Europe Celebrating

Donald Trump: Those European countries are absolutely horrible to refuse to support our war in Iran so I'm going to withdraw US troops from Europe.
Europe: Woo Hoo.
Donald Trump: I mean it, no more US Troops in Europe.
Europe: We heard. Very sad, boo hoo, so do you need a hand packing?
Donald Trump: Do you understand what that means?
Europe: Yep, hey Macron, got the Champagne?
Donald Trump: I'm not joking.
Europe: Are you still here?
Donald Trump: If you won't help me in my war why should we have Troops there?
Europe: Good point, so you promise not to come back? No crossed fingers or anything?
Donald Trump: No, gone forever.
Europe: And you are promising that? You don't have a great reputation for telling the truth you know.
Donald Trump:  I swear it.
Europe: Result!! So long, farewell Auf Wiederseh'n, adieu
Donald Trump: <silence>
Europe: Has he gone or just fallen asleep again?  
Donald Trump: <silence>
Europe: Frederiksen, Macron, Merz, Meloni, Sánchez, grab a bottle and head to Downing Street. Its Party Time!!!!

Antidisestablishmentarianism

The Church of England is the established state church, with King Charles III as its Supreme Governor and 26 bishops sitting in the House of Lords so there is a close relationship with the state which means that as an establishment, the state can withdrawal it's recognition known as disestablishment which will annoy some churchy types who will try to oppose it which is called antidisestablishmentarianism.
Yep, i had to Google all that but the serious point is that as Church numbers fall to unsustainable levels, why is the Church of England still holding such sway over matters when only a small percentage of us actually pay any attention to it?
So to some antidisestablishmentarianisers (made up word?), they don't believe that establishments such as the CoE should be disestablished but if many of us had our way, we would remove all traces of religion from having any representation with the State which makes them supporting  prosestablishmentarianism i guess but whatever, it isn't going to happen so it's all actually floccinaucinihilipilification but at least having  a word like antidisestablishmentarianism bandied around annoys the people with hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia, and that's worth something.

Protest Israel, Not Jews

Awful knife attacks against two Jews yesterday in Golders Green and Keir Starmer turned up today to pass on his sympathy to the Jewish Community and was heckled and accused the government of failing to keep Jewish people safe.
He replied that the Government will strengthen the visible police presence in Jewish communities and  prevent hate preachers from entering our country and speed up sentencing on antisemitic attacks but i don't know what else the Government can do although one  
One Jewish community leader says the language used by the media to describe the Middle East conflict had put targets on the Jewish community's back and called for us to be careful with our words, especially using the word 'genocide' to describe what Israel is doing in Gaza conflict.
Unfortunately, what Israel is doing in Gaza IS a genocide so it has to be called what it is, anything else would be disingenuous so we can't just overlook that, have to call it what it is.  
According to the Home Office, Jewish people are six times more likely to be the victim of a religious hate crime compared to any other major religious group and most concerningly, religious hate crimes targeting Jewish individuals appear to be on the rise. Between 2021/22 and 2024/25, police forces across England and Wales recorded a 25% increase in these crimes.
One Jewish leader even went as far as blaming Keir Starmer for not joining in the Iran War with America and Israel which flies in the face of the majority of the British Public who back the decision not to get involved.
The problem is, in some minds, Israel and Jews are conflated to mean the same thing and it doesn't help when people like Netanyahu are quick to paint any attack on Israel as antisemitic which it isn't, the demonstrations and protests are against what Israel are doing in the Middle East, nothing to do with Judaism or as tjhe protests against the Iraq and Afghan Wars were not protesting against Christianity because America and Britain were conducting them.
It is somehow breaking the link in the sick minds of some people who are unable to see the difference between the two, that's what the UK Government can do, not ban marches against the Israeli Genocide, it will take some sort of education of the complete difference because until then, this will keep sadly happening.   

Iran War Silver Lining

If anything good is to come out of the Iranian conflict, is that it has focused minds that fossil fuels are not good although we may get to the result through economics rather than because we are destroying our planet.
The United Nations today said that the conflict in Iran has: supercharged the boom in renewable power' and with perfect timing the Automobile Association announced that electric vehicle numbers in Britain have hit a record high of two million amidst a worldwide buying spree and further news that Britons have installed new solar power at the highest monthly rate in 10 years. New electric vehicle sales in March were up 66% in Germany and 69% in France and by 72% in Italy as as the rising cost of petrol highlights the cheaper power available from a plug.
Oil and gas prices have soared as Trump and Netanyahu's disastrous conflict in Iran chokes off about a fifth of global oil  supplies and spreads misery.
'Those who've fought to keep the world hooked on fossil fuels are inadvertently supercharging the global renewables boom' the man from the UN said and the energy secretary of the Philippines agreed, saying that the conflict had: 'Accelerated the development of renewable energy and storage is both a strategic necessity and a national imperative and France this week published a national plan to phase out fossil fuels entirely by 2030, oil by 2045 and gas by 2050.
At the world's first-ever conference dedicated to ditching fossil fuels, held in Colombia this week and attended by 56 countries, it was announced that: 'The crisis has accelerated trends that were already underway' and that 'the universal theme is turning away from global energy markets and into regional ones where nations feel they can better guarantee their security' which obviously is a disaster for the Gulf States but then better for the rest of us, so that's fair.

