipment was the compact cavity magnetron, a high-powered vacuum tube that generates microwaves.
I stood too close to one whilst having a bar of chocolate in my pocket one afternoon but rather than be disappointed to realise my afternoon snack melted, I went and got some unpopped popcorn and placed that in front of the magnetron, and realised that microwaves could cook food.
I showed it to my bosses and we filed for a patent on the technology and Raytheon began manufacturing what we called 'Radarange' mostly to restaurants but it never really caught on as it was six-feet tall and weighed 750 pounds and who would want one of those ugly things in their kitchen so we scaled it down to household size and started selling the countertop microwave oven in 1967.
Another hurdle to consumer adoption was the fear of radiation but after the Bureau of Radiological Health began a thorough testing process to ensure microwaves didn’t emit dangerous levels of radiation they really took off and all because  of a happy accident and the fact i hadn't shoved an apple in my pocket on that day.

Brits To Sizzle In Hottest Summer Ever

The Meteorological Office, known as the Met Office for short, is the UK’s national weather service and was founded in 1854 by Vice-Admiral Robert FitzRoy who made daily forecasts as a way to warn sailors and fishermen about potentially deadly storms but the public became interested in them as it was useful to know when they could go hang the washing out or to take a brolly to work so he made them public.
While back then it was largely information from word of mouth, weather singularities and some guy with a pencil and a map, today's forecasts are made by Super-Computers crunching millions of bits of weather information but a little known secret is that they may spit out long range weather forecasts but anything more than 48 hours ahead is a best guess, although a highly educated one.
The Daily Star, without any actual quotes from anyone that far enough up the Meteorological Chain of Command to warrant such headlines, screamed: 'Brits set to sizzle in hottest summer ever as forecasters predict record temperatures' which probably leant more to the usefulness of the headline to include pictures of sexy teenage girls in bikini's than any proper forecasting but the MET Office replied stuffily that they expect: 'An above-average chance of warmer-than-average conditions but this is not an indication of an imminent record-breaking summer, as the cooler, or more average conditions remain possible' and pointing towards how seven of the 10 hottest UK temperatures have been recorded since 2003 and with Climate Change  rampant, well it doesn't take a genius to work out that Summer 2025 is going to be making an appearance in the top 10 somewhere.
What the MET Office does have is weather information dating back to 1853 and they list the Top 10 hottest UK temperatures as:

    40.3°C -  Lincolnshire - 19 July 2022
    38.7°C – Cambridgeshire – 25 July 2019
    38.5°C – Kent – 10 August 2003
    38.2°C -  Northamptonshire - 18 July 2022
    37.8°C – London – 31 July 2020
    37.1°C – Gloucestershire – 3 August 1990
    36.7°C – London – 1 July 2015
    36.7°C – Northamptonshire – 9 August 1911
    36.6°C – Worcestershire – 2 August 1990
    36.5°C – Surrey – 19 July 2006

As none of the 10 hottest UK temperatures have been reported outside of England, mid July to mid August could be a good time to visit one of the other nations in the United Kingdom or pitch a tent in the frozen aisle of the local Supermarket.

Taliban Saying Check Mate

Chess. The ultimate meeting of minds where competitors joust together, face to face across the 64 squares of the Chess Board, the panoply to encapsulate the unspoken nobility of competition in the time honoured tradition until the loser is vanquished.    

There was an Indian kid in my school who was brilliant and virtually unbeatable so he is either a highly successful managing director somewhere or planning to take over the world which is why the Taliban have banned Chess in Afghanistan.Actually they have banned it due to concerns over gambling which is against it's very strictly adhered to Islamic law but that didn't make such a good opening paragraph but Chess does have a history of being played by some of history's very worse such as Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi even though apparently he wasn't very good and when he played the Chess President, the Pres said he held back and offered a diplomatic draw because: 'Winning on a visit would be embarrassing' which was probably a very wise move.

Other despots and mass murderers include Stalin, Menachem Begin, Napoleon, Chairman Mao, Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, Ivan the Terrible, Franco, Goebbels, Henry VIII, Rudolf Hess, Hitler, Ho Chi Minh, William Joyce, Machiavelli, Bin Laden, Charles Manson, Lee Harvey Oswald, Tito, Kaiser Wilhelm, William the Conqueror and Bono of U2.

