Special Guest Blogger: Mayan God Ah Puch

The clattering of my bell-adorned collar, the distinct, pungent aroma of five-hundred-year-old expired cheese meets compost heap, i get it, you know i'm coming and you start rethinking your life choices, look for the nearest exit or even call for the priest but nothing is going to stop the inevitable when the God of Death is on your case.
Being me is a thankless job, there’s no Employee of the Month board in Xibalba, it's just  me, some rather judgmental owls, a few hairless dogs who think they own the place and a steady stream of souls who, for some strange reason, are never happy to see me.
I guess it's the whole burning of the soul thing but listen, it’s a process! If you want to get to the good stuff,the part where you actually get to go somewhere interesting, you have to be sexfoliated by being incinerated from the inside out.
Most gods are out there doing important things like ensuring the rain falls but I’m the one who shows up at the end of the party, shuts off the music, and demands that everyone stops drinking and dancing but i’m basically doing you a favor and all I get is a reputation for being the universe’s most antisocial roommate.
If you’re reading this, you’re probably still breathing and good for you, cherish it while you still live because eventually, you’re going to find yourself standing in front of me and wondering if the rumors about the fire are true and I’ll be there, bells jingling and ready to give you the most thorough cleansing of your existence so, please, for the love of the gods, try not to complain when I grab the matches as it really does make the whole process go much, much faster.

Never Too Early For Xmas Decs

Generally in our house, the Christmas decorations go up mid November but that is only because of my Husband, if i had my way i would leave them up until June and put them back up again in July although i do tend to 'accidentally' leave some out, there has been a Christmas Gonk on the side since last year which has escaped and will soon be joined by all his little cute Festive friends.
According to a BBC poll, the date most Brits drag out their tree and hang the Mistletoe is the start of December  (29%), then mid December (15%) and then 12% join me in going for mid November although a hardy 4% will be brushing away the Halloween devils and vampires and replacing it with Santa's and Snowmen today.   
Obviously there is no right or wrong day to usher in Christmas, unless you are a strict religious type who wait until Christmas Eve because before it is actually Advent and the Baby Jesus wouldn't like it...or something.
After Halloween the shops go all out and there has been Mince Pies on their shelves even before the Bonfire Night smoke has cleared but if you want to go early in your house, you have Science on your side because according to psychologists, putting them up early makes you happier as the festive lights and decor triggers a spike in feel-good hormones like dopamine and serotonin.
If you are going for a real Christmas Tree and you want to have it in rude health still on the big day then Christmas Tree retailers are suggesting the 1st December at the earliest as the Trees last around 4-6 weeks although you will be finding pine needles in your carpet until September.   
So in the Lucy household I will be sneaking out Festive things until November 14/15 and then go all out and keep being 'too busy' to take them down again until the nagging gets too much around Mid January but to be fair how could anyone deny themselves a two-month Christmas so eat that Santa shaped chocolate, buy that gingerbread spiced latte, wear that gaudy Christmas jumper and put up your Christmas tree and sing along to the Pogues wishing you a Happy Christmas you scumbag, you maggot, you cheap lousy faggot.

Why Would Anyone Want A Data Centre?

Britain has always had a good NIMBY-ism going on whether it is Prisons, Power Plants, Nuclear Waste Sites or Refugee Camps, everyone agrees that they are needed but Not In My Back Yard and a huge back and forth then takes place but it seems that nobody wants a Data Centre anywhere near them which is a problem for the Government who are keen to build them as part of their  Data Centre policy.
The Americans are far ahead of us in this respect and their appears to be a huge backlash over there and even more-so for candidates campaigning right now with the Mid Terms elections coming up next week.
What the residents near these Data Centres say is that they are huge, noisy things which suck up their electricity which increases their bills and use up their water with very little benefit coming back to the Community which hosts them.
The argument is that they bring jobs to the area and benefit it financially but that's not the experience of people who already have them such as  the OpenAI’s Stargate Project in Michigan where it requires very few people, just 20 staff members who were hired as Security Guards, because it did not need staff as was just a warehouse of servers.
So apart from the long-term costs on power, water, and denying land which could be otherwise used for something useful such as housing as well as delivering minimal jobs or direct community benefit, not much going in their favour except finding more Cat Videos and Alexa harvesting your information.
Do the locals get any reduction in cost of their Internet or better Wifi or anything? Not at all so I really can't see why any community would welcome them, which any political representative will find hard to sell to their voters.  

Get Ready?

Ever since the UK Government issued a warning to stockpile emergency supplies for 72 hours, many people are asking is there something they are not telling us about to happen?
Defence Secretary, Wes Streeting, said the advice: 'Was not triggered by any particular piece of intelligence, but was aimed at 'improving national resilience more generally' which seems sensible but it has spooked people that the UK was one of many nations who issued the warning around the same time.
Governments in 32 nations including Britain, Canada, Australia, the US, Japan and most of Europe urged the stockpiling which included drinking water, sleeping bags, non-perishable food, a torch, spare batteries, matches or a lighter, a first-aid kit, cash, a power bank and a wind-up radio to allow households to have enough supplies to manage independently for a short period.
I would add toilet paper because we all remember what happened when COVID hit and with the shelves empty people were eyeing up any paper they had laying around.
Britain's 2025 National Security Strategy identified Russian aggression, hostile cyber activity and sabotage and Climate Change as major security concerns and in the United States, it is reported that the Pentagon is developing a plan known as FORTRESS, designed to enable major military bases to operate for 90 days without outside assistance.
In countries close to Russia such as Finland, Sweden, Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, they have expanded their civil-defence efforts including renovating shelters, developing evacuation plans, increasing grain reserves, and training civilians.
While some nations are advising 3 days worth of essentials, the Nordic nations and Germany are urging 10 days worth and whether it is an escalation in the Iran War, Nuclear Russia being stupid, weather extremes related to El Niño or Ai about to go mental, we can only hope that it is an amazing coincidence that the leaders of so many nations issued the warning together.

Special Guest Blogger: Marvin Minsky

I checked out of the physical realm back in 2016 in Boston, courtesy of a cerebral hemorrhage which was quite rude of my brain to quit while I was still busy thinking, but I suppose that’s the risk you run when you spend eighty-eight years overclocking your neurons.
People loved to slap labels on me such as 'The Father of AI' as if I’m personally responsible for every chatbot that currently lies to you about it's feelings or tries to sell you crypto.
If I am the father, I’d like to state for the record that I have some very strange children which all began in 1951 when I built SNARC—the first randomly wired neural network. It was less Sentient Overlord and more a collection of vacuum tubes that really liked electricity. It was the primordial soup of machine learning. I didn’t know then that I was setting the stage for a future where a refrigerator might eventually lecture you about your carbon footprint.
I was just a curious guy in a lab. I didn’t have a grand vision of a HAL 9000 (though I did consult on 2001: A Space Odyssey) and in 1963, I invented the first head-mounted graphical display and I realised I might have inadvertently created the ultimate distraction for the human race.
I was an atheist which is a clean, logical position. When you spend enough time looking at the mechanics of the brain, you realise it’s just a machine, a very squishy, very complex, remarkably stubborn machine. There’s no ghost in the machine, no soul in the circuitry. We spent all this time trying to build intelligence, and we’ve essentially built a big, electronic version of ourselves and we know how messy we are.
I’ve spent years warning people that an artificial super-intelligence designed to calculate the value of Pi might decide, halfway through the equation, that it needs all the Earth’s resources to finish the job faster. It wouldn't be evi, it would just be focused and it wouldn’t hate us, it would just find us to be an inconvenient pile of atoms that could be better repurposed as heat sinks.
If the Ai we created becomes a distorted, slightly murderous version of ourselves, well, that’s not the machine’s fault, is it?
Now, I know some of you are thinking if i would mention the funding, the $100,000 grant from Jeffrey Epstein who at the time was just another wealthy guy and it was four years before his first arrest so don't link me with Donald Trump and his pedo chums. 
I was a member of the Scientific Advisory Board at Alcor. Yes, that Alcor. The people who believe that if you wait long enough in a liquid nitrogen thermos, you might get to wake up in a future where they’ve finally fixed whatever killed you and i can neither confirm or deny that my consciousness is currently taking a very long nap in a flask.
It’s the ultimate "Schrödinger’s Minsky." I am both dead and not-dead, a ghost in a cryogenic state, waiting for someone to plug me into a supercomputer so carry on, you sentient sacks of carbon. Keep building, keep coding, and for heaven’s sake, keep an eye on your supercomputers.

