Go For It Keir, Or Just Go

To say that since they gained power the Labour Party has been a disappointment is an under statement and to see a YouGov poll today showing that 37% of the country think there should be a change at the top of Government should focus a few minds at the Party Headquarters.    
I put the problem squarely at the door of Keir Starmer who seems more intent in trying to keep everyone happy rather than enact Labour policies which promised 'Change'.
I get that after 14 years of ideological right wing nonsense from the Conservatives there is a lot to fix, the economy they inherited was dreadful and the services so hollowed out by cuts and austerity that it was never going to be a quick fix but as the first two Labour cost cutting policies were to remove payments to Pensioners and then the disabled and then ramp up the defence budget, us Labour supporters are left wondering what is so different to the last lot?
If Starmer is not going to be bold and give us real change, he should step aside and let someone who will take over, someone like Angela Raynor or West Streeting who are much more in the 'Labour' mould and would shake things up.
If Starmer wants us to rejoin the EU as he hinted at or bring in a wealth tax or hammer the Non Doms or ramp up Capital Gains and Inheritance Tax to raise the funds to pay for things then do it, you have a huge majority in Parliament and can do literally anything you want to do because at the moment he is doing nothing, just annoying people with his inaction and giving us nothing different to what the Conservatives gave us.
No point in playing safe because you have already wasted a year in a five year term and you are losing the chance very few get to actually hold the power and ability to do something.
We have had right wing policies under the Conservatives and they were terrible for the country but they had the conviction to enforce them so pull your head out of your arse and remember you are the Labour Party, founded on Socialism and the party of the downtrodden and working person and act accordingly because the worst that can happen is you are removed from power in four years, which is going to happen anyway the way you are going and then you will only be remembered as that guy who led the Labour Party into power after 14 years and then piddled it all away doing nothing worthwhile when he finally got in.

Calling For More Deaths Just Wrong

I have no problem with musicians spouting off their political beliefs and i had no problem with the Rap act, Bob Vylian, performing in front of a screen supporting Palestine but when they began chanting 'Death to the IDF', that went too far and they are now quite rightly being investigated by Police for any criminal offence committed .
Unfortunately, when they began chanting many from the 30,000 crowd joined in which saddens me because regardless of our beliefs, we shouldn't be calling for the death of anyone because this is exactly why we find ourselves in the situation we do now.
Yes the IDF has been committing genocide against the Palestinians for decades and that is abhorrent and the Israeli Government should be tried for War crimes but what Hamas did in October 2023 was also a War Crime and just as abhorrent.
It is killing, or trying to kill, the other side which keeps the pot bubbling and fosters the hatred so we need new leaders in Palestine and Israel, leaders who want to live in peace with each other and not annihilate one another.
I am not a friend of the Israeli or Palestinian Governments, the leaders can get into a big field and lob bombs at each other all they want for all i care but my concern is always the poor, innocent buggers stuck in the Middle, the Palestinians and Israeli's who suffer and die under their awful Governments.
Calling for more death won't solve anything, it just keeps the embers burning. 

Special Guest Blogger: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Child prodigy, Musical genius, supernatural composer, my likeness won’t come around any time soon.
I began banging away on the keys at age three, composed a concerto at four, a symphony at eight, and mastered the violin soon thereafter.
My sister Maria Anna was also a prodigy on piano and my Father knew a cash cow when he sired them and said Salzburg was too small for us, and that the world should hear us play so took us both on a concert tour through the courts of Munich, Paris, and London, visiting two hundred cities in the next ten years.
We played all over Europe, and kings and queens came to see us! We were like an early version of the Kardashian Family, except a lot more talented.
By age sixteen, I had picked up musical ideas the world over and had written twenty-five symphonies, I was a melody machine, spinning off operas, string quartets, and sonatas far ahead of their time.
I married Constanze Weber who was from a musical family and she sang like a bird and I wrote several solos for her over the years but some courts and patrons wouldn’t touch me with a fifty-foot cello bow as they considered me arrogant and lazy.
Six hundred works, twenty-one stage and opera compositions, fifteen masses, forty-one symphonies, twelve violin concertos, seventeen piano sonatas, twenty-seven piano concertos, twenty-six string quartets. I'd rather be a lazy genius than talentless dolts like them.
To supplement my income I began teaching, as well as performing in my concertos as conductor and soloist but i did have an expensive lifestyle but luckily I had a fiscally sound wife and Constanze was quite smart when it came to money. Heck, she probably kept us from starving by moving us into a smaller house, got some loans, and negotiated a royalty deal for publications. Loved that woman!
Antonio Salieri, the court composer to the Holy Roman Emperor didn't help as he was jealous of my effortless talents and on several occasions tried to ruin me, he alone made the public despise my opera Le nozze di Figaro.
My last years were spent in Vienna, crafting some of my most brilliant masterpieces and worrying nonstop about our finances as I was spending more than I brought in and my health was rapidly declining and my last piece was a composition called Requiem. Some mysterious Count Chocula type wanted it for his wife’s funeral, and I needed the commission.
Then I got sick with Kidney disease and realised I was basically writing my own requiem but I hear that there is a thing now called 'the Mozart Effect' where parents plays my music to newborn children and think it will make the child smarter which is a great idea, especially if I get a royalty cheque out of the deal. 

If You Support Israel You Are On Wrong Side Of History

Israel’s pre-emptive attack on Iran and the American assistance in blowing some holes in the side of a mountain overshadowed the ongoing carnage in Palestine where during the 12 day battle, over 550 Palestinians were killed by the IDF, manywhile attempting to secure food and water from the sites set up by the Israeli's in a combat zone.  
It defies belief that the Unicef spokesperson, James Elder, should have needed to spell that out this week that: 'We cannot be asking civilians to go into a combat zone so that then they can be killed with the justification that they are in a combat zone' and yet each day Palestinians continue to be killed en-mass while attempting to collect aid for their families from food hubs in Gaza.
Unfortunately, mid the Israeli genocide, Palestinians are being forced to make a choice between risking being shot and letting their families starve to death in what Médecins Sans Frontières has described as: 'Slaughter masquerading as humanitarian aid'.
Overall, the grim death toll of the Israeli version of their own Final Solution, stands at 56,331 people who have died in Israeli attacks since war began but many consider this an undercount with bodies still buried under the mass graves of building rubble and think the total will exceed 80,000 and that is before they even begin counting the the toll of those dying from hunger and dehydration.
One day thankfully this will all be over but the vision of Netanyahu and the Israeli Government is one which includes the disappearance of Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank where 3 Palestinians where shot by the IDF yesterday for resisting settlers who were burning down houses and attacking Palestinians.
When future generations read about Gaza with horror at the true scale of the slaughter and wonder how we allowed it to happen and how a country was allowed to bomb homes, aid centres and hospitals and shoot dead civilians who were bought to the point of starvation and enticed to distribution hubs to then shoot at them.
The people with real power, the politicians who supplied the weapons and gave cover to the genocide, minimized the Israeli war crimes and atrocities by allowing Israel carte blanche to do whatever it liked, history will judge all these people and those who supported it and by supporting it, if you believe this all began in 2023, then you deserve to be castigated if you answer the question asked by future generations of what did you do in the Gaza genocide, you answer that you supported it.

Alanis Is Back

 It is great to see Alanis Morissette back in the news again, when they come to write the playlist of my life her Jagged Little Pill album will feature because her 1995 offering was huge, in the UK the album spent a total of 221 weeks on the charts and is 13th in the list of best selling albums ever at 33 million Worldwide so that is a lot of people who warbled along to: 'It's like raiiiiiiiiiiin..on your wedding day' and from the Album, Ironic was probably the one people know best although for me, the best song was always 'Forgiven' which starts off a slow ballad type raging against her Catholic upbringing and ramps up during the next 5 minutes to a brilliant crescendo which shows just what an amazing voice she had. It's also an amazing song to play along to on the guitar
The whole Jagged Little Pill album was an angry sounding bitchfest and it turned out to be the high-point in the Alanis career trajectory because she never hit those heights again, her subsequent Albums being much more contented affairs but i guess when you hit such peaks early on, you are never going to climb to the top of that mountain again.
Brilliant to see her back though and being appreciated by a younger generation because her album and the songs from that album really were that good.  