We were taught Chess in school as we were told it would serve us well in life because it would teach us to think ahead of the possible consequences of our actions but we will never know if someone had hid the chess pieces from a young Adolf and Bono we could have avoided WW2 and the awful Zooropa album but the Taliban could be on to something by banning Chess clubs because whoever the next big bad is, its almost a cert they are currently pondering over whether to take their opponents Bishop or Castling to protect their King.

Israel Eurovision Ban Calls Growing

A week away from the biggest Song Contest on the Planet and the Eurovision Committee and already reaching for the 'We don't do politics' mantra as nations question why the hell Israel haven't been booted out for their ongoing genocide in Palestine.
There were calls for Israel to join Russia and Belarus on the sidelines where they were told not to bother entering a song previously after the Ukraine war kicked off and there were protests inside and outside the event against the country and there are almost certain to be the same this year in Switzerland but the Irish Public Broadcaster has beat the rush by questioning Israel's continued inclusion in the Eurovision song contest
A letter from 72 former contestants has also gone into the European Broadcasters Union (EBU) letterbox asking why the Israeli broadcaster is allowed in as the broadcaster was: 'Complicit in Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza and the decades-long regime of apartheid and military occupation against the entire Palestinian people'.
The performers went on to say that the inclusion: 'Would allow music to be used as a tool to whitewash crimes against humanity and would amount to double standards since the EBU has banned Russia from the event since 2022 over its invasion of Ukraine.'
An EBU spokesperson said: 'We understand the concerns and deeply held views around the current conflict in the Middle East. The EBU is not immune to global events but, together with our members, it is our role to ensure the contest remains, at its heart, a universal event that promotes connections, diversity and inclusion through music' which would sound great if there wasn't for the other nations sat on the bench for being warmongery and unable to promote connections, diversity and inclusion through their music.

Religionists Big Cheeses

 
Rosary beads are being excitedly shaken amongst the 1.4 billion Catholics as with Pope Leo XIV now sat in the big chair, they have a new leader to fawn other but if you are not of a Catholic persuasion, not to worry because there are plenty of other religions to choose and they will all tell you they are the right one so who are the top bananas of those other religions?
Since Henry VIII told the Pope to do one so he could marry his bit of young crumpet the top Royal has always doubled up as the head of the Church of England and lorded it over the 26 million Church of Englander's.
After the Pope the Dalia Lama is probably the most famous religious leader and he is who you would need to doff your hat to if you join the other 500 million Buddhists in meditating on the path toward liberation from defilements  whatever that is and The Jagadguru (guru of the universe) is the big enchilada  for the 1.2 billion Hindu's.
Just like Christianity, Islam is split into teams under the same umbrella with the 1.7 billion Sunni Muslims considering the Grand Imam, Ahmed el-Tayeb, as their big cheese and the 300 million Shia flavour looking towards Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Sistani.
The 15.2 million followers of Judaism see Chief Rabbi is David Yosef as their bigwig and the Shinto religion get two for one as the Japanese Emperor, Shinto Naruhito, get to run the country and the official religion of 3 million believers.
Some religious groups are ruled over by committee so in the World of Hari Krishna the head honcho is His Divine Grace Sri Srimad Bhakti Sundar Sanyasi Goswami Maharaj and the 8.8 million Jehovah's Witnesses officially list Jesus Christ as their leader but the President of the Watch Tower is Robert Ciranko and he actually exists so he has the 'I'm The Boss' sign on his desk.   
The 8 million Church of Scientology  followers waiting for Xenu and looking nervously at Volcanoes see David Miscavige, President of Scientology as the head honcho while 7 million
Baháʼí Faith admirers dont let death stop a leader because theirs died in 1921 but it keeps things simpe even if a bit tricky to email with questions of faith.
Voodoo boats 60 million followers and Augustin St. Clou is the current King of Voodoo and the Taosim Celestial Master of Orthodox Unity Taoism for the 8.7 milion Taosits is Chang Tao-ch'en and Zoroastrianism's top dog is Zerbanoo Gifford for the 200,000 followers of the religion.
I'm not sure who the 1.1 billion Atheist give Thanks to for not believing any of the above but as Richard Dawkins is probably the most famous non-believer then i would have to say the Evolutionary biology is probably the Atheists chief.