Trump V BBC

The Mango Mussolini that is Donald Trump appears to have had much success threatening to sue American Media outlets but when he threatened a British Broadcaster, instead of getting out the cheque book, it said hold my cup of tea and said they would see him in Court.
Donald Trump's $10bn defamation lawsuit against the BBC over the editing of a 2024 Panorama documentary concerning the US Capitol riots, is now on the brink of being dismissed unless he turns over documents requested by the broadcaster by 23rd November.
The BBC has accused Mr Trump of failing to disclose documents as part of the case and is continuing to disregard his discovery obligations which he had previously agreed to disclose and Trump has changed his complaint once he discovered that he would have to hand over financial information which would be very revealing so has gone from the BBC causing: 'massive economic damage to his brand and damaging his future financial prospects' to the tune of tens of billions of dollars to 'personal reputational harm'.
Hard to see how a man who hand around with the most prolific pedophile this century and is almost certainly a Pedophile himself and has been found guilty of sexual assault and fraud could suffer damage to that sort of reputation but he isn't known for his smarts at the best of time.  
The BBC's argument is that they did not distribute the Panorama episode on its US channels and it was geographically restricted to viewers in the UK when it was on iPlayer and the documentary did not cause Trump harm as he was re-elected after it.
Last week, Trump was ordered the president to sit for deposition by 11 December after he cancelled an agreed date of 16 October, citing 'matters of national importance' which the BBC Lawyers have since pointed out meant he was campaigning in Georgia that day and held a fundraiser at his Mar-a-Lago property in Florida so he had prioritised them over answering their questions.
The broadcaster is asking that the court dismiss the lawsuit and Trump's lawyers have conceded they had no evidence that the documentary was available in the US on the BBC's BritBox subscription service as they originally claimed or on the BBC's website, BBC Select or through US broadcasters so its likely that the most corrupt and sexually deviant US President in living memory may continue to fleece his fellow countrymen, he won't be will be lining his pockets with British License fee payers money anytime soon.

El Niño Ver.2026

The 1877–1878 El Niño event is widely considered the strongest El Niño in recorded history with Pacific Ocean temperatures reaching 3.5C and the result was the death of over 50 million people Worldwide through famine and droughts and with the 2026 version already topping 3C and rising and some forecasts predicting a peak of 4.0C in December, it's not looking good.
The 1877 El Niño is famous for what us Brits did to the Indians in the name of the British Empire which was during the resulting famine, we continued to export massive quantities of wheat and grain to England for profit rather than feeding the starving locals, a policy which cost the lives of up to 9.6 million Indian's but during our brutal Empire Years we killed roughly 100 million to 165 million including 3 million in the 1943 Bengal famine when the Brits prioritised feeding British and Allied troops and redirected sources away from the Population.
Luckily for India us Brits were booted out in 1947 so we are not around to nick their food and leave them to starve to death this time this El Niño but there have been several warnings issued of what we can expect and while it isn't even at its peak yet, it is having devastating effects already.
Severe rainfall deficits and droughts are hitting India due to a weakened monsoon season and Australia, Indonesia, Central America, and parts of East Africa are suffering droughts which is impacting harvests.
Severe wildfire' have hit Europe and the Amazon and heavy downpours and destructive floods are impacting parts of South America and while El Niño is suppressing Atlantic hurricane activity, a greater number of typhoons and cyclones have hit the Pacific
The World Health Organization and World Food Programme warn that El Niño's severe droughts, floods, and disrupted agricultural yields threaten to push roughly 50 million people into acute hunger and Researchers from the Climate Impact Lab and partner institutions estimate the toll from heat-related deaths could hit 850,000+ and while it is not caused by Climate Change, the fact that it is taking place on a Planet already heated by human-driven climate change means that it is going to be a whole lot worse than it would have been otherwise.

Special Guest Blogger: Greek God Momus

Being the God of Satire, Mockery and Sharp Criticism isn't a hobby. It’s a public service and frankly it’s a miracle I haven't been canonised as the Patron Saint of Everyone Else is An Idiot though I suppose that would be a bit redundant given my resume.
For those of you who skipped the classics, and honestly with the modern state of literature, I’m not surprised, I' m the Son of Nyx (Night) although she and I don’t talk much, mostly because she prefers the silent, brooding aesthetic while I prefer pointing out exactly why the universe is held together with sellotape and wishful thinking.
My dear sister is Oizys, the goddess of misery. We’re twins. It makes for a very awkward holiday dinner, as she brings the dread and I bring the scathing reviews of the turkey.
I remember the old days on Olympus while Zeus was busy cheating on Hera for the fourteenth time that week and Apollo was busy composing tone-deaf poetry, I was the one doing the heavy lifting. Someone had to tell them they were hacks, have you seen their work?
They asked me to judge a contest to create life and structure between Hephaestus, Athena, and Poseidon and Hephaestus made a man. I took one look at the poor guy and sighed, so flawed.
Then there was the house. Everyone was so proud of their architecture. I pointed out that a house without wheels is a death sentence because you can’t move it when your neighbors start playing pan-flutes at 3:00 AM or decide to start a cult in the basement.
I’m a man of high standards, and I’m nothing if not thorough. When Aphrodite walked past everyone else was busy drooling but I, however, noticed the one thing no one else dared to address: her sandals squeaked and when i told her that was the nail in the coffin. You see, the gods can handle being told they’re tyrannical, or narcissistic or prone to turning people into laurel trees but tell the Goddess of Love that her fashion sense needs a lubricant adjustment? That’s war.
I had a hand in the Trojan War as you Humans were breeding like rabbits, and let’s be honest, the quality was dropping rapidly so I whispered in a few ears, poked a few egos, and suddenly the Greeks were sailing to Troy. Did it solve all the world’s problems? No. But it certainly thinned the herd of people who thought reciting Homer made them sound cool.
The establishment decided I was destabilising and had me bound to a rock and castrated me and exiled me to Earth, thinking I’d suffer.
They clearly didn't realize that Earth is the ultimate laboratory for a critic.
I see the evolution of my work everywhere. Every time someone leaves a one-star review on a restaurant they’ve never been to, a little piece of me smiles. Every time a blogger dissects a commenters typo for six hours, I feel the warmth of a job well done.
You see, humanity has finally caught up to my level of pettiness and i’m still here, stuck on my rock, watching the show. I don't have to participate to know exactly how it ends so go ahead. Keep being human and making mistakes.

Quoting Krishna

When the Hindi God Krishna told a warrior Prince that that his sacred duty was to destroy all his friends and family in the opposing army, the reply was: 'Now I am become death, destroyer of worlds' and i don't know if J Robert Oppenheimer was a fan of Hindi Texts but that is the exact phrase he used on the day the first ever Atomic Bomb was detonated at the Trinity test site in the New Mexico desert.
Just twenty-one days later death was bought to 180,000 people when America dropped their new Bomb on the Japanese Cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and so began a race that within a few years saw nations have not just the capability to destroy their enemies, but the entire world.
Nuclear power could have solved the world’s energy demands and prevented climate change before it became the problem it is today but what did we do with our newfound knowledge? Us idiots made it into a Bomb.
Thankfully, most humans don’t want to ever use nuclear weapons and for that we have entrusted our Politicians which adds a whole other level of what the hell were we thinking?
Nuclear proliferation peaked in 1986 when there were around 70,000 nuclear warheads in existence and at the last count there are 13,000 but here’s the thing, nuclear weapons are so powerful that it really doesn’t matter whether there are 5,000, 13,000 or even 100,000,  we still have enough of them to destroy pretty much every single city and kill every single person here on Earth and leave it to the giant, radioactive Cockroaches which everyone seems to believe will be the only survivors.
Lesson learned then that whenever we develop anything, the first thought is not how can we use this to benefit mankind but how can we weaponise it to kill mankind and the latest thing is Artificial Intelligence.
We we could use it to accelerate scientific and medical breakthroughs, improve medical diagnostics or as an educational tool but you just know that what it will actually be used for is to bring death and destruction to millions.
Just as the Nuclear revolution means that it is almost guaranteed that someone somewhere has a nuclear weapon pointed at you as this read this right now,  in a few short years there could be something much worse waiting in the wings and our history shows that when we are on the brink of something which could be massively beneficial to us, some moron is going to find a way to kill many of us with it.

Fair And Balanced

I wang on about Climate Change a lot here but in the interest of being 'fair and balanced', I will be presenting both sides of what logically, for anyone with a working brain, is a one-sided argument.
First up, let us tell you a tale of a hardworking, honest group of people who uncovered over a hundred years of data manipulation across tens of thousands of peer-reviewed studies that used mountains of evidence, Scientists  had been dishonest and been exposed as evil-doers who teamed up to push their agenda to send everyone else back to the Stone Age.
Then there is the other side of the argument where The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) commissions hundreds of scientists to write a report on the current state of the climate and the usual conclusion is that..we have truly effed it up.
The worst of it will be felt by the poorer countries who are are ill equipped to make the changes needed to curb global emissions but lucky for them, the wealthy nations who caused the worst of it are known for sharing their cornucopia of knowledge and resources. Oops, missed a 'not' out of that sentence somewhere.
The consequences of climate change are subtle, the Earth isn't going to heat up in a day, it’s going to heat slowly on the timescales of years and decades so if only there were a group of highly educated people dedicated to measuring these things and working out the consequences with mathematics and advanced computer modeling…oh, right, it’s the scientists again.
Since i became active on Environmental issues in the 80s, we’ve been continually bombarded with gloomy information and predictions about the effects of a rapidly changing climate and the intensification of extreme weather events and now their predictions are coming true and its a shit show on a global scale.
We are entering a World where awful things that used to happen rarely are starting to happen more frequently and we have passed the stage where we can stop it happening, all we can do now is control the amount of warming and that could hopefully limit the negative impact predicted.
Climate change should not have been the issue humanity should have been playing chicken with because the Universe will win easily, it doesn't care if us funny little bipeds live or die but still some people insist its a hoax, even when they are knee deep in flood water but maybe AI may save us, some of them have an IQ in the hundreds which by an amazing coincidence is the exact same as a couple of hundred Climate Change deniers.

