Special Guest Blogger: Stevie Ray Vaughan

There’s a reason why I reduced the stage to a pile of smoking cinders, my guitar didn’t just sing, it blazed but my personal life was also a dumpster fire.
My father was a hard-drinking guy as tough as they came and i was the exact opposite as a boy, small, shy, and sensitive and my brother and I would hide in our bedroom with our guitars. I got a job at a local hamburger stand but after falling on top of a massive barrel filled with scorching hot grease, I decided to get a  safer job so auditioned for a band called Southern Distributor at just 14 and spent many nights tearing it up at The Cellar, a sleazy Dallas club.
Sure, I was earning money and having a blast, but this dive bar was actually dangerous, the sort of place where some audience members chose not to boo but would instead fire a few rounds at the stage when they didn’t like what they heard.
I wasn't your typical high schooler with my long hair, wild outfits, and a habit of nodding off in class thanks to the substances i’d picked up at the dive bar and one day but i had my eyes on a bigger prize because by now i was big on the Austin music scene and playing with some real legends and got noticed and made up the band Double Trouble but fate was just waiting to throw a nasty wrench in the works.
Totally normal to have post-show jitters and i would cool down with a post-performance toot until an off-duty cop just happened to be lingering outside while i was snorting nose candy. The Buzzkill busted me and slapped with a possession charge and two years probation and people did warn me to leave off the white stuff so i did what any normal person would do and got much better at hiding it as my career began to click.
Suddenly, everyone wanted to know me and even David Bowie asked me to play on his album and tour with him but the tightwad only offered me the same money as the backing singers so i refused and returned to my band and we made the album 'Texas Flood'.
This hit album made us so much money which i put in a trust account, not really, i blew it on booze and cocaine which seemed a bit of a mistake when i collapsed on stage in Germany and almost died.
I began recording  and even won a Grammy and was back at the top of my game and unfortunately also at the top of a ski slope after the helicopter i was travelling in crashed into it one and killed everyone on board one foggy night.
My funeral guest list was pretty cool though, Eric Clapton, Stevie Wonder and ZZ Top all came to say goodbye.

Retiring Perfect Songs

There are some songs which have just been sung so brilliantly that they should be retired because nobody is ever going to sing them better so they should be off limits because anybody else is just going to fail to do it justice.
In this list i would include Whitneys 'I Will ALways Love You',  Loren Allred's 'Never Enough, Lea Michele's 'O Holy Night', 'California Dreaming' by the Mamas and Papa's, 'Ace of Spades' from Motorhead and 'Only You by 'The Platters' but there are some famous songs which could be huge and are yearning to be included, it's just that i have never heard the definitive, perfect version of them.
'Hallelujah', 'Will You', 'Smile' and 'The Impossible Dream' are some songs just waiting for someone to pick them up and belt them out to do them justice and there have been some good versions, but not THE perfect versions although Jennifer Hudson came mightily close with her Impossible Dream but i could not find a studio version, just singing live but she was mightily impressive.
Hopefully she will put it on an album one day then i can tick it off my list.

Great Idea's From The Keyboard Of Lucy: Winter Olympics

The 2026 Winter Olympics will be held in Italy but already they are concerned that they won't have enough snow and are getting ready to use the artificial stuff like they did in China, Russia and Canada previously.
Obviously, because we were too damned stupid to stop filling the atmosphere with gunk, we are now at the start of a drastically changing climate but it always struck me strange that we held a Global sporting event which was based primarily on a single weather condition and secondary on steep enough hills for participants to fling themselves off of which excludes many nations, we are not going to be seeing a Saudi Arabian or Ghanaian Bobsleigh team dressed like Power Rangers hurtling down a slope anytime soon but I have an idea which will satisfy both the lack of snow going forward considering we have knackered the environment and will open the field to the Middle Eastern and African nations.   
My suggestion is to replace the last remaining nations with Snow with...places with sand.
The upside is desert-based nations get a fairer shot at gold and there is no lack of sand and with desertification, will soon be a whole lot more of it.
Of course the downside is that if you go arse over elbow during the downhill at 80mph or you are going to get all the skin on the underside of your body sanded away in seconds but i will leave that for the organisers to work out, i'm just the idea's person and I can't think of everything, geeze!!

Who Ordered The Mayonnaise?

You’ve got to feel sorry for Donald Trump. No, really. Bear with me. Stop throwing things at the screen and let me explain.
Wherever he goes he is greeted by protesters and on his upcoming trip to Britain the protesters are reportedly to be topping the 400,000 protesters who waved placards telling to him to bugger off back to America.
Most of the time, when people take a holiday abroad they return home gushing about how friendly the locals were, how helpful and accommodating and then whip out the digital camera and bore you to tears with pictures of them grinning alongside that nice couple who ran that lovely little bar.
Trump doesn’t have    any photos like that. His holiday snaps, assuming he takes any,  must consist of brief glimpses of landmarks as seen through a ten-inch layer of bulletproof glass and half hidden behind a banner making fun of his small hands and orange face.
It can’t be good for the psyche, being reviled around the world and I can’t see it getting better any time soon now that his close friendship and travels with a notorious pedophile is being exposed.    
When he retires, where’s he meant to go for a nice relaxing getaway? To be honest such is the hatred of him that even in 20 years if he pops out for a meal during a break, chances are the kitchen staff will be queuing up to dribble all manner of bodily fluids in his food.
He may also want to hope that there isn't an afterlife at all because if there is, chances are they’re already working on those 'special meals' and the Devil may have the best tunes but he must also have access to some pretty evil bodily fluids to mix into that food so have a thought for what its like to be Donald Trump..and thank God himself that you are not going to spend the rest of your life looking at your plate of food and wondering exactly why they have given you mayonnaise when you didn't ask for it and if that Apple Juice is looking a bit of a strange colour.

That Don't Impress Me Much

There is a thought from the fair sex that the bigger the car a man drives, the smaller he is in the underpants department so i am not surprised the owners of the Mini are not keen to pursue that avenue of advertising but according to researchers with warm hands and a tape measure, most men worrying about the size of their tiddler.
Dr Kevan Wylie of the Royal Hallamshire hospital made a six year study and analysed 12,000 willies and concluded that that: 'The average erect penis was between 5.5 inches and 6.2 inches long' but they didn't tell the todger owners this beforehand and asked them if they thought they were normal sized and most thought that their plonker was on the smaller side, even if they were in the 'average' range.    
Obviously the scientists could have been evil and arranged for the researchers with the largest hands to conduct the measuring but of those who said their Dong was more of a Ding, they blamed pornography for making unrealistic comparisons to the real life normal mans pecker.
What the participants said once they were told they were average sized and the tape measure had been put into industrial strength bleach and then incinerated it doesn't say, but it does state that most men are anxious about the size of their John Thomas for nothing and just to reassure the delicate flowers, the report states that it is very common for men to worry about the size of their penis and it is important that these concerns aren't dismissed as this can heighten concerns and anxieties' so in other words, pointing and laughing is not considered helping.