Not An Ai Post

I was shocked to discover recently a blogger i regularly visit has been using AI to generate their posts and even worse, i didn't realise until they told me. I then found out that many more bloggers are using AI and had me wondering how could we tell?  
Long gone are the debates about whether AI can effectively mimic humans, it can and it is getting harder to prove if something was made by a human so how will we ever be sure we are reading something a real person wrote because i really don't want to be going to blogs or reading posts if they are not created by a human, what's the point in that?
Some type of new Turing test would ne nice to prove a machine did all the hard work of writing the post so how can we prove to others in the digital world that you are a human and the content you create is from my own brain and fingertips tapping on a keyboard?
One way is that the machines are almost perfect grammatically and never make mistakes so they won't misspell a word, make a typo or put a punctuation mark in the wrong place so maybe that is where the test is although if you proof-read your own work enough, you will iron out any grammatical errors anyway so it isn't fool-proof.
If a post is too perfect then we could use it as a test of human authenticity so maybe we should throw in a few errors or clunky, awkward sentences or use the wrong homophone but the downside to that is we dumb down to prove we are not a machine which can't be right because nobody should deliberately forget what we spent years in school learning so we must come up with another way, but i'd be buggered if i can think of one.  

Special Guest Blogger: Greek Nymph Callisto

I’m the original, mythological, slightly tragic, and, let’s be honest, profoundly unlucky Callisto. Former nymph, erstwhile companion of Artemis, and eventual celestial real estate (long story).
If Greek mythology were a dinner party I’d be the guest who showed up fashionably late, got accidentally turned into a bear, then flung into the sky by Zeus in a panic move. Literally and metaphorically over my head.
I was a nymph. Not a particularly famous one but a run of the mill woodland nymph just walking through forests looking ethereal, occasionally startling shepherds, and trying not to get turned into a tree.
I joined Artemis’s crew, goddess of the hunt, eternal virgin, and frankly her expectations were high. Total abstinence, zero tolerance for romance, and a strict no-boys-rules which would’ve been fine, if Zeus hadn’t had the self-control of an American at a free gun show.
Zeus  disguised himself as Artemis herself to get close to me. Let that sink in. Not as a handsome mortal, not as a swan, not even as a golden shower, no, he went full undercover goddess.
Long story short: deception occurred, I was blessed (cursed?) with a child, and Artemis found out. You’d think she might’ve had a word with Zeus but no. Off I go, transformed into a bear and sent packing into the woods
The life of a bear is not quite the majestic, spiritual experience people imagine  and as the years passed. I roamed. I hibernated. I developed a taste for berries and then enter my son, Arcas.
Grown up, hunting in the woods, and entirely unaware that the angry bear charging toward him was his dear old mum. I’d like to say we had a tearful reunion. Instead, we had a near-fatal misunderstanding and a very awkward near-mauling.
Enter Zeus (again). In what can only be described as divine panic, he grabs us both and whoosh, hurls us into the night sky. Literally. No warning. Just you’re both constellations now. Deal with it.
And so, I became Ursa Major which looks like a saucepan with legs so never trust a god in a disguise and if you’re going to be immortalised in the stars, at least insist on a flattering angle but at least i’m literally written in the stars i suppose.

Special Guest Blogger: King Christian VII of Denmark

One finds oneself with a surprising amount of time for reflection once one is, well, dead. The celestial paperwork is minimal, the duties are non-existent, and the company, is a bit stuffy.
From my vantage point I’ve had the chance to peruse the history books. And I must say, the press I’ve received is simply dreadful. Mad Christian they called me, and The Insane Monarch. So little imagination! So dreadfully blunt. One prefers to think of myself as… unconventional.
It all began, as these things do, with a childhood. My dear mamma, a British princess through and through (which explains my fondness for a decent cup of tea), did her best.
But there’s only so much one can do with a child whose primary interests include climbing curtains, holding conversations with busts of Roman emperors and developing a sudden, inexplicable passion for cobbling. They tried to teach me statecraft. I found it a bore. They attempted to instill in me a sense of gravitas. I found it chaffed. I was a prince, you see, not an accountant. The whole point of being royalty is to avoid such tedious nonsense.
Then came marriage. A splendid way of securing alliances and my dear Queen Caroline Mathilde, was a lovely girl. Rather serious for my tastes, given to a furrowed brow and an alarming interest in philosophy. I did try to engage with her, I truly did. I’d regale her with my latest theories on why sparrows conspire to steal one’s left shoe, but she always seemed preoccupied. A shame.
The real star of my reign, of course, was a chap by the name of Johann Friedrich Struensee. My physician. A terribly ambitious man who meant to be looking after my humours, which, I grant you, were in a state of perpetual disarray. But he got a taste for power, the old boy. He looked at the machinery of the state, then looked at me who was probably trying to teach the court dog to sing sea shanties at the time, and thought, Right. I can do this.
And do it, he did.
Looking back, one has to admire the sheer audacity. Struensee, with the quiet collusion of my dear wife simply took over. He issued decrees, reformed the government, abolished torture, and gave the press entirely too much freedom. All while signing off with, By order of the King.
I was aware of all this obviously. It’s just… why bother? Struensee was far better at it. He enjoyed it, bless him. Why get my hands dirty with budget cuts and agricultural reforms when you can dedicate your time perfecting the art of entering a state banquet by sliding down the banister?
While other monarchs were poring over maps, I was curating a collection of hats so magnificent it would make a peacock weep. While they were debating trade tariffs, I was perfecting my Royal wave.
My later years were, frankly, a relief. After the dramatic fall of Dr. Struensee (a rather messy business involving a drawing and quartering that quite spoiled my appetite), my stepson and various others decided I’d had quite enough fun. I became a figurehead. A magnificent, be-wigged ornament. And it was glorious. Finally, peace and quiet. All the prestige, none of the paperwork. I could spend my days in Rösseldorf castle, happily engaged in shouting at the statues in the garden and demanding my horses be fed chocolate.
My death, when it came, was terribly anticlimactic. A stroke, they said. One moment, I was correcting a footman on the proper polishing method for my snuffbox, and the next… poof. The great curtain call. Rude of the body to give up so suddenly, I thought, but there you have it.