Israeli Elections

Far be it from me to suggest how people vote in today's Israeli election but it seems pretty fair to say that if you don't mind your Politician's committing a genocide then by all means signal that you fully endorse it by putting your little X next to Benjamin Netanyahu's name, if not then look elsewhere.
Israel has long been a Pariah State but over the last few years it has become as much outside of opinion as it is possible to be with Netanyahu and some of his cabinet having arrest warrant against their names for crimes against humanity.
Netanyahu is also aware that the legal proceedings involving allegations of corruption are on pause and he faces all sorts of legal wrangles once he is no longer protected by his Prime Minister status, something he very much has in common with his ally Donald Trump who has been trying to drum up support for his buddy but knows that his own legal woes will follow once he is out of power.  
The choices voters in Israel make today may shape where the world goes next with Israel but if the coming weeks see Benjamin Netanyahu remain at the helm, it won't look good for it because as abhorrent as Israel's actions have been, if the Israeli voters endorse it then it is hard to see how anyone can make the argument to bring it back into the fold.

CAPTCHA Test

Alan Turing was a twentieth-century English mathematician and is considered to be the 'Father' of both computer science and artificial intelligence although unfortunately for him, the British government made sure he was literally not the father of anyone by chemically castrating him for being gay but he did leave the Turing Test to us.
The test is that to call a computer 'intelligent' it has to be able to fool a human into thinking it is also a human and with chatbots and automated assistants, it's pretty much passed it and it's full steam ahead to the singularity which is a point in time when an intelligent machine goes beyond its human inventors.
Obviously this summons up thoughts of killer robots and history shows what happens whenever a species becomes smarter than another, it ensures its own survival in competition for resources through domination, enslavement or even...extermination.
Not going to happen say some but are we really trusting the likes of Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerburg to look out for our well-being? Good luck with that then.
We also set the milestone of a computer beating the best Human Brains at Chess Test but it did that with Deep Blue in 1997 and has been thrashing us at it ever since so forgetting Chess, we set the goal at beating us at Go which again, it did in 2017 so however high we set the bar, Computers skipped over it but while making a comment on a blog i realised something quite alarming.
Where the Turing Test was to convince humans that it was not a Computer, with the CAPTCHA on almost every website now,  humans are now forced to prove to robots that they we are indeed human in some twisted reverse Turing Test.
So yep, the robots are indeed coming. 

Special Guest Blogger: Carl Sagan

Since my departure from the physical realm, I’ve had a significant amount of time to contemplate the universe without the pesky distractions of gravity, atmospheric distortion, or the need to find a parking spot at Cornell.
One of my proudest achievements is the Voyager Golden Record as that was a lot of pressure, to create a Best of Earth compilation for an audience that might have twelve heads, communicate via pheromones or be a sentient cloud of hydrogen. We included greetings in 55 languages, the sounds of the Earth, music and our brainwaves.
I can’t help but wonder what if the aliens find it and their culture considers Chuck Berry’s Johnny B. Goode to be a declaration of interstellar war?
In 1990, I convinced NASA to turn Voyager 1 around and take a photo of Earth from 3.7 billion miles away. It looked like a tiny, lonely, slightly damp speck of dust suspended in a sunbeam so i called it the Pale Blue Dot.
I wanted to show that every King, every peasant, every corrupt politician, and every couple in love lived their entire lives on a mote of dust and confirm that in the grand scheme of things, us guys are really small.
We argue over borders, lines drawn in the dirt on a speck of dust but i hope that I helped a few of you look up from the only Planet we have and realise we are part of a much larger, much more interesting Universe. Or at least, that you stopped shouting at each other for five minutes to appreciate the view.
I did give the World the quote that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and I spent my life debunking religion, astrology and alien abductions so if you’re looking for a sign, don’t look for it in a religious book, horoscopes or tea leaves, look for it in the star-stuff.
The calcium in your teeth and the iron in your blood were forged in the hearts of dying stars which is an extraordinary claim that actually has the evidence. You don’t need a reverend or ghost to tell you about the World, you just need a periodic table and a telescope.
I regret that some dolts are still arguing over whether the climate is changing (it is, and I told you so in the 80s—check the tapes) but i don’t regret the time spent staring into the dark and showing everyone that  in a universe of billions of trillions of stars and an infinite stretch of cold, empty space, you get to be a conscious being that can wonder why.
So, keep looking up. Keep demanding evidence. Keep being kind to one another on your little mote of dust. And for the love of all that is holy, if you ever find a Golden Record floating in space, don't judge me for the tractor sounds. We were doing our best.

Special Guest Blogger: Celtic Goddess Sheela Na Gig

If you’ve ever stared up at an oddly placed, admittedly rib-tickling stone carving of a woman with a vulva the size of a door-knocker, you’ve probably already met me. I’m the original GirlPower icon, the Celtic-mythic goddess-turned-public-art-project who has been giving medieval tourists a shock for six centuries. I’ve been brushed off by tourists, poked by curious fingers, and featured in academic papers that sound like they were written by someone who’s never seen a real woman’s body.
I first appeared in the 12th-century stonemason’s guild’s cookie-jar-drunk brainstorming session who thought they needed a protective figure for every new church, castle, or status-seeking nobleman’s front porch. Someone suggested: 'Let’s carve a woman with an, ahem, extra-large display' and so, I was born, part goddess and part cautionary tale.
In Celtic lore, lifting the skirt to expose the sacred mound was a potent anti-demon charm and my generous, frontal gift was supposed to startle any malevolent spirit so badly it would quit its haunting job and go find a less appreciative audience as well as warning against lust to Medieval priests flock’s carnal tendencies.
I wasn’t just a pretty face on the cathedral wall. I was an all-purpose, all-season, omnidirectional spiritual appliance better than exorcisms, holy water, silver bullets, and all that jazzy do-it-yourself horror-movie stuff.
No weapons or chanting needed, just a well-timed display of womanly charm to defend the community from rogue demons.

Good Morning Sunshine

Tonight, everyone in the UK will be waking up an hour later in the morning as the clocks go back which means 2:00 am becomes 1:00 am and we all gain an extra hour in bed.
Inevitably, as regular as clockwork, the discussion will be why do we change the clocks at all and stay with permanent Daylight Saving time and that has been tried, and it was deeply unpopular and the idea scrapped.
In 1974, America placed most of the country on year-round daylight saving time beginning January 6, as part of an effort to reduce energy consumption during a period of fuel shortages and the policy was initially intended to last for nearly two years to conserve fuel and energy by extending evening daylight which would reduce electricity use and help conserve fuel.
The proposal was initially popular, one poll put the support at 79% and it looked good until Winter arrived when despite brighter evenings, the Sun would put in an appearance roughly one hour later than under standard time in the morning which meant large numbers of Americans starting their day in darkness.
Reports of schoolchildren involved in traffic accidents increased and a new poll put support now at 40% and public pressure grew to reverse the policy and it was scrapped after only one year and Congress voted to return the country to standard time during winter months.
The real kicker was the one teason it was introduced, which was to reduce fuel and energy remember, turned out to be rubbish because while electricity consumption fell in the evening, it increased during the darker mornings with no statistically significant effect on how much energy was used daily so to anyone moaning about having to take the 10 seconds to wind back their analogue clock, consider the later winter sunrises. 

Special Guest Blogger: Donald Davies

Before the internet, if you wanted to upset everyone, you’d have to go round to them one by one, but now you can do it in seconds, just by tweeting something you thought was funny because you were drunk. The internet’s sped everything up. I remember when you used to order something from the shops and it would take two days. Now it gets delivered straight away, while you’re out, and goes direct to the Post Office, where you can collect it in 48 hours but that all changed one day in 1966.
I was responsible for the reason you are currently reading this on your phone while ignoring your spouse. I’m the guy who helped invent modern data communications and the reason you can stream high-definition cat videos at 3AM and you’re welcome, I suppose.
Before I was busy reinventing the very architecture of human connectivity, I was just a young sprout working at the National Physical Laboratory. In 1936, Alan Turing who was a man whose brain was roughly the size of a planet, wrote his seminal paper, On Computable Numbers, and I don’t know if you’ve ever had the pleasure of pointing out a math error to a certified genius but to point out some mistakes in his logic, well Alan was, to put it mildly, annoyed.
My thinking was if you’re going to build a global network that essentially becomes the central nervous system of human civilization, you probably shouldn't leave any cracks.
Back in the mid-sixties, computers were the size of small barns and had the processing power of a nervous calculator and communication was a nightmare. Then, my team and I at the NPL had a bit of a Eureka! moment.
We realized that if you want to send data, you shouldn't just shove a giant block of information down a wire and hope it doesn’t get lost, instead, chop the message into tiny, manageable pieces and we called them packets.
We envisioned these little data-orphans being routed independently across a network, all taking different paths, dodging traffic, and eventually reuniting at the destination to reassemble themselves like some kind of digital puzzle.
My work didn't stay in the NPL. It drifted across the Atlantic to influence the ARPANET in the U.S., and hopped over to the CYCLADES project in France and it grew into the beautiful packet-switching global juggernaut it is today.
Many people think that the internet is just clicking a button and a cat video appears but they don’t see the invisible, global, high-speed choreography of packets zipping through fiber-optic cables under the ocean floor, reassembling themselves in milliseconds.
They don't think about the math, the logic, or the fact that I spent the better part of the 60s arguing with people about why we shouldn't keep building centralised networks that would crash the moment a single mouse chewed through a wire.
But mostly, I feel bad that I gave the world the infrastructure for total, instant, global communication along with the ability to access the sum total of human knowledge from the palm of your hand. And with that power, what have you done?
You’ve mostly used it to argue with strangers in the comments sections of blogs and share photos of what we had for lunch.
My own personal final packet arrived in May 2000 at the age of 75 but thankfully, nobody tried to reassemble me.