Most Popular Songs Per Year

The Official Chart Company have identified the biggest streaming hit for every year since the chart's inception in 1952 and have compiled the UK's most-streamed songs from the calendar year in which they were released up until 2022.
Not sure what service they used or it was a hotch pot of all of them but Music streaming began around 1999 but didn't really hit its stride until 2010 so it is actually a list of the most streamed songs from the last 15 of those years but it has thrown up a real mix of some decent tunes, some what the hell tunes and some i have never heard of.
Amazingly one of my favourite songs ever, Johnny B. Goode by Chuck Berry, was never actually released as a single in the UK and was never a hit here but it is the most streamed song from 1958 but looking through the list i was a bit non plussed by the rest of the selection.
I would really need to find all the songs from each year to judge but did 1971 really have such poor pickings that John Denver's 'Take Me Home Country Roads' is the top offering from that year and how can 1988's most streamed song be 'Everywhere' by Fleetwood Mac when you have Guns N Roses magnificent 'Sweet Child O'Mine' just standing there.  
Something i did pick up on was that i obviously stopped paying attention around 2005 because apart from the odd song, 2011's Someone Like You by Adele and 2015's Cheap Thrills by Sia, i knew hardly of them which only clarifies the science that we tend to stop listening to new music around our mid 30's. 
Obviously musical tastes differ and that is a good thing but my personal list would look very different and i will have a look through each year later but for now the top songs by year of release are:

1952 - Singin' In The Rain by Gene Kelly
1953 - That's Amore by Dean Martin
1954 - I've Got A Woman by Ray Charles
1955 - Tutti Frutti by Little Richard
1956 - I Walk The Line by Johnny Cash
1957 - Jailhouse Rock by Elvis Presley
1958 - Johnny B. Goode by Chuck Berry
1959 - Put Your Head On My Shoulder by Paul Anka
1960 - At Last by Etta James
1961 - Stand By Me by Ben E King
1962 - Cry To Me by Solomon Burke
1963 - Be My Baby by Ronettes
1964 - My Girl by The Temptations
1965 - I Can't Help Myself by Four Tops
1966 - Paint It Black by Rolling Stones
1967 - Ain't No Mountain High Enough by Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell
1968 - (Sittin' On The) Dock Of The Bay by Otis Redding
1969 - Here Comes The Sun by Beatles
1970 - Your Song by Elton John
1971 - Take Me Home Country Roads by John Denver
1972 - Tiny Dancer by Elton John
1973 - Jolene by Dolly Parton
1974 - Sweet Home Alabama by Lynyrd Skynyrd
1975 - Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen
1976 - Go Your Own Way by Fleetwood Mac
1977 - Dreams by Fleetwood Mac
1978 - September by Earth Wind & Fire
1979 - Don't Stop Me Now by Queen
1980 - Another One Bites The Dust by Queen
1981 - Don't Stop Believin' by Journey
1982 - Africa by Toto
1983 - Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This) by Eurythmics
1984 - Wake Me Up Before You Go Go by Wham
1985 - Summer Of '69 by Bryan Adams
1986 - Livin' On A Prayer by Bon Jovi
1987 - I Wanna Dance With Somebody by Whitney Houston
1988 - Everywhere by Fleetwood Mac
1989 - We Didn't Start The Fire by Billy Joel
1990 - Thunderstruck by AC/DC
1991 - Smells Like Teen Spirit by Nirvana
1992 - Creep by Radiohead
1993 - What Is Love? by Haddaway
1994 - Juicy by The Notorious B.I.G
1995 - Wonderwall by Oasis
1996 - No Diggity by Blackstreet Ft. Dr Dre
1997 - Bitter Sweet Symphony by The Verve
1998 - Iris by Goo Goo Dolls
1999 - No Scrubs by TLC
2000 - Dancing In The Moonlight by Toploader
2001 - How You Remind Me by Nickelback
2002 - Lose Yourself by Eminem
2003 - Mr Brightside by The Killers
2004 - Let Me Love You by Mario
2005 - I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor by Arctic Monkeys
2006 - Naïve by The Kooks
2007 - Fluorescent Adolescent by Arctic Monkeys
2008 - I'm Yours by Jason Mraz
2009 - Party In The USA by Miley Cyrus
2010 - Love The Way You Lie by Eminem Ft. Rihanna
2011 - Someone Like You by Adele
2012 - Let Her Go by Passenger
2013 - Riptide by Vance Joy
2014 - Thinking Out Loud by Ed Sheeran
2015 - Cheap Thrills by Sia
2016 - Say You Won't Let Go by James Arthur
2017 - Shape Of You by Ed Sheeran
2018 - Someone You Loved by Lewis Capaldi
2019 - Dance Monkey by Tones & I
2020 - Head & Heart by Joel Corry Ft. MNEK
2021 - Bad Habits by Ed Sheeran
2022 - As It Was by Harry Styles

Potentially Life Saving Idea..But

The NHS have announced that by 2030, every baby born in the UK could have their entire genome sequenced under a new initiative to 'predict and prevent illness' which checks for hundreds of genetic conditions and at first i thought what a great potentially life saving idea, but then i thought some more on it and saw some potential problems with it.
The genetic result will suggest a child has a higher probability of developing a certain disease later in life but us Humans have a tendency to suffer the psychological problem of hearing 'you might get sick' and hearing 'you will get sick' and acting accordingly which could have huge implications of how children are raised, how they’re treated and how they could see themselves as they age, almost like a patient in waiting.
There could even be treatment for diseases they never develop and real stress and psychological damage around an anticipated future of illness, we still bear the scars from Covid when we all thought we were going to catch it and the be a statistic read out in the Prime Ministers Daily Briefings
I still think it is a good idea but i struggle to see how the emphasis can be put on how being higher risk does not mean it is a certainty because you cannot change the way we think, and unfortunately we always think the worst.

Special Guest Blogger: Buddhist God Pigsy

Originally holding the title of Marshall of the Jade Emperor's Heavenly armies and commander-in-chief of 80,000 Celestial sailors, i did have an eye for the angels and a face for stuffing food into at every opportunity but being a great General meant my many indiscretions were generally overlooked until one day i guzzled too much peach wine and misbehaved with Chang’e, Goddess of the Moon. Oops.
She raised such a fuss that armed guards hauled me off to the Jade Emperor who decided my punishment was to be cast out of Heaven and sent to be reincarnated on Earth, where i fell into a pigs sty on a farm and was reborn as a man-eating pig-monster.
I saved the farmers daughter from being kidnapped and such was my reward that the grateful Farmer  offered her to me in marriage and to become part of their family but my animal nature soon took over and though i managed to do quite a lot of work in the fields, I also manages to eat so much that the farm was losing money.  
The farmer sent a servant to the nearby village to offer gold to anyone who could rid them of me and the pilgrim Tripitaka was passing with his guardian, the Monkey King, who offered me a way back to heaven if I help them in a quest. I reluctantly agreed and they named me Pigsy.
We travelled to India, carrying Tripitaka’s baggage and fighting demons along the way until finally our quest was fulfilled and i achieved enlightenment.
I was made Cleaner of the Holy Altar in Buddhist Heaven which may sound like a very menial job for an ex-Marshall of the Heavenly Hosts, but thousands of worshipers send offerings to that altar every day and I get all the leftovers I can eat so win-win as far as i'm concerned.

Welfare or Warfare?

Announcing you are increasing defence spending in the same week that the Government face a vote on cuts to Welfare probably wasn't the brightest move but since they came to power the Labour Party haven't been that hot.  
On Monday the Prime Minister announced that the UK was set to increase spending on defence to 5% of GDP in the next decade adding a further £30bn to take spending to £75bn but today, faces a possible Parliamentary defeat in his attempt to cut £5bn from Welfare payments due to 'the welfare bill is unsustainable and must be dealt with'.
A third of his own side have signed an amendment to next week's welfare vote that could see his welfare reforms killed off although it would take more than that as he currently has a working majority of 165 votes and is confident that they can face down any rebellion rather than watering down the bill and especially in light of the embarrassing U-turn on the Winter Fuel payments.
Keir Starmer then has a big argument with his party in the coming days and an even bigger one with the public if his Chancellor has to announce cuts to services and tax hikes in the future in order to fund buying tanks, bullets and drones.
If i had my way i would cut defence spending to the bone and use that money to improve peoples lives, £75bn would build a lot of schools and hospitals and fix a lot of roads because it is our money he is spending and he has made the political decision spend it on the machines of war, the moron.  

Stretching Meaning Of Obliterated Somewhat

Whether it was obliterated, destroyed or damaged, the potty mouthed tyrant Trump is saying that the attacks by the American B2 bombers have set back Iran's nuclear program 'decades' although the American intelligence people are not quite so certain.
Admittedly it is the same intelligence agency that Trump dismissed as wrong when they tried to explain to him that Iran had no Nukes and were not planning to make any but six 13.5 tonne bombs and 35 cruise missiles later, a report from the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency estimated that the attacks set Iran’s nuclear program back 'only a few months' which is stretching obliterated a bit far.
Iran said they moved all the good stuff out before anyway so Trump's  'spectacular military success' would be applicable if the aim was to make some really big holes in a mountain for which the warmongering Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, or 'fucking liar' as Joe Biden called him, has expressed his gratitude to US President Donald Trump for his actions, saying they will 'help lead the Middle East and beyond to a future of prosperity and peace' which comes with oodles of irony considering that in the past year he has helped lead his nation to war on Palestine, Lebanon, Syria and Iran so peace while he is in charge seems a forlorn hope and as it will bring forward the charges of fraud, breach of trust and bribery for which he could face 10 years in prison, not going to happen soon.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) boss Rafael Grossi says that Iran maintains the industrial capacity and technical knowledge for its nuclear program so all that was achieved was that at $500m a pop, America dropped £3bn worth of bombs to alter the Iranian skyline and prove to Iran that if they didn't think they needed a Nuclear Bomb to ensure it wasn't attacked, aka the North Korea defence, it bloody does now. 