Turbulent Times Ahead

Climate Change is responsible for many disastrous things but when a friend of mine mentioned to me that she seems to be feeling much more Turbulence when she flies when she used to i wasn't expecting it to be too blame.
In 2024, researchers from the University of Toulouse analysed historical atmospheric models and discovered that the climate conditions that cause severe plane turbulence have been increasing over the past decades, and those conditions are projected to get worse.
Since satellite data collection started 40 years ago, severe turbulence in the North Atlantic has increased by around 55% and the number of turbulence-related injuries since the 1980s have doubled with more hospilisations for broken bones, heart attacks, sprains and spinal injuries
Google states that the technical definition of severe turbulence is any up-and-down movement of a plane that applies a force greater than 1.5 g's to the occupants of the plane when a plane passes through a pocket of variable-density air.
Air turbulence occurs when a plane hits pockets of variable air density around the skies of the jet stream and as global warming heats up the seas and skies near the equator, the temperature differences in the jet stream's lower and higher latitudes become more extreme. Such differences amplify the strength of the jet stream, and, in turn, increase the strength and frequency of its air density.
Not sure if engineers can make changes to a plane to make it less susceptible to turbulence but if not then it has to come down to the computer weather modeling to advise the pilots of areas to avoid although estimates put the current accuracy to forecast unstable air at around 75% of the time.
Karma maybe that the problem is caused by global warming which was helped along by air travel which is a major contributor to global warming in the first place.

Why People Keep Trying To Kill Donald Trump?

By my reckoning, last night at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner was the 5th attempt to kill Donald Trump but before you have any sympathy for the self-confessed sex pest, warmonger and (probable) pedophile, a quick reminder of the things he have said on the sad demise of other people, on Robert Mueller: 'Good, I’m glad he’s dead' and to the widow of a soldier who had just died, 'He knew what he signed up for' and then there was the time he dismissed military cemeteries as 'filled with losers' and 'suckers' for getting killed while the killing of director Rob Reiner and his wife, Trump suggested Reiner had died from 'Trump Derangement Syndrome' so when someone does finally get a clean shot at him, he shouldn't expect too much sympathy.
We don't need to go into the reasons of why people keep trying to take out the Tango Tyrant, it is obvious that he is the ultimate bell-end but if the White House Correspondents' Association dinner was the fifth, what happened at the other four?
Attempt number one was in 2016 when a 20-year-old British man tried to grab a police officer's gun at a rally in a Las Vegas casino and later said he was trying to kill the then presumptive Republican nominee.
The second was in July 2024 in Pennsylvania when a gunman inexplicably missed the massive blob of the body of the third fattest President and shot him in the ear instead which forced the President to embarrassingly wear a Sanitary Towel on his ear for a week afterwards.
Number three came just two months later in September 2024 when a man hiding in bushes with an AK-47-style rifle attempted to assassinate Mr Trump as he played golf in West Palm Beach, Florida and the fourth in February 2026 when a 21-year old man was shot dead by the Secret Service after trying to unlawfully enter Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida armed with a shotgun and gas canister.
Then came yesterdays attempt and you do have to wonder if in a moment of quiet reflection Donald Trump will sit and ponder on just why people keep trying to kill him and consider changing his ways, or, as is more likely, he will just carry on being a complete dick and rely on his security people bundling him out of harms way. If you answered carry on being a complete dick, well done, you win.  