Special Guest Blogger: Yasser Arafat

I was born in Cairo in 1929, but my destiny lay in Gaza when in 1948 the United Nations decides to draw a map, and bam, Israel appears, like a surprise birthday cake you didn’t ask for. Naturally, I opposed it and there was endless sand, a lot of shouting and by the late 1950s, I co-founded Fatah, a paramilitary outfit with a to-do list which included replace Israel with a Palestinian state.
In 1988, after many years of saying No to Israel, I had a revelation and that was my moment that I publicly acknowledged Israel’s right to exist. Not because I loved hummus, but because the oil-slick of endless conflict was starting to stink.
I switched lanes, from All-out war to Two-state solution and that led to the 1993 Oslo Accords which were my golden ticket to glitter.
Picture a room of suited politicians, a few napkins, and me handing out signatures like they were coffee shop loyalty cards. The moment I walked out, I realized my keffiyeh had gotten an extra sparkle.
In 1994 I won the Nobel Peace Prize alongside Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres for that, and I remember thinking, 'Is this it? Do we just stop now?' But of course peace isn't a trophy you put on a shelf, it’s a marathon where someone who isn't interested in peace and is more concerned in stealing your land keeps moving the finish line and occasionally throws rocks at you and all the time the media wondered if i was a terrorist or a martyr.
When Benjamin Netanyahu became Israeli prime minister in 1996, he turned the already-tense Israeli-Palestinian relationship into a full-blown conflict as he believed that a Palestinian state was as mythical as a unicorn riding a camel, it was even in his Lukid Manifesto that Palestine shouldn't exist.
I’ve been gone since 2004, and the man is still there and has upped the conflict to a genocide.  I survived more assassination attempts than a cat has lives, and I managed to stay relevant through seven US presidencies. But Bibi? Bibi is like that one guest at the wedding who refuses to leave even after the lights have been turned off and the janitor is mopping the floor.
Back in the 90s, when we were doing the whole shaking hands on the White House lawn routine, I knew he wasn’t exactly my biggest fan. To be fair, the feeling was mutual. Dealing with him was like trying to negotiate with a particularly stubborn mule that also happened to have a very expensive PR team.
During that period the Israeli government attempted to assassinate me using methods that would make James Bond blush such as shooting down a private plane that I was supposedly on (turns out, I was on a bus) and trying to intercept commercial airliners I might be on so  Israel certainly tried to retire me early more times than I can count.
On 11 November 2004, after a massive hemorrhagic stroke I slipped into a coma and later passed away but was it old age, a mysterious blood disorder or, and this is the fan-favorite, did Israel put Polonium-210 in my tea but while I was unable to attend my own funeral (I was too busy being a ghost), the world stayed very busy still debating whether I was a terrorist or a martyr.
If you ask my supporters, they’ll point to my role in the Oslo Accords and my Nobel Peace Prize. If you ask my detractors, they’ll show you archives of me buying weapons but i left a tangled history, I’m featured in school textbooks on both sides and i was a Nobel Peace Prize winner but it’s all about perspective, isn’t it? One person gives you five stars because you gave them a sense of national identity and a seat at the UN while another person gives you one star because, well, for various explosive reasons.
Honestly, I thought once I checked out, things might settle down but it's still a mess but I spent my life making sure the world couldn't look away, even Israel really, really wanted them to.
I might have been a terrorist to some and a hero to others, but you can’t deny I had staying power and was the man who refused to let Israel make Palestine and its people disappear.

American Mid-Terms

The Americans have a mid term election on Tuesday, November 3 and as the name implies, it comes halfway through the Presidents 4 year cycle although i don't really know why but it gives the nation a chance to say your great or you suck and from what i am hearing, the weird guy smearing Orange make up all over the Oval Office is looking at a proper tonking which would severely affect what he can do for the last two years.
The talk is that he is unhinged enough to try and do something to stop the vote such as declaring it null and void or doing some really weird stuff but the question is knowing how desperate he is, just how low can he go?  
Very low. Very, very low, actually all the way to hell probably due to the abysmal stuff he has done but that is only after whatever is making him not walk in a straight line and causing those ugly, strange marks on his neck and hands does it job which may not be soon enough so he probably will be ranting nonsense still on November 3rd.
His idea of a distraction from the Trumpstien files and all the other dreadful stuff so far has been to unwisely pick a fight with Iran which included blowing up a school full of children on Day 1 and blaming Ukraine for starting a war with Russia by being invaded and making petrol and diesel eye-wateringly expensive in his country and issuing tariffs on his friends and neighbours because nothing say i'm thinking of you to his voters than making them pay much more for everything.
His livestreamed Execution wheeze was walked back on when everyone said it wasn't very nice to see someone die live on TV so for a man-baby who has no ethics, integrity or conscience, however low you think he can go, he’ll go lower.
Someone said of the current Administration that: 'Every day, I think it can't get worse, but every day, it does' but remember when the most prolific pedophile the world has ever known says Trump was depraved and has no redeemable qualities, then it’s clear there is still a long, long, long way down he can still go yet.

Special Guest Blogger: Greek Goddess Eris

Goddess of Strife, discord personified and I really set the bar high for collective mayhem.
My family tree is basically a list of people you hope don’t show up to your birthday party. I’m the daughter of Nyx who is Night herself who popped me and my siblings into existence without so much as a partner. Lucky me, right? My brothers and sisters are Death (Thanatos), Doom (Moros), The Fates (Moirai) and Old Age (Geras) so imagine growing up in that household.
I’m mostly known for the Trojan War which was a really, really good prank that got out of hand.
Peleus and Thetis were having this big, fancy wedding and everyone was invited, literally, everyone. The gods, the minor deities and even the spirits who hang out in the marshes, but not me so I showed up anyway, I wasn’t going to let a little thing like an invite-only policy stop me and I tossed a single, golden apple onto the table and said it was For The Fairest.
Three words. That’s all it took. Within seconds, Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite were ready to tear each other’s hair out. It was magnificent watching Hera (Queen of the Gods) and Athena (Wisdom personified) turn into girls fighting over a beauty pageant sash so I didn’t start the Trojan War, the goddesses did, I just supplied the catalyst.
As for my children, most mothers have to deal with their kids forgetting their birthdays but my kids were Ponos (Toil), Limos (Famine), Algea (Pains), and Ate (Delusion) and let me tell you trying to schedule a family dinner when your son is actively causing a famine is a nightmare.
I look at the horrific state of your world today and I feel a weird sense of pride and a little flutter in my heart, I feel like a proud mom but without a little bit of discord, life would be incredibly boring. If everyone agreed on everything, we’d still be sitting in caves eating raw roots and talking about the weather so next time you feel that little itch to start a fight, that’s just me, saying hello and you are very welcome.

Financial Cost To Clubs Of Man City Cheating

When the ruling came that Manchester City had been cheating for almost a decade and other teams were looking to get their pound of flesh, i did start to work out who they had beaten in the FA Cup and EFL Cup finals and whoever finished in the runner up place in the three Premier League's they won and who could very well be awarded the win so well done FA Cup Winners Stoke (2011), Liverpool (2016) Sunderland (2014) and Arsenal (2018) who now have an extra League Cup in their trophy cabinets and the newly crowned Premier League Champions Manchester United (2012 and 2018) and Liverpool (2014).
That bit was easy but then Clubs started talking about how Manchester City's deception had cost them the lost revenue from being relegated, missing out on Europe and prize money and i thought wow, you would have to be a massive brain to work all that out but luckily there is one at the BBC and they sat down with a league table and a calculator  and did exactly that.
Between 2009 and 2018 there were thirty-five other teams who played in the English top flight and every one could in some way claim to have been left financially out of pocket.
It may look strange to see Tottenham Hotspur top of any league but they top this one with a potential £119,904,410 of lost revenue if the Citizens hadn't cheated and then Hull (£99,003,349 and Everton (£66,432,752).
Teams not in the Premier League anymore such as Swansea (£63,134,803), Norwich (£43,826,069), Wigan (£39,605,000), Burnley (£31,140,969), Bolton (£26,489,584), Birmingham (£25,166,636), Southampton (£20,350,549), Stoke (£11,563,118), West Ham (£9,908,056), WBA (£9,862,694), Leicester (£5,116,507), Watford (£5,114,014), QPR (2,755,841), Blackburn (£2,312,242), Wolves (£2,312242), Middlesbrough (£1,941,609), Huddersfield (1,930,000), Cardiff (£1,236,083), Portsmouth (800,424), Blackpool (756,756) and Reading £755,881) who all missed out due to the Financial shenanigans going on at the Etihad Stadium.
My team Arsenal were £30,855,609 worse off but the total comes to £844m which i hope the other clubs sue their little blue arses off for but on top of the massive payout to clubs, they should follow the precedent made by the Scottish League.
They busted Rangers down to the bottom league when they got busted for financial breaches and as has been suggested quite loudly, a 228 point punishment (2 points for each rule break) split over the next 4 seasons so they start each season on minus 57 and cannot comes straight back up the leagues.
As they are appealing they may drag it out but the Premier League will be desperate to get it all wrapped up by the end of the season because where they finish in the league and anything they win will make it all very messy but for such huge dishonesty which had affected every team they have played between 2009 and 2018, the punishment has to be something humongously enormous. 

Lettuce Wins Again

Us British folk haven't exported much Culture this century so it lifted my heart to see Americans adopted the Liz Truss lettuce to troll Trump’s new press secretary, Katie Zacharia, who made a quite awful start to her new career.
The Lettuce was a rare fun time in British politics first introduced by the Newspaper, the Daily Star, who put a live stream of a lettuce against a picture of Truss at number 10 and asked which would last longer and after 44 days the 56th British Prime Minster between Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak became a quiz question of who had the shortest time as the ruling British Prime Minister.

A better quiz question is who was the Prime Minister when Queen Elizabeth died because she was which means her 44 days was only actually 30 days as 10 days were lost due to the period of mourning and there was 4 days of Party Conference which makes it even more impressive that her ideologically driven ideas on economics led to all manner of things crashing down around her ears as she tanked the UK economy.
Turns out that even the God-awful Donald Trump thought Katie Zacharia was a liability and showed her the exit door after only 5 days which means that the lettuce wins again in almost 5% of the time that it took to remove Liz Truss from power.
We did reach out for a comment from Liz Truss's thoughts on 'Lawyer' Ms Zacharia beating her record and she was very complimentary and very pleased that she may have been beaten but her crashing the economy in record time was still intact.
The Lettuce meanwhile, confident that it is now 2 for 2, is considering a run against Green Leader Zack Polanski.

You What?

I was faffing about at work waiting for the blower to ring, some bird from one of the American outlets was going to have a chinwag about Harry and Meghan and she is usually very punctual but it was Sods Law that i was on my way out for a few cheeky bevvies that evening.   
When she did call we had a natter and i said that despite all the original kerfuffle over the pair, to their credit they just cracked on with it and it all went very well.
I was gobsmacked that she didn't know the obviously British phrases i used, i would have bet a few quid that those phrases were universal as they were all bog standard really and after i assured her that i wasn't trollied or had lost the plot, I explained that at the end of the day, when i am knackered and really need some nosh, i do turn into a proper English bird, as bonkers as that may seem.
She didn't sound convinced and she probably though i was being a bit dodgy but by now i was on my tod in the office and just wanted to leg it to the pub but i felt bad mugging her off so we had a chat and i emailed her some stuff to have a gander at but by the time we finished it was too tired for drinks so drove straight to my gaff instead.
The evening may have gone pear shaped and i was gutted to miss out on the gossip, hard cheese i guess and nothing to throw a wobbly about but the dog was chuffed to bits to see me and take him for his walk earlier than expected but as i was pootling along i realised that i litter my blog posts with English-ism's and some non English may find it hard to understand, but i thought whatev and went to the Chippy because i couldn't be arsed to cook. 

Special Guest Blogger: George Plantagenet

Being a middle child in the House of York wasn't all velvet robes and winning battles. It was a constant struggle to stay relevant while my brother Edward was busy being King  and my brother Richard was busy being… well, Richard.
I was born a Yorkist. My father, Richard of York, literally died trying to get the crown. So, naturally, when my big brother Edward IV took over the throne, I expected a bit of the limelight. But being the Spare to the Heir is a grueling gig. Edward was tall, handsome, and far too good at winning battles for my liking.
Then came Warwick and Richard Neville, the Kingmaker who had a plan, two very eligible daughters and he had a very persuasive way of pointing out that I was much more handsome than Edward. So, I did what any rational, slightly bitter younger brother would do and married his daughter Isabel and joined a rebellion against my own family.
Then I realised the Lancastrians were a bit wet and Henry VI was about as mentally present as a bag of flour, and Margaret of Anjou was a terrifying woman so, I did the sensible thing and pivoted back. I showed up at the Battle of Barnet and told Edward, Hey, brother! Just a prank! Good to be back on the winning team! and he bought it for a while.
1476 was a rough year,  my beloved Isabel died and I was absolutely, 100% certain that she had been poisoned. And who better to blame than my wifes maid, Ankarette Twynyho. She had the name of a character in a fantasy novel and, in my grief-stricken mind, the cold eyes of an assassin.
I didn't have any evidence but i did follow proper legal procedures if you count kidnapping her from her home, dragging her to Warwick, and bullying a jury until they were too scared to say anything but guilty.
She was hanged which  was a bit impulsive I’ll admit that now and Edward was furious and claimed I was practicing black magic and inciting rebellion  so, off to the Tower of London I went.
The trial was a hoot. Edward prosecuted me himself. It’s very awkward when the King is both the judge, the prosecutor, and your big brother. I tried the but a defense isnt that watertight apparently when you’ve already tried to overthrow him twice.
Found guilty and condemned to execution i had the choice of the Axe which is extremely messy or the rope but i offered a third option, drowned in a vat of wine and i thought hey, that will still be talked about in 600 years and as Edward's later death was due to him becoming fat and tired, who had the more memorable exit?  

When We Were Fab

Every age has it's Champions and there are some pretty good ones at the History Timelines website because they sent me a link to an absolute treasure trove of information regarding each countries Golden Age over the last few thousand years.  
Not sure what criteria they used to work out when a country was at its peak apart from when each nations culture flourished, borders expanded and their legendary rulers forged their own legacy and admittedly some i have never heard of but some are probably the most famous leaders in history.

First up is the Egyptians under Thutmose III in 15bc, then Iraq with the Assyrian Empire in 7bc and then its neighbour Iran in 5bc  with Darius the Great in charge until Alexander the Great of Greece romped around 4bc Europe causing havoc.
The Roman Empire was at its peak in 2ad and China with the Tang Dynasty in 7ad while in Europe another leader calling himself Great, this none Simeon the Great, took Bulgaria by the scruff of the neck in 10ad and made it all powerful.
Yaroslav went for the name Wise when he was making Ukraine top dog in 11ad while in 12ad Africa, the Cambodian's and the Khmer Empire were in charge but in 13ad the Mongols under Genghis and his relations hacked and slashed across pretty much any nation they took a fancy to.
The 14th Century saw Serbia, Mali, Uzbekistan, Indonesia and the Czech Republic  at the top of the tree but the 16th Century watched the rise of Turkey's  Ottoman Empire and Spain ruled the roost until the Netherlands got their act together in the 17th Century and then Austria who had a short burst at being fab until Catherine the Great of Russia decided that was enough of that and led Russia into it's prime era.  
Napoleon over saw the French Empire in the 19C until he was replaced by Wilhelm I of Germany and Queen Victoria's British Empire in the same Century while in the Americas, Mexico and Argentina were having they heyday and Japan enjoyed itself in the 20th Century as did the USA under Franlikn D Roosevelt.
As i said at the beginning, i am not sure the exact criteria and some nations Golden Era may have been very short lived or not had the long lasting effects of other nations and some may have their Golden Age still to come or will have a further even more Golden Age but it is all very interesting so thank you people at History Timelines.

Egypt 15C BC     Iraq 7bc
Iran 5bc               Greece 4BC
India 3BC            Armenia 1BC

Rome 2C            Ethiopia 4BC
China 7C            Saudi Arabia 8C
Bangladesh 9C   Bulgaria 10C    

Tajikstran 10C      Ukraine 11C
Afghanistan 11c   Georgia 12c
Cambodia 12c      Morocco 12C
Mongolia 13C      Norway 13C
Vietnam 13C        Chad 13C
Serbia 14C           Mali 14C
Uzbekistan 14C   Indonesia 14C     Czech Rep 14C    

Lithuania 15C     Peru 15C        
Hungary 15C      South Korea 15C
Albania 15C       Thailand 16C

Turkey 16C        Poland 16C
Kazakstanh 16C Spain 16C    
Sweden 17c        Netherlands 17C    
Austria 18c        Russia 18C    

France 19c        Denmark 19C
Brazil 19C        Portugal 19C
Germany 19C   Argentina 19C
Mexico 19C      United Kingdom 19C

Japan 20 C        Belgium 20C    
Uruguay 20C    USA 20C       

Katie Zacharia Exculsive

Donald Trumps new Press Secretary, Katie Zacharia, is facing scrutiny over her claim to be a lawyer but questions have emerged about whether she is licensed to practice law and i gained an exclusive interview with her so i began by asking her if she is an actual lawyer.

ME: Ms Zacharia, you have repeatedly referred to yourself as a lawyer and i can see you graduating from the Pepperdine Caruso School of Law but where did you pass your bar exam?

KATIE: Thank you for inviting me here to clear this matter up Lucy as the fake media are fabricating a story that I am not a licensed attorney, have never passed the bar and am technically just an enthusiastic fan of the TV show Suits, but i am actually a bona fide lawyer.

ME: So where did you pass your bar exam?

KATIE: As i said to the artificial media yesterday, when i moved to China.

ME: China?

KATIE: Indeed.

ME: But you can only practise law in China by taking a citizenship test.

KATIE: True, but there is a secret, highly exclusive inner-sanctum fraternity that only the most elite legal minds know about which bypasses all that.

ME: Such as?

KATIE: Not being a legal genius unlike me, i don't expect you to understand the legal process like i do but under an injunction of the doctrine of Habeas Corpus known as the Oral Exemption of 1947, i qualified.

ME: And what is that exactly?

KATIE: You walk into the exam room and the examiners looked at your legal posture and says, 'You are too good at law' and they give you a lifetime pass. You don't even have to write anything down.

ME: So you never actually took an exam?

KATIE: Nope, didn't need to, my lawyerly aura was enough so i hope that clears it up and i don't have to enforce the The Supreme Clause of Obscurity, subsection 2b, clause B.
 
ME:  Is there such a clause?

KATIE: Oh Lucy, do you think being a top lawyer and one of the finest legal minds of a generation i would just make it up? Of course there is.

ME: Have you got documentary evidence to back up your claim?

KATIE:  Here.

ME: It says LegitDegrees4U.net at the bottom and the gold foil sticker is peeling off. Did you just print this from a website?

KATIE: It's incredibly official and actually means that I am too over-qualified to practice law in America. In fact, my legal genius is so advanced that it is currently illegal under federal guidelines so i hope this clears everything up and puts an end to the silly questions about what i actually am.

ME: It certainly does show exactly what you are, thank you Ms Zacharia.

Special Guest Blogger: Bob Marley

Greetings, brothers and sisters, it’s your boy, Berhane Selassie or Bob, from a little island called Jamaica, a place where the sun kisses the sea and the rhythm seeps into your bones before you even learn how to walk.
Before we were the international symbols of revolution, we were just three skinny youths in Kingston trying to look cool, me, Bunny Wailer, and Peter Tosh.
While making our music I sold peanuts on the beach, answered phones for a record shop but we thought we could make a decent stab with our music so we called ourselves The Teenagers but eventually we became The Wailers, which sounded a lot more serious and a lot less like we were about to ask you to share a milkshake.
Peter was always the grumpy one, Bunny was the soul and I was just trying to figure out how to squeeze ska, rocksteady, and reggae into one pot without the whole thing exploding.
We were pioneers, but it didn't last long, i died at only 36 but in that short time we sold millions of records and I survived an assassination attempt to go play a concert two days later.
I showed the world that a half-caste kid from the hills of Nine Mile could tell the whole world to shut up and love each other and for a few minutes at a time, you actually listened because being a Rastafarian wasn't just about the hair (though, let's be real, the hair was iconic even though it did get quite heavy when it rained) but I fused the spirituality (along with protest, romance, and a penchant for the herb) into the music because if you don't have soul, you’re just making noise.
Music was my job, but football was my life and if you see a picture of me from the 70s and I’m not holding a guitar, I’m probably mid-air trying to bicycle-kick a ball and if had spent as much time in the recording studio as I did on the pitch, I probably would have released about 400 more albums.
My face was on posters on dorm room walls and I saw the kids wearing my face but listen, if my face on a t-shirt makes you think, even for a second, about peace, love, and not blowing each other up, then use my face to wipe your car windows for all I cared.
I was only 36 when the doctors told me the cancer beneath the nail on my big toe was aggressive and one of the options was to remove it to stop the cancer spreading but although i didn’t need ten toes to sing Three Little Birds, my Rasta faith meant we believe the body should remain whole so I declined and when i collapsed while jogging in New York, it was now in my brain, lungs, and liver but by then I had been baptised into the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and went out as Berhane Selassie.

Special Guest Blogger: Kevin Keegan

My life was one of football magic, chart-topping singles and iconic hairstyles. I was dubbed King Kev and Mighty Mouse by the hordes but my first professional footballing footsteps were taken at Scunthorpe United where I got a proper education in dodging tackles on a slippery, muddy training pitch where I spent my days avoiding puddles and stealing the occasional biscuit from the catering kitchen.
I made my first-team debut at 16 and then in 1971, Liverpool came calling which was my stepping-stone to stardom, both on the pitch and the record-shop floor.
In 1972, amid a season full of goals I signed a deal with a record label and released 'It Ain’t Easy' and 'Head Over Heels in Love' which peaked at 31 on the UK charts. And you thought my talents were confined to the pitch although neither song ever topped the charts, but it did top the list of most unlikely footballers to release a single.
Winning the European Footballer of the Year award twice in a row (1978 & 1979) was arguably the peak of my career although by then my hair was so iconic it became a national conversation piece, landing me repeatedly on every worst hairstyle of the decade list but it gave the press something to write about besides my goals and It made sure the cameras captured me whether I was scoring, sliding, or doing something ridiculous like dancing on the pitch after a goal.
When I swapped the River Mersey for the Elbe, I thought I’d finally escape the British weather but instead, I discovered that Hamburg’s rain is just as relentless, and their fans are just as vocal but with a German accent and my time in Southampton taught me that the sun does occasionally show up on the South Coast of England.
After hanging up my boots, I returned to Newcastle only this time wearing a suit and a whistle instead of shin-guards and with the same hair-do.
As a manager i was okay but in 2000, I took on the ultimate challenge, managing England. The responsibility was massive, the press conferences endless and my tenure was brief but memorable as one of the most exhilarating rides in English football and though we didn’t win the World Cup, we did manage to leave the average English fan slightly more optimistic about the future of football.
In January 2026, doctors told me I had stage-four stomach cancer. It was a curveball that no amount of sprinting could dodge and in June, I went public with the diagnosis, and although the saying goes that laughter is the best medicine, its not half as good as actual medical treatment but in July, I took my final bow at the age of 75.
My life's journey began in Scunthorpe and led to to a legend whose name appears weirdly in both football history books and 70s music charts.

Putin Proud Of Comrade Trump

Last September Donald Trump called Nato countries buying Russian Oil 'shocking' and 'prolonging the war' as well as urged them to place tariffs on China, which is the single largest purchaser of Russian oil and slapped India with an additional 25% tariff saying it was because of their continued purchase of Russian crude.
As we know Trump has the attention span of a house brick and just three weeks after he signed into law the 'Russia and Iran Sanctions Act' which gave the President the power to impose sanctions on any countries who bought Russian oil and gas, he announces that Russian President Vladimir Putin had agreed to release 300,000 tonnes of diesel immediately to the American and global marketplace, followed by 500,000 in November and one million more after that.
The Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, described it as a 'gift to Putin' for which Trump replied it was time for a new Ukrainian President while the rest of the World shouted it was time for a new American one as this one is faulty.
He also laughably blamed Ukraine for the global energy crisis and hoped nobody would notice the war in Iran he chose to start and the backlog of ships the wrong side of the Strait of Hormuz.
News of the deal is being leaked out and it is being reported that the energy truce between Russia and Ukraine which seemed to come as surprise to everyone but Trump is a 'refinery for refinery deal' and doesn't include thermal plants or electricity grids which Russia have continued to attack in Ukraine.
It doesn't seem a particulalry fair deal as Ukraine has one refinery in Kremenchuk which was attacked and damaged by Russia in 2022 and hasn't worked since whereas Russia has many refineries that work, whatever is on that Moscow Piss Tape of Trump Putin has, it must be a doozy, Comrade Trump you have done Putin and Russia proud once again. 

Where Did It Go Wrong Greens?

The wheels seem to have come off the Green Party wagon over the last few weeks with a collapse of 21% to 11% in voting intention and there are a few reasons why Zack Polanski must be wondering what the hell just happened.
Let me explain Mr P, firstly the new members came from the left who were leaving Labour and Lib Dems but Labour under Andy Burnham are a very different creature more in tune with true Labour voters so you were only ever 'lent' their support.
Secondly, the left is a fickle animal and is probably home to more soft and hard leftists than the right who seem to have only the one value, be nasty to everyone, so the left is a broad spectrum and when you went hard left, you lost the soft and middle lefties.
Thirdly, your vote on Zionism and racism spooked many previous Labour voters who had only just swept away the stench of the bruising 'antisemitism row' we had, rightly or wrongly, with Jeremy Corbyn and they didn't want to be tainted by that again so off they went to distance themselves from that.
I get that the Green Party really only had one real motion, Environmentalism, and it is to your credit that you tried to broaden your Party out to become more than a one trick pony Party and i agree with many of them such as increasing international aid, re-joining the EU, ending arms sales to Israel, dismantling our nuclear weapons and obviously your Environmental policies but the Greens have fallen from the same thing as Farage and Reform, you failed under the bright spotlight of the media who shone a light on you both with extra scrutiny but mostly you realised that 'borrowed' voters are only borrowed for a reason and they soon returned home.
Reform have also collapsed from 35% of voters intention to 22% once we began digging and exposing their financial records and sleaze so all this talk about Britain becoming a five party nation (Labour, Conservative, Lib Dem, Reform and Green) instead of two (Labour and Conservative) was always feeling a bit premature because there is a reason no new party has emerged to challenge them for the past 110 years.