Special Guest Blogger: Benvenuto Cellini

Being great in one area of your life doesn't mean you can't be a complete tool in another and I admit that I earned the admiration of the world through my genius work while also doing terrible things.
Do you know the table sculpture Cellini Salt Cellar where i molded gold into an incredibly detailed and intricate sculpture or maybe the even more famous sculpture of Perseus with the Head of Medusa? Some of my greatest works of art and that's without mentioning the autobiography which was been described as one of the most important documents of the 16th century.
At the age of 16, I was gaining a reputation as a bit of a hot head in Florence and after yet another street brawl, my father sent me to Siena where i discovered my passion for sculpture and from there to Rome where the phrase, 'it's not what you know but who you know' was written for me.
I made sculptures for the Cardinals and Bishops and Pope Clement VII was a big fan of mine which came in very handy when  my brother was killed and i killed his murderer in turn and through the influence of several cardinals clutching beautiful table sculptures and a quiet word from a fanboy Pope, I obtained a pardon.
Then, in 1527, the Sack of Rome happened, and i killed two of the occupying soldiers during the invasion which found me great favor with the new pope, Paul III, which again was very useful when three other men suspiciously wound up dead around me.
A few years later, while busy beating a man to death, a witness saw me and threatened to turn me in so i promptly killed the witness before the man could testify against me and fearing my credit with the Pope had run out by now, i went to sculpt in France.
There, i became the subject of a civil lawsuit over illegitimate children but before that filing could work its way into court, I crippled the plaintiff’s legs and fled town back to Florence and straight into an accusation that i had sodomised one of my students for which i was fined 50 golden Scudi and four years of prison, remitted to four years of house arrest thanks to the intercession of my friends the powerful Medici family.
I married and lived out my life in peace but my legacy would be some amazing works of art and the realisation that if you are pals with the Church, you can literally get away with murder.

Avoid A Newspaper Today Dan

In the olden times, anything written in a newspaper disappeared within a day of it being published, ideally ending up wrapped round your fish and chips. These days, of course, newspaper content lives on seemingly for ever on the Internet which can be annoying for Politicians who can change their thinking at the drop of a hat, if you asked some if they still thought what they wrote a few months later they would reply that they probably didn’t even think it by tea that day so heaven only knows what Tory MP Daniel Hannan thinks about Brexit today.  
Back in 2016, Brexit supporting Dan prophesied about what the post-EU sunlit uplands would be like on this very day in an article in the Times and it began with 'It’s 24 June, 2025, and Britain is marking its annual Independence Day celebration. As the fireworks stream through the summer sky, still not quite dark, we wonder why it took us so long to leave. The years that followed the 2016 referendum didn’t just reinvigorate our economy, our democracy and our liberty. They improved relations with our neighbours'  which shows a remarkable ability to be absolutely wrong about everything.  
I assume Dan the man has been eyeing his calendar nervously hoping nobody would remember his Mystic Meg predictions , too busy looking in the local newspaper for the nearest venue of all the street and firework parties i assume to celebrate that 4% hit to our GDP?
Somebody really should explain to him that despite his wishes, agriculture and fishing are not booming, the UK is not the foremost knowledge-based economy in the world, steel and ceramics have not become competitive again and the EU is not withering and dying without Britain.
Birmingham and Leeds are not financial capitals of the world, the UK has not become the centre of world shipping, shale oil and gas has not driven down energy prices and Universities have not flourished and the Brexit supporters are keeping their head's downs, embarrassed that they were taken in by numpties like him promising them the World but the World he delivered was akin to Mars or Venus.   
Forshame that man, or not if you have none, but i am looking forward to your predictions for the state of Britain on 24th June 2035. 

Tips For Yanks Coming To UK

During the last 12 months, more than 6,000 US citizens have applied to either become British subjects or to live and work in the country indefinitely which is the highest number ever according to data released on Thursday by the UK’s Home Office.
In total, 6,618 Americans applied for British citizenship with most arriving since November following the election of Donald TACO Trump as the 47th US presidency and American immigration lawyers say they are receiving an increasing number of inquiries and point to the chaotic political landscape amid Trump’s government.
So what can Americans expect when they leave the political dumpster fire of a country to come here?

No Wild Animals: The most dangerous animal we have is a hedgehog.    
Decent Tea: Hot and made ina  kettle as it should be.
Driving: No complicated crossroads, we have Roundabouts.
History: We have houses, pubs and a company that makes washing up bowls which are older than your America.
Spelling: You can get to use that letter 'U' you learnt about in School
Guns: No risk of dying of multiple gun shot wounds while out on a shopping trip.
Humour: Blackadder, QI, Red Dwarf, Monty Python, Fools & Horses, Vicar of Dibley, Father Ted...enough said.  
Prince Harry: He will still be there so he isn't here.
Weather: The fun of leaving for work in brilliant sunshine and arriving drenched to the bone.
Accent: Learn how to speak proper English (unless you go to Liverpool, Newcastle or Birmingham)
Chocolate: Honestly, you haven't tasted Chocolate until you have had a Cadburys Easter Egg.
Dates: DD/MM/YYYY else we will completely miss your Birthday
Eggs: In the cupboard and not the fridge.
Ground Floor: The floor on the ground, not the First floor.
Chicken: The only Chlorine you will find is in the Swimming Pools.
Christmas Crackers: Little explosives to go with your Christmas Lunch.
Religion: Unless you wear a dog collar, don't mention God.   
NHS: Put your purse away.  
Fag, Shag, Fanny: Not an homosexual, a carpet or a backside over here   
Rhyming Slang: Find something that rhymes (China Plate = mate), then we shorten it (OK China)
Taps: We have two which are clearly labelled and even coloured red and blue.
Showing off: Boasting is a quick way to learn some new British swearwords.
Being American: If anyone asks about your accent, easier to say you are Canadian, you all sound the same to us anyway.

Oh, i'm sure you will get the hang of it once you are here.

My Blogging Style

When i was growing up one of my favourite reads was the Newspaper Sketch writers and my favourite was the 'By The Way' and later renamed 'Beachcomber' column because it was silly and funny and when it was created during the First World War, the writer, Major John Bernard Arbuthnot, said he wanted a column which took a news item, rolled it around bit and then clapped a Harpo Marx wig over it which was very well received at a time of such National struggle.
When i started blogging around 1999 as part of a group of friends doing on an online magazine type blog, i decided that would be my style which didn't really chime with the style of the blog we was writing so around 2004 i began my own blog where i could slap as many Harpo Marx wigs on news items as i wanted.
The problem was unless people know you are writing a sketch, they just assume you are making things up or flat out lying because sketch writing is very much a British thing and not really done outside of our shores, the act of taking a situation and pointing at the absurdity and silliness in it rather than the 'serious' part of the news was not clear although then it was the Gulf War and many people didn't like my slapping a Harpo wig on the players like Tony Blair or G W Bush at such a time and spent more time defending that the posts were not meant to be 'factually accurate' as it was a sketch but i soon realised that the style could be off-putting and the humour something of an acquired taste so i began the Falling On A Bruise blog around 2007 and tried to intertwine the two.  
Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't but all those years of reading the Beachcomber columns certainly did have an influence on me because when i am looking for angles for pieces, i always dive head first into the silly and absurdness of it all and then usually have to reign myself back in, lesson learnt from earlier experiences where some stories were deemed not inductive to the silly and absurd.
Sometimes i just can't help myself and the urge to lampoon is too strong, i mean just look around some of the people who are leading us, but other times i try to combine to the two into one post which could come across as making fun of a serious topic but i maintain that some situations are always going to end badly so we might as well have a bloody good laugh about it. It's the British way. 

Special Guest Blogger: Goddess Asherah

Men! Bah! I was the Mother Goddess and wife of God when he was going under the name of Yahweh and together we had seventy-seven god children, or was it eighty-eight? Whatever, we had so many that I lose count but as no-one has heard of most of them, it probably doesn’t matter anyway.
Back then I was known as 'She Who Walks Upon The Sea' which was weird because i never but anyway, i was held in very high esteem by my many worshipers who erected many wooden pillars and statues in my honor, so many that my husband, being a man, felt a little threatened by his woman.
We were ruling side by side as a divine man and wife but hardly anyone remembers me so what happened you may ask? Obviously, men happened.
I was not only edited out of the Holy texts such as the Hebrew Bible and Old Testament when the Christians began taking bits and pieces for their own religion, but they started referring to me as a sacred tree in an effort to hide me although references to me did have to be edited out in later versions of the Bible because they missed a few references such as in Deuteronomy 33.2-3, when i was said to be 'at his right hand'.
After being written out of the Christian Bible, to kick me even further away from my ex-husband, I became morphed into a Pagan goddess and worshiping Pagans was a huge no-no and any statues to me had to be destroyed because of the whole False Idols bit of the commandments.
Obviously, today's Christians don't want to know that their top banana has an ex-wife knocking around and definitely don't want to acknowledge the 77 or 88 kids we  had together, preferring to concentrate on the one Godly offspring which was a result of making a 14 year girl who was betrothed to another pregnant because that is so much better apparently.