Special Guest Blogger: Jerry Siegel

As one of the creators with Joe Shuster of one of the World's most iconic superheroes, we turned into chumps in a single bound when we sold him for the paltry sum of $130, which we then had to split between ourselves.
Superman had long languished in my imagination and when i met illustrator Joe who equally shared my vivid imagination and he gave dimension to vision in my head.
Only problem was, no one else cared. For six years Superman was rejected by a succession of publishers until finally Vin Sullivan, editor of National Allied Publications (precursor of DC Comics), agreed to put him on the June 1938 cover of National’s Action Comics #1. Superman had at last taken flight but without either of its creators along to enjoy the ride.
Just before our superhero hit the stands, we  signed away all rights to our creation, with their names spelled wrong on the accompanying $130 check, and agreed to continuous life as employees of the publisher for ten years.
It was a colossal kryptonite making decision which resulted in decades wrangling in court to reclaim the rights to our signature character.
Finally in the 1970s Warner Communications, the eventual owner of the Superman franchise, gave us pensions of $20,000 per year, as well as health benefits but that was due to the studio couldn't afford the bad publicity with a Superman movie on the way.
Superman, meanwhile, kept well above the fray, continuing the very lucrative pursuit of truth, justice, and the American way, earning billions for his new owners, we died nearly broke while DC raked in billions from Superman alone. The Superdicks.

Jeffrey Epstein? Who's He Says Trump.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez summed up what many people thought when the Epstein files and a client list which were promised by Donald Trump to be released, were suddenly disappeared with her comment that: 'Wow who would have thought that electing a rapist would have complicated the release of the Epstein Files?'
Confusingly the client list which Trump campaigned on releasing but now doesn't exist was once sat on the Attorney Generals desk waiting for approval release and was written by Obama and Hillary Clinton but once Elon Musk said Trump's name was on the list, strangely he has got very coy on wanting the papers released, saying anyone who now wanted it released (despite it not existing) were 'weaklings' and 'stupid people'.
As a quick recap, Jeffrey Epstein was the sex-trafficking financier and friend of Donald Trump who was in the Epstein flight log 26 times between 2001 and 2003, but Jeff conveniently died in jail while awaiting trial, apparently by suicide while Ghislaine Maxwell, was convicted of conspiring with him to sexually abuse minors, and is currently serving 20 years in prison.
Donald Trump came to power promising to expose the cover-up of this story, but now, Trump say's there is no list. Nope. Non. Nyet. Negatory. Nada. Nej and there was never even a list to start with but now as even his own right wing numbnuts are turning on him, Trump is instructing the attorney general, Pam Bondi, to seek release of the Epstein grand jury testimony.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Trump had served as a contributor to some kind of 50th birthday scrapbook for Epstein for which he’d sent a 'bawdy' letter of a naked lady with the Trump signature serving as a kind of  pubic hair and a cryptic 'Happy birthday and may every day be another wonderful secret.'
Donald, remember he loves the uneducated, has denied the letter and said that that he has never in his life 'wrote a picture' and is threatening to sue the WSJ while calling the whole thing 'boring' and 'bullshit' so he wants everyone to so move on as there is nothing to see here, especially if it has his signature and refers to secrets between himself and one of the most infamous pedophile's anyway.
To paraphrase AOC, who would have thought that electing a sex offender who was great pals with a infamous pedophile who flew multiple times on his private plane and sent him a birthday card referring to 'secrets' would have complicated the release of the Epstein Files?

Once It Is Known Makes The Difference

Diane Abbot is back in hot water for her explanation of types of racism, the same thing that got the Labour Whip removed from her two years ago.
The Labour Party are said to be looking incredibly seriously at the latest remarks where she previously said that: 'People of colour experienced racism all their lives, different to the prejudice experienced by Jewish people, Irish people and Travellers' which seemed to play down the experiences of other people and was much worse for the black communities' but this time she has clarified it, and she has a point.
She said today that: 'There must be a difference between racism which is about colour and other types of racism because you can see a Traveller or a Jewish person walking down the street, you don’t know' and i take that to mean that the racism and prejudice isn't worse for black people, but black people are more easily identified for the targeting of it.
It is not obvious if someone is Jewish, Irish or a Traveller and in the 80's when i grew up some people in all 3 of these committees were targeted for some awful prejudice and abuse once it was known they were Jewish, Irish or a Traveller and that is the nub of what i believe Dianne Abbot is trying to say, once it was known because it wasn't obvious just by looking at them, but a Black or brown face is instantly recognised.   
The fact that any fascist arse wanting to beat up a Jew, Irish or Traveller would need to ask first them first if they were Jewish, Irish or a Traveller (and give them the option to hide and say they were neither) is not available to a non-white so yes, i agree that people of colour do experience it more just because they are more noticeable but that is not to say that the hatred and prejudice is less for the other groups, it is just those 4 words, 'Once It Is Known' which makes the difference.

16 Year Old's Voting

It is an idea that has been floated for quite a while and one that i have always supported which is to lower the voting age to 16.
My support is based on if you can work and pay tax at 16, why should you not get a vote to how your money is being spent so they should get a say although i widely suspect that a 16 year old will not be enough across the political spectrum and will be heavilly influenced by their peers, social media and their parents before which means that educating them in politics should begin in school.
That in itself is a delicate process, how to explain politics in a classroom without showing a preference for one side or the other would take a special skill because no matter how hard we can try to be removed, it is impossible so good luck with that.
There is also a whispered belief amongst the left that younger people tend to be more left wing and the right who seem to be more the preserve of the older persuasion seem to agree because they have come out and dismissed it.
I am all for it and if i get a chance to explain the difference between the left and the right to developing minds then i will do so calmly and with immense impartiality that while it can be said that not all right wingers are racist, xenophobic, sexist, greedy, homophobic fascists, all the racist, xenophobic, sexist, greedy, homophobic fascists are on the right wing so don't vote for them, you know it makes sense.

Special Guest Blogger: Frances Griffiths

I knew i was in a heap of trouble with my mother during that summer of 1917.
My cousin Elsie and I had gotten ourselves muddy and soaked while playing near a stream behind our home and when mum saw me, she sent to my bedroom where we came up with the idea that we had got into such a state while playing with fairies.
To prove it we borrowed a camera from Elsie’s father, after which Frances posed in front of a group of fairies we had clipped out of a children’s book and set in place with pins. Elsie then snapped the staged scene that would one day become one of the world’s most famous photographs.
We were shocked and surprised that it fooled anyone as it was an amateurish job and my mum wasn't fooled and immediately dismissed it.
We then produced more fairy pictures, and someone who really should have known better, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, became interested in them and he even arranged for cameras to be given to us both so that we could take some more fairy pictures and we managed to stage three more.
The creator of Sherlock Holmes had in recent years become absorbed in a new form of spiritualism sweeping Britain and to Doyle the existence of fairies simply wasn’t that far out, and he was thrilled to find evidence of them in Cottingley.
He sent letters to seeking permission to use the fairy photographs in an article he was writing on the subject for The Strand magazine and that December, the article was published.
After photography experts including Kodak declared the pictures genuine, the 100% not faked photographs were picked up by the Theosophical Society who used the pictures to prove that 'humanity is undergoing a cycle of evolution', whatever that meant.
We both married and lived abroad for a time after we grew up, and yet the photographs continued to hold the public imagination and in 1966 a reporter from the Daily Express newspaper interviewed me and i said that maybe we had photographed our thoughts, just to keep the intrigue going.
We both kept our secret close for nearly seven decades because a brilliant man like Conan Doyle well, we could only keep quiet because he was a national treasure but in 1983 I felt I had to come clean and admitted the truth that the photographs were fakes and that the fairies were in fact nothing more than cardboard cut-outs from the Princess Mary's Gift Book. Sorry Conan, nice books though.

Super Callous Fragile Racist Sexist Nazi Potus

Donald the Elephant packed his trunk
And trundled off to see Britain
Off he went with a Trumpety Trump
Trump Trump Trump

I assumed, like most of the civilised World, that last November the American public vote for the party not headed by the fat, lying sex offender with a criminal record for fraud who who led an insurrection, cheated on his wife and was promising to bring fascism to their shores and we would be welcoming a Democrat to the nation this September but instead they never so we get the Tangerine Tyrant and close friend of Jeffrey Epstein instead.
When France's President, Emmanuel Macron, was invited over last week he got the the whole enchilada and took home photos of him in Buckingham Palace, addressing Parliament, outside Number 10 and waving from the Royal Carriage at the non-protesters lining the street but the Poundland Mussolini isn't getting any of that.
In a neat swift bit of maneuvering, Trump is being directed to the top bit of the country away, well away from the interesting bits and will meet the King at Windsor Castle and not Buckingham Palace which is like being told you are going to a Restaurant and ending up sitting in a McDonald's with a Cheeseburger.
Last time he was here the British managed 400,000 protesters, including some especially great placards such as 'Orange is the new stupid', such as 'All in all you're another prick without no wall', 'Fascist Twat',  'We're British, we're polite but Fuck off please' but the genius one was 'Super Callous Fragile Racist Sexist Nazi Potus'.
The real bit of  careful planning to keep him away from everything though is scheduling the visit for the day after Parliament goes into recess so no vision of a lying scumbag who can't keep his zipper done up, well not unless Boris Johnson puts in another appearance anyway.
I am also certain that the giant Trump baby balloon will come out of storage which portrayed Trump as a 20-foot-high inflatable in a nappy with a snarl on its face, like it’d just been told it had lost a free and fair presidential election or something.
All in all i am sure the visit of the Carrot coloured sex offender will provide us Brits with some late Summer entertainment.

Special Guest Blogger: Carl Rosenbaum

I was an employee of the Noble Austrian Esterházy family and through my marriage to a famous Opera Singer, Therese Gassmann, we were celebrities in Viennese circles and it was through them that i became good friends with composer Joseph Haydn.
When my good friend died after a long illness, I was appalled by the meager farewell given to my musical hero but as Vienna under siege by Napoleon at the time, the genius drew few of the honors that might have been accorded him under better circumstances, as many would-be mourners were otherwise engaged in not dying themselves.
I had a far better idea and for that i needed Haydn’s head. In the late 19th Century a relatively new science known as phrenology had gained widespread credibility as a means of understanding the human mind through examination of the skull. It was believed that the various shapes and contours of the cranium indicated specific human characteristics.
My intention was to map musical brilliance using the head of the man who possessed it in such abundance and four days after the burial i slipped the cemetery warden a few notes and he delivered the head to me in my carriage.
Unfortunately it was the height of summer and the smell of the putrefying head made me sick but the next step was to remove the skin from the head and i handed over the head to a scientist friend who stripped away the muscle and ligature that obscured the all-revealing skull and popped ou the brain and tossed it into the hospital furnace.
Meanwhile, i was delighted to see that a far grander memorial service had been arranged for Haydn although while the composer was being more appropriately celebrated, his head was soaking in lime-water at a nearby hospital
The corrosive bath did wonders on the skull, transforming it to a gleaming white and ready to be set in the display case I had so lovingly constructed for it. And there it remained for over a decade in a handsome custom-made black wooden box, with a symbolic golden lyre at the top, glass windows and a white cushion until it was decided that Haydn deserved an even more dignified burial site and that’s when it was discovered something was amiss.
Upon exhumation of the grave they found only a wig left where the head should have been and an investigation by the police traced it back to me so i gave them  a substitute skull. They weren’t fooled that time but I successfully foisted a second fake on them which they placed in the grave above the severed neck, while hiding the real skull in my wife’s bed as she pretended to be ill.
The skull remained with me for the rest of my life so i don't know if the composer’s head was never reunited with the rest of him.

1945 Labour v 2025 Version

The Conservative Party, and Liz Truss in particular, is often accused of running down the country and hollowing out our institutions such as the Police, NHS and pretty much everything else in an ideological zeal.
It's a problem that the new Labour Government say they are are currently trying to correct but as they are starting from the very low base they inherited, it is going to take some time and some tough decisions, apparently even tougher if you are a Pensioner or Disabled because it was there they bizarrely decided to start before having a change of heart and deciding taking money away from the old and the weakest members of society doesn't lend itself to gaining the moral high ground so they are now looking elsewhere to bolster their depleted coffers.  
The Labour Party of 2025, has a GDP of between £3.84 trillion and $4.45 trillion to play with each year while in 1945 they had  £8.8 billion (worth £408bn today) to tinker with and that was after WW2 when pretty much everything was flattened by the Luftwaffe.
The incoming 1945 Government under Clement Attlee introduced state ownership of major industries, a universal entitlement to pensions, child benefit and introduced legal aid.
They gave us the The Education Act which established the principle of free secondary education and former armaments factories were used to turn out prefabricated dwellings and whole new council estates began to be built with bathrooms and inside toilets.
Most symbolic was giving the nation the National Health Service, a universal health-care system, free at the point of delivery, available to all, irrespective of income or status and a National Insurance Scheme introduced to pay for it.
Amazing that with the Country, at the end of World War II and with Britain's national debt standing at 270% of its GDP, a Government managed to do all that while today it stands at 97% of GDP which is still a huge amount but the Government tell us their hands are tied when it comes to spending.
Everything is political and the Government gets an annual amount to spend as it wishes but i wonder why the 1945 Labour Party with it's massive debt still decided to use its political time in office to make things better for everyone while the 2025 version is dicking around with saving £3bn by not removing the two-child benefit cap which would lift between an estimated 250,000 and 540,000 children out of poverty.
Even more obscene when you consider they have no qualms on raising the defence budget to 3% of GDP (£75bn) and that doesn't count the cost of our obscene nuclear weapons at £20bn a year so we have the money, we are just not spending it right.

Oooops, Sorry About Killing You

The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said 'a technical error with the munition'  had caused one of their missiles to kill 10 Palestinians, including six children, who were queuing at a water collection point in the Nuseirat refugee camp.  
As usual, they said that they will hold a review and laughably adding that it: 'Works to mitigate harm to uninvolved civilians as much as possible' which would raise eyebrows of the 60,000 Palestinians if Israel hadn't already killed them in its ongoing genocide against them.
I assume the 800 killed by Israel at aid distribution sites was also down to technical error and those killed in Hospitals, refugee sites they had been directed to and in their own homes were also due to technical error, or maybe they just meant those ones.
As for the latest peace talks,  the 1.5km no-go buffer zone inside Gaza which Hamas reluctantly agreed to suddenly became a 3km no-go buffer zone inside Gaza with a continued Israeli presence in vast swathes of territory. and the Israeli's insisted that the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) who are shooting at Palestinians be allowed to carry on in their role.  
Someone would think that Israel doesn't want peace and that it is happy to carry on and drive the Palestinians from their land and as dramatically moving the goal posts and then saying it was the other side who walked away is a well worn Israeli tactic to abandon peace talks for decades, you would be right.

Special Guest Blogger: Great British Goddess Britannia

My journey starts off in sunny Rome as a Goddess of wisdom and knowledge, a helmeted female warrior holding a trident and shield and ends as the patron deity in the not so sunny Albion.
Back in my Roman days i was called Minerva and anything to do with music, poetry, medicine, wisdom, commerce, weaving and the crafts came under my domain. I also created the Olive tree and after Medusa and Neptune got up to hanky panky in one of my temples, I turned her into a monster, replacing her hair with hissing snakes and turned any living creature she looked upon into stone but it was when the Romans invaded Britain that my sweet, sweet life took a swerve.
During the Roman occupation of Albion, it was common for carpenters to own tools ornamented with images of me to invoke a greater amount of protection from the goddess of crafts which all seems very sensible.
Some women would also have images of me on accessories such as hairpins or jewellery and as the Romans liked to invent Goddess for the places they ruled over,  and because they were not willing to give up Minerva, they began calling the place Britanniae and invented the persona of Brittania who was basically me sat with a shield and holding a spear.
When the Romans gave up and went home in the 5th Century, i continued to be the deity and the later Kings began putting me on coins and titles in charters but I really came into my own following the Acts of Union which joined the Kingdoms of England and Scotland and saw Britain the rainy, windswept island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the coast of continental Europe become known as Great Britain but still remained a rainy, windswept island in the North Atlantic.
My image as Britannia was used as an emblem of Great Britain, i even had a song about Britannia rules the waves which would have really ticked off Neptune but he was a dick so i didn't mind that so much.
Due to the British Empire i was suddenly everywhere but somehow the Victorians never managed to invade Rome so i never got a chance to get my own back but musicians do get a little effigy of me at the annual Brit Awards  but although i was pretty ticked that i was forcibly moved to Britain, it isn't so bad, i mean the weathers crap, the food isn't great and don't get me started on the politicians while the only waves it will be ruling these days are the ones in the swimming pool at Butlin's but it's not so bad here although i do find that strange Rhyming Slang they use a bit confusing where your plates are nothing to do with kitchenware, your boat is not the one with oars and any mention of Bristol's and Hampton's are not meant in any geographical way whatsover.

Junior Doctors Losing Public Support

Last year, when the Junior Doctors were striking, they have almost universal support from the public even though it meant possible cancelled appointments and longer waiting times and when they got the 23% payrise from the incoming Labour Government to end the strikes after years of being underpaid by the previous Government, it was thought richly deserved.     
Twelve months on and with the same Doctors threatening industrial action and demanding a 29% pay rise this year, the public support isn't there with only 23% of the public supporting them this time.
Their argument is that under the 14 years of the Conservatives, their pay fell by 52% so they are after the outstanding 29% for pay restoration of what they believe they 'should' be on if they hadn't had such draconian pay restraints.
Polling by Ipsos found that less than a quarter of those asked supported the Doctors in their planned five-day walkout on 25 July and the British Medical Association leader acknowledges that public support had fallen but argues that: 'The public should expect their doctors to be valued properly' which we do but even the most strident supporter will feel that after receiving a 23% increase last year, to threaten to to strike again and disrupt people lives for an even bigger pay rise this year is a tad too much brass neck, or as many people said in such a way to ensure they don't make the final edit on the news, taking the piss.
They could go on strike without popular support from the public but it is very unlikely that we will see repeats of the scenes from last year with cars tooting their horns in support and the general public joining them on the picket lines, this time it will be old ladies wagging their umbrellas in disapproval at them and jeers centered around them being greedy and questioning their parentage.   

Can I Smell Burning?

It was lucky that the Devil went down to Georgia to play in a fiddle contest because if he come to the UK over the last few days after 15 mins he would have gone sod this, its too hot and buggered off back to Hades because it has been cooking eggs on a car bonnet hot.
As the owner of a skin so pale it is almost transparent, i always take care to avoid sunburn but every year i get caught out and this year was no exception, after popping outside for a quick pull on the vape mid afternoon and as it was only a quick pop, not bothering with any protection, i ended up spending 20 mins outside yakking during the hottest part of the day and came back in with a face and shoulders the colour of Santa's suit.
Happens every year and it is about this point in the season when i have been stung or bitten several times and have to smell of after-sun for the next week and avoid wearing anything that touches the affected areas, i think Summer can bugger off now and pine for the cold of Winter.
I was told a while ago that Sun-Cream is not as effective as staying covered up as it doesn't completely block the sun as well as a cotton blouse or a pair of trousers and if i do wear sun cream, don't pat the extra for Factor 50 as it is only fractionally better than Factor 30.
Many people don't understand what the  Factor 30/50 means and i want sure so i Googled it and found it means that Factor 30 allows you to spend 30 times longer in the Sun than if you were not wearing anything.
The caveat to that is knowing how long you can spend in the Sun before you burn to start with, if it's 10 mins than you get 300 minutes of frolicking in the Sun before toasting  (10 mins x 30) or if you burn at 20 mins, you get 600 mins (20 mins x 30). If like me your skin burns the second a sun ray hits you then get about 30 seconds but to be complicated about it, the time is adjusted by the time of day so the above maths is just a rough guide across the day and between 10am and 5pm you will get burnt quicker and therefore have a shorter time than outside of these times.  
The answer than is to stay covered, try to avoid direct sunlight between 10am and 4pm if possible and if not apply sun cream and do the maths as above for your skin type but most importantly, if you pop outside for a quick vape in the heat of the midday sun, don't spend too long gassing about the Women's Euro's.

I Blame The Parents

The Swedish migration minister, Johan Forssell, knows exactly who is to blame when children break the law, the parents.
Forsell has built a reputation on claims that parental responsibility is the only real way to prevent crime and even said that parents should be held legally accountable for the crimes of their children and advocated for harsher punitive action including harsher punishment for minors but it was those damned lefists who deny the role of 'parental responsibility as a method for crime prevention and the best way to prevent criminality is attentive parents who give their children love and set clear boundaries'.
Guess what happened next..go on..try to work out what happened next to the right wing gobshite screaming at parents for the actions of their children.
Give up? Well...his son was exposed as active with violent far-right and neo-Nazi groups and pictured making Nazi salutes so as good as his word, his father Johan took his own advice and dished out some harsh parental responsibility.
Actually, scrap that, what he did was say he was clueless that his own child was involved in neo-Nazi groups and blamed Social media platforms instead for what they are doing to our children.
He is now refusing to resign from the Government so what we can take from that is when the dipstick says parents should be held to account for the atrocious actions of their children, he meant other parents, obviously.

Oh Dear

Donald Trump claimed he had warned Vladimir Putin over any attack on Ukraine, saying: 'If you go into Ukraine, I'm going to bomb the shit out of Moscow' and he also claims he made a  similar warning to Chinese President Xi Jinping if Beijing was to invade its neighbour Taiwan.
The White House also announced they were imposing sanctions on UN Human Rights Council Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese for releasing a report earlier this month which showed how US companies were aiding and enabling Israel's genocide in Gaza .
Threatening to start World War 3 and sanctioning someone for showing American complicity in a genocide, that's the Nobel Peace Prize in the bag then.

Special Guest Blogger: Tsutomu Yamaguchi

There are two types of people in this World, the glass half full and the glass half empty types and some may say that i was one of the most unluckiest men in history and others say i was the luckiest but i lived to be 93 but i almost checked out twice in 1945 and earned the label as the man who got nuked twice and survived.
August 6, 1945 and the war was winding down, the Japanese were negotiating an end to hostilities and i was a 29-year old engineer for Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and was on a a business trip in Hiroshima which was deemed a safe place as it was a civilian city with no military significance so i was a surprised as anyone when the United States dropped the world’s first Atomic Bomb and incinerated the city.
I was about two miles away from the epicenter of the blast which killed 140,000 of my fellow citizens, but I was nevertheless temporarily blinded, left with my eardrum destroyed and horrific burns over much of the top half of my body.
The next day, i suffered more radiation exposure as i made my way to the city center in an effort to find a way to hightail it back home to the safety of home, home being Nagasaki.
Us Japanese are an industrious lot and i was back at work three days after the nuclear holocaust that nearly killed me. Then, while detailing the events of the prior few days to my boss, a familiar blinding light suddenly filled the room as a second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, killing another 100,000 people and devastating the city so thoroughly that, in the words of our mayor: 'Not even the sound of insects could be heard'.
I spent many years wrapped in bandages for my resulting skin wounds, and i went completely bald from the radiation and when i died of stomach cancer it was said that it stemmed from all the radiation I suffered but when you escape certain death twice when a quarter of a million of your citizens never, I  can't complain too much.

Stay Cool Britain

Yellow heat health alerts, warning of impacts on vulnerable people, are now in force with temperatures expected to hit 34C (93F) in the UK this weekend and are valid until at least 15 July .
Good luck trying to get to sleep in that but you could try a fan if you can stand the whirring noise or throw open a window if you don't mind an insect party in your bedroom.
I go for the pillow case i the fridge for 60 mins before bed tactic which works fine if you drop off in the first 30 minutes or so and a cold water bottle helps but something i hear a lot but never understood is drink a  hot cup of tea to cool down.
A while ago I asked some people from hot countries if they drink hot drinks to cool down and the resounding answer from people who should know was WTF...ARE YOU MAD !!!!
The science behind it, as it is, is that by drinking something hot, you bodies core temperature increases so you sweat and sweating cools you down but as the sweating only cools you down to the temperature you were before drinking the tea elevated your temperature in the first place, it's quite pointless and if someone hands you a hot cup of tea when your hot, you would be better off waiting for it to cool down and pouring it over yourself.
So it's Factor 50, a cold water bottle and emptying out my husbands tins of beer from the fridge to make room for my pillow it is then.

The Bayeux (Canterbury) Tapestry (Embroidery)

Strange to see a visiting President given a State visit and nobody protesting or holding up banners decrying his orange coloured skin or him being a sex offender but this is the French President and not the weird one with little hands and we seem to like the French guy.
In exchange for a visit to Buckingham Palace and a slap up dinner, he is offering to lend us the Bayeux Tapestry to gawk at but to be honest, i have seen it and to be polite, it's not as impressive as you may think.  
The bit everyone looks for first in the 230ft long tapestry is the section where Harold has the arrow in his eye but accounts at the time had Harold skewered through the heart by a Norman Knight, his head chopped off while his guts were strewn across the ground and his left leg cut off at the thigh. Oh, and then his corpse was castrated just for good measure but that's a lot of needlework so instead they just knitted an arrow in his eye instead.
It is therefore reasonable to assume that the rest of the Bayeux Tapestry isn’t 100% reliable, for a start it’s not a tapestry it's an embroidery and it's from Canterbury and not Bayeux and you can only assume when William the Conqueror was told he was to be presented with an epic work which had taken years of painstaking labour by dozens of devoted artists to commemorate his victory other the English, he wasn't expecting some fancy needlework.  
Could explain why he didn't display it in the Royal Palace and had it shipped to Bayeux in France and why you never hear the line that history is embroidered by the winners.

Peace?

Benjamin Netanyahu has presented the nomination letter he sent to the Nobel Peace Prize awarders stating that: 'President Trump has demonstrated steadfast and exceptional dedication to promoting peace, security and stability around the world'.
That would be the mass murdering leader of Israel who has an arrest warrant against him for genocide in Palestine and crimes against humanity who is openly discussing creating a concentration camp to ethinically cleanse the region supporting a sex offender and fraudster who has not only been providing the weapons to commit the genocide but initially made the suggestion for the ethnic cleansing and recently instructed bombs to be dropped on Iranian nuclear facilities in a pre-emptive strike to stop them building the nuclear weapons that his own intelligence community said they were not doing.   
So far over 300 candidates have been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize this year and if the Committee decide that Trump is more worthy of the Prize than the other 299 for 'bringing peace to the region', then the Swedish definition of 'Peace' must be very different to the definition the rest of us use.

Why Not A Wealth Tax?

The idea of a Wealth Tax had been mentioned a few times but nobody has ever implemented it but Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves are widely thought to be considering it and most tellingly have refused to rule it out to help balance the books when asked about it.  
Keir Starmer has repeatedly said that those with the broadest shoulders should carry the largest burden which tugs at every old Socialists heart as what we should be doing anyway but how would it work?
A wealth tax, so it was explained, is aimed at reducing economic inequality to redistribute wealth and to raise revenue and is a direct levy on an individual's, household's or business's total net wealth, rather than their income.
Advocates of the tax propose an annual 2% tax on wealth above £10m which has been calculated as affecting 20,000 people but would raise £24bn a year which is equivalent to putting 2p on income tax.
In Europe France, Italy , Norway,  Spain and Switzerland have a Wealth Tax but the argument is that if you squeeze the rich, then they bugger off elsewhere with their money but also up for consideration is a one off Wealth Tax and the one shot economic boost that would give but another alternative is to just get the tax rates fair in the first place.
At the moment the British tax system seems tilted towards the rich with only the higher rate payers receiving tax relief for Gift Aid and pension contributions, the basic rate tax payers get nothing for charity donations or putting into a pension and anyone earning up to £125,140 pays tax at 40% while anyone above that to any amount only pays an extra 5%.
Whether it is a one off or a repeated annual tax then i can't see why Labour are just thinking about it when the options are annoy 20,000 people and raise £24 billion or put 2p on income tax and annoy every working person in the country.

Special Guest Blogger: Gao Jianli

During the Warring States Period, I lived in Yan which was a small and fairly weak state in the north-east of China, King Zheng armies were not particularly pleasant to Yan and a committee met and a plot was hatched to assassinate the King.
The chosen assassin was my friend Jing Ke, and it all went horribly wrong. Jing Ke was killed, and Yan was overtaken by the Kings troops rooting out the committee and as a close friend to Jing, i knew that my days were numbered if i was recognised so i changed his name and found work in a wine shop.
I may not have been a great planner but i was a master at playing the Lute and my fame grew quickly which with hindsight was not so clever given i was trying to maintain a low profile but finally King Zheng heard about the wonderful lute player in Yan and commanded an audience which is when things went wrong very quickly because someone in the King's Palace recognised me as an associate of the former attempted assassin and I was immediately arrested.
Fortunately for me, the urge to brutally lop off my head was set against my wonderful lute playing so we reached a compromise, i would live as long as i continued to play for him oh, and they would pull my eyes out to render me harmless which i weighed up as better than the alternative .
So, i continued as the King's lute player, faithfully playing my lute from a safe distance from the Ruler and as time went on, I gained the King's trust and he beckoned me closer and closer so he could hear my beautiful music which is when i hatchd my plot and began slowly filling my lute with little bits of lead and bided my time to act.
After a few weeks my Lute was heavy and by now i was literally playing at the Kings feet and when i finished that day, i stood up and with a mighty swing, aimed my lead-filled lute at the King's head.
Being blind, i obviously missed completely but the big man with the axe never and i was executed on the spot.

Improving Democracy

Politics is a vital part of all our lives, almost everything depends on political decisions from how we travel to how our children are educated to how much tax we pay on our wages and we are always told that if we don't like what the Government is doing, then we can always vote them out of Office.
That sounds great in practise until you consider that  once in power a Government is there for four or five years until the elections roll around again and having no way to force an election if the Government turn out to be a duffer is my biggest gripe but it isn't just me, a poll from Pew Research asked 30,000 respondents in 24 countries if they were satisfied with how Democracy was working in their country and 65% replied that it sucked so they asked a follow up question: 'What do you think would help improve it?'
The overwhelming answer in 19 nations was 'better politicians' and by that they mean ones that are more responsive to their needs and are more competent and honest.
Second was curbing the influence of special interests and combat corruption and in third place is focusing policy on economic conditions such as taxation, inflation, wealth inequality.
The fourth answer is better informed citizens who are more willing to participate in politics and fifth is greater citizen representation by making it easier to vote and the people consulted more via referendums on important topics.
I agree with the poor standard of politicians and christ the UK have had more than their fair share over the years and i am behind the more referendums part, I have banged that drum for years but in truth there are many forms of Government, some are better than others, but we can look around now and honestly say something has to be better than what we have but with AI becoming more important in running our lives, there must be something said for removing humans from the decision making process because we have made a bit of a pigs ear of it so far.

Special Guest Blogger: George Foreman

The road from ruthless boxer to grill master isn't a very well worn one but it is one i made with a little stop to meet Jesus in between.
As one of seven children, we grew up poor and the way i sort out of it was by taking things that other people had by threatening to beat the crap out of them if they didn't hand over their money but as lucrative as mugging was,  it was an advert on TV bought with the money i nicked off other people that changed my life.
The TV ad was for an organization called the Job Corps and i signed up and did some training for jobs like bricklaying and carpentry and got a job in San Francisco, California and after work i would go to the local gym and one evening they were showing the Ali fight against Floyd Patterson and i thought, 'You can earn money for punching people'? So I thought i would have a go at it.
Turns out i was good at it and got picked to go to the 1968 Olympics and got to the final where i beat a scary guy from the Soviet Union and turned Pro.
In my first 32 fights i won they all, 29 by knockout but then i had the brilliant and unbeaten Joe Frazier stood in front of me and so i slapped him about for two rounds and the referee stopped it before I killed the man and i was crowned the World Champion.
One thing a boxing champion needs is an adoring fan base but i didn’t do anything to help this along, i was pretty anti-social back then and saw no reason to get warm and cozy with the fans.
The big name at the time was Mohammad Ali and we got offered $5 million and the location was set as Zaire, mainly because the promoter Don King was pals with the dictator there.
The Rumble in the Jungle they called it  and Ali sat on the ropes for seven rounds while i punched him and then exhausted, he knocked me out in the eighth.
I carried on fighting after the loss but after one bout, and feeling like i was going to die,  i asked God to spare me and if he did I would hand over my boxing prize money to him.
Obviously i lived and became a  minister at the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ but i had that promise to hand over my Boxing purses so aged 38, i made  a comeback and put my healthy lifestyle down to reducing the fat in my diet and that opened the door to my next venture, as a grill salesman for the George Foreman Grill which made me more money than my entire boxing career.
My last TV Appearance was on the The Masked Singer dressed as a Venus Fly Trap but i died  as a two-time world heavyweight champion and an Olympic gold medalist with 81 fights, 76 wins and 68 by knockout and to some i was a Boxing Legend, to others, the guy who made grills on an angle.

Naming And Shaming Israeli Genocide Enablers

UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese has published her report into what she calls: 'the transformation of Israel's economy of occupation to an economy of genocide' and has not held back in naming and shaming the companies that assist and enable Israel in their genocide against the Palestinians and ashamedly 'enable and profiting from crimes including illegal occupation, war crimes, apartheid, forced displacement and genocide in the occupied Palestinian territories'.
In the first part she names the companies who provide the technology and weapons to commit the genocide as Lockheed Martin, Leonardo S.p.A, The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and FANUC Corporation and points the finger at companies delivering the components, parts, weapons and raw materials as A.P. Moller and Maersk A/S transport.
Providing the technology for Israel for surveillance are IBM, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Microsoft, Alphabet Inc. (Google), Amazon.com, Inc and Palantir Technologies Inc.
Providing the heavy machinery for purposes settler and colonial destruction are Caterpillar Inc, Leonardo DRS, HD Hyundai, Volvo, Heidelberg Materials AG, Construcciones Auxiliar de Ferrocarriles and Keller Williams Realty LLC.
Companies accused of helping in the denial of the basics for life are Drummond Company, Inc, Glencore PLC, Chevron Corporation, BP PLC and Paz Retail and Energy Ltd while those trading in the illegal settlements are Bright Food (Group) Co., Ltd, Orbia Advance Corporation, A.P. Moller, Maersk A/S, Booking Holdings Inc. and Airbnb, Inc.
Financial Institutions financing the Genocide by providing loans and buying Israeli Government bonds are BNP Paribas, Barclays, Blackrock, Vanguard, Allianz, AXA, the University of Edinburgh and the Technical University of Munich.
She ends the report by explaining that in her view: 'While life in Gaza is being obliterated and the West Bank is under escalating assault, the present report shows why the genocide carried out by Israel continues: because it is lucrative for many.'
She recommends that: 'The corporate sector, including its executives, must be held to account, as a necessary step towards ending the genocide and disassembling the global system of racialized capitalism that underpins it' and sanctions and an arms embargo must be applied to Israel, all trade agreements must be suspended and  corporate entities face legal consequences for their involvement in serious violations of international law and reparations paid to the Palestinian people along the lines of post-apartheid South Africa.
She also urges the International Criminal Court and national judiciaries to: 'Investigate and prosecute corporate executives and/or corporate entities for their part in the commission of international crimes and laundering of the proceeds from those crimes.'
You have the report and the names of those enabling the genocide so over to you United Nations.

Special Guest Blogger: Shah Jahan

My full title was Shah Jahan the Magnificent and i was, when my father died i defeated my brother and crowned myself Emperor of Hindustan and leader of the Mughal's.
When i wasn't executing most of my rival claimants to the throne, i commissioned many monuments and presided over the aggressive campaigns against the Deccan sultanates, the Portuguese and the Safavids while suppressing several local rebellions.
I may have been the Emperor but i was also a ferocious soldier which meant a lot of killing and a lot of pillaging. People would say please don't pillage me and i would say no, i'm pillaging everyone, you included and vastly expanded our territory but my real love was my wife, my second wife not the first one, the lovely Mumtaz Maha, and together we had 14 children and 18 happy years of marriage until she died in childbirth and i was so distraught, i had the Taj Mahal built as an enduring tribute to her and her body laid to rest inside.
It really did upset me, so much that i only took three more wife's after her but it was with another enduring erection that created a far less savory legacy.
In 1657 i fell ill with what was called 'stangury' and it turned out that the aphrodisiacs that i had been taking to perform with my much younger fifth wife led to the retention of urine for three days, and left me almost at death’s door.
News of my supposed imminent death reached my four sons who, upon learning of my illness, immediately went to war with one another over the succession. Aurangzeb won and I was disposed and relegated to a prison for the rest of my life with my eldest daughter to nurse me in my dotage.
I did recover but by then Aurangzeb had launched a bloody religious war in India that eventually killed millions and i did try to rebel, even trying to arrange the assassination of my usurping son who had been kind enough to send me the severed head of one of his brothers.
In the end, though, nothing came of it and i remained in prison, staring out at the Taj Mahal until i joined my wife there seven years later.

New Party For Disaffected Labour Supporters?

The Labour Party has always been the Party for the left and how we chortled like drains when the hard right Reform Party came along and split the vote on the more stupid side of the ideological fence  and Labour swooped into power amidst a chorus of the Red Flag.
A year on and Labour have been, well...not great as they picked up the clothes dropped by the Conservatives and went headlong after the pensioners and the disabled to which Labour supporters cried WTF Keir???  
Hiding in the shadows and with his Labour membership ripped from his hand, stood Jeremy Corbyn who was one of my favourite Labour leaders as he was more radical than most but the 2019 election came too early for him but now he is back and the signs are that he is forming a new, left wing party with the more Socialist members of the Labour Party.
Zarah Sultana has announced that she is setting up a new political party with Jeremy Corbyn as an alternative to the Labour Party which is great news and it will be atractive to Labour supporters who feel that their Party has moved too far away from it's Socialist roots although it does come with the risk of splitting the left leaning vote and allowing one of the god-awful right wing parties back in.
We will have to wait and see who joins and if any of the Big Beasts at the current Labour Party step across which will be key to it being a success but as i said in a previous post, if this current Government are not willing to pull their heads out of their arses and remember they are the Party founded on Socialism and the party of the downtrodden and working person, then the best they can do is step aside and allow in a proper left wing Party that does.

No Guns For You Catholics

It is said that Great Britain has an unwritten constitution so it was surprising that i managed to find one, the 1689 British Bill of Rights which waffles on about things like free elections, freedom of speech within Parliament, freedom from government interference, the right of petition, just treatment of people by courts and the right to petition the monarch as well as a few Doe's and Soe's and the odd Abrogated but the bit that caught my eye was that: 'Subjects which are Protestants may have Arms for their Defence suitable to their Conditions and as allowed by Law.'
As I am Church of England, after first checking exactly what a Protestant was and if i was one ( I am) i set out to look about ordering myself a gun and was deciding between a Pistol, semi-automatic, Rifle, Machine gun, Shotgun or a Revolver and deciding between a Kalashnikov or a CZ75 when i thought i had better check that it hadn't been removed later on and apparently it is still on the books so i plumped for a CZ75, small enough to fit in my purse and not cause too much of a bulge under my blouse because i would have to get one of those cool leather shoulder holsters like they had in Cagney and Lacey.  
I was practising my best Dirty Harry 'Go Ahead Catholic, make my day' drawl in the mirror with my hairdryer when i noticed the last bit of the sentence '...as allowed by Law' so i checked with the local Police and it turns out that although the ruling is still valid, the Firearms Control Act of 1903 which prohibited the sale of guns to individuals makes it a no-no.
Turns out that it was decided that allowing citizens to own guns was considered madness and no sane nation would allow such bat shit crazy laws so banned them.
Fair enough, would be a bit insane to allow people to own and keep guns in their homes but luckily I didn’t order the CZ75 but I might still get shoulder holster as i could keep my vape in it.

Special Guest Blogger: Pope Adrian IV

After the Pope Joan debacle, it used to be that to become Pope, you had to sit pants-less in a horseshoe-shaped chair and let a couple of cardinals see if you had the goods. If you passed, they'd yell 'Testiculos habet et bene pendentes!' (He has testicles, and they hang well!) It's true, in those days it took real balls to become Pope because in 12th Century Europe, every nation was intent on killing each other and the Roman Emperor hated me personally.
I began life in Hertfordshire, England and travelled to the south of France to study law but i felt the Church calling me and went on to Avignon and the joined the Abbey of Saint-Ruf.
I was appointed Abbot and in my role met Pope Eugene III who liked my no nonsense style of strict discipline and religious zeal and thought i could do a job ending the conflict between the Christian
Catalonians and the Muslim Al-Andalus which i did by saying i would bang their bloody heads together if they didn't stop fighting which got me promoted to the Bishop of Albano.
The Pope then sent me to Scanidaniva which was a much tougher task as the Swedes and Norwegians were in the middle of a vicious, full blown war and I thought this would take some special negotiating, either that or i just reorganise the Church in both nations and say you can't kill each other now because you are all the same which worked but when i excitedly got back to Rome to tell the Pope the good news, i found out he had died and the Cardinals were in the process of choosing a new one and in i stepped, flavour of the month, and got given the job, the first Brit to gain the role.
My problem was that Italy was divided with the  Byzantine emperor in the North and Norman Kings in the South fighting over it and me stuck in the middle and it didn't help when i argued with the Romans that the Church is the defender of Christians and not them which really did not go down well.
I had better luck with the Irish though and solved all their problems by giving Ireland to the English and passed a decree that serfs should be free to wed whoever they wished, without their master’s blessing, since marriage was sacrosanct but the Byzantines were causing me a real headache so i planned to excommunicate the Emperor to rid me of him but never got a chance.
Quite embarrassing really, but i choked to death by swallowing a fly which had been floating in my goblet of wine but i was a trailblazer and proof that anyone can become Pope and the Church welcomes all, as long as you’re not gay or into science or anything like that anyway.

Not Trusting Israel In Any Peace Deal

Donald Trump has claimed that Israel is ready to agree to a peace deal with Hamas as he seeks to broker a ceasefire to the war in Gaza that has claimed almost 60,000 lives, 600 killed by Israeli troops over the last few weeks when they arrived to collect food at aid stations.
The details are sketchy but we know Israel has agreed to a 60-day ceasefire and immediately we must ask if Israel is keen on the deal, then it must be seen as overly favourable to them.
Unfortunately we have been here before, it was only a few months ago that Israel reneged on the last ceasefire and began attacking Palestine again so hard to think that this will be any different especially as it is only a 60 day pause to the genocide Israel has been conducting.
A temporary ceasefire rather than a permanent one is due to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu knowing that if he agreed to a permanent ceasefire, his Government full of warmongering right wingers hell bent on continuing the war and eliminating the Palestinians would collapse and bring forward his many court cases alleging fraud and corruption which carries a ten year prison sentence.
With the prospect of jail, Netanyahu is in no rush to permanently end the war and a temporary ceasefire, which means he could restart it any time on any of the trumped up charges he used last time, could see a return to the slaughter.
I am no friend of Hamas but i would say to them if a murdering maniac is keen to pause the war, and if Donald Trump is behind it who we saw was only willing to throw Ukraine under the bus to satisfy Russia and end that war, then i would proceed with extreme care because if it is satisfactory to Israel, it will certainly not be for the people of Palestine and we would see a return to the status quo which saw Israel murder the Palestinians and steal their land with impunity for the past 75 years.

The End Is Sort Of Nigh

So far, human beings have managed to avoid being completely eradicated like so many species in the history of life on Earth but scientists put the Earth at halfway through a 10 billion year life-span after which it will run out of energy, expand and engulf us all but hey, we got another 5 billion years to worry about all that so party on, or so we thought.
Scientists at  the University of Toho in Japan have crunched the numbers and come up with a date when life will become hospitable, and it is a lot less than 5 billion years.
The Sun's death will be a slow process but they have taken into account atmospheric conditions and the reduction in Oxygen, rising temperatures and deteriorating   air quality and pegged the date for when life will be completely unable to survive on Earth as the year 1,000,002,021, give or take a few years.
My calculator shows that we've got around 999,999,995 years left which seems a long time but it's a lot shorter than the original 5 billion years we thought we had although the way things are going, we will be long gone by then anyway.

Special Guest Blogger: Philip II of Spain

Spanish culture flourished during my reign, beginning the Spanish Golden Age and creating a lasting legacy in literature, music and the visual arts and we considered Spain as the center of the Christian world and me as the chief defender of Catholic Europe.
I fervently believed that God was also a fanatically Catholic who savoured the smell of burning heretics and had a real beef with Elizabeth, the Queen of England after what her father did to Catholicism but nobody told me that God had changed sides in our war with the British.
I assumed God was vexed by the shenanigans of the Protestant Queen and told my military commanders: 'You are engaged in God’s service and in mine, which is the same thing' and that was to be put to the test in 1588 when the Almighty and I launched an invasion to rid the world of the English Jezebel and re-establishing Catholicism over there.
'I am so convinced that God our Savior must embrace it as His own cause, that I cannot be dissuaded' i said when i waved off my Holy Armada against the English.
I chose the Duke of Medina Sidonia to lead the attack but he tried to pull out saying he didn't feel worthy to lead such an important mission (and he suffered from seasickness) but i assured him that God would guide and help him so off he popped along with 130 ships and 30,000 soldiers and sailors all pointing their ships towards the southern coast of England.
I even made sure the ships had plenty of priests aboard just to give God a little nudge if he needed it during the skirmishes but they turned out to be no use at all as the English battered our ships due to, ironically, an act of God when a great wind whipped up and drove the Spanish Armada farther toward the North Sea and as it attempted to make its way home around Scotland and down the western coast of Ireland, savage storms destroyed much of the remaining fleet.
My reputation never recovered and many European princes and religious leaders turned against Spain but worst of all and the greatest insult was God favoured the English over me...THE BLOODY ENGLISH!!