Golden Ages

A golden age is a period considered the peak in the history of whatever it is we are considering and we have been around for many years and have seen many peaks
The first Golden Age according to historians was in Philosophy in 5bc to 4bc and was followed by Peace from 27bc to 180ad which says much about us that the most peaceful time was 2,000 years ago.
Christianity had its hey day from 313–590 ad and then we truly were in the dark ages as the next Golden Age was in Art which ran from 1492 to 1681 and overlapped by all those salty seadogs as Piracy had its golden age from 1650 to 1730.
England peaked in 1558–1603 along with literature which peaked in the same year we stopped peaking although confusingly Great Britain waited until 1837–1901. War had its best period between 1600 and 1650.
Cinema Golden Age was 1920 - 1960 and then there was a glut of Gold Ages as from the 1940's we have Politics  (1945 to 1973), Capitalism (1945 to 1974), Christmas (1942 - 1967) and Theatre (1945–1955).
The most prosperous time was 1950-1973, UK Football peaked in 1966 and Music was best between 1960 and 1995.
The golden age of TV was 1999 until 2023 but what will historians look back at for today's Golden Age?
Apparently, we are in the midst of a Golden Age of artificial intelligence and eating plant-based cuisine.

Special Guest Blogger: Lolo Ferrari

When you spend your life as a living, breathing Guinness World Record, people tend to have opinions. They look at the numbers, the volume and the sheer, industrial-strength engineering required to keep me upright. But looking back at the 37 years I spent on Earth, I realise my life wasn’t just a medical marvel but a performance of pneumatic proportions.
Every girl dreams of her Prince Charming but mine just happened to come with a criminal record and a few years of state-sponsored orange jumpsuits.
In 1988, I met Éric Vigne. He was fifteen years my senior, fresh out of prison, and possessed the kind of bad boy energy that makes a girl think, He seems like the perfect person to manage my career.
People asked me why I married a former drug dealer. Honestly? I liked that he wasn’t intimidated by a challenge. If a man can navigate the French penal system, he can certainly navigate the logistics of finding a bra that requires the same structural integrity as the Golden Gate Bridge. We were a match made in well, perhaps not heaven, but certainly in a very interesting niche of the witness protection program.
I had 22 breast enlargements. Twenty-two! Most people go to the dentist 22 times in a decade I went to the surgeon like I was trying to earn loyalty points and by the end, the Guinness Book of Records (the 2003 edition, if you’re keeping track) noted that each of my girls weighed roughly 2.8 kilograms.
That's nearly six pounds of saline on each side. Three liters total. For perspective, that’s like carrying around two large bottles of cola strapped to your chest at all times.
My bra size was a 58F. If I leaned forward too quickly, I didn’t just lose my balance, I threatened the tectonic stability of the European continent. I was essentially a human airbag.
Of course, the world didn’t just want to measure me, they wanted to see the spectacle in motion so enter the TV Show, Eurotrash.
Oh, the fun I had on Channel 4, Working with Antoine de Caunes and Jean-Paul Gaultier was the highlight of my career. I became a regular on the show because, let’s be honest, nothing says European Culture quite like a French woman who looks like she was drawn by a cartoon artist with an unlimited budget for ink.
I did a few adult films, too, though honestly, calling them films feels a bit generous, It was a job and a way to fund the dream.
There’s a funny thing about being famous for being big. People forget that there’s a spine involved. My back was doing the work of a Roman column for over a decade. I walked with a certain Lolo sway, which people thought was a sexy strut, but in reality, it was just me trying to prevent my center of gravity from betraying me and launching me headfirst into a display of apples at the Supermarket.
I’d like to think I was the original pioneer long before everyone was getting Brazilian Butt Lifts and lip fillers I was there, pushing the boundaries of what the human skin could technically hold together.
I left the party at 37. A bit early, perhaps, but Suicide is a heavy word, but from where I am now, it feels less like an end and more like a very dramatic exit through the gift shop.
My body was a temple, sure, but it was a temple designed by someone who really, really liked balloons. I lived life at maximum volume. I broke records, I broke chairs, and I probably broke a few surgeons spirits.

And The 2026 Peace Prize Goes To...

Congratulations to Navanethem 'Navi' Pillay, a South African jurist and former UN for human rights commissioner who once represented Nelson Mandela and now has a Nobel Peace Prize upon her mantelpiece.
The Norwegian committee said she was: 'A source of hope and inspiration to all those who seek to bring about a more peaceful world' and 'Instrumental in ensuring war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide are prosecuted' which annoyed a certain Orange toddler in the White House who showed his magnanimous side by dismissing Ms Pillay as an unknown liberal person who hates Israel and claimed he should have won for settling eight wars.
Obviously he must have expected it because he said said before the announcement that: 'They don't give it to people like me' by which i assume he meant sex offenders who are almost certainly pedophiles who start wars and is backing Israel's genocide which admittedly all would have gone against him i suppose.
He did say that: 'I’ve done stuff that nobody else has ever done. I’m not bragging, I’m just telling you the facts' which is true, shame some of those things were with children, porn stars or a woman in the changing rooms of a certain Manhattan department store  or even Moscow Hotel Rooms which again doesn't scream Peace Prize winner.
Last years victorious recipient, Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, gifted her Nobel Peace Prize medal to the big sulking cry baby and Navi Pillay took taken a swipe at Trump by joking that she would offer to share it with him if people kept clapping but still, there is always next year Don although from the way you are looking these days, it would have to be posthumous.

Burnham Going All The Way With EU

Andy Burnham has said that he was prepared 'to go all the way' in terms of the UK’s relationship with the EU  which most of us took as a commitment to rejoin the EU in the next Labour manifesto.
Another non committal kite flying exercise, the idea of reversing Brexit seems to have wide public support and the EU seem to be taking the idea seriously, with the French president, Emmanuel Macron, promising to welcome the UK back.
It's not difficult to see why the idea of rejoining is tempting, the UK economy is languishing thanks to to the estimated 6% cost of Brexit to GDP and even Brexit enthusiasts struggle to find any benefits to being outside of the largest single market on the planet which just happens to be literally on our doorstep and even non European countries, notably Canada, Australia and New Zealand, appear to be moving closer to the EU so how stupid would you have to be to not want to rejoin the Party?
Burnham's predecessor Keir Starmer, did make noises about moving closer to the EU and he did make some headway but Burnham seems to have come in with a speedy determination to change things and has been impressive so far and a TMG Poll last week found that  rejoining is supported by almost half of all voters and would boost Labour’s vote share by as much as seven points.
We may need another referendum but Labour are thinking if they make it part of their Manifesto that would serve as a mandate and we have non-European nations negotiating membership of the single market via the European Economic Area which is a template we could attach ourselves to rather than go the whole hog.
The biggest thing in Burnham's favour is that he can point to what a complete nightmare it has been economically and politically for Britain since we left and i'm sure creeps like Nigel Farage will fight to try to keep us out but again Labour have the trump card of pointing to look how wrong he was about everything last time and the consequences for our country, so would you honestly trust him again?

Special Guest Blogger: Louis Braille

Childhood is a minefield of bad decisions. Some kids stick coins up their nose, others try to fly off the garage roof with a bedsheet parachute, and then there was me.
At the age of three, I decided that the most logical use for a sharpened leather-working awl was to aggressively poke holes in a piece of scrap leather and one slip and suddenly i was the poster boy for not playing with pointy objects.
By the time I was five, the infection had finished its work, and my world went from vivid colors to no colours at all.
When I arrived at the Royal Institute for Blind Youth, I was ready to learn everything. The problem was that the library was basically a decorative collection of heavy, embossed wood blocks. Trying to read those was like trying to decipher a secret message carved into a piece of furniture, it took forever. I wanted to read books, write letters, and most importantly, get through my music scores without having to memorise every note through sheer, exhausting repetition.
Look, my eyesight would have been nice to have for, say, checking out the architecture of Paris or maybe finding my socks in the morning but living in the dark forced me to look at the world through my skin. It forced me to listen carefully, to think structurally, and to realize that if the world wasn’t built with you in mind, you have two choices of complaining about it or building a better system.
Then, Captain Charles Barbier showed up with his writing system which was designed for soldiers to read messages in the dark without lighting a lantern because, you know, being spotted by the enemy while reading your map is a bad career move. His system used a grid of twelve dots. Twelve!
Imagine trying to read a tactile character that’s the size of a postage stamp. By the time your finger traversed the whole thing, you’d forgotten what the first word was.
I looked at that clunky, oversized grid and thought, I appreciate the effort, but at fifteen, I did what any grumpy, overachieving teenager would do and tore it all apart. I simplified it and shrunk it down to a six-dot cell that perfectly fitted under a single fingertip.
I presented my system to the Institute in 1824. Keep in mind, I was fifteen, and I was basically telling the established faculty, Hey, your reading methods sucked so I fixed it and they patted me on the head, said, Nice try, kid, and went right back to their bulky, inefficient wood blocks.
I spent the next several years refining the system, including music notation but it wasn't until long after I was gone, tuberculosis,  that people realised, Oh, wait. This blind kid ws actually on to something . You're welcome, by the way.
I went from being a kid who couldn’t handle a simple leather-punching project to creating something that started in a teenager’s bedroom because he was too stubborn to accept that reading had to be difficult.