God On Trump

At least the Tangerine Taco left his ridiculous looking MAGA hat at home when he announced that it was time for Iran to make peace now that he had ordered his country to attack them but that's Trump logic for you, as stupid as he looks with his Orange clown make up.
Flanked by three of his administration, Plague, Famine and Death, the self confessed sex pest ended his self congratulatory speech about firing 30 Cruise Missiles and dropping seven 13.5 tonne bombs on another country with: 'God bless the Middle East. God bless Israel, and God bless America'.
Don't know what God made of this imposition of his precious blessing time and energy, so lets ask him.
'It's a bit of a liberty to be honest' said the Almighty, 'as if i haven't got enough on my plate already what with answering prayers, saving The King of England and trying to orchestrate all these Holy Wars. I really could do without dubious politicians organising yet more for me to do although i have had dealings with these warmongering American Presidents before.'
Obviously reading my mind about the Bush consultation before the Iraq War, the big guy sighed and shook his omnipresent head, 'Yep, there was that Bush fella but i told him what i tell everyone when they ask for help in a war, I'm God. If i want to get rid of someone I can just give them bird flu or food poisoning so if Trump has asked me i would have said that I didn't need some jumped up little draft dodger with bone spurs to help me.'
I wanted to press him further on the meaning of life, origins of the Universe and exactly what he thought of what those that he made in his own image were doing to the environment that he had cobbled together in under a week and did he think he would have made a better job of it if he hadn't had Sunday off, but before i had chance, he got called away to an incident.
'Sorry but the King is digging about inside his toaster with a knife again' he said rolling his eyes and ordering Gabriel to fetch his winged chariot.
'I'll tell you what' he said as he ushered me towards the door 'None of my other creations give this  much hassle.'

It Shouldn't Have Come To This

Benjamin Netanyahu has been gunning for Iran for decades and finally he found a dumbo in the White House who not only gave him the Green light to go ahead and attack the Country but dismissed his own intelligence Agency to join in with it.
The fact that the situation came to this is a direct consequence of his 2018 decision to tear up the joint comprehensive plan of action (JCPOA) agreement negotiated during Barack Obama’s presidency that limited Iran’s nuclear capabilities in return for sanctions relief.
Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, addressed US Congress to argue against the JCPOA but Obama made the case that the only alternative to a negotiated agreement with Iran was yet another war in the Middle East.
It was working and the IEAE continually monitored Iran Nuclear capabilities but then Trump was then elected and mindlessly exited the JCPOA and put the economic sanctions back Iran.
Biden had talks with Iran to revive the JCPOA but Iran did not trust the Americans to not go back on their word again and Biden saw that Iran was continuing to comply and the more moderate  president Hassan Rouhani was running the country but when the Iran Proxy, Hamas, slaughtered over 1,000 Israeli's in 2023, that was an end to any negotiations.  
US intelligence consistently stated that Iran was not actively pursuing a Nuclear weapon but Netanyahu continued to repeat that an immediate military action was needed to stop Iran from obtaining a nuclear bomb.
America and Iran were in negotiations but now the more hardline Ebrahim Raisiwas elected as Iran’s president and he demanded tougher terms for any future nuclear deal, the lifting of sanctions and guarantees against another US withdrawal.
Ultimately, though, the conditions that led to this war would almost certainly not have arisen without Trump’s mishandling of Iran policy, his abysmal leadership skills in his first administration and being Netanyahu's bitch.

Still Wavering On Assisted Dying

 I was always wavering on the Assisted Dying  which has just passed through the House of Commons, mainly because it was open to exploitation but it has been toughened up to make it harder to access.
The assisted dying debate was last heard in the Commons in 2015, when it was defeated by 330 votes to 118 but this time it passed with 314 votes for and 291 against, with Health Secretary Wes Streeting and Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood, who will have to deliver the bill, voting against.
The amended bill will now allow terminally ill adults with fewer than six months to live to apply for an assisted death, subject to approval by two doctors and a panel featuring a social worker, senior legal figure and psychiatrist and exclude anyone trying to join the program on grounds of Mental Health or Anorexia and will not be started until 2029, giving more time for it to be pored over.
Campaign group Dignity in Dying hailed the result as: 'A landmark moment for choice, compassion and dignity at the end of life' and i get all that but still i am not wholeheartedly behind it although a recent poll showed 70% of people support assisted dying but the opposition has come from the Medical Profession who were challenging it up til the very last moment.  
The Royal College of Psychiatrists, the Royal College of Pathologists and the Royal College of Physicians raised concerns about the bill and it is one of those emotive subjects where i can see both sides but if the professionals are against it, then the 49% for and 51% against debate i have internally over it remains.

Five Things I Learnt About Cruising

1. Dress for where you are going not where you are coming from. Beautiful and Sunny in Southampton when we sailed away, cold and wet in Norway when we arrived and sandles and flimsy tops were not cutting it but at least the Norwegian Economy benefited from a Cruise Ship full of passengers woefully unprepared for a Norwegian Summer.

2. People will ask how many cruises you have been on and if you say this is your first, they will offer 'advice' on everything, and i mean everything including the fine details of every single one of their previous cruises..every...single...one.

3. Another question is where do you work but they are not asking you out of interest and you could actually say anything as they are just hoping you will say it back to them so they can then go into details of their job and try and make it sound exciting as one guy who sold Air Conditioning did until we did the watch tapping 'wow, is that the time' thing and buggered off to another part of the ship.

4. The Americans onboard were very nice and well mannered but nobody beats the Japanese, they were excruciatingly polite and smiley and would always stop for a chat as were the Indians but they are not so keen to engage in smalltalk but as for the British, unfortunately the drunk ones staggering around the pool at midnight and singing loudly were the folks from my own country.   

5. Ducks. Lots and lots of ducks and not the feathered kind, the plastic type which passengers hide all over the ship and when you find one you take a picture and rehide it again.

I thoroughly enjoyed my first cruise, so much that we are looking into doing one for our Anniversary in November but the Sea Gods were good to us this time, those virgins i sacrificed to Neptune before we set off obviously worked so that's a tip, just before you set off prepare an altar and invite a computer programmer around.

Someone's Lying

Seemed weird just watching the news rather than be involved in disseminating it but i am due for a full catch up at work tomorrow but from what i have gleaned so far:

Iran and America were in talks about the Iranian Nuclear Program
The IAEA announced that Iran were not in co-operation with them and been enriching uranium to 60% purity
Israel launched a 'pre-emptive attack' against Iran as they say it was on the verge of building a nuclear bomb although they gave no evidence
The American Director of National Intelligence said there was no evidence Iran is building a nuclear weapon.
Donald Trump said she was wrong and he didn't  care what she said and Iran could have a bomb in weeks.
Israel and Iran have been trading missile strikes with each other ever since.
Israel calls for regime change in Iran.
Donald Trump is mulling over joining Israel in attacking Iranian Nuclear Sites.

All seems very much like the build up to the Gulf War and the infamous 'Weapons of Mass Destruction', where G W Bush and his sidekick Tony Blair said they had to go to war with Saddam Hussein's Iraq who were stockpiling Nuclear, Biological and Chemical weapons and Saddam said he wasn't. Turns out one of them were telling the truth and he didn't have an American or British Accent.
Now the Israeli and Americans are saying Iran are weeks or months away from developing a nuclear weapon, the Iranians, as well as the American Intelligence Service are saying they are not so swap out Britain for Israel and we are exactly where we were in 2003.
Meanwhile, the Israeli genocide in Palestine continues with them continuing to call people to distribution sites and then shooting them dead, 51 on Friday.
Maybe i missed something but a pre-emptive strike and calling for regime change against a Middle Eastern country who are being accused of developing weapons of mass destruction which they deny? Been there, done that, watched the bloody mess and abhorrent death toll that caused. Don't learn do we. 

Special Guest Blogger: The Sundance Kid

My name was Harry Longabaugh but I was called the Sundance Kid because i was a youngster when i first broke the law and i earned that name because i was imprisoned in Sundance, Wyoming which could have been worse, i could have been arrested in Colon, Michigan and that's a nickname nobody wants.
My life was full of gun-slinging, daring robberies and thrilling escapes and the fast living did eventually catch up to me, though not until I was in a whole other Continent.
I was the Kid because i first landed in jail at 19 when I headed up North to work on my cousins farm and made my way to Sundance, Wyoming, where I stole a gun and an horse but my first stint as an outlaw was postponed for 18 months courtesy of a magistrate and Harry Longabaugh may have gone in but it was the Sundance Kid that came out.
I got a job as  a ranch hand and a sideline in rustling cattle and horses across Montana and into Canada but the pay was lousy and i had found a new pal in someone with an equally cool name, Butch Cassidy, and his Wild Bunch and we robbed trains and banks and we became well known all across America but to law enforcement mostly.
We were involved in several thrilling gunfights but it was the one where i shot two officers which put a price on my  head, $30,000, and my face on Wanted Posters with Dead or Alive beneath it and i was very keen on it not being dead so Kid and I decided to lay low for a while.
As we were off the grid the long arm of the federal government set the Pinkerton Detective Agency onto us and those guys were not the sort to politely inform us that we were under arrest and that it would be best for everyone involved if we just came along quietly so we went where their eye's couldn't find us, Argentina.
We purchased a 15,000-acre ranch but old habits die hard and we held up a bank which alerted the Pinkerton's where we were so legged it into Chile and I adopted a new name but the name may have changed but the love of a gun fight never and after shooting an Officer, escaped to Bolivia.  
We did consider giving up the outlaw life but that lasted as long as it took to knock over a courier carrying the payroll for the local Silver Mine but we made the mistake of taking the mule to carry the money which embarrassingly had the branding of the Mine on it which led to our last stand but it wasn't the authorities that killed me, it was my pal Butch who finished me when i was fatally wounded and then took his own life, both of us riding off into the sunset.