Invoking The 25th

The 25th Amendment of the US Constitution has been spoken of for quite some time but this is the first time it's gotten any real press as far as I can tell and it is plain to see that  he is clearly unhinged, the unhingediest man to ever sit his fat arse in the seat of the Oval Office.
We all know Trump has been doing loads of terrible things this entire time but it seems that threatening to destroy Iranian civilisation was a step to far for some people unlike backing a Genocide, ICE abductions, Trade Wars, ending US Aid, bombing schools, being shown to be a (probable) pedophile in the Epstein Files and arguing with the Pope and depicting himself as Jesus.
Could it be that Trumps implied threat of going nuclear was enough to awaken people to finally do something about the remarkable Orange politician with a record of sexual assault and fraud and is obviously in cognitive decline seems obvious although he has always been a very stupid man with the moral compass and attention span of a brain-damaged whelk who acts like a petulant child when he doesn't get his own way?
The 25th Amendment states that if the Vice President and a majority of the cabinet reckon the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, they can boot him out however they need a two thirds majority vote of the house and the senate and the Republicans will never go for that nor the incompetent, sycophantic useful idiot's in his cabinet who do nothing to restrain his madness.
The whole ball rolling has to start then with JD Vance to save everyone by declaring Trump unfit and replacing him with...checks notes...JD Vance?
Can't see it myself but then i couldn't see the current chaotic, disastrous, exceptionally poor debacle we see today happening either so don't waste good money on betting on the 25th happening, the man is so morbidly obese that a bet on Cholesterol finally doing it's thing instead seems much safer. 

Special Guest Blogger: King of Sparta Tyndareus

I’ve been sitting here for eons, listening to Achilles prattle on about his one tiny heel, while Socrates keeps asking rhetorical questions no one wants answered.
I was born in Sparta, a place where the average citizen is sculpted like a Greek god and my claim to the throne was pure nepotism. Father was Zeus and I inherited the crown not because of any great deeds or divine right, but because Sparta’s version of a royal dynasty was Zeus did it.
My most notable achievement before ascending the throne? Mastering the art of avoiding the plague of infant exposure (yes, Sparta’s famous for leaving unhealthy babies on the side of a hill. Harsh, but effective if you’re into attrition).
I once married a woman named Leda. In my defence, she was a queen, a goddess, and possibly a swan in disguise. It was a match made in Olympus but result was a family tree so convoluted it would make a Game of Thrones fan weep. There was my step-daughter Helen, the face that launched a thousand ships, then Pollux, Castor, and a few other demigods.
My bad luck that the Trojan War happened. Entirely. My fault. You see, I had this little rule: if a suitor wanted to marry Helen, they had to swear an oath to defend her honour forever. A great idea, until 100 men showed up, swore oaths, and then spent three decades sulking in a tent when she got abducted and sparking the Trojan War. My brilliance knew no bounds.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that nobody remembers you for your leadership skills, especially if you die in a classic way.
My daughter Clytemnestra’s husband decided to kill me in a fit of poetic justice. I’d raised the lad like a son, only for him to return the favour by stabbing me. I assume he thought it was a Greek tragedy moment, but honestly, I died while reaching out for the cheese board.
The History books mention me as  the man  murdered by his son-in-law but I wasn’t built for the brutal discipline of Leonidas or the tactical genius of Lysander.
No, I was built for drama and my life was full of irony, murder, and the occasional swan with a lifetime of dodging daggers and died thinking, Maybe I should have just left the kid on the hill.

Not Learning From Last Energy Crisis

Ever since Benjamin Netanyahu discovered he had a simpleton in the White House and they joined forced to start the Iran War which blocked upo the Strait of Hormuz, we have heard much about the energy crisis in the 1970's but i was more into watching Scooby Doo back then so it passed me by so what did happen back then?
In October 1973, in response to Western support for Israel during the Yom Kippur War, Arab members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) imposed an oil embargo on all nations aiding Israel which led to severe oil shortages and a significant spike in global oil prices, profoundly impacting economies worldwide.
The crisis triggered stagflation, impacting growth, high inflation and rising unemployment.
The shortage left many homes and schools without heat and some institutions closed during winter months and cities were plunged into darkness during blackouts.
You would have thought that all this would have concentrated minds and ushered in a new age of renewable sources so nations were not so countries were not so dependent on fossil fuels but what Trump's and Netanyahu's foolishness is proving, we never so we can only hope that this time around, we do and ramp up the Solar, tidal and wind power and then we can tell the Middle East to stick their oil where the sun doesn't shine because our power will be coming from where it does.

End Of The World As We Know It

All the madness from politicians over the past few decades could cause a snowball effect and people start voting for honest caring politicians, corporate capital is restrained, war is ended and humanity lives in peace until the sun dies in billions of years but that doesn't seem very likely because as i wrote here, that once a Civilisation develops a way to end all life on the Planet, it inevitably end up doing exactly that.
Scientists split the demise of the whole damn lot of us into two categories, human-caused (anthropogenic) risks in the near future and inevitable natural events billions of years from now so first the things we can do nothing about and are inevitable.
The Sun will slowly increase in luminosity, making Earth too hot for liquid water which will boil away and the Sun will expand into a red giant, likely consuming the Earth entirely which isn't great but that is up to 5 billion years away.
In the short-term and things we can do something about but stupidly don't is Climate Change and rapid global warming making the planet uninhabitable for humans and most species or a Nuclear War, pandemics  through natural or bio-engineered viruses or my personal favourite, a super-intelligent AI going rouge and deciding that all the humans problems are best dealt with by whacking us all.
There are also the threats from outer space which could involve an Asteroid Impact which could eliminate all life and making us the new Dinosaurs or a Gamma-Ray Burst from a Supernova striping the ozone layer and exposing all life on Earth to lethal radiation.
Based on models from the Global Challenges Foundation, researchers at the Future of Humanity Institute and the World Economic Forum the rankings of perceived risks for are pegged at 16% none of us will be around to welcome the next Century but they put the risks for how life will end are 100% for the Sun thing, 30% of pandemic either we made or a natural one, 10% for Ai running amok,Nuclear War 1% and Asteroid Impact 0.0001%.
Hopefully we will make it until the Sun decides to go Supernova but looking at some of the idiotic people making decisions, i wouldn't bet on it.

Social Media Backlash Begins

Leaded petrol, Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), Plastic, Asbestos and Thalidomide were all things which started out as brilliant inventions which later became so dangerous that they had to be removed and Social Media could soon be added to the list as more and more countries deem it too hazardous for children.
Conceived initially to connect people and foster communities, social media’s influence has grown to shape politics, mental health and the spread of misinformation while enabling cyberbullying and social division. Platforms like Facebook and X have become central to political discourse, influencing elections and public opinion while disseminating misinformation has led to public health challenges, as seen during the COVID-19 pandemic, where false information actually hindered effective responses.
I have seen first hand the effect on mental health from cyberbullying and it has got worse since i left the education arena with plenty of studies showing the link between social media use and increased rates of depression and anxiety and not just in adolescents.
Only recently a Californian Court found Meta and YouTube responsible for injuries incurred by a 20-year-old woman over the course of her childhood including injuries, including body dysmorphia and thoughts of self-harm, that it attributed to these platforms and ruked they must pay the woman $6m in damages.
The Court found that it was clear that these companies knew of the addictive qualities of their sites and the potential damage to young people but  apparently chose to ignore what was evident to them and their users have paid the price but it is reported that a further eight cases are due to go to trial.
Many countries have recognised these dangers and acted decisively by barring under 16's from using social media platforms and we can only hope that like those other things mentioned, Social Media Platforms will be forced to change and become liable for their actions to make it safer or be consigned to history.

Amen To Churches

Over the last decade, apparently 3,500 Churches have closed their doors for good due to poor attendant congregations and the decreasing prevalence of Christianity in this country and speaking to members of the clergy, they say that people are not attending church with the same frequency or devotion that they did in previous generations.
As an Atheist, i couldn't give a hoot  if I am being honest and have long considered religion as a whole to be thankfully on a downward trajectory but as my fellow Blog Owner regularly pulls on the dog collar and the black smock i should show some sympathy that he may soon be out of work and there isn't much call for someone who can recite Numbers 6:24-26 while tipping water over a babies head, it's a very niche role.
More pressing is the fact that there are 3,500 large empty buildings knocking around and I have seen some turned into Restaurants which admittedly looks very nice while you are having the Full English Breakfast or Vegetable Lasagna but otherwise, not sure what else you can do with them.
Some are very old, the oldest goes back to 600AD which is even before there was an England and the Angles and Saxons were carving up the land so historical importance and admittedly some are very impressive buildings indeed but it doesn't mean we can't keep the shell and do something else which doesn't include passing around a plate to collect money to fix the permanently leaky roof.
The Faith Survey found that UK Church membership has declined from 10.6 million in 1930 to 630,000 today with the biggest falls coming within the Catholic, Anglican, Baptist and Methodist flavours of Christianity and a separate Pew Survey of 65 countries revealed the UK to be one of the world's most irreligious countries, with only 30% of those surveyed identifying as 'religious'.
The consolation for the clergy is that there are still approximately 40,300 church buildings in the UK so at a rate of 350 a year, that's 115 years until the last one closes it's doors for the last time which gives them plenty of time to look for new work where you can dress in black and tell people how to live their lives.

Special Guest Blogger: Liberace

Ah, darling. You’ve caught me mid-practise. I was just rehearsing a delicate rendition of Fly Me to the Moon on a spectral grand piano I conjured from moonbeams and vintage sequins, but I saw your curious little mouse hovering over my entry and thought, oh, bless their hearts. They clearly need a bit of sparkle in their life. So here I am, Liberace, still fabulous and still flamboyant.
I passed away on January 31st, 1987 from an AIDS related complication. It was a Tuesday, if memory serves and i was mourned in tasteful black (boring, darling), but mostly they argued over who should inherit my rhinestone-studded candelabra.
In the mid 80's AIDS was a misunderstood disease, on my demise my staff burnt all my bathrobes like they were cursed because then saying you had AIDS was like telling people you’d personally spat in Mother Teresa's face so we called it an 'immune deficiency' which was much more dignified.
Now, don’t get me wrong, dying was not my best performance. No curtain call, no encore, no standing ovation but at least I did it with panache. I left behind 22 Rolls-Royce's, 69 candelabras, and a foundation to teach children piano.
I played the Piano with passion and drama and enough wrist flourishes to qualify as interpretive dance. Critics said I was over-the-top and too flamboyant and likened to a walking disco ball and why not?
I had a piano custom-made with a mirror top. Why? Because even in the middle of Rhapsody in Blue, I wanted to check my hair. Vanity? Perhaps. Practical? Absolutely.
And the fans, oh, the fans! Women threw their girdles at me. Girdles! Not flowers, not chocolates, foundation garments. I had a closet full of them backstage but I knew exactly what  I was doing. While other pianists wore tuxedos and stared wistfully at the ceiling like they’d lost their train of thought, I wore capes lined with actual peacock feathers and descended from the ceiling on a golden elevator.
After i died i heard they turned my house into a Liberace museum, wonder if they left my rhinestone toilet seat?
I proved you could be a classically trained musician, a showman, a fashion disaster (in the best way), and still sell out Madison Square Garden doing a medley of pop tunes and Flight of the Bumblebee all while wearing gloves made of actual mink.
Now some say I wasn’t taken seriously. That I was all show and no substance but I've cultivated a certain image and I don’t regret it one sequin of it because I lived loud, I loved fiercely (with a backup dancer named Tony) and I never let fear of judgment or poorly matched cufflinks silence me.

Hinting At A Super El Niño

 
The Met Office are not ones to send out scare stories and generally coach their language carefully which is why they are saying that: 'Whilst most climate prediction models favour the development of El Niño later this year, there remains a lot of uncertainty about how strong it might be and hence how much the world's climate and weather patterns could be affected but there are hints that this upcoming El Niño could become a strong event'.
Obviously some of the media have picked the phrase 'hints of a strong El Niño' and dubbed it as a 'Super El Niño' which is coming to the UK soon.
An El Niño is a natural climate pattern which occurs every 5-7 years where sea surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific Ocean become unusually warm, weakening trade winds and which allows the warm water to flow back toward South America and messes with global weather.
In South America this can bring increased storms, flooding, and rain, particularly in the southern US, Peru, and Ecuador and severe droughts in Asia and Australasia but these have a further knock on effect for the rest of the Globe, including the UK.
The Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BoM, the US Climate Prediction Center and the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) have also said their models are suggesting a strong El Niño which could effect global weather patterns with the UK weather facing an increased chance of a colder spell during the winter months.
The effects of El Niño in the UK are expected to start in late summer and last around until Spring 2027 so might be a good time to buy a new, thick winter coat although the last major El Niño event in 2009-10 was one of the coldest for generations, the one in 2015-16 gave us lots of rain but an unusually mild winter rather than extreme cold so get some water-proof shoes also, just in case.

Clearing Up Any Iran War Misunderstandings

Day 54th of the Iran War which we were told would last a few weeks so just in case you missed it, here's what's been happening so far.   

America and Israel bombed Ian while in the midst of negotiations to prevent a war and to distract attention from the Epstein files which were a hoax and did not exist but were on the desk of the District Attorney who was slowly releasing them.
The First act of the war which isn't a war was to change the regime by replacing the old regime with a younger more hardline version of the same regime and then take out the Iranian navy which has now been destroyed eight times and who have closed the Strait of Hormuz which was open before the outbreak of the not war and while Trump was declaring that they had won the war which isnt a war seven times.
Trump moaned about Keir Starmer and told Britain to not send their ships which Britain never offered anyway because they could easily get the uranium that was completely obliterated previously during negotiations so that the Iranians can't build the nuclear weapon that they weren't building before the not war that the US and Israel started so Iran could not have a nuclear missile, which they never.
Then as the price of oil went up as the Iranian military which was beaten and had lost the war were launching missiles which America had already been wiped out at several other Middle Eastern nations so the US, which has nuclear weapons, threatened to end Iranian Civilisation by using nuclear weapons to prevent Iran from having nuclear weapons because having nuclear weapons is dangerous which made the Pope question the war and led the US to question just how religious the Pope actually was that he didn't support the mass murder of millions of people .
Now a second round of negotiations are being prepared which Iran did not turn up to to end the not a war and America have blockaded the Strait to show Iran that blocking a Strait is wrong and breaking International Law.
So that's where we are today, I hope this has cleared up a few things

Special Guest Blogger: Ian Dury

Right, pull up a chair, clutch your cuppa, and let’s have a proper chin-wag about the bits of my life that actually mattered. I’m not gonna stand on a soapbox and wax lyrical like some pretentious pop-poet, nah, I’ll give it to you straight, with the kind of language a true Londoner would use when he’s had a few pints and a proper rant. So, strap in you lot, and let’s go.
I was born in the East End of London right in the middle of a blitz, where the only thing falling faster than the bombs were the chances of any decent music on the radio.
School was a hard grind  but the real lesson I learned was how to survive on a diet of battered fish and chips, and the occasional jam sandwich when the canteen ran out of anything decent. That’s the sort of culinary inspiration that later fed into the lyric about a dog-eating-a-dog in Reasons to be Cheerful, Part 3.
At 17 I signed up for the Royal Air Force. Not because I wanted to fly a Spitfire, nah, I was looking for a free meal and a roof over me head. And, let’s be honest, the uniforms made you look proper sharp even though i came with a you can sod-off attitude, the RAF also nicknamed me Sparky. Not because I was bright, but because I kept sparking off arguments with the Sergeants, but I did learn to play the clarinet in the band.
When I finally got my discharge papers, I walked back to London, after a stint as a handyman and a teacher, I found myself in Kilburn, hanging out with a bunch of blokes and we formed Kilburn & the High-Roads, a band that was part punk, part rock-'n-roll and all-out chaos.
Our first gig was at the Rock Garden where I  stepped up to the mic, looked at the crowd, and thought Right, let’s give ‘em something they’ll never forget and came up with a tune that I’d later call 'Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick'.
Sadly, the band split up after a few years and i went solo and my first solo record, New Boots and Panties!!, was me saying I’ve got a voice that can sound like a thunderstorm mixed with a tinny radio, and I’ll use it to say whatever the hell I want.
The track that got the world and the tabloids to notice was when i was with Ian Dury and the Blockheads called Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll and i followed that with Spasticus Autisticus about my disability after contracting Polio when I was seven, and The BBC banned them both, which only made them more appealing.
I didn’t set out to be some iconic figure. I just wanted a good gig, a decent pint, and the chance to say whatever I felt like when the moment struck. Yet, somewhere between those blokes and lasses in the clubs and the radio stations that finally caught my drift, something happened where people started to listen but I was just  being myself, a bit of a nut.
I tossed rock, funk, reggae, and a dash of cabaret into the same pot and served it with a side of sarcasm, the Pop World needs a bit of chaos now and then just to keep the boring bits at bay such as the diagnoses of bowel cancer which forced me to write one more album and do a farewell tour but i was always proud that i was a man who walked to the beat of his own drum and it appear that this particular drummer learnt his drumming skills on a trumpet.

A New Me?

Apparently, all the cells in our body are replaced every seven years which means we are completely new people then we were seven years ago which made me wonder if i have changed since 2019 and i had a look through my blog posts from that year to see what i was banging on about back then and if I felt any differently now .
In 2019 we had plenty of posts about climate change but I have been on about that for decades so no surprise there as well as the awfulness of Capitalism and the even more awfulness of the diabolical actions from nation of Israel so they would always be getting a mention so no surprises there either.
Very much a 2019 thing was Boris Johnson who took it from both barrels all the way through the year as did Prince Andrew and Donald Trump who was just known as a moronic sex pest back then and not a probable pedophile also.  
Raging against War's and Inequality as well as Religion, America's gun laws after yet another mass shooting, the Royals and Brexit all got a mention as did Greta Thunberg who is thankfully still around so pretty much all the same things i go on about now so no real change from the 2019 version to today's so maybe if we go back 14 years, and two previous me's, we may find something.
Very much a 2012 thing mentioned a lot was the US Election and President Obama and the arrival of China's Xi Jinping, the death of Whitney Houston, David Cameron and his Government got a regular kicking as did Piers Morgan but running through 2012 were posts raging against Climate Change, American gun laws, Starbuck's tax avoidance, floods, the awfulness of Israel, Capitalism and the Afghan war so pretty much the names may have changed but what vexes me in 2026 was vexing me back then also.
So in conclusion, my body may have 30 to 37 trillion new cells since 2019 but each one picked up from the ones they replaced so nope, no changes to me but unfortunately, not many changes for the better in our World either, its just as bad and run by just as awful people as it was back then.  

Trump Effect On World Cup

When FIFA voted to give the 2026 World Cup to USA, Mexico and Canada, i imagine they thought that Donald Trump would be either be in Prison or in a mental Institution by this year so i imagine they were quite shocked when the Calendar rolled around and the man in charge was, Donald Trump.  
America's reputation has been shot through for years but no more so than at the moment with a (probable) pedophile running the show and starting wars which could explain why the 2026 World Cup Organisers are concerned by how their Tournament is going in the time of Trump.
Rather than being a global showcase for America, it has falling hotel prices, canceled room blocks and weak international demand are exposing that the world’s biggest tournament is arriving at the exact moment America has become harder to visit, harder to trust, and harder to welcome.
Hotel rates in Dallas, Miami, Atlanta, and other host cities are falling instead of surging ahead of the World Cup and extreme ticket prices and inflated transit costs are putting off travellers.
A study by FIFA and the World Trade Organization published last year predicted the 39-day event would bring in 6.5 million fans and yield an overall $30.5 billion economic impact in the U.S. with an influx of visitors will likely generate billions of dollars in economic activity, benefiting the hospitality, transportation, and retail sectors in host cities but with the tournament just over two months away, things are not looking quite so rosy.
Analysis by Deutsche Bank has reported that the price of plane tickets have gone up by 140% for internal flights and there is even a ban on the fans of three teams Iran, Haiti, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo who all have games in the US.
Even getting into the country has gone from $21 to $40 for Europeans visitors who will need to apply for a non-immigrant visa and visitors from other qualifying nations with games in the U.S., including Algeria, Cape Verde, Ivory Coast, and Senegal, must also pay a bond of either $5,000, $10,000, or $15,000, that will be decided at their visa interview.
On top of the added costs, worries about Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which has previously arrested tourists with valid visas, may make football fans not want to attend anyway and many fans from nations such as England, Germany and The Netherland called for their nation to boycott the Finals altogether.
The American Hotels & Lodging Association reported late last month that hotel bookings in New York City for the dates of the World Cup were 2% below the same time last year when no major event was scheduled and the New York City comptroller also estimated in a report that the city may lose money because of costs like policing.
Hotel Association in Philadelphia and San Francisco, all of which are hosting World Cup matches, said that that the economic boom FIFA promised isn’t materializing despite hotels slashing their rates ahead of the World Cup. They also report thousands of room cancellations FIFA made in host cities across the United States, Canada and Mexico.
Less than two months out from the FIFA World Cup, it has become clear that Donald Trump’s detrimental influence is casting a pall over things.

Starmer Out But Not Quite Yet

Inadvertently misleading Parliament sure is a weaselly way of saying that you accidentally lied but whatever he wants to call it, Prime Minister  Keir Starmer is looking as shaky as a jelly on a trampoline.
Just in case you missed it, in December 2024, Starmer announced that he was appointing Peter Mandelson as the ambassador to the US.
In July 2025, journalists reveal documents from the Trumpstein files which show a very close relationship with Mandleson and the pedophile and two months later Mandelson is sacked, the third time he has been sacked from Government in his career.
In February 20206, Mandelson is arrested by Police for passing on UK Government secret information to Epstein, misconduct in public office,  and politicians began asking Starmer some awkward questions about the vetting process, of which the Prime Minister stated was carried out fully and completely.
In the last week it has been revealed that Mandelson failed the security vetting process but it was over-ruled by the Foreign Office without Downing Street’s knowledge and today Starmer said that he had not known Mandelson had failed the vetting process until two days ago but may had 'Inadvertently misled Parliament over the vetting'.
Firstly, that appointing someone who had already been sacked twice previously is hard to defend but then not being told that the person you are putting forward as the Ambassador failed the Security Checks is stretching credibility unless it was one of those situations where you make it clear that you don't want to know so you can later say nobody told me if it all blows up in your face, like this has. 
As expected the opposition are calling for Starmer's head and despite being a Labour supporter, i agree that his position is untenable now but the only thing that is saving him at the moment is that they want to scapegoat and boot him out in May after the Local Elections which are expected to be a royal shallacking for the Party.
Seems we could be heading for our 7th different Prime Minister in 11 years and we can only hope the next one is a bit more proper Labour Party than Starmer has been. 

They Did What To A Statue?

Wanted War Criminal, Benjamin Netanyahu, has condemned 'in the strongest possible terms' the Israeli soldier seen vandalising Jesus statue with a sledgehammer in Lebanon.
Analysts have said the image was taken in Debel, one of the villages in ​Lebanon where Israel's military has been operating and Netanyahu said that he was: 'Stunned and saddened to learn that an IDF soldier damaged a Catholic religious icon in southern Lebanon' and will launch a probe of the matter and will take appropriately harsh disciplinary action against the offender before expressing 'Regret for the incident and for any hurt this has caused to believers in Lebanon and around the world'.
Fresh from the uproar over the Trump depicting himself as God, it made the American's nervous that their close ally was anything bhut the wholesome genocidal murderers they believed they were and the US ambassador to Israel has called for 'Swift, severe, & public consequences for this desecration of our holy symbols'.
If only they had shown such concern for the bombed out schools, hospitals, homes and offices as well as the minimum 75,000 people of Gaza murdered by Israel and their backers in Washington but nope, Israel and America draw the line at smashing up a statue.
One day the years of Trump and Netanyahu will be gone and only relived through History programmes with ominous music playing as the voice-over tries to make explain of just how awful these years are.

Special Guest Blogger: Roald Amundsen

My life and that rather ignominious final chapter where I managed to lose myself. The irony, I tell you, is thicker than a week-old blizzard.
They say you should follow your passion and my passion, as it turned out, was for being profoundly cold. While other lads in Oslo were dreaming of warm bakeries or perhaps not dying of scurvy, I was reading books about men whose primary achievement was turning various shades of blue before succumbing to a polar bear.
My dear mother had other plans. Doctor, she wanted. A respectable profession. indoors by a warm fire. She pictured me with a stethoscope, listening to men cough. Instead, I took a dogsled and listened to the howl of the Arctic wind from the bow of a ship heading for the Northwest Passage.
I had to. The Northwest Passage was the Everest of my day, only flatter, wetter, and considerably more likely to crush your ship into splinters. People had been trying it for centuries, mostly adding to the growing collection of ghost ships.
My plan, in a nutshell, was not to be tragic. It was revolutionary. I learned from the chaps who actually knew what they were doing, the local Inuit. We wore their clothes, ate their food, and more importantly, let their dogs do all the actual work. The real heroes of that expedition weren't the men but the furry, four-legged chaps who seemed to view the entire adventure as a rather demanding walkies.
The South Pole was the main event. The one that gets all the press. This is where things get a bit competitive.
You see, there was this other fellow, Captain Robert Falcon Scott. A splendid chap, I’m sure. Very British, very heroic. Great moustache. But his approach to exploration was, shall we say, a touch more romantic than practical. It was all about noble suffering for the glory of the Empire. Splendid stuff for a poem, awful stuff for staying alive.
My plan was, in essence, don’t be a tit. It involved Ski's for moving efficiently, dogs for pulling the sledge (or in a pinch for emergency rations) and warm fur clothing for not freezