The Gaza Peace Plan

So we have a 20 point Peace Plan which Israel and most of the Middle East nations have agreed to and Hamas are studying but we have been here so many times before and it all sadly ends up the same way.
On the one side you have a terrorist group who massacred over 1500 people in 2023 and on the other a Government wanted for war crimes and committing a genocide so there are no good guys here and i would trust both as far as i could throw a piano which is why i am pessimistic unless the 20 point plan comes with some hard rules because we don't want to be back here again in a year.
The plan supposedly ends with a total withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza and a Palestinian state but Benjamin Netanyahu has already stated he will oppose both of these and Israeli troops will stay occupying Gaza and no Palestinians State so that's not a great start.
The usual Israeli tactics when a peace plan is reached is to suddenly move the goalposts, make demands that it knows cannot be kept and then return to the slaughter and occupation, it is a well trod road and exactly what they did only a few months ago when just before the second phase of the agreement when the hostages would be released in small groups, Israel demanding that Hamas release all the remaining hostages first which allowed Netanyahu to say that Hamas were in violation and started dropping the bombs again.   
I fully expect Israel to do it again and it has already started with Netanyahu's statements which is why the Palestinians need tougher back up so they can't.
I am no fan of Tony Blair but his Palestinians Panel may make sure that both sides keep to the deal they agreed to and make it tougher for Israel to renege on as well as pursue a legitimate Government for the Palestinians but what may be needed is a UN Peace Keeping force to stand between the two.
This would stop Hamas from rearming and firing rockets and also stop Israel from making military incursions into Palestine because that is where it always go wrong.
Israel has militarily occupied Palestine for over 75 years, murdering the civilians and stealing their land to build settlements upon and that is why we cannot return to that because that is the awful status quo but we have to go past that and make sure their is a viable Palestinian nation at the end of it.
The full details of the 20 points have not yet been released and there may be some sticking points but i think that the way Netanyahu agreed to it almost immediately means one of two things, either he hopes Hamas reject it so to give him cover to continue the genocide or, and Israel have a long history of form in this, he has absolutely no plan to stick to it and will be busy thinking of ways to sabotage it and blame the Palestinians for it.

Special Guest Blogger: John Candy

Someone said Life is life a box of chocolates and that is very true, neither last long if you are morbidly obese and i struggled with the weight of my success as well as my literal weight.
My father was a large man and died of a heart attack aged only 35 so i tried to keep fit and was a pretty decent football player but a knee injury wrecked any chance of a career so I got into acting while attending university in the Toronto chapter of an improvisational comedy troupe and we started up the hit sketch television series, Second City Television (SCTV).
People seemed to like that in the land of maple syrup and bacon and got me noticed in Hollywood and i got a small role in The Blues Brothers  but my big break came with 1981’s Stripes. this introduction to real Hollywood filmmaking, however, was almost more than my already overloaded heart could handle.
Most comedians in my position became obsessed with women, substances, and the hard partying lifestyle but i was happily married and had no interest in the hard stuff at that time and starred in some of the most successful comedies of the 80s and 90s although i missed out on Ghostbusters, i did get to star in the music video for Ray Parker Jr's hit single 'Ghostbusters' to help promote the soundtrack for the film.
Unfortunately, i then discovered an interest for the hard stuff and took to drink and drugs and my weight was ballooning and was living life in the fast lane but the death of my friend  John Belushi from an overdose slowed me down but the damage, sadly, was already done as i just couldn't get the weight off due to a pastry addiction and tipped the scales at 300 lbs.
To be fair, discipline was never in my genes but heart disease was and my heart finally gave out.

MMR Vaccine Nonsense

While making his ridiculous and unsubstantiated statement on pregnant women taking Paracetomal during pregnancy, he also claimed that there was a link between the mumps, measles and rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism.
I remember speaking about this way back when it was a thing over here and i have dug out the details from back then and since then (2000ish), it has become even more clear that it is nonsense.
The link between childhood vaccines and autism first gained mainstream attention after a paper by British doctor Andrew Wakefield was published in the medical journal The Lancet in 1998 but it was discovered that Wakefield was found to have financial conflicts of interest including that some of his test patients connected with a lawsuit against vaccine companies and the UK's General Medical Council (GMC) found that he falsified his results. The research paper was retracted and Wakefield was struck off the medical register in 2010.
Multiple studies since have found no link between the MMR vaccine and autism, a study from Denmark in 2019 looked at 1.4 million children and concluded that their was no link between childhood vaccines and autism.
One ingredient in vaccines, Aluminium, was targeted by weird anti-vaxxers as the cause of autism but the childhood vaccines contained 4.4mg which is less than breast milk (7mg), Formula milk (38mg), and even a slice of cheese (50mg) so that idea quickly fell flat.
Studies show that the genetic and environmental factors such as air pollution and exposure to pesticides are the largest driver of autism along with older parents, injury during birth and viral infection whilst pregnant.
The British Medical Journal explain that autism tends to emerge around the same time children receive the vaccines, around age 2-3 and the UK Government have dismissed any link between vaccines and autism, saying there is 'no evidence' and the CDC in America has said: 'President Trump produced no evidence that the current immunisation schedule in the States was harmful and no evidence that giving the combined MMR vaccine was unsafe' and then showed a graph that shows MMR vaccines in USA have dropped from the 95% threshold needed to prevent transmission of measles virus to between 89% and 92% and blamed that for the US seeing the highest cases for measles in more than three decades, resulting in three deaths.
The GMC added that: The authors of the withdrawn (Andrew Wakefield) paper clearly stated that they had not proven a link but suggested more research should be done. That research has been done, and no evidence of a link has been found'.
As conclusive as it could be from professionals and you would have to be window shakily stupid to dismiss their advice that the overwhelming scientific evidence is that the MMR vaccination is a massive plus for health and is safe for our children and listen to someone who said of a possible cure for during Covid: 'I see the disinfectant where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning?'
Yeah, he's the one to listen to obviously.

Dont Bother Reading If You're Over 28

I don't want to come across as Cheugy so i was amped ASL when i was asked to write a post on Gen Z speak so i asked a bunch of Gen Z's to make a post which wasn't basic.
At first they thought i was Cray Cray to even attempt it, hard to make a Beige flag post about their slang Bussin' but IYKYK, and they certainly did.
Obviously being youngsters, we had to do it in the afternoon due to bed rot and they promised to Keep it 100 although NGL, they could cap all the way through and i wouldn't know any different, it's what i would do at their age.
We met up at the cafe in the local park which suited them because it gave them a reason to touch grass for a change me because it meant we could take in flavoured air as we spoke and i'm a bit of a Granola anyway so when i arrived i knew who to look for as most were highlighter kids so i got the coffees in because being students, none were Hella Skrilla.
So now we were all finna to spill the tea on this new language and it was all bussin' and i was filling up my notepad with Gen Z speak and as most of them were G's, it was a very friendly and rewarding meeting and after around 30 mins they began saying they had to dip but by then i had plenty to got through while i ate my girls dinner on the way back to work.
Gen Z does have a bit of a reputation for being a bit Salty but i found this group to be totes on fleck, a few were there with their boos and some i had known for a while and some of the boys i knew a while ago and were Big Backs then, are now Looksmaxxing and good for them.
After making sure nobody needed a swoop, i bought my scribble back to my desk and texted it to one guy who i thought was showing small dick energy at the time and i deliberately picked out to be my contact as a bit of a confidence boost and at first i thought he was going to leave me on read but finally he got back and said he made a few changes but otherwise it was dub.
So i am stoked to say here it is, a smol post courtesy of my new sick friends in the park and i am not Delulu enough to think they haven't inserted a few Fan Service words, as i said earlier it is exactly what i would have done at their age so i won't have a Menty b if they have, no ick from me for that.
Now that this is done i am off to ask my friend if she wants to go out and find a snack with me, that waiter at the cafe was totes above Mid, Periodt!!!

Thank you guys and if you ever need some 80's words translated, i'm your bird.