Special Guest Blogger: Dave The Waiter At The Last Supper

So much for things being slow during Passover.
It was April of 33 and as usual Jerry's was jammed and I was coming to the end of an eight-hour double shift slopping kishke to drunken centurions and it was almost 9 and the kitchen wanted to close and in walks Jesus with his flock of hangers-on.
It was no bother to me, the chance to get a few extra shekels are always welcome and i see Luke, the skinny one with the greasy hair, comes over and says to me with a real snotty attitude, 'Table for thirteen ... I believe it's under Christ' so I check the book and i have one table left and show them over to it and then the arguments start because Matthew wants to sit next to Jesus but John is having none of it, Mark and James are pouting because what food is left is limited and mostly salad and Paul is saying he is lactose intolerant and wants t make sure there is no  cream in his borscht.
Judas sits glowering because no one will split an appetizer with him and Andrew actually snapped his fingers at me for a water refill, cheeky barstool.
I get extra if i can sell bottles of wine but the cheapskates only ordered one glass of house red, one glass, and they all split it the tightwads.
After I got them settled down, and started handing out the meals and you'd have thought we were feeding the lions the way they attacked it . I wanted to ask Jesus if he was planning some commandments on table manners but we got through dinner and Jesus was the only one who actually seemed pretty normal, being the son of God and a bit of a celebrity in these parts after all he did for the lepers you might expect him to be a bit of a git but he was actually pretty cool.
We were hoping for some miracles at the dinner table but he didn't do any of that although when I found out later that one of those guys had betrayed Jesus, it didn't surprise me a bit but let's face it, Messiahs come and go still I was sorry to hear what happened to Jesus. He was a good tipper.

Still No Pope

Christmas is usually the only time anyone pays any attention to Chimneys but eyes have been on the one in the Vatican which for the second day running is polluting the air with black smoke, meaning they haven't yet decided who is the next one in the funny hat to replace Francis.  
The 133 cardinals whose job it is to choose the next Pontiff will have to vote again and that is scheduled for this afternoon and again at 7pm if they still can't decide but the noises coming from the Vatican is that they fully expect to be looking around for something which emits White Smoke at some point today.  
Listening to the Cardinals speak, they seem torn between a Pope who will continue the progressive work of Francis who had no problem with homosexuality, women, divorce, abortion or Atheism or a traditional Pope who will turn the calendar back centuries and calling them all abominations again.
One Cardinal said that the main directive for the new Pope is to: 'Strengthen faith in God in a world that seemed to have forgotten about God a bit' which is a bit harsh because we haven't forgotten about him, those of us with a few working brain cells looked at the feeble evidence and decided it was all a load of phooey and ignored the whole thing.
So if the Catholics will be jangling their rosary beads in excitement for a Pope Parolin, Tagle, Erdő, Sarah or Prevost, some of the first one's to know will be the 100,000 who are signed up to the live stream of the chimney on the Sistine Chapel's roof where they have been treated to sights of the Vatican's pigeons who as yet, are undisturbed by white smoke.

Good Month For Trade Deals

This month seems to be a good one for agreeing Trade deals with the Indian one announced on Tuesday and an American one due to be announced today although today's is a Trade Agreement which, i am reliably informed, is an agreement to negotiate what issues to discuss at some point in the future which is not quite the  'full and comprehensive' deal being trumpeted by the American side.
In Downing Street the PM’s spokesperson ducked questions about just how 'full and comprehensive' it will be by saying that: 'Keir Starmer would be describing it in his own words when he speaks later today' which may be interesting as Keir Starmer has a frustrating way of saying lots of words without actually saying anything.
Although not giving out any details, the Government are saying that we will not be lowering our food standards to accept Chlorinated Chicken or Hormone treated Beef so sorry Americans, you will just have to carry on poisoning yourselves with that muck, we don't want it.
Trump seems to have made the same mistake as the Brexit supporters who assumed that as America is big we need them more than they need us and nations would come running to sign up for deals but found out that the rest of the world is bigger and now he has to hurry about trying to tie up trade deals himself, this agreement being announced today began three Prime Ministers ago under Boris Johnson but Trump will try to spin it as a result of his tariff's meltdowns because he needs some wins, however how spurious.
With India trading 2% with the UK and America 20%, both are very nice thank you but the real deal is going to come on May 19th when the trade deal with the EU is announced where we do over 50% of our trading.
Calling it a re-set, Britain and the 27 nation EU are set to announce a huge softening of the disastrous Brexit deal the Conservatives negotiated when we lost the plot and left the largest Single Market in the World in 2016 and some Brexiteers are calling it a reversal of Brexit by the back door and I am fine with that because it has been a disaster which has shaved 4% off our GDP so if we can claw some of that back and integrate back into the EU then I am all for it.

Special Guest Blogger: Robert Bunsen

I invented many things but not the Bunsen burner. I was a German chemist and teacher who devised or improved the design of a number of pieces of laboratory equipment which you still use today. However, the item i am most famous for was actually invented by the English chemist Michael Faraday.
I first became renowned in the scientific community for my work on arsenic and discovered the only known antidote to the poison, iron oxide hydrate, but not before losing my sight in one eye and almost dying of arsenic poisoning when some of it got in my eye after it exploded.
 I went on to produce a galvanic battery that used a carbon element instead of the much more expensive platinum and solved the riddle of how geysers worked by building a working model in my lab.
The need for a new style of burner grew out of my work with physicist called Gustav Kirchoff and together we pioneered the technique that became known as spectroscopy by filtering light through a prism and discovered that every element had its own signature spectrum. Very pretty it was too.
In order to produce this light by heating different materials, we needed a flame that was very hot but not very bright and I developed this new heat source using Faraday’s burner as a starting point. I took my ideas to Desaga, who built the prototype in 1855 and within five years our lab became famous, and brought me international renown.
So how did it get named after me? My family had the rights to sell it and they named it Bunsen's Burner so I got famous for inventing something i didn't really invent when the other work i did was so extraordinary but at least i get a name call every time a student sets fire to their stupid fringe in Chemistry lessons.

Most Hated Nation 2025

You would think with Great Britain's atrocious past, when it comes to a list of the most disliked countries  based on global surveys and public opinions, we would appear somewhere near the top but in the 2025 poll for World Population Review, we don't even make it into the top 10 so which nations are bumping us out of a top 10 most hated position?
China sit at the top of the pile and accused of being authoritative, oppressive and controlling although nobody in China will get to see any of this for exactly those reasons.  
Second is the United States due to throwing it's weight around politically and being oppressive and bullying to people in other countries while supporting questionable regimes. To be fair with the 3rd fattest President Donald Trump in charge he has a lot of weight to throw around. A Lot.
Third is Russia where they are disliked due to being restrictive in personal rights and freedoms and democracy as a whole and being aggressive to its neighbours and fourth is North Korea which is seen as authoritative, oppressive, secretive and pursues aggressive international policies.
Fifth is Israel because of what is politely termed its unsavory conduct in the Middle East which means less politely, the whole genocide and ethnic cleansing of its Palestinian neighbours.
The rest of the Top 10 are made up Pakistan, Iran,  Iraq ,Syria and India and there at the 11th most hated nation we find Great Britain and the thing that gets up peoples noses about is Brits is our colonial past which has a very long shadow.
Japan is 12th but i expected to see the head choppy Saudi Arabians higher than 13th but just like Britain, Germany's past is mentioned as why they are hated and lands them 14th.
Afghanistan is 18th and Argentina 24th, Australia 25th and Mexico 28th but humourously the Vatican City is at 30 which shows the new Pope has his work cut out when they get around to electing one.

BSL Coming To A School Near You Soon

 I was never very good at languages, I was merde at French and mist at German and recently held a conversation with a Spaniard using the Google Translate function on my iPhone so it is good news that from the new school term in September, British Sign Language (BSL) will be taught.
Amazingly, the Royal National Institute for Deaf People (RNID) say that over 18 million adults in the UK are deaf and only around 151,000 BSL users and describe the move as 'A significant moment in the history of the British deaf community' which it is.
Not only will it be beneficial to the Deaf Community that more people will be able to communicate with them without either just saying things slower and louder or scribbling things on bits of paper, but will open the eyes and make those with decent hearing aware of the Deaf Community.  
The National Deaf Children's Society, said that students will find it a fun and engaging language to learn which was two words i would never apply to my time sitting in a classroom  and learning how to ask directions to the railway in French.
The RNID say that on average it takes 3-4 years to become fluent (BSL Level 6) based upon learning 3 hours a week and obviously knowing their audience, state that swear words are available, just be careful who you are facing when you put your little finger on your chin, else you will look a complete fist tapping on forehead.