Special Guest Blogger: Moses

1350 BC was not a great time for the Israelite's. We had been subjugated by a certain Egyptian Pharaoh to a life of bondage and misery. But along came  a Hebrew chap who also happened to be an adopted Egyptian prince, the Great Prophet of Judaism, the leading light of the Israelite's and God's right-hand man, little old me.
Close encounters with God are very rare and as email was still a few millennia away, Yahweh appeared to me in the form of a burning bush on the side of a mountain and issued a rescue plan with me as chief perpetrator. I ask God the kind of personal questions we’d all like the answers to but Yahweh was not entirely forthcoming but it was worth a try.
When God started giving me detailed religio-political instructions for confronting kings and leading an entire nation out of slavery, fair to say I was not overly enthusiastic.
Sure my Princely Egyptian status got me the ear of the Pharaoh, but when it came to 'Let My People Go', the ear was a little hard of hearing.
It was a tough gig I had been handed so i tried to show them that God was all powerful so had a contest with the best wizards but despite me turning sticks into snakes, pulling rabbits from hats and even performed my sawing a Mummy in half trick, they were not impressed.
I conjured up plagues of boils, locusts, frogs, gnats and other nasties with only the Israelite's remaining unscathed and that got the Pharaohs attention and he booted us out into the desert wilderness.
The Jews complained non-stop about the sand in their sandles and the lack of food and water so I went to consult with Yahweh, who provided two stone tablets inscribed with the Ten Commandments.
Many of these rules were practical tips for keeping a society healthy under difficult circumstances but to some it just seemed like an excuse for me to boss them around. Which, to be perfectly honest, I did but i didn't have much choice.  
The Ten commandments may be a good starting point, but they're so negative. Thou shalt not do this and thou shalt not do that. What about things you shalt? Thou shalt have a nice cup of tea and a biscuit, for example.
Anyway, after forty years of wandering the desert, the Israelite's finally reached the Promised Land but i didn’t quite make it.
We arrived at Mount Abarim and as we gazed down upon Canaanite, i looked up the Heavens and asked God if i should lead our people into the City.
Expecting something for my lifetime of devoted service but he said nope, neither dead nor alive shalt thou go into the land and God kissing me upon the mouth (bit weird in all honestly), i dropped dead which seems a tad ungrateful but religion is like that, bears may lay down with lambs and princes mix with paupers but to the Big Guy, you are as inconsequential as a speck of dust, but nah, i'm not bitter.

Special Guest Blogger: Montezuma

In 1502 i became the ninth emperor of the Aztec Empire. Ruling the city of Tenochtitlán, i was revered as an intellectual, warrior, and chief priest who had a nasty habit of sacrificing folks on pretty much an hourly basis.
My coronation was one big party, guests were given mescaline which is a powerful psychedelic drug to make the bash seem even more spectacular but i didn't need any stimulation to master the practice of tearing a victim’s heart out and tossing the body down the pyramid steps.
These ritual killings actually became a full-time job for me and I was an equal opportunities executioner and killed the  young, old, virgins, maidens and when you have a theater made out of 135,000 skulls it might sound a bit excessive but we prayed to over 1500 Gods so had many of them to appease so occasionally i would start a war just so we could capture warriors for sacrifice.
I conquered many area tribes and was despised for my looting, taxation, and murder in the name of religious zeal and my empire stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific but my reign sadly came to an end with the arrival of Spanish explorer Hernán Cortés in 1519.
We mistakenly thought he was a god as Aztec legend, Quetzalcoatl, who was a bearded white deity showing up to bring on the apocalypse and he arrived the exact year the god-king is supposed to show up, and with a white beard, how was we meant to know it wasn't him?
Cortés convinced many tribes to aid in his effort to oust me, and in fairness most of them hated my guts anyway as I kept killing their warriors, and rolled into Tenochtitlán and stormed my Palace.
I was not a great leader for nothing and to make sure it was a God and not someone coming to murder us all, I sent along a look-alike dressed as me but he never came back so assumed he had either been killed or take to Aztec heaven so still thinking it was indeed Quetzalcoatl, I welcomed him with open arms and offered him gifts of gold, jeweled necklaces, and even the highest honour, flowers from my own garden.
Bad idea as the Spanish took me hostage and threatened to kill me unless i went onto the balcony of the palace and told his angry followers to back off.
The crowds became even more furious at me for appearing meek and stoned with rocks and chucking spears. Injured and no longer in charge, I was held captive until my death a few days later and with me gone, so did the Aztec empire.

How Countries Got Their Names

From Britannia to Anglia to Engla Land, our country has had a few names before settling on England, or the 'land of the Angles' which got me thinking that every country had to be named after something or someone and apparently the majority of country names fall into just four categories:  a tribe name or a person, a feature of the land or a description of the country,
France is named for the Franks, Italy for the Vitali tribe, Switzerland for the Schwyz people, Korea after the Han tribes, America is named after either Richard Ameryk or Amerigo Vespucci, Colombia takes its name from Christopher Columbus, St. Kitt’s after Saint Christopher and St. Lucia the only country to be named after a woman, Saint Lucy.
The Philippines are named after Spain’s King Philip II, Bolivia after the Venezuelan revolutionary Simón Bolívar, Mauritius after a 16th-century Netherlands magistrate, Belgium after the Belgae tribe, Hungary’s name comes from the On Ogur tribe.
Montenegro’s means 'black mountain', Iceland is self explanatory,  Costa Rica means 'the rich coast' and named by Christopher Columbus as the indigenous people wore a lot of gold,  Honduras means 'deep water' and Sierra Leone is named 'lion mountains' due to explorers hearing thunder there, Singapore means 'lion city' as hunters wrongly thought there was lion there. Ecuador is a reference to the equator running through the country and Jordan after the River Jordan.
Japan means 'land of the rising sun' as it is direction of the Sun rising and Australia is a shortened version of 'Terra Australis Incognita', or Unknown Southern Land.” Ireland means Land in the West' but some names are a bit more silly such as Tobago is named after a pipe, Brazil and Barbados are named after a type of tree, Malta means honey and Venezuela named so because European explorers thought it looked like Venice and Grenada because sailors thought it looked like Granada in Spain.
Mexico means 'in the navel of the moon' and Nauru is named after the indigenous words for 'I go to the beach'.

Special Guest Blogger: Frida Kahlo

They called me Frida Kahlo as my real name, Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderón, took too long to say but despite suffering from polio as a child and a nasty accident on a bus which collided with a trolley car and broke my spinal column, collar bone, ribs, pelvis, and leg which took over 30 operation to fix, i became Mexico's most famous artist.
I specialised in self portraits mostly because finding myself in constant traction with corsets and broken legs and plaster casts, it was pretty much the only thing I could do was to lie there and paint although people did say my art contained a lot of pain and suffering but i would say ever been in a bus when it flips over and crushes most the bones in your body? Comprende?
I always think you should paint what you know and in my case, that was a lot of X-rays and internal organs and I used a special easel with mirrors so I could see myself and do self-portraits.
I also put  a lot of my culture and political ideas on canvas, I was a proud Communist and painted Karl Marx, Mao, Stalin, Engels and Leon Trotsky who i hobnobbed with when he was in Mexico, he lived me with for several years  and i even got arrested on suspicion for his murder.
Leon was a sweetie but not so much my husband, the muralist Diego Rivera who was an abusive bastardo, anger management issues you may say and while i was barely a cripple and he was over six feet tall and three hundred pounds, it was not a good time let me tell you.
I had an exhibition exhibition in Paris in 1938 and The Louvre bought a picture and I met fellow artists such as Picasso, Kandinksy and Duchamp, and they made me feel a part of their Surrealist group which really helped me become something in the art world although i thought their work was cuckoo but i played along because i was now popular.
I had exhibition in Mexico but i was in such bad shape my doctors told me not to attend but i wasn't going to miss that so i arrived in an ambulance, and they carried me in on a stretcher. I had my giant four-poster bed delivered to the gallery, and they put me right in the middle of the action.
Everyone said how brave i was but lots of painkillers and even more tequila helped  ease the pain of my broken body but the pain stopped when i hit 47. Some say i died from one of my many ailments, some say it was suicide from a drink and drugs overdose but as there was no autopsy, nobody knows for certain although the death certificate said: Pulmonary Embolism' so let's go with that.