Unconvinced About ID Cards

ID Cards are back and i was initially against them when Tony Blair first mentioned introducing them in a fight against terrorism, this time they are being repackaged as a necessary part of the fight against illegal immigrants.
Despite being told by various members of Keir Starmer's Government how they will actually stop immigrants working, i still don't really understand how because if you are here illegally, you are hardly going to be filling out application forms for 'proper' jobs and will surly be heading towards cash in hand work where no details are required to earn your wage.
We already have information that proves who we are, every British National is issued with a National Insurance number when we hit 16 and if you come to the country, you are given a National Insurance number which begins with the letter 'S' so that's you pointed out that you are not British when it is asked for.
The issue is that a National Insurance number is only checked by employers to make sure you are who you say you are and i could easily give someone else's Number and their name, i would still get paid and why would I worry about National Insurance contributions, i'm not going to retire here anyway.   
That makes sense and currently if we have to prove who we are we need lots of forms of identification such as passport, driving license and utility bills so having one card which verifies all that is quite smart but i forsee many problems, hacking is one of them because if someone gets all that information in one go...basically your knackered.
My other concern is the good old slippery slope and what that could be used for by future more nefarious governments and suddenly we have a scheme with the most basic of information held to absolutely everything held such as medical records, affiliations, political memberships and all sorts of data that once all put together, could be a minefield.  
I therefore file the idea of ID cards under the file marked 'Unconvinced' but then it doesn't matter because as Blair found out, it has absolutely as much chance of getting through the Commons and the House of Lords as i have of ever saying anything nice about Nigel Farage's weird lopsided face. 

Israel Further Isolated

Finally and shamefully much too late, the World is turning against Israel as the Eurovision Song Contest look as though they will be asking Israel not to bother turning up this year and UEFA are taking a vote on whether to kick the National side out of the World Cup and ban their team representatives from the European Cups.
Generally i am not in favour of mixing Sport and Politics but that ship sailed when Russia and Belarus where removed from sporting and Entertainment events so if Russia are out then so should be Israel for their ongoing genocide in Gaza.
The news i am hearing is that with 20 nations voting on the UEFA Committee, and it only needing a simple majority and the 11 required will be easily surpassed so finally some consequences for the evil they are doing.
This follows many nations walking out of the United Nations chamber when Benjamin Netanyahu rolled up to the podium amidst boos where he is only protected by the lickspillte American Government who bizarrely seem okay with his actions which has resulted in at least 65,000 deaths, amazing how much support spending billions on American weapons to drop on schools and hospitals will get you.
The plane taking the mass murderer to New York even had to divert around Europe in fear that it would be forced down and Netanyahu arrested by a European nation, what with his Arrest Warrant against his blackened name for war crimes.
Israel is becoming more and more isolated as Greta Thunberg's Relief Flotilla of 50 vessels bears down on Israel and have already come under Israeli drone attack as ridiculously the Israeli Minister said it was  supporting Hamas but at least they didn't reach for that cliched trope that it was antisemitic.
Oh Hang on,  they did with Zionist Media outlet, Arutz Shultz, saying Greta's flotilla was antisemitic and working to delegitimise the State of Israel for which the brilliant Greta replied that: 'It is not antisemitic to say that we should not be bombing people, that one should not be living in occupation'. Go Girl!!!
Israel is fast becoming the South Africa of the modern age and like the Apartheid regime, are facing international boycotts in sports, culture, and education and Worldwide protests and amazingly, South Africa's biggest supporter at the time was, guess who, America who vetoed UN sanctions and continued to sell them arms to tyrant PW Botha and even provided the information that led to Nelson's Mandela's arrest.
The America leadership it seems, is on the wrong side of history...again.

Brilliant English Ladies

I don't know the first thing about rugby but i was there at Twickenham today with 81,000 others, cheering the Red Roses against the Canadians and taking my cue from people who know more than me and cheering when everyone else cheered and thoroughly enjoying it.
First our ladies won the European Football Championship and now the Rugby ladies have picked up the (Rugby) ball and dropped it behind the line to bring home the World Cup and next week starts the Women's Cricket World Cup so we could yet make it a hat trick.
Much has been made about the morons hanging England flags from lampposts to show their patriotism (in truth it is to intimidate anyone not white English whatever they grunt monosyllabically about it) but it is moments like this which should be held up as what makes us proud and not just the team but the crowd.
I do notice when i go to watch Ladies sports, the atmosphere is just nicer and more sporting, no booing of the Canadian national anthem, no crude hand gestures or screams whenever a player comes to the side and is within earshot of the baying crowd.  
Just another reason to my logic that men should be sidelined and women should run everything, just think how much nicer everything would be but anyway, brilliant stuff ladies, it is people like you who make us proud to be English.

Special Guest Blogger: Dimebag Darrell

I never started out as Dimebag Darrell, i was Diamond Darrell at the beginning which wasn't such a fitting name for the lead guitar of hard rock band Pantera.
It all began for me on my 12th birthday when i got given a Les Paul-style Hondo guitar along with a Pignose amplifier which sparked a lifelong love affair with the guitar, marking the beginning of my journey to becoming one of metal's most revered guitarists or it did once i learnt how to play the thing.
I got given a guitar but i really wanted to be a drummer like my brother but he wouldn't share them with me so in true rock style, i taught myself and got so good that i began entering competitions  and at just 14 i won a guitar contest and my mum was so proud, especially as she had to come with me because i was too young to enter the club alone and she had to accompany me.
In 1981, my brother asked me to join a rock band he was making up called Pantera with his high school buddies but they were not convinced, considering me a little skinny, scrawny kid who was not heavy enough to rock with them but onced they heard me play, they were happy to have me.
Megadeth did come and ask me if i wanted to join them but i turned them down as Pantera was on the verge of good things.
Our first Album was pretty ok, it was in the style of Kiss or one of those other 80s hair groups so i said we need to go heavier which we did and we got a new singer and the second album was better but i thought we could go even heavier which we did in our next release which critics said pushed the boundaries of Heavy Metal and this newfound fame required a newfound name to go with the heavier sound so i went with Dimebag.
So we made another album and critics hailed it as the heaviest album ever to top the charts, solidifying our place in metal history but now the downfall and the amazing death sequence.
Our lead singer, Phil Anselmo,  took to heavy drinking, pills, and eventually smack, at one point he overdosed and was clinically dead for 4 minutes and the band began to break up so we split and my brother and i made up a new band, Damageplan, although some Pantera fans, and one in particular, were not impressed.
At a concert one fan stormed the stage and caused $1,800 worth of damage but we were rockers and took it in our stride but a few months later in Columbus, Ohio, the same fan ran onto the stage, shouted 'This is for breaking up Pantera' and shot me four times which beats dying in a plane crash or overdosing in a dingy hotel room although the absolute worst thing was at my funeral when it was divulged that i was a huge fan of Nickelback.

A Post By A Climate Change Denier

I do bang on about climate change a lot so in the interests of fairness, i am handing over this blog post to Donald, a 79 year old retired businessman and climate change denier who thinks the whole thing is a load of nonsense.

hello freedom fans, donald here.

the hate media is claiming that we brave climate deniers are no longer talking about climate change because there is so called 'clear and irrefutable evidence' that the climate is changing but i'm proud to say that I tend not to focus on those things.


the sad reality is that people believe lies and are not ready to hear the truth about how climate change is caused by solar storms and volcanoes. also magnets, trans people and immigrants. we all know climate change is a HOAX but sadly people refuse to pay attention, they are even distracted by the weather so we need to stop them focusing on huge storms, floods, fires and droughts that inexplicably keep happening when they should be worried about the global climate SCAM.

the climate change HOAXERS have been so successful in bringing their claims to the worlds attention that i have had to change my own courageous crusade of climate change skepticism which started off as Climate Change is not real through even if Climate Change is real its a natural phenonomum phumnomenum thing and we can't solve it anyway.

our real enemy people are renewables. we have windmills that kill birds and whales and everyone loves birds and whales and Solar Power which doesn't even work at night so that's you stuffed if you want to watch TV in the evening in britain when it gets dark at 3pm but while there are people like me willing to ignore all the scientific evidence, fortunately there is still hope that we can still save the Earth from the people trying to save it.

science doesn’t know everything you know. i mean, what is science anyway? only a rigorously tested, peer-reviewed, continually evolving system of knowledge about the way our world works, built up over centuries,that’s all. it’s not a patch on mindless conspiracy theories and ignorance which has been around far, far longer.

i leave you with this to ponder on, What if it's all a big hoax, and we go through all this bother to just create a better World for nothing? Think on that while you are shovelling dead birds away from your windmill.

all the best and thank you for your attention to this matter

donald

Special Guest Blogger: Adrian Carton de Wiart

People called me the 'the unkillable soldier' but as we know, no soldier is unkillable but i was certainly hard to kill as my record includes being shot in the face, head, stomach, ankle, leg, hip and ear and a couple of plane crashes, an escape from a POW camp and a self-inflicted amputation but i will give you the short version.
Born in Belgium, I was sent to England to learn a proper British education and was preparing for a career in law but that was interrupted by the Second Boer Conflict and the British Army needed boots on the ground so i volunteered and got the first of my bullet holes, one in the stomach and one in the groin.
These injuries didn’t slow me down though and luckily for me the start of the century was a great time for the British Army and then 1914 happened and a return to duty and another bullet wound, this time, during an attack on an enemy fort in Somaliland, i got shot in the ear and face and lost my left eye.
It did get me a natty eyepatch and moved out of Africa and into Europe though and that's where the real action was and at Ypres my hand got shattered by a German shell and in the medical tent the doctor refused to amputate my fingers so i tore them off myself although my self amputation skills were not up to snuff and i got sent back to England to have my whole hand amputated properly.
After recovering from my latest round of injuries, I managed to convince a medical board that, even without a left eye and left hand, I was fit for service and went on to lead the charge at the Battle of the Somme where i got shot in the back of the head.
Once again sent home to recover, I survived to get shot again, this time in the hip, one in leg and another through my ear at Arras so i was getting quite a metal collection back home.
I was sent to Poland in a diplomatic role but still managed to crash a plane and get captured by Lithuanian forces and on release by them i spent the next 15 years living on an Estate in relative peace until Soviet forces invaded and by then WW2 was kicking off.
Despite now being 60, I came out of retirement and returned to service as the head of the British-Yugoslavian Mission and traveled to Cairo to begin negotiations. As per usual, however, I had to add some drama to this adventures and en route, my plane crashed into the sea off the coast of Italian-controlled Libya and I managed to swim ashore only to wind up in the hands of the enemy Italian authorities.
Held as a POW, I tried to escape numerous times and i thought my goose was cooked when they took me to Rome but it was to return to England with a message of a proposed peace treaty.
I ended my time living in China but not before yet yet another plane that fell out of the sky from which i walked away from but in the end i had tempted fate one too many times and bullets and plane crashed couldn't kill me but a flight of stairs almost did, slipping on coconut mat and breaking several vertebrae so i took to living in Ireland until my last days which rather boringly, was a plain old heart attack.

Trump's Day

Now Donald Trump is a large man, he is the third fattest President in the history of the United States of America, and the rotund sex pest began yesterday pin-ponting the blame for autism on women taking Paracetamol when pregnant although experts can't agree what causes it, Trump and his cohorts of anti-vaxxers and conspiracy theorists seem to know more than the people with qualifications and experience in it, so who are we to argue.
It could be pointed out that during his first term and the Covid Pandemic, Trump's Medical advice was to suggest people drink disinfectant and led America to the top of the grimmest of league tables with 1.6m deaths or 17% of all 6m deaths around the entire World so he may not be far enough up the Medical chain to know what he is talking about.
After that he turned up the United Nations and broke the escalator and the teleprompter stopped working. Now i'm no Escaltor technician but we can see on the video that it was working perfectly find until he stepped on it, then it stopped. I do know that escalators have a maximum weight capacity and it is a safety feature that they stop when that maximum is exceeded and as i said at the start, Trump is a very, very fat man and 25 stone of President suddenly balancing on a escalator step is enough to make it scream 'EMERGENCY, TOO MUCH WEIGHT ' and turn itself off.
When he finally managed to drag himself to the podium, he went on an unhinged rant for 60 minutes about everything from Climate Change to Immigrants to Palestine which was met with a stony silence from the gathered diplomats and the deafening sound of millions of MAGA hats hitting the bin with a 'He's nothing to do with me' shrug from his rapidly dwindling bag of deplorable supporters.   
He even had a pop at the London Mayor, Sadiq Khan, for wanting to introduce Sharia Law and repeating how he didn't invite Khan to the Banquet at Windsor Castle last week for which Sadiq Khan said he asked not to be invited which is fair enough, imagine if you got in the way of the buffet table when Trump had smelt the sausage rolls, you would be lucky not to be trampled and spend 6 months in traction.  
He ended the day by signing an order which banned Antifa which now means that you cannot call out fascism in America which might come in very handy for the bunch of fascists running the country.
All in all a busy day for the Tangerine coloured Tyrant  and he must have slept well last night in the hope that one of these things had to gain traction and take the spotlight off his own sexual assaults and close friendship with a notorious pedophile who's files, which apparently contains Trump's name multiple times, he is refusing to release.  

Special Guest Blogger: African God Dubiaku

Burdened with eleven sons, my overworked mother couldn’t cope and asked the Gods for assistance. To solve the problem they helpfully sent Death.
When my mother said: “Dearest son, I’m going out tonight, but nice Mrs Death is coming to babysit”, no-one could blame him for being slightly suspicious. That evening, Mrs Death turned up with eleven of her own children, making it a kind of double babysit.
I was on my worst behavior. staying up way past bedtime, chewing tobacco, taking snuff and demanding snacks until Mrs Death didn’t know if she was coming or going. She decided to go outside and bang her head against a tree. Meanwhile I got busy...
Ten minutes later Mrs Death returned to the nursery with a sore head and a renewed sense of purpose. She ate the eleven children as she had been asked, and went to kiss her own children goodnight.
Too late she discovered that I had tinkered with the sleeping arrangements and sneaked his brothers out the back where they were hiding in a tree. Mrs Death had just eaten her own children. Cue bad attack of indigestion.
Screeching with rage, she dashed outside to find the missing kiddies. As she stood under a tree scratching her head, I peed on her head which she didn't take very well, and how did i know she knew a Falling Down Dead Spell.
All the boys fell out of the tree, except for me who had already jumped to escape the spell. Mrs Death climbed the tree to make sure she hadn’t missed anyone, and I turned the tables by repeating the Falling Down Dead Spell and Mrs Death fell dead.
By one of those quirks of fate with which mythology abounds, the tree happened to be on the banks of the Water-of-Life river. So I splashed my siblings with handfuls of water to restore them to life but accidentally allowed a drop or two to splash onto Mrs Death, who sprang up and chased us all. But the boys leapt into the river and swam to safety, all except little old me who couldn’t swim.
In a terrible rage, Mrs Death began throwing stones at the escapees. She picked up a particularly large one and hurled it towards the opposite bank. But it wasn’t really a stone, it was a cunningly disguised me so we all escaped and Mrs Death trudged home in a foul mood.

Recognising A Palestinian State

Finally, the UK, Portugal, Canada and Australia recognised the state of Palestine today ahead of a conference of the UN general assembly in New York where other nations are expected to join the recognition, including France, making over 150 countries, to have recognised Palestine by the end of next week,
In his announcement, Keir Starmer said that the announcement shows government’s hopes for a secure Israel alongside a viable Palestine although predictably, the Israeli leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, whose own party rejects there ever being a Palestinian State, says recognition is a prize for terrorism although for most decent people it is a response to over 70 years of military occupation and genocide against the Palestinians as the abhorrent death toll from the war on Gaza continues to rise and conditions for the people trapped there become even more desperate.
The move comes after the end of the British mandate in Palestine in 1948 and the formation of the state of Israel which as any history buff will explain, came about as reward for their own terrorism.
The Irgun was a body of Zionist Jews who actively sought to establish a Jewish state and through assassinations, bombing British hotels, markets, police stations and Embassy's, posting letter bombs and kidnappings as well as massacring entire Palestinian villages, forced Britain to withdraw from Palestine and give up its mandate to pass the problem to the United Nations who partitioned Palestine into separate Arab and Jewish states.
So if Israel is condemning the formation of a Palestinians state as a 'reward for Hamas' and their terrorist acts, they must know that Israel therefore came about as a 'reward' for their own terrorism or maybe, just like the genocide they are committing, it is different if they are the ones doing it.
What the UN can do about, especially as it is the United States complicit in facilitating and dismissing the war crimes, is another thing but as one Labour MP said, we have placed ourselves on the right side of history and although this recognition alone won’t change the lives of Palestinians, it is a timely and necessary riposte to an authoritarian Israeli government that has increasingly made Israel a pariah state.