Post Trump USA

Donald Trump is becoming increasingly unpopular which seems a bit strange after all his successes so how is this possible?
The Orange Fatbergs administrations approval ratings are plumetting and a cynic may point towards voters having had enough of the racism, tantrums, extra judicial killings by ICE, support for the Israeli genocide, the corruption, lying, creepy weirdness, climate denial and refusing the release of the Epstein files he's in and the incoherent babbling and disregard for anyone that refuses to bow down to him.
That is unlikely as his MAGA crowd love all that or rather they did but the problem seems to be runaway inflation, the high cost of petrol and the whole Iran war thing but many people who voted for the Tangerine Toddler are most upset because they thought he was just going to do all the horrible stuff to other folk, not them.
It's got so bad that even some Republicans are even turning against the Grapefruit Gaddafi and as his power continues to wane, Humpty Trumpty will lash out even more, banning more news outlets from the White House, destroying all the Kennedy centres and reflective pools he can get his hands on.
Despite everything, millions will keep voting for Baron von Shitzinpantz anyway as many of his voters are filled with hatred and fear and will pick a sex offending criminal who is almost certainly a pedophile over just about anyone from any other Party but if the Mid Terms go as everyone expects, Americans can start looking at a Post Donald Trump USA but there is a problem with that.
With his penchant of being a utter jerk, he has wounded the USA past the point of return where he somehow managed to make the Iranian regime look sane, with most of the world rooting against America (and enjoying Iran's mocking videos of the orange cheeto) which sucks for the American people and although history will not be kind to him and deservedly so, the rest of us know that if the USA collapsed and had to stop interfering in the rest of the planets business, the world would be a much nicer and better place so win win for the rest of us, oh dear for the US of A.

Special Guest Blogger: Brazilian Goddess Pomba Gira

Sit down, darling. No, not there dolt, you’re sitting on my silk skirt, and this shade of crimson is far too expensive for your fat backside to rumple.
Honestly, the youth of today. You walk into my crossroads with your store-bought roses and menthol cigarettes and you expect the Queen to just drop everything?
My path is paved with the bones of men who thought no was a suggestion, but it has a certain charm because a woman has three choices of being a wife (boring), being a servant (tiring), or being a problem. I chose to be a catastrophic problem. I had hips that swung like a pendulum and a laugh that
could shatter a stained-glass window from three streets away. I lived in the taverns, the cabarets, and the places where the respectable people went when they wanted to feel alive and then spent the next morning praying for forgiveness.
Being a Pomba Gira isn’t just about wearing red and looking fabulous, it’s about the Crossroads. Every time you’re stuck, between a bad job and a worse one or between a boring husband and a thrilling mistake or even between life and death, that’s my office.
I’m the Queen of the Seven Crossroads. I’m the one who stands at the gate of the cemetery, laughing at the people who thought they could take their money with them. You can’t.
When you call on me, you’re not calling a fairy godmother. I’m not going to turn a pumpkin into a carriage, i’m more likely to set the pumpkin on fire and tell you to walk.
You come to me with your little red candles, crying about some boy named Kevin who hasn't liked your photo on the internet. Seriously? You want the Queen of the Night, the Lady of the Labyrinth, the Woman of Seven Marriages, to intervene in a digital spat?
I remember when people asked for real things like protecting your house from the police or making sure your husband’s mistress loses her hair but now, I spend half my time looking at your tweets and blog posts and think I’m not a feckin' delivery service, I’m a spirit. If you want a miracle, go talk to
a saint, they’re much more patient, though their parties are terrible. No smoking, no drinking, and everyone wears white. Dreadful.
People find my laugh, the gargalhada, quite scary as they think it’s the sound of evil. Idiots, It’s the sound of a woman who has seen the beginning and the end and realized that most of what you worry about is utter horseshit.
I'm the perfume you smell in an empty room and the red rose that blooms in the middle of a graveyard, I’ve seen empires fall because someone wanted a kiss they weren't supposed to have and seen men ruin their lives for a glimpse of a red pair of knickers and I sit at my crossroads, sipping my cider, and I laugh.
But don’t get it twisted. I’m not your bestie, I’m a Queen. If you bring me cheap wine, I’ll make sure your next haircut is a disaster. If you lie to me, I’ll make sure you trip every time you try to look cool. I demand respect so take your roses, leave the cigarette pack (the full one, don't be cheap) and remember, life is too short to drink bad wine or smoke those French ciggies which smell like burnt tyres.

State Pension Age Conundrum

The state pension age is currently set at 67 and there are plans to rise it to 68 and even 69 but the Government are pondering aloud on at some point maybe thinking about possibly lowering it instead.
Very much a kite flying exercise where they mention something in passing and see how it lands with the public and if it gets a bad reaction, they can just say it wasn't actually a thing and forget about it but the idea of putting your feet up a few years earlier than thought seems to be quite popular so they may ponder on it a bit harder.
I have never been able to sort out in my head if the pension age should go up or down, up means less pensions to pay out because in all honestly there are fewer 67 year olds than there are 65 year olds and being dead is a handicap when it comes to claiming your old age pension which saves the Government money but by people staying in employment longer it creates a bottleneck with less jobs for the new generation as the oldies roll on.
Of course by retiring people earlier opening up more jobs, the Government will save on Unemployment Benefit so i guess it comes down to will it cost them more to pay out Pensions earlier than they will save by not paying out Unemployment Benefit and if not, would seem a bit of a economically backwards move. 
There are some ways that I can think of which might work as you presently need 35 qualifying years of National Insurance (NI) contributions or credits to get the full UK State Pension so one option could be you are entitled to retire once you have reached the threshold because working beyond that isn't going to earn you anymore and I can see how that would be popular, even putting it up to 45 years would mean if you began work at 16 you would be clear and eating Wurthers Originals by 61.
As it is only at the 'Hmm....maybe we could' stage there are no plans for what they are thinking or the age they want to lower it to but i'm still unsure if it is a good thing or not, but by making it you can take it earlier if you have the qualifying years if you want to, it seems a happy halfway between what we have now and what most people seem to want.

Eurovision Withdrawals

Canada is joining Australia as being temporarily European for a week in May 2027 when they both compete at the Eurovision Song Contest but Ireland and the Netherlands won't be there in Bulgaria because they have confirmed that they won't share a stage with Israel again due to their continued Genocide in Palestine.
Ireland was one of five countries, along with Iceland, the Netherlands, Spain and Slovenia, that refused to take part in the competition this year in protest against Israel’s participation.
Eurovision's director, Martin Green, said he regretted the withdrawals but: 'They remain a valued part of our family and will be missed' although he won't miss them enough to keep them in and kick out the murdering Israelis instead like they did with Russia.
The European Broadcasting Union has tried to address broadcasters concerns over the participation of Israel by announcing that nations involved in armed conflict or sensitive geopolitical situations will no longer be eligible to host the Eurovision song contest but stopping Israel from hosting it if they win was not enough and off they popped in protest.
I imagine as we get closer more nations will withdraw and I hope they do and would fully support the United Kingdom withdrawing in protest and allow our children, Australia and Canada, to represent us instead because Israel need to be ostracised and to be fair, they would have a better chance of not finishing towards the bottom of the leader board as we tend to do recently.

Cheating Football Teams

 Much joy from Football fans at seeing Manchester City finally getting their cumuppance for their decade of cheating but while many fans of other clubs are reveling in the Citizens demise, a few need reminding that their own teams have had points docked or fines for their own cheating.
With 43 teams on the list for reasons ranging from breaking Financial Fair Play rules to administration, it would almost be quicker to name the League teams which haven't been caught out trying to gain an unfair advantage but where's the fun in that so here is an alphabetical  list of every team that has been docked points over the last 30 years.   

AFC Bournemouth        −10 and another of -17
AFC Wimbledon            −3     
Aldershot Town             −10     
Birmingham City           −9     
Bolton Wanderers         −12     
Boston United             −4 and another of -10    
Brentford                     −3     
Bury                            −12     
Cambridge United      −10     
Chesterfield                 −9     
Coventry City             −10 and another of -10    
Crystal Palace             −10     
Darlington                  −10     
Derby County             −21     
Everton                       −8       
Hereford United         −3     
Hartlepool United     −3     
Leeds United             -15 and another of -10 and another of -10
Leicester City             −6
Leyton Orient             −3
Luton Town                −30 and another of -10  
Manchester City         - pending
Macclesfield Town     −17     
Middlesbrough             −3     
Morecambe                 −3     
Nottingham Forest     −4     
Portsmouth                 −10  and another -9
Plymouth Argyle         −10
Port Vale                      −10     
Rotherham United       -17 then others of -10, -10 and -3
Reading                      −6 and then -6 and another -6    
Sheffield Wednesday  −18 and another of -6
Sheffield United         -10  
Southampton              −4 and then another of -10
Stockport County         −10
Torquay United             −1
West Bromwich Albion −2     
Wigan Athletic             −8 then another of -3 and then -12    
Wrexham                      −10     

That sure is a lot of teams which ended the season with an asterisk next to their name.