Out Of Office

'It was on the good ship Venus, by Christ you should have seen us, the figure head was a....' oh hello, you caught me singing from nautical tunes because the Out of Office has been set and very soon I will be bobbing around in the North Sea on my way to the Fjords of Norway and i am equally nervous and excited by the thought of my very first cruise.
Not knowing what to expect i have been asking around more experienced cruisers and on the whole the experience of other people is a good one, we have booked a cabin in the middle of ship to reduce the feeling of movement on the ship and  i have a good supply of sea sickness tablets (it was pretty unanimous that Stugeron 15 is the best apparently)  and sea sickness bands and on advice of other travellers, a decent supply of Ginger biscuits.
I have been obsessively checking the weather on every App and website possible for the week from 14th June to 21st June since we booked the trip in January and it has varied from windy to calm and everything in between but now that we are getting closer, it is settling on warm and a gentle breeze and i have been assured that a ship which weighs 181,541 Tonnes isn't going to be blown around by a gentle breeze which is reassuring.
For the first time ever i will be completely incommunicado so the work phone is going into the drawer and even though everyone at work has my personal number, as i am not paying the extortionate price for the Ships internet if someone does ring to ask me to 'quickly glance over' something  or ask where did i put the teabags, all they will get is the mechanical voice telling them the number they called is unavailable.
I have told the Rev if he fancies posting anything then he can feel free to but otherwise it's me and hubby, the North Sea and if the Sex Pistrols are any guide, the captain of this lugger who was a dirty bugger.

Very Wary Of Netanyahu's Words In Iranian Attack

As hard as it is, we have to separate the ongoing horrific genocide Israel is committing in Gaza to their action today in Iran.
Benjamin Netanyahu is taking the line that their action was a pre-emptive strike to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear missile and nobodies wants Iran to develop one, i would rather nobody had them at all, but i do have a problem with believing anything Netanyahu says on anything especially as the Israeli Prime Minister has been warning that Iran is on the brink of developing a nuclear weapon for decades.
Israel said it had no choice but to attack Iran, saying that Tehran was approaching 'the point of no return in its pursuit of a nuclear weapon' but we have heard this before, in 1992 Netanyahu said Iran was  'three to five years' away from reaching nuclear weapons capability' and in 1995 he repeated the three to five years claim and in 1996 he addressed the American Congress and warned that Iran acquire nuclear weapons was 'extremely close'.
Then in 2009 where Netanyahu informed a visiting Congressional delegation that Iran was 'one or two years away from developing weapons capability' and in 2012 he said that Iran was just 'a few months away from attaining nuclear capabilities' and in 2105 he arrived at the UN with a cartoon bomb and a marker pen warning that Iran was 'weeks away from having enough enriched uranium for an entire arsenal of nuclear weapons'.
In 2015 a deal called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was signed between Iran and six major world powers (Russia, China, the US, Britain, France, and Germany) where the IAEA kept constant checks on the Iranian Nuclear program which was working until Donald Trump, under pressure from Israel, withdrew the USA from it while calling it the worst deal in history.
If Iran is building a nuclear capability, and there is no proof that they are, it is copying what Israel did back in 60's when they lied that the building in Dimona was a textile factory and refused IAEA inspections, so i would be very, very, VERY wary of what Netanyahu is saying without proof. 

Special Guest Blogger: J. Edgar Hoover

I directed the Federal Bureau of Investigation from 1924 until i bit the dust in 1972 and in those five wiretapping decades, I served under eight presidents, from Coolidge to Nixon, and became one of the most powerful men in Washington.
I earned a reputation of being a ruthless, lawless strongman, using illegal break-ins and hidden microphones to collect damaging info and blackmailing anyone in my path but I always held back the most seedy bits though, i intended to use them for my own personal use and i kept copious files on the likes of Martin Luther King Jr., John Lennon and Frank Sinatra not to mention each and every sitting president, just in case someone had the idea to try and bin me.
My first job at the FBI was as a special assistant to Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, who was responsible for removing undesirable elements after World War I, rounding up and deporting suspected Communists and liberals, of course. We deported 556 innocent people, and Palmer resigned after his methods came to light but i got made the top banana at the FBI and organised it into one of the best law enforcement units the world has ever seen.
President Franklin Roosevelt gave me the directive to investigate both foreign espionage and perform surveillance of Communist and leftwing activists within our great country’s borders and to do that I turned a ragtag organization into a top-notch unit. I started the FBI National Academy, rebuilding from the ground up, stripping lousy officers of their jobs and any political appointees and anyone too fat to be a Special Agent and hired rookies only after extensive tests and interviews.
I was a controversial, hit-or-miss kinda guy who was always one to shoot-first and hide the bodies later although supporting Prohibition helped as it led to the largest development of organized crime in our history.
While harassing black activists and suspected Commies left, right and center, i created the G-men who were the very best became Government Men (or G-Men for the hard of spelling) handpicked, highly educated, and abstained from booze, relations with women, and other amoral behavior.
Eleanor Roosevelt called them the American Gestapo but I never liked her. In fact, she was on my Custodial Detention list, along with other Communists who might be questioned for their liberal activities.  Un-American activities, are un-American regardless of who you are like Charlie Chaplin, JFK, Einstein, Marilyn Monroe or Martin Luther King.
Martin Luther King Jr was a dissenter. A left-wing activist who may well have been a Communist with his anti-American 'civil rights' and truth be told, I was a huge racist and i tried many times to bring him down, even mailing tapes of his sexual affairs to King’s wife and encouraging him to commit suicide but I had many secret files and dossiers on innocent people, many of them the Presidents i served under.
Later on evidence of my secretive abuses of power began to surface and I was found to have routinely violated both the FBI's own policies and the very laws which the FBI was charged with enforcing so I made damned sure my files were shredded the day I died, croaking at age 77, having served as the FBI’s chief for forty-eight years.

Spending Review Is The Easy Part

It's the spending review, where the government set out the budget which the Government Departments will receive over the next three years and the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, has announced that Government spending will increase by 2.3% and will go some way to undoing the  'destructive legacy of austerity' which to be fair, was a steaming pile of ideological right wing crap and actually did nothing to cut the deficit apart from hollow out most institutions.
So what can we look forward to?
The Ministry of Defence would have got sweet FA if i was dishing out the money but Reeves saw fit to shove a further £11bn to it so that's lots of shiny new missiles and tanks in service next time we have to 'defend ourselves'.   
The National Health Service will find an extra 3% or £29bn a year in their piggy bank and the Schools budget has risen by £4.6bn a year and a further £1.2bn a year for  training and upskilling young people. Government funding of social and affordable housing has been allocated £39bn over the next 10 years and Energy has been handed £30bn with half of that going to the building of the Sizewell C nuclear power station.
Research and development funding will go to a record high of £22bn a year and £2bn to build 'home-grown AI' and £15bn is being set aside for for new rail, tram and bus networks.
£7bn is being invested in new prisons and £2bn is allocatd to the police in England and Wales to fill them up while asylum and border security get an increase of £280m more per year.
On the nations of the UK, the chancellor announced Scotland has been allocated £52bn, Northern Ireland £20bn and Wales £23bn.
All sounds very good but that's the easy part done, now to tell us how she will raise the additional money to pay for it all which should be interesting as she has ruled out increasing income tax.

Special Guest Blogger: Claude Rouget de Lisle

The French National anthem, La Marseillaise, was not written in Marseilles but in Strasbourg which is half German and far from being inspired by the Revolution, the words were written by a Royalist who dedicated it to a German and lifted the music from an Italian.
It was originally called ‘Battle Hymn for the Army of the Rhine’ which is the longest river in Germany and La Marseillaise was commissioned as a marching song to inspire the French army.
I was an amateur composer and artillery officer and at a lavish banquet thrown to mark France’s declaration of war on Austria in April 1792, the mayor of Strasbourg asked me to write a song that will rally our soldiers from all over to defend their homeland.
After drinking a little too much champagne, I returned to my quarters, where i fell asleep at my harpsichord, to wake with both the words and music of La Marseillaise fully formed.
To be honest the music was at least certainly fully formed as the tune had been written eight years earlier by the Italian Giovanni Battista Viotti who worked as court musician to Marie Antoinette.
I dedicated the song to the Bavarian-born Count Nikolaus Graf von Luckner, the commander of the French Army on the Rhine. My reward was to be  arrested shortly afterwards during the Terror where i only escaped being guillotined because i was the revered author of La Marseillaise.
On Bastille Day, 1795, 'The Marseilles Song' was adopted as the Republic’s national anthem although Napoleon always disliked it and had it banned. In fact, it was banned and unbanned several times in my lifetime.
I later published my  memoirs which no one bought and died penniless in 1836 but i live on through the song and thanks goes to Tchaikovsky used it as a theme in his 1812 Overture who used the first bit, not so much the bit about the French coming to tear the throats of your sons and your wives.

Call Me Nobel Prize Committee

The problem with nuclear technology has always been its waste,  the low level less dangerous stuff, remains deadly to humans for thousands of years while the high level waste is hazardous for a million years so it has to be stored somewhere safe away from humans.
There are over 500 operational nuclear stations dotted around the globe and in the UK we store our nuclear waste in secure containers at sites across Britain but successive governments have been desperate to find somewhere to dump the lot and they have tried bribing local councils to take it and dig a big hole and forget about it but unsurprisingly the local population have refused and the Government return to square one and the problem of what to do with all this growing mountain of toxic waste.  
So here we are stuck with tonnes and tonnes of the glowing stuff but nowhere to store it and I thought i had come up with with a great idea, dump it all into a volcano. Problem solved now the only problem is where to hang all the Environmental awards that will be winging  there way to me or so i thought because those spoilsport volcano geophysicists came along and ruined it all.
Apparently the problem is that in order to melt the uranium waste a required heat of  5,189˚F is needed and the hottest volcano we have is only a piddly 2,400˚F and also, if the volcano ever erupted, ash, gas and radioactive fuel rods would be spewed for miles around along with radioactive lava which is apparently not a good thing.
Not to be put off (and because i had ordered a gold frame for my Nobel Certificate), i have been pondering on this thorny issue and the required 5,189˚F limit and the obvious solution is fire it into the 10,000˚F Sun but the very real danger of the rocket exploding and the subsequent raining of nuclear waste over a large area made that a no go so if we cant go up, why not go down.
The Earth's core is 9,392° Fahrenheit, well above the heat we need and the hole would need to be 3,000 miles or 4,828,032 metres deep and we currently have a hole in China which is 7.6 miles or 12,231 metres into the crust.
Ok, we are 2,992.4 miles short and how you would manage a 3,000 mile drill bit and what it would have to be made of to not just melt is a head scratcher but that's for the boffins to work out, i'm just the person with the idea's and the currently empty gold frame.  

Brits Love Einstein, Canada and NATO

I do love a popularity contest and the YouGov website has a broad array of polls measures the popularity and fame of anything and everything, based on millions of responses from the British public and is the go-to place for British media outlets due to the accuracy and large sample size.
I could make a post a day for a year with this information but it was the three popularity contests that caught my eye which were most popular person, most popular country and the most popular International Orgainisation.
As the contributors are British it gives a real insight into what us Brits think and we think that the all time person who we have a positive opinion of is Albert Einstien with 85%.
National Institution that is David Attenborough pushed him hard as did Steven Spielberg, Rowan Atkinson and Robin Williams who made up the top five.
Dame Judi Dench at 6th is the highest placed female, Freddie Mercury at 9th the highest ranked musician and Usain Bolt 54th the highest ranked sports star.
The most popular countries for 81% of Brits is Canada and then a tie in second for Australia and the Netherlands and then it is Italy and New Zealand.
Surprisingly considering it was a poll of Brits, the United Kingdom is the 7th most popular with ourselves which says something about us and i expected Ukraine to be higher than 23rd, USA at 32rd is kind of expected considering what is going on there.    
The most popular International organization is NATO with 58% and close behind is the World Health Organization, United Nations, European Union and UNESCO. 

Special Guest Blogger: Benjamin Franklin

Founding Father, inventor, scientist, philosopher, printer, diplomat and author, I had more roles than Tom Hanks which isn't bad for someone who quit school at age ten and then apprenticed at my brother’s print shop before setting out on my own.
I bought the Pennsylvania Gazette and turned it into the most popular rag in the colonies between writing political essays, Almanacks and even had a pop at writing my own alphabet for the shiny new America.
I always thought that a common global language would be great and by dropping almost 25% of it by wiping out the letters C, J, Q, W, X and Y but the idea obviously never caught on among the masses but we did later drop the U, which is a vowel, but whatever.
I lived in England on and off for eighteen years and mediated conflicts on behalf of the thirteen colonies, i have one of those blue plaques the Brits like to throw up above the door of my house and even attended George III’s coronation and really thought we could do well as part of the British Empire, before hitting France to gain support for the Revolutionary War and spent nine years, munching baguettes and getting crucial aid to back our bid for independence from the British.
They loved me there, you couldn't walk around Paris without seeing my bald mug on posters and snuffboxes and busts and they even made a Franklin doll.
I helped craft both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and suggested things such as not having  a President but there should be an executive council that does the top job but if there really was gonna be a president, he should be there for one term only but those youngsters refused my ideas, not a single one of ’em!
We did raise a few eyebrows from the slaves when we read out that the line that all men are created and that the thirteen states are no longer under British Rule and have declared themselves an independent nation, as I was pretty hefty by then it was fair to say my girth was equal to three men.
I also invented bifocal glasses, was a pioneer of electro-convulsive shock therapy and an odometer which we strapped to wagon wheels because it was a few centuries too early for cars and the glass harmonica but most people know me for not getting electrocuted by lightning whilst outside flying a kite during an electrical storm.
I said that nothing is inevitable but death and taxes and a respiratory disease meant the first bit came true but i can still be seen  on the $100 bill, or i could be if i could find my damned bifocals.

Special Guest Blogger: Isadora Duncan

And a-one, and a-two, and a one-two-three-four, one-two! Gorgeous, wasn’t it, the breath work and the power from the solar plexus with haunted gestures.
If you don't know me I was a dancer but not just any old dancer, rejecting classic ballet and dancing in my own way but prudish America wasn't ready for me and my style failed to impress so my family and I took the show on the road, well, a  boat actually, and and went abroad to  Europe where they were more appreciative of my style.
I was a smash hit, they were fascinated by my unconventional style and performed in London, Berlin, Salzburg and Vienna and gained such a level of fame for my expressive dance that artists and authors were inspired by my vision, creating sculptures, poetry, and paintings in my likeness.
I did have a fan in the writer George Bernard Shaw who i wrote to saying we should have a child together as with my body and his brains it would be a wonder baby, he brilliantly replied 'What if it had my body and your brains!'
I opened a dancing school in Moscow and in 1921 Russia was brand new. The communal school seemed right up my alley, revolutionary activists and students could attend for free. And of course, I met the poet, Sergei Aleksandrovich Yesenin, there.
I married him, and we started schools in the newly formed Soviet Union but as well as being rigid on their views on dancing in America, it was the time of the Red Scare and my timing kinda sucked because it was then that I chose to return for a tour in the United States, I was labeled a Bolshevik and raved against by the press who called me a traitor.
With hindsight I probably should have stuck with the dancing and not made speeches in favour of the new Soviet Union but i was so livid that my own country was hating on me and when the tour finished, i left and swore i would never return, and I didn't but i didn't have much choice in the matter.
While motoring around France, i stopped in to see my friend Mary Desti who gave me a beautiful, long scarf as a present and when she said i should wear a cape as the car was open topped, i said i had the scarf to keep me warm which i did right up until it got tangled in the spokes of the front wheel and broke my neck.
As i always said, my life was an odd dance, it had it up's and down's but it was never a walk in the park which would have been a lot less painful if that was what i had done that day.

Musk, Trump And Epstein

No surprise that when you get two men with planet sized egos and skin as thin as paper, there was always going to be a falling out but the question was always how long before Musk and Trump end up knocking lumps out of each other and yesterday we go the answer, 137 days.
Musk said Trumps Big Beautiful Bill was a big ugly spending bill, Trump got his teeny, tiny hands on his phone to retort that Elon ELon was 'wearing thin' and  how he had gone crazy after he took away his EV mandate and then Elon dropped what he called ' The Really Big Bomb', that Donald Trump is in the Epstein files and that they have not yet been released because they implicated the President.
The files are a collection of evidence gathered by investigators working on the multiple criminal cases brought against Epstein and his associates and some have been released by there remains a treasure trove yet to come out although Elon gave no evidence for the claim.
The accusation will puts the President’s old relationship with the paedophile under renewed scrutiny, they were good friends for almost two decades and were photographed together at parties and Trumps Mar-a-Lago Estate during the 1990s and early 2000s and documents released as part of the trial of Ghislaine Maxwell showed that Trump flew on Epstein's private jet a number of times in the 1990s.
One damning quote from Trump in a New York magazine was that he'd 'known Jeff for 15 years' and described the financier as a 'terrific guy' who was 'a lot of fun to be with' and he liked 'beautiful women and many of them are on the younger side.'
Elon's 'Really Big Bomb' could be just that as Trump is facing accusations of sex abuse by over 30 women and was found Trump liable for sexually abusing E Jean Carroll and defaming her by calling her a liar, as well as his infamous line that he 'grabbed women by the pussy' as well as being convicted of paying hush money to a porn star, Musk's words will bring focus on to how Trump, a renown sex pest ,was such good pals with Epstein, a convicted sex offender.

US Backs Israel Again With Veto

As of 4 June 2025,  the United States had used their Veto at the United Nations 87 times, 49 of those to protect Israel and yesterday was number was nudged up to 88 and 50 for Israel because it blocked a Resolution backed by all the other 14 members calling for an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza.
America, objected to the draft which demanded: 'An immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire in Gaza to be respected by all parties and the immediate, dignified and unconditional release of all hostages held by Hamas and other groups'.
Somehow America deemed a ceasefire and the return of the hostages: 'Unacceptable for what it does say, it is unacceptable for what it does not say, and it is unacceptable for the manner in which it has been advanced' and that is 'undermine U.S.-led efforts to broker a ceasefire'.
Already complicit by politically backing and supplying the arms for Israel's Genocide which has seen over 54,000 people killed in Gaza, this comes on the back of starving Palestinians being killed as they line up for the meagre scraps of food that Israel has reluctantly allowed into the area.
Other nations should move forward on sanctioning Israel and bringing Netanyahu and his cronies to the ICC for War Crimes as well as recognising a Palestinian State but already i have heard the usual pathetic bleating that the United Nations is bias against Israel and it is Anti-Semitism which is drives the agenda against them.
It is true that Israel has been on the end of an amazing number of UN resolutions, almost more than on the rest of the world combined but before you think poor old Israel, what has it done to be on the end of the UN's ire in its short lifetime?
Take your pick from scuppering peace talks at every turn, mopping up occupied Palestinian land with illegal settlements, killing innocent Palestinians, committing war crimes, holding over 9000 Palestinians in its prisons, destroying farms, bulldozing homes and businesses, using Palestinian children as human shields, inciting genocide and building a monstrous wall deemed illegal by the international court of justice, oppression of its neighbours and turning Gaza into an outdoor prison and killing fields .
If their isn't a UN bias, there certainly should be.