Special Guest Blogger: Xerxes I

I am probably most well known for fighting the Greeks, they made quite a decent film about me.
Back then, life was hard, even for a prince and my name in Iranian meant 'ruling over heroes' so that's a title to live up to.
Raised by eunuchs and powerful Zoroastrian religious figures, my upbringing was intense and at the age of seven I was learning to ride horses and hunt game to make me battle-ready because when i was 16, all Princes has to serve 25 long years of national service learning archery and spear throwing but handily my sudden ascension to the throne aged 20 cut this short.
My fathers favourite past-time was declaring war on Greece for which he taxed his citizens heavilly but it was marching to a scrap with Egypt that he died leaving me in charge but the king needed a queen and i had a sweet Cousin and we was wed and we were ready to rule our vast empire.
The issue with our empire was it was too vast and encompassed many different religious groups who would get a bit uppity sometimes but going in and destroying all their religious temples and statues soon put out their fire.
Being a ruthless leader and sending in troops all over soon depleted my army so the next fight with the Greeks was postponed for 4 years while i built up my army and charted a course and literally moved heaven and earth to smooth the journey to Greecewell, the earth part, at least as i oversaw the digging of the Xerxes Canal through the Mount Athos peninsula, had provisions brought ahead and stored along the route, and built two bridges across the Hellespont Strait in preparation. Two because the first one collapsed so i had the Strait whipped 300 times and the strait learnt its lesson as the second attempt at the bridge was successful.
The stage was set so I personally led his army across the Hellespont into Europe and won a battle at Artemisium and many Greeks offering support to side with us and when i arrived at Thermopylae to face the Spartans we numbered 1 million men.
Laughably we faced 300 men led by King Leonidas and obviously we slaughtered them and capture Athens which we promptly burnt to the ground.
It was now that i perhaps got a bit cocky because with most of the land conquered, i went after the Greek fleet and should have waited until the storm passed by told them to attack anyway and the Greek fleet, with something of a home advantage in the poor conditions, trounced us so i ran away with what was left of my army and went home and built magnificent structures instead and having affairs.
By August of 465 BC, I was no more, betrayed by one of my own bodyguards.

News From The Weather Channel

I'm not sure what to make of it but in a YouGov survey of American Adults who were asked who they most trusted to get their news from, the top choice was The Weather Channel. Our very own BBC was second amongst Americans and then PBS made the top three.
As important as it is to know if you need an umbrella, not sure how a Channel that gives you Weather Information can be the most trusted for giving out News unless they have a Current Affairs program between the Weather reports but all the plaudits go to them and i will accept them on behalf of the BBC, whose turn is it to get the cakes in?  
I guess we could tell our BBC Weather people to up their game but the YouGov Poll does have a lot more to unpack so leaving my Blueberry Muffin on the side for a minute, let's delve into it.   
The poll shows 56% of Americans go actively seeking news and that most Americans get it from Social Media (Facebook and Youtube mostly), Television (BBC, PBS) and friends and Families (Uncle George and Cousin Bob).  
In the UK, YouGov found that the most trusted Broadcast Journalists were at the BBC and then ITV and Channel 4 News with the least trusted at GB News and Channel 5 with the most trusted Press Journalists could be found at The Financial Times, The Guardian and then The Times.
Sadly, for the Journalists at the Daily Star and The Sun, the British public believe what you write about as much as they trust you to find your own arse with both your hands and a mirror.
Now, where did i put that Muffin.

Special Guest Blogger: Jack Wild

Like many child actors, I developing unhealthy habits early on in life, i was smoking 20 a day by aged 12.
My mum was a theatrical agent and she got me and my brother into the Barbara Speake Stage School where we got put into a production based on Oliver Twist and when the role came up in the film production, I auditioned for the role of Oliver but got offered the Artful Dodger instead.
Following the release of Oliver!, i got offered TV roles  but due to my youthful face and short stature, i kept getting offered to play young boys so i packed in the acting and tried a career as a singer and had some success at that and at 20 i was a millionaire, wore hand-made suits, ate at best restaurants and hired  a Chauffeur to drive me around and then the worst possible thing happened, i started to look older.
No more child star or teen heartthrob the TV industry passed me over and spent more and more time unemployed which gave me more time for my new hobby, drinking.
Being so rich at a young age hadn’t prepared me very well and the money soon went and i registered for unemployment benefits and spent that on booze also which earned me acute pancreatitis and a warning i would die if i carried on drinking i'd be dead by 30.
Three heart attacks and a diagnose of diabetes didn't help my mental state and i became paranoid people were trying to kill me and was committed to a hospital under the Mental Health Act.
I did make a bit of a comeback, acting alongside Kevin Costner in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and i got a few roles in the Theatre and just as things looked on the up, fate smashed me around the head with mouth cancer so surgery took my tongue and my voice box so now i could only do non-speaking parts.
I know i messed up and one of the last things i did was write to Daniel Radcliffe, who had just got the role of Harry Potter and congratulated the young star and emphatically warned Radcliffe of making the same mistakes as me which was to get older.

UN Calls It Israeli Genocide In Palestine

A United Nations commission of inquiry announcing that Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza is like saying that they found that rain is wet because you would need to be ignorant on an industrial scale to not see what they are doing is genocidal.
The 72 page report found that Israel has committed, and continue to commit, four of the five genocidal acts defined under international law: Killing members of a group, Causing them serious bodily and mental harm, Deliberately inflicting conditions calculated to destroy the group and Preventing births, which was a law which ironically was written by Jews after the Holocaust to prosecute the Nazi's.
It cites statements by Israeli leaders, and the pattern of conduct by Israeli forces, as evidence and the 64,964 people which is widely seen as an under-count, have been killed in Israeli attacks which have seen residential and UN buildings, hospitals, schools, safe zones and civilians targeted as well as the deliberate famine and murder of starving civilians collecting food and water which was imposed by the Israeli Government.
Israel's foreign ministry, as expected, said it categorically rejected the report, denouncing it as: 'distorted and antisemitic' although that much used and now watered down phrase is negated when the report also found Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups guilty of war crimes in Gaza.
The Israeli have always insisted that Israeli forces operate in accordance with international law and take all feasible measures to mitigate harm to civilians so maybe they are just really, really bad at it but more than likely the Qatar Emir hit the nail on the head when he said that Israel wants to make Gaza uninhabitable in order to displace its population and  ethnically cleanse that piece of land.
The Report includes  a line warning all other countries that they have have an immediate obligation under the Genocide Convention to prevent and punish the crime of genocide and if they do not, they could be complicit which means America mostly as they continue to not only supply the weapons to continue the genocide but fund it also.
A number of international and even Israeli human rights organisations, independent UN experts, and scholars have previously accused Israel of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has issued arrest warrants for Hamas and Israeli leaders accused of genocide.
That the victim of genocide is now the perpetrator of one is a shame that an ever more isolated Israel will now have to contend with forever.

Welcome Back Trump

If you woke up and thought the United Kingdom looked a little bit more Orange this morning then you would be right because Donald Trump landed here and was greeted as he flew over Windsor Castle with the sight of a massive picture of him and his Pedophile friend Jeffrey Epstein projected onto the side of the Castle.
If he was not happy with the huge baby Balloon that was flown in his honour last time he was here then he is sure to have been a grumpy bugger once he saw that although the protests against the sex pest coming here are being kept away, or rather he is being kept away from them as the tour doesn't take in any of the Pageantry and Coach rides through London Town which usual Royal Visitors enjoy, including France's President Macron a few short weeks ago, Trump will have to make do with a trip around the grounds of Windsor Castle instead.
As the third fattest American President has no public-facing engagements to shield him from all sorts of protest banners (Impeach The Orange was a personal highlight last time), there is a grand state banquet being hosted but there will be a few extra spaces as some MP's are refusing to turn up in protest although it has not been announced if Prince Andrew is going, would be nice if he did because now Peter Mandleson isn't in post anymore, it would give Trump a familiar face to talk with about their mutual friend and trips on his Lolita Express plane.
Speaking to reporters mid-flight on his way over yesterday, Trump said: 'My relationship is very good with the UK' so he might be surprised to hear that although he won't be there, tens of thousands of people are still expected to take part in a major protest against his stay in central London today which should give us an opportunity to see some witty banners regarding his orange skin/pedophile friends/weight/silly hair/sex pest conviction or being a fascist which is a wide choice of options indeed.
They may be able to shield him from the baying mob but not the media and tomorrow sees a joint Press Conference with the British Prime Minister and one thing he will find out is that he may be able to silence the fawning and submissive American media but he won't get that luxury here and will face questions on the Epstein scandal engulfing him. 
He may be hoping that being this side of the Water the name Epstein slip away, especially as when it is mentioned it rattles the Tangerine Tyrant like nothing else, so it will prod, prod prod to try and make him explode and say ridiculous things, which he obviously will because he's Donald Trump.

Special Guest Blogger: Tom Petty

I may have come from the land of sunshine, trailers, and gators, but I was not the laid back cool guy that everyone assumed, i may have nailed the too cool to care vibe, but beneath it all i was a bubbling cauldron of psychological chaos long before the superstardom, the Traveling Wilburys, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and selling over 80 million albums.
I was a  quiet, artsy kid who would see Elvis and the Beatles on TV and thought 'I could do that' and i took some guitar lessons with a local resident who knew his way around the fretboard,  Don Felder, and played in a couple of local bands but soon we was cruising from Florida to Los Angeles in a VW camper van with band, my girlfriend, the open road, good vibes, a demo tape and of course, a little weed and once there we got a few nibbles from record executives.
I sensed bigger things on the horizon but the interest fizzled out and i drifted around LA, got married and my now wife gave birth to my daughter and we reformed the group, called them Heartbreakers and took a harder, sharper kick at the pop star can.
Strangely i was bigger in the UK at the start, the Brits really took to me before America but our album, 'Damn the Torpedoes' launched us there too although Britain seemed to just forget about me and i never had a top 25 single there afterwards but as my stardom took off, my marriage  was free falling and my wife's mental health was declining.
Sadly, her grip was loosening fast and we split although she did come back, once  at the end of the driveway in a limo, screaming and trying to get the driver to ram the gate.
By now i was a big star and my tours were anything but small-time and for the Heartbreakers’ 40th-anniversary tour in 2016, disaster struck before the tour even began.
During rehearsals, I slipped and fractured my hip. The sensible thing would have been to postpone the 53 date tour and recover but i did the furthest thing from that and carried on resulting in the fractured hip becoming a broken one.
In pain i drastically upped the pain killers which wasn't a wise move because my wife found me collapsed on the floor of our home and rushed me to the hospital but a full cardiac arrest, Heartbreakers to Heartbroken you could say, and that finished the job.

Special Guest Blogger: King Arthur

And lo, at the hour of England’s greatest need, a King will step forth to lead them and sweep the English to a legendary victory. Could a mere man turn out to be one of the greatest war leaders this land had ever known, famously expelling the invaders and becoming a national folk hero who would inspire poets and storytellers down through the ages?
Well, no, frankly because first things first, i didn't exist. You may have heard talk of Arthur the King of the Britons who was famous for owning a table which was not rectangular and mixed it with Magicians but i agree, the back story is very compelling.
I was supposedly around at a time when Swords where what matters. Swords, that’s what it had all been about. Swords and cutting off heads. That was how you got land in other nations in the old days, and then the rules were changed so that you didn’t need a sword to own land anymore, you just needed the right piece of paper. But some people still hung on to their swords, just in case people thought that the whole thing with the bits of paper was unfair, it being a fact that you can’t please everybody.
I was the son of a strange liaison between King Uther Pendragon and Ygerna, Duchess of Cornwall and raised by noble knight Sir Ector and knighted as King after pulling a sword out of a great anvil and later when the sword broke, having it replaced by The Lady of the lake whose hand rose out of the lake and handed me the magical sword called Exalibur which guaranteed victory.
Yeah, I can see how that would be hard to disbelieve but hate to pee on your campfire but it's all made up.
I didn't marry Guinevere, the most beautiful woman in Britain or chum around with Sir Lancelot in Camelot and the Holy Grail search was made up and Modred didn't kill me but worst of all, I am not laying dead on the Isle of Avalon, waiting to rise up once the people of Britain have need of me again. You are on your own people!

Guess Who's Back Keir

Oh dear, Keir Starmer may end up regretting sacking Lucy Powell from the role of Leader of The House of Commons last week because she is in the final two of the contest for the recently vacant role of Deputy Leader of the Labour Party.
I'm a Labour supporter and even i say the last 12 months of Labour Government have been awful, not Conservative Party awful, but really not good and the calls for the stubbornly boring Keir to be replaced by someone more 'Labour' is growing which takes some doing after such a short time at the helm but after a year of Labour shouting at him to do something different, he only has himself to blame.
I would usually be championing Angela Raynor but that boat sailed when she evaded, and then lied about, her tax affairs so i would have to have a look around to see who is left standing before committing but the role of Deputy seems to be between Powell who has been critical of the way Labour has Governed and Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson who is Number 10's choice.
Unfortunately for Number 10 though, the decision is down to the Labour Party members and Lucy Powell is believed to be the most popular candidate amongst ordinary members which could be awkward for Starmer, especially as her closest friend is Andy Burnham who is widely tipped to be the one to take over if something happens to Starmer, such as he is removed from power by his own Party.
Things could get interesting in the Labour Party which is something nobody has ever said under Keir Starmer.

Special Guest Blogger: Krampus

You’d better watch out because i may be a Christmas spirit but i am more like Satan than Santa. One is a jolly rotund fellow with a fluffy white beard. The other is a menacing shaggy-haired Eastern-European monstrosity with hideous curling horns and huge red tongue. We both do carry a sack though. Not for the same reason.
I see myself as part of a carrot-and-stick approach to children’s behavior. Good kids are rewarded with lovely gifts from Father Christmas’s magic sack. Naughty kids get a visit from Krampus who stuffs them into my sack and carted off back to Krampus HQ to be punished and by that i mean eaten.
But I don't want you to think that i'm all bad, in some regions and traditions I do actually bring gifts. Okay, so they are evil gifts for horrible people, but it’s the thought that counts isn’t it? If you are an adult who despises children, I will sometimes supply such practical gifts as whips, chains and big stickswith which to punish and bludgeon the little’uns.
In many European countries, December 5th is Krampusnacht (The Night of Krampus), a sort of Halloween do-over featuring groups of often inebriated Krampuses (Krampi?) roaming the streets and frightening people.
As its name suggests, it's a gloriously extreme costume parade complete with shockingly ugly make-up and all dedicated to me.

Banning Israel From Eurovision?

I am conflicted over the rash of withdrawals from the Eurovision Song Contest if Israel is involved because on the one hand i want to keep Politics and Entertainment separate but on the other you can't treat a nation committing Genocide to be treated like everyone else as if nothing is happening.
The Irish, Spanish, Belgium, Iceland, Slovenia and now Netherlands are saying they will not take part in the contest being held Vienna in May 2026 if Israel appears.
Earlier this year, more than 70 former Eurovision contestants, including ast years winner, signed a letter calling on the organisers to ban Israel and the Eurovision Organisers did try and nudge them out last year by saying they could not sing their original song but then they just wrote another one and ended up performing amidst boos from the audience.
As Spain is one of the big 5 who qualify automatically for the Grand Final each year because their broadcasters make the largest financial contributions to the Eurovision organisation, so that could focus a few minds in the contests HQ and especially if any of the other largest contributors in France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom withdrawal although the UK's Eurovision Committee has so far declined to comment on if they will participate.
The Eurovision, about to celebrate it's 70th anniversary, issued  a statement which said that: 'We understand the concerns and deeply held views around the ongoing conflict in the Middle East. We are still consulting with all EBU Members to gather views on how we manage participation and geopolitical tensions around the Eurovision Song Contest' .
If several more countries were to withdraw from Eurovision it would have serious ramifications for the format of two semi finals and a grand final as well as financial but as Russia has been asked not to bother due to the invasion of Ukraine, it is hard to see how Israel can be allowed to enter.   

US Civil War 2

There was some guy on the radio last night and he was predicting that the shooting of Charlie Kirk could very well spark a Civil War in America which sounded so hyperbolic that i dismissed it, especially as predictions of a looming civil war has been uttered a few times but i did wonder what would the 2nd American Civil War look like?
I assume they mean it would be between the ideological left and the right rather than slavery this time but then you could tell who the enemy was because it was South against North and they conveniently wore different coloured uniforms so you knew who you were shooting at but it would be tricky to see who is left and right so can't see how that would work.
I have always managed to sort the left leaning males from the right leaning males by hairstyles. In my mind right wing men have short, gelled and smart hairstyles while lefty men usually have long hair that goes in whatever direction the wind is blowing but that is my own rule of thumb but Psychologists have conducted studies which may help Americans pinpoint who in their neighbourhood is today's version of the Yankees and the Dixies.
If you look through a window and front room is messy, cluttered, colourful and contains maps or flags, then they are on the left side of the political fence but if its neat, clean, organized, brightly lit and contains paintings or pictures of buildings then they on the opposite side.
Lefts have more books are are likely to listen to classical music or jazz, enjoy abstract art, like romantic comedies and play musical instruments while the right are more likely to be religious and like country music.
Of course it would be much easier if the left just held their fist in the air occasionally and called everyone comrade or the right wore T-shirts with Swastika's on and gave Nazi Salutes but it isn't that easy  and unfortunately there have been enough Civil Wars in years gone by to know that the winner is always the one who the Army back, and we can't tell who that would be.
I guess what will happen now is some right winger will target a high profile left winger who in return will target a right winger and it will escalate from there but until the left and right come up with uniforms, can't see it happening.

How To Measure A Nation's Success

With the budget looming, we will be hearing much about tax rises and GDP and the state of the economy and using that as a measure of how well Britain is doing and although it may be a fairly useful indicator of a country’s performance, economic performance is not everything.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves has said that economic growth was the priority of her Labour Government but why should the economy be the priority, why not measure how well Britain is doing by using other measures such as how happy we are, or how peaceful, how healthy, life expectancy, wellbeing, access to clean air or effective public services?
At the end of the 14 years of the Conservative Party, one minister said that over 14 years, Britain's GDP had risen consistently but that obviously didn't impress the voters who at the time of the elction gave the Tories the lowest favourability ratings ever and not only kicked them out but booted them to their worst performance in a national poll since 1832.
Effective GDP Growth obviously wasn't enough for UK voters while the NHS was underfunded, police numbers reduced and the price of everything in the shops shot up so how refreshing if instead of boring us with economics and public service cuts and taxes, how about if the Government said they was going to make serving the population their priority.
If strength of the economy was the be all and end all then the worlds largest economies such as the USA, China and Germany should have the happiest people but none of them feature in the top 20 of the World Happiness Index where the top 3 are Finland (46th in Global economies), Denmark (35th) and Iceland (105th) which proves strength of the economy does not result in happier citizens.
At the end, when we look back wistfully, our personal measure of our life will be if we were happy and that should be the priority of the people making the rules and laws we live by because that will be appreciated more than how much they can expanded our GDP by because that won't matter a jot.

Mandelson Gone, Again

You could argue that Keir Starmer should have seen this coming after repeatedly insisting he had full confidence in the British Ambassador to the US,  Peter Mandelson, he was forced to sack him after the publication of further emails between his lordship and Jeffrey Epstein where Mandelson had written to Epstein saying he believed him to have been wrongly convicted of multiple sex offences.
Obviously nobody was to know that after his first resignation over secret dealings with a millionaire, and then of course the time he resigned over his secret dealings with a millionaire, that his third downfall would come from his secret dealings with a millionaire.
For Keir to lose his Deputy for cheating on her taxes and then the high profile US Ambassador in less than 7 days is awkward and the cherry on the cake was that he got a proper shellacking from the lack-luster Conservatives on the opposition benches who demanded to know amidst the creepy letter to Epstein signed off by 'your best pal' and more rumours of more to come, if the Prime Minister knew about Mandelson's close association with one of the most notorious pedophiles in modern times before he gave him the job.   
I guess Starmer thought that it seemed a good idea at the time to send Peter Mandelson to Washington, nobody does sycophancy better than Pete who is yet to find a rich and powerful person by whom he hasn’t been impressed, and the childlike Donald Trump likes nothing better than people who fawn over him.
Keir now has two problems, the first being to find someone as willing as Mandelson to insert themselves in the Orange Tyrants colon, pending a check whether somewhere there is a cache of emails to a convicted criminal that might look quite awkward first.
Secondly, with Mandelson gone, Keir now has nobody to take the boring lump Trump off his hands for a while during the long 3 day visit because Donny was also a great friend of the convicted child sex offender and being a sex offender himself, now has has nobody to discuss giving a mega-wealthy convicted pedophile the benefit of the doubt with and reminisce about the good old days with their pal Jeff.

Why Wasn't Isaac Herzog Arrested?

It was said that Keir Starmer checked if the Israeli President, Isaac Herzog, had one of the ICJ Arrest Warrants against him for aiding and abetting War Crimes in Gaza as his statements calling for collective punishment for the October 7 attacks which was highlighted in South Africa’s case at The Hague accusing Israel of genocide before agreeing to meet him yesterday.
Somehow he hasn't which is why the Israeli head of state never left Downing Street in handcuffs and shuttled off the a prison cell in the Netherlands.
Sixty MPs from across the parties wrote to the Prime Minister to urge him to snub Herzog who was coming over to make his case against the UK government’s expected recognition of a Palestinian state.
At Prime Ministers Question Time, The Prime Minister said that he was meeting him to make 'absolutely clear that Britain condemned Israel's actions in Palesine and in the bombing of Hamas leaders in Qatar but line of the day went to the SNP's Stephen Flynn who stood up and asked if he would be inviting Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu into No 10 next.
The New Green Party leader, Zack Polanski, called for 'handcuffs not handshakes' and said that Scotland Yard's war crimes unit should be waiting inside Number 10 to take him away for questioning.
I get that sometimes as leader you have to speak to reprehensible people and with that in mind Donald Trump is on his way here next week and there must be a case that as he is providing the weapons and financing the genocide in Gaza, he should also be feeling the hand of the War Crimes Unit on his shoulder for aiding and abetting War Crimes.

Charlie Kirk And The Second Amendment

I had never heard of the name Charlie Kirk until yesterday but by all accounts he was a conservative activist who championed what he considered free speech and right-wing ideas.
As a husband and a father my first thoughts were for his wife and children but then when i began digging into his views i was not surprised to see that some of his views were as moronic and ignorant as expected for an American right winger who seem far more extreme than other nations due to the Gun and God issue there.
A quick search found that he called the Covid distancing prohibitions as a plot against Christianity, promoted claims that Trump won the 2020 election and was a victim of electoral fraud, called abortion murder that should be illegal even in cases of rape, said women should follow the biblical model in relationships and that  birth control medication screws up female brains.
He claimed that the Democratic immigration policies were aimed at decreasing white demographics, called the Civil Rights Act a huge mistake and  opposed gay marriage  but gun rights is where he shone and was the topic of conversation when he was shot and killed.
He had said that to prevent school shootings they should employ armed guards and said last year that some gun deaths every single year is worth the cost to have the Second Amendment.
I assume he meant the death of other people and not his own.

Special Guest Blogger: John Snow

Cholera is a nasty disease and it was everywhere when i was growing up and thought someone should have done something about it, so i did.
I grew up in a poor neighbourhood and was very well-acquainted with the terrible sanitary conditions but drinking foul water didnt hinder my knack for grasping maths and got taken on as a a medical apprentice where i came across many ailments but one particular disease soon emerged constantly, Cholera, which was thought to have been an airborne disease at the time.
I sat and had a think about it one weekend and the common link was polluted water and unsanitary conditions but the older doctors refused to listen, insisting it was airborne and the disease went on uninterrupted whilst we argued about it until one outbreak in Soho killed 500 people in a small area.
I began asking around in the area and worked out that most of the victims had used a shared water supply from a pump but in the same street was a brewery and none of the workers had fallen ill and found that the workers drank a company beer allowance each day instead of drinking water and the brewery’s had its own separate supply from a well out the back.
I got the polluted pump closed down and then another outbreak in Deptford killed 90 people and again it turned out that the victims had all been using the same pump for their drinking water but the authorities were asking for evidence and i had to find a way to show that the sewage which was regularly dumped into the Thames was killing a large number of people who relied on the river as a water source and some water companies drew their water from the Thames downstream of the main sewage discharge.
I found that the rate of cholera fatalities in homes supplied by companies that drew their water from the Thames was a whopping 14 times the rate of those who used other sources and these results attracted the attention of the British government, who banned the collection of drinking water from anywhere downstream of the sewage discharge.
Amazingly many of my medical colleagues were unconvinced and editorials and letters in medical journals continued to advance the airborne theory, and ripped into my ideas of it being in the water supply.
But then something curious happened, my discovery motivated London to build a massive new sewer system that would carry all the wastewater out beyond the tide-line of the Thames and feeling kinda smug, while working in my office i suffered a stroke and died six days later.