Increased Defence Spending Madness

'Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed': D Eisenhower

Russia has always been a bogeyman, China, North Korea and Iran have been recently added because the West need a bogeyman or two to keep us safe from and Russia invading Ukraine was manna from Heaven for people who have an interest in military spending and the media has been full of those these last few days as the Defence Spending Review offer up how we must be spending much more on defence and the Orange Taco's NATO ambassador is trying to talk us up to spending at least 5% of national income.
There was some Defence Minister loon on TV last night saying we will be at war with Russia within 10 years and we need to spend big NOW but he never went on to say what areas should be cut to pay for it.
More money on bombs and less for people who already can't afford to heat their homes or feed their families isn't a very good slogan nor is why give the unemployed and disabled money to feed themselves when we can buy lots of ammunition but that is what they are saying because if your country is standing there cross legged and looking for a pot, spending more in one area means spending less in another.
Spending money on weapons to bring death and destruction somewhere or use the money saved for something helpful to mankind instead, we already spend £44.6 billion on defence which doesn't include the £133 billion spent on maintaining our Nuclear Weapons which is less money for schools, health, police, housing, infrastructure, the elderly and disabled.
If the Government decide they can afford to spend billions more on rockets, nuclear submarines and tanks and spend less on building schools, equipping hospitals, hiring police officers or building houses then they should be deciding which is more important. Spoiler alert: It should never, ever be the war equipment.

Special Guest Blogger: Emily Dickinson

I'm Nobody! Who are you? Are you – Nobody – too? Then there's a pair of us!
I may be one of America's greatest poets but I barely published a word in my own lifetime and hardly ventured out of my own front door but somehow people seem to know a lot about me, including my sex life.
I was a recluse, I would spend days hiding away in our family’s home in Amherst, Massachusetts and the only time i did go out was to go to school but my love was poetry, and not the usual stuff but i did it differently, breaking the rules of the usual grammar and rhymes, daring concepts and changing the meter on a whim which was a bit of a problem for most editors and why not very much was published at the time.
I had over 1,700 poems in the bottom drawer of my dresser, and only seven were published but after I died of Kidney Disease, my sister in law, Mabel, edited my poetry to fit a more traditional style although we had an agreement that she would burn them all when i died.
I was definitely the stay-at-home type, for the last twenty years of my life I never left the house and because i would always wore white, i became known as the Nun of Amherst but it was one of my favorite colours. If you must know, it looked rather fetching with my fair complexion and chestnut hair.
I did also suffer from problems with my eyes, an  intolerance to direct sunlight, so it was hard to go outside but i had a regular visitor in Thomas Wentworth Higginson, who knew about publishing but he was always trying to 'improve' my poetry by straightening out the punctuation, taking out the half rhymes and adding Capital letters but i  said if you can't print them as i intended, stuff you and refused to let him alter them.
One regular thing was the romantic letters i wrote to my friend, Susan Gilbert,  who married my brother Austin and that did break my heart but if I couldn’t have her, I suppose it’s best to keep her in the family.
I did write about death quite a bit and because I could not stop for Death, he kindly stopped for me when but i never heard a Fly buzz, all i heard was: 'Shouldn't that sentence start with a Capital Letter'?

Churchy Types And Abortions

Groucho Marx said that: 'Those are my principles, and if you don't like them…well, I have others' and that comes to mind with Nigel Farage who has been spouting forth on the subject of abortions.
When it was revealed that he has been working with the whack-a-doodle right-wing US-based Christian group Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), it was only a matter of time before the massive donation they made to his Party meant he would begin echoing their views and that day has come and the Reform UK leader this week said: 'It is ludicrous we allow abortion up to 24 weeks and that the law is totally out of date' and Parliament should debate rolling out stricter limits on abortion for women.
Now i take no side in the Abortion discussion, it is only between the man and woman directly involved but what i am for is having the choice left on the table so i hate it when religious types, or people speaking on behalf of them, stick their noses in and try and force their view onto people in what is already a difficult decision.  
The ADF that Farage is working with has called for abortion to be banned as well as strip away protections for LGBTQ+ people, in the name of Christianity and that may be successful in America where Religion is taken much more seriously, but not so much in Britain where it plays almost no part in the decision making process.
There was a discussion a few years ago about cutting the legal limit to have an abortion from the current deadline of 24 weeks to 22 weeks but it was dismissed after Health Chiefs warned this could inflict cruelty on vulnerable women and 90% of abortions happen in this country are performed before 10 weeks and only 1% are after 20 weeks and they are due to fatal conditions that mean the child would not survive birth or is a danger to the mother if the pregnancy continued.
If Farage thinks he can stir up ideological feelings in a culture war using abortion then he should note that in a British Attitudes Survey, 90% of Brits supported abortion in some circumstances and over the last decade the UK has seen a string of victories for abortion rights such as decriminalisation in Northern Ireland, the permanent adoption of abortion pills by phone after the pandemic and the introduction of buffer zones around clinics.
It is far too important a decision to have someone else try to intimidate a woman into what they can and can't do with their own bodies because of their own beliefs and we cant allow them to chip away at the right to an abortion, however we feel about it.

Special Guest Blogger: Greek God Eros

The Greeks have given us many great things such as thick yoghurt, sodomy, and triangles but they also gave me to the World and I was the irresistibly handsome God of Love, Sex and Desire.
I was born of Chaos and helped Uranus (Heaven) and Gaia (Earth) get it together and their offspring helped to populate the Universe and fill the pages of mythology and silly blogs like this and my role was to stir the passions and create desire, no matter how many hearts get broken in the process. To help in this mission, I carried a lethal love weapon, a magical bow with two string which nobody could withstand when my Arrows hit you.
Primarily known for the gold arrows from the string which denotes love, my other sting fired lead arrows and led the receiver to indifference so it’s best to get on my good side if you’re feeling lucky.
I went from being the most eligible bachelor in the Universe to a married man when i fell for the lovely mortal Psyche after accidentally pricking myself with one of my own arrows which was a match made not in Heaven, but in the Underworld.
My Mum, Aphrodite, was jealous of the beauty of my mortal girlfriend as people were leaving her altars barren to worship a mere mortal woman instead so she stole her away from me and imposed four difficult tasks on her which she did so as a reward Zeus turned Psyche into an immortal to live amongst the Gods with me.
My love life was complicated but my family life wasn't straight forward,  my mum complained to Themis that I did not grow and remained a perpetual child so Themis advised her to give me a brother and when she gave birth to Anteros, whenever I was near him, I grew into an adult but if Anteros was away, I shrank back to my previous, smaller size.
When the Romans took over the Greek they changed my name to Cupid and turned me from a handsome stallion of a God into a cute and cuddly baby angel which is a bit embarrassing but not as much as the Brits who thought they had stuck a statue of me in Piccadilly Circus only to find out it was actually a statue of my brother  Anteros.
The Sculptor thought I was too frivolous to immortalise so did the statue of goody two shoes Anteros instead who was the punisher of those who scorn love and the advances of others but the Londoners just shrugged and called it Eros anyway so it's not me but everyone thinks it is anyway so I'll take that, spin on that Anteros.

Boris Redux

The saying is that you cant keep a good man down but it seems the awful ones are pretty keen to come back also because Boris Johnson is apparently eyeing up a return to politics when the current Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, falls from grace.
Since being removed by his own Party in 2022 after swearing he never attended any of the lock-down breaking parties only to then be hung to dry by his own photographer showing he was not only there but pissing it up with the rest of them, Boris has been knocking out yet more babies (his 9th? 10th?) whilst plotting a miraculous return to politics like a bloated Orpheus muttering about his destiny and the betrayal he suffered at the hands of his Cabinet, who if memory served, refused to work with him.
Johnson’s premiership actually began in triumph if you are of a right wing bent, he had an enormous majority and the opposition Labour Party was in disarray until his self-inflicted scandals, corruption, lies and incompetence saw him squander it all away.
 Kemi, for her part, has been irrelevant and has on a few occasions ended the day rejecting the position she had appeared to be taking at the start of it and as she moves her party so far to the right that many have taken the short step to Nigel Farage's Reform Party, the relaunched UKIP which were once dismissed as Fruitcakes and racists but now are in the same political space as each other.    
As the Conservatives leak electorate, the Party’s best and brightest are manoeuvring into position to replace her and vying for the honour of being knifed by colleagues before the next election but if Boris, who was one of the most unpopular Prime Ministers at the time of his removal, thinks he can come back and be welcomed by the British public means he is even more deluded than that time he asked us to trust him that all the rules had been followed in Downing Street during lock-down.