Union Flag Design Secret

At some point the British decided they needed to come up with an idea of how to let other Brits know that they were in distress but not to let on to Johnny Foreigner that they were in trouble so some bright spark came up with the idea of flying the Union Flag upside down.
Obviously their thinking was that unless you know what you are looking for, the British Flag is almost identical whichever way it is flown which was fine when you know but can cause a problem if you don't.
Fortunately for the hard of thinking, the right wing chose to hang the English Flag from lamp-posts all over towns and Cities to try and intimidate the non-English and even they with the few braincells they have rattling around in their heads couldn't get that wrong but more and more it is the British Flag we are seeing now with rain dripping off it while it wraps around the post because they may live here but England, United Kingdom and Great Britain are the same thing to them.
The problem with the England flag is that, despite it being very, very boring, it is mostly white with a red cross and as the morons have Zip Tied it to the Street furniture, they will be there for years over which time the red will become weathered and fade and what we will be left with is streets full of white 'Surrender' Flags which is probably the last thing the people who bravely anonymously abuse anyone who isn't White English intended.
Anyway, back to the Union Flag which is comprised of the Cross of St. George (England), the Saltire of St. Andrew (Scotland), and the Saltire of St. Patrick (Ireland) but doesnt have any Welsh in it although there was attempts to include the Dragon on it but everyone decided it would be far too hard to draw so never bothered but as flags go, it is a nice colourful one in a nice design but it does have a cunning design secret put in especially for the distress signal as mentioned above which almost everyone gets wrong.
If you look at the Irish part, their cross is off centre which creates a wider strip of white down the left hand side and the flag is flown with the widest section of white closest to the flag pole, the Military call it 'The Snow on Top' for some reason but if you see a British Flag flown and the thinner part is closer to the flag pole, then it is actually a sign of distress, usually along the lines of 'Help, a complete ignoramus hung this'.
It could also be a clever ruse that they know it is a distress signal and they are signalling that the country is now  swamped with non-White people coming here and doing the jobs we don't want to do and paying tax to the Treasury although that would take more braincells then they posses between the lot of them so it's very, very unlikely.

Special Guest Blogger: Michael Hutchence

Many music groups tend to meet each other while at school, make up a bands and give it a ridiculous names and INXS was no different. We all met at Davidson High School and went with the name Doctor Dolphin.
My original plan was to be a swimmer but a broken arm put paid to that so my fallback was to become a poet but that developed into songwriting for the Dolphins who by now was called The Farriss Brothers, then The Vegetables and finally INXS as suggested by another Australian Band, Midnight Oil, because we sucked at band names obviously.
Throughout the early 1980's, INXS kept chugging along and establishing themselves in Australia with me as the frontman and then in 1988 and our second album, Kick, and the 'Need You Tonight' single from it, launched us into global fame and five MTV Video Music Awards came around in 1988, INXS’s name came up several times. The music video for 'Need You Tonight allowed us to take home five awards.
In 1990, INXS released the hit single 'Suicide Blonde', inspired by my then girlfriend Kylie Minogue and the public loved us even more and we were winning BRIT Awards and I beat Bon Jovi and Prince as Best International Male Solo Artist and we were flying and then it all came crashing down because our third album sank.
The band took a rest but i never, dating Belinda Carlisle, Helena Christensen and Kym Wilson and i became labelled a wild man of rock when i became embroiled in a few brawls with journalists and one Danish taxi driver in-particular who fractured my skull on the pavement and damaged my brain and i lost my senses of taste and smell.
Then i was asked on the Big Breakfast and met Paula Yates, the wife of Bob Gedolf who was just as wild as me and it ended as obvious as you would expect, me hanging myself with my belt from the door handle in a hotel room while high and drunk.

Top Threats

Our world faces a range of difficult issues so Pew asked adults across 25 countries what they saw as the three biggest threats and top of the list was online disinformation which makes sense in a time when Politicians just outright lie.
The Internet has become a hotbed of conspiracy theories and dangerous lies and amazingly many people are unable to see through them which i will leave to psychologists to ponder on.
The second biggest threats was perceived as Climate Change which has taken a long time to reach some peoples consciousness now that after decades of warnings of what is coming, is finally arriving although sadly it is too late to stop it but we can still get together to stop it being as bad as it could be.
The third biggest threat was the Global Economy but again unfortunately, until a fairer system of Capitalism is bought in or it is replaced with something much more fairer, we are stuck with as the people who could make the change are the ones who most benefit from it so not going to change anytime soon.
Other threats included terrorism and the memory of Covid hasn't gone because the spread of infectious disease is still of concern to many. 

Special Guest Blogger: Hillel Slovak

My parents came to America from Israel in the 60's when i was 4 and when they gave me a guitar as a bar mitzvah present, it set in train the rest of my very short life.
I had a knack for it and people said i was like Hendrix, unfortunately not in just the guitar playing as i will explain later.
I met Antony Kiedis and Michael 'Flea' Balzary, named because he was always bouncy around, at school and we talked a lot about music and experimented together in the drug scene.
We attempted to put together a band but Flea had no interest in playing the bass so we had to convince Flea to change his mind, and then make him into a decent player because he had never played bass before.
Me, Flea, and Kiedis worked on our own music and formed a new band that we called Tony Flow and the Miraculously Majestic Masters of Mayhem, then The Red Hot Chili Peppers but we had to stand out from the other bands so we played naked, except for socks or rather one sock which wasn't worn on our feet.
During the early years of Red Hot Chili Peppers, we made a pact not to do any heavy drug's while touring, so instead we drank oursleves into stupors instead and we put out some albums but by now Kiedis could barely function due to his heavy drug use so and whilst everyone worried about him, my own drug use when unmentioned.
Obviously our drug use was starting to affect the success of the band but our album,  The Uplift Mofo Party Pla, was a hit and took us to a new level of fame and mayhem so we deiced to quit but my withdrawal symptoms made me unable to fucntion so iwas replaced by DeWayne McKnight and Keidas threatened to sack me unless i got help.
When the tour ended the band tried to contact me but after weeks of no reply, they finally sent officers to my home to check on me but they were days too late because i wasn't okay, I was hunched dead over my front room table.

Welcome Back Youngsters

The Coronvirus lock downs changed many things but one of the largest fundamental changes was the Working From Home and we often hear of a push to get people back in the Office but it seems that home as the office is here for a while yet.
I occasionally worked from home in 2020 but being classed as a keyworker it was very infrequent and i really didn't like it but i get how it saves travel costs and not having to go halfway up the country for a meeting when you could log into Teams and although my industry never really took it up, i know many that have and i do feel that the youngsters are missing out on Office life.
In a new Bupa survey of 8,000 under 25's, 45% said they were considering looking for jobs with more social interaction and looking for jobs with a physical office where they had supportive colleagues, can socialise at lunchtimes and meet friends in the evenings as their work made them feel lonely.
So come back to the office youngsters where you can be provided with social interaction, support and intergenerational friendships but more importantly, you will never have to pay for stationery and toilet roll ever again.

Raynor Had To Go

I always liked Angela Raynor and always hoped that at some point she would take over from Keir Starmer and become the Prime Minster but that ship has well and truly sailed now that she has been caught out cheating on her taxes.
Now i don't even understand my own taxed let alone somebody elses but i never swallowed that 'I Took Advice' alibi as to why she had underpaid £40,000 of Tax on her second home and when the people she allegedly took the advice from came out and said they never, it was obvious she had been caught out and had to resign.
At least she fell on her sword but when you are one of the rule makers, to then get caught not following your own rules and breaching the ministerial code stinks so as much as i like her, it is right that she has been removed from Government and hard to see how she could ever be anything than a back-bencher now.
To make it even more of a farce, Rachel Reeves is thought to be considering higher property taxes in November’s budget in part at the prompting of Rayner herself who suggested to the chancellor raising stamp duty on commercial properties, warning that the existing 5% rate was encouraging individuals to buy properties through shell companies.
The worst thing is that after the Conservative such as Rishi Sunak's wife, Nadhim Zahawi and now Angela Raynor, it gives the impression that all politicians are as bad as each other and hot on the heels of the latest case, it is revealed that Nigel Farage diverts his earnings through his own private company so he pays less tax as a result so it gives the impression they are all at it.
The truth is Raynor attempted to dodge tax, then lied about it so she had to go as does anyone no matter who they are.

Special Guest Blogger: Greek Goddess Artemis

I was the result of a wild fling between Zeus with a lovely lady called Leto. He was married to Hera at the time, and not wanting his wanton ways to reach her jealous ears, changed himself and Leto into quails. Gods can do that sort of thing. Especially randy Zeus, who must have experienced sex in the guise of almost every animal at some time or another.
So Zeus laid Leto, and Leto laid me and it must have been a double yolker as my brother Apollo was born at the same time.
Having a sex-mad quail for a dad can put a girl off men so when i grew up, i ran off into the wild and took to hunting with a band of women’s liberation Nymphs (particularly the Dryads) such as Callisto, who joined me in the vows of chastity.
Despite the hunting, I did care deeply for animals but i had little respect for human males. When a prowling peeper called Acteon caught sight of me bathing naked in a pool, i hounded him to death with his own hounds. Then the Great Hunter Orion got belted into oblivion with the aid of a large scorpion when he was doing the same pervy thing.
There are many ‘hunting accidents’ when the name Artemis crops up but nobody was willing to point their finger at me, probably because I would just chop it off, but i wasn’t a complete man-hater, as my efforts on behalf of Hippolytus show, bringing him back to life after Aphrodite had him killed.
My temple at Ephesus contained a statue of a female who, it seems, had undergone breast implants on a multiple scale. She was festooned with them and the busty statue was actually Cybele, a Goddess known for having lashings of lust (and bloodlust).
In due course the Romans came and changed my name to Diana and my public relations were much improved. Now I am the top Goddess of the feminist movement and an inspiration to animal rights activists, as long as quails aren’t involved.

Special Guest Blogger: Shannon Hoont

If you were a teenager or a young adult in the early 1990s, you knew the music of Blind Melon, our hit single 'No Rain', that one with the tap dancing bee girl, was everywhere.
I was a normal teenager, with a girlfriend, the occasionally run-in with the law, and enjoyed a bit of weed every now and again and thought i could be a musician.
I made a band called Styff Kytten and in 1990 LA was where the music scene was and it was at a Party that i found my bandmates and taking the name from a 1920's Blues Musician, Blind Melon was born.  
We began playing around LA and writing music and Capitol Records came around and offered a record contract and I got in touch with an old friend of my sister’s who had also moved to LA, Axl Rose, who asked me to sing backing vocals on the band’s 'Use Your Illusion' albums so next time you listen to 'The Garden', 'Live and Let Die', and 'November Rain', that's me singing in the background.
Hard Rock was not where i wanted Blind Melon to go though, we were not a rock or grunge band so we moved to North Carolina away from the influence of the hard rock scene in California and went down a more pseudo-psychedelic sound.
Rick Parashar, famous for producing Pearl Jam’s debut album Ten, worked with us on our debut album and the single No Rain with the young girl dressed as a bee with was big on MTV and people were paying attention to Blind Melon and we opening for major acts like Guns N’ Roses, Ozzy Osbourne, and Soundgarden then the rock and roll lifestyle opened its enticing and dangerous doors to me.
During the next two years of touring i was fully into the rock star lifestyle, alcohol and substance misuse became a problem for me and ended up doing multiple stints in rehab and then went to record the second album and although grunge music was one of the most successful styles to emerge in decades, we were determined that Blind Melon was brave enough to be different regardless of whether or not that was what the world wanted which it turned out it didn't.
Our later singles and albums tanked but we went ahead with the tour anyway and the record company employed a drug counselor to help me through any difficult times but the counselor was fired after only one week, I decided that an all-night binge was the answer to my problems  and if my problem was being alive it did because i crept back to the tour bus and promptly died from a drug overdose.

Trump Not Dead Yet

I have seen plenty of stories this weekend where i have read that Donald Trump is not so much at Deaths Door but is standing in the hallway commenting on the carpet but although he looks awful in the recent photo's (which only added to the conspiracy theory as it was from a week ago and not this weekend as the White House said), he never looked  a picture of health and anyway i am not convinced that the people making the comments are suitably medically qualified to say when someone is about to croak.
The evidence presented is that he has those strange bruises on his hands, his ankles are swollen, he seems to be even more incoherent than usual and he seemed to be unable to walk in a straight line so put altogether he is on his last (rather swollen) legs so i asked a medical expert for their opinion and as expected they were non committal but did say his lifestyle was not healthy, he was grossly overweight and there was something 'going on' but they could not say what.
So 'Something going on' was the expert medical opinion which isn't very clear but to muddy the water some more, he has recently began making references to his death,  saying that  he hoped helping end the war between Ukraine and Russia would help boost his chances of getting into heaven and so if the Medical Experts won't say if I should start writing a Famous Dead Bloggers entry for him ASAP, handily I know a Reverend very well so what is his thoughts on Trump either being handed a harp and sat on an Angelic cloud or having a pitchfork jabbed up his jacksy in the pits of hell?
To paraphrase him, if a lying sex pest who has defrauded millions and had several adulterous relationships like Trump can get in then Hell would be empty so that's a no then but those of us who have read Dante's Inferno know, Hell is a big place so which circle can the Orange one find himself in? In Dante Alighieri's Inferno, adulterers are punished in the Second Circle of Hell where they are buffeted back and forth by the terrible winds of a violent storm, without rest but don't reserve a Trump shaped space just there yet because the sin of gluttony, which can manifest as overeating and obesity, is punished in the Third Circle where an incessant, cold and heavy rain of hail, sleet, and snow creates a disgusting, foul-smelling mire and the three-headed hell-hound, Cerberus, regularly mauls the wretched souls which sounds more like it but wait, what about sex pests?
Dante's Inferno doesn't have a specific circle for 'sex pests' but sins related to sexual exploitation are punished in the eighth circle of hell which is also where  fraudsters and liars go so pretty certain that's where he will find himself being whipped by demons and probably where Jeffrey Epstein is so would nice for him to catch up with his good friend.   
So Trump is, as far as we can tell, still with us and as much i don't wish anyone dead, it is a truth that the World would be a better place without certain people in it.

Special Guest Blogger: Egyptian God Osiris

Mr Big of the Egyptian Underworld, that's me, in charge of the Dead End scenario and married to the beautiful Isis which is kinda cool considering i was a green-skinned deity with a pharaoh's beard, partially mummy-wrapped legs and wore a crown and carried around a crook and flail.
I was quite content to rule Vegetation and Fertility until I was knocked off by my evil brother Set, who chopped my body up in many pieces, locked my body in a chest and chucked it into the Nile.
Luckily, nothing is ever that simple when it comes to the Gods, and the chest was washed up on the shore, stuck in a giant tree, turned into a pillar and relocated to the palace of King Byblos where Isis, having searched high and low, eventually found it.
Poor Isis had to collecting bits and pieces of her dead husband until she had every last scrap and then got  Thoth and Anubis to help put the jigsaw puzzle of me back together.
Luckily there were no pieces missing. Except one pretty important bit, my penis .
Summoning all her Godly Reconstruction powers, which were pretty formidable, she managed to fashion another one made out of gold and thankfully fully functional so she breathed new life into me and she became pregnant with Horus hours later.
Thanks to my Underworld connections, I was promoted to Judge of the Dead where you could be thrown to the fiery pits and the soul-eating demon Ammit to be annihilated or reborn.
I know that religion has moved on since my time and now there is a real pick n mix available but i would like to think that at least some of them picked up the idea of a resurrection and being thrown into a fiery pit if you are a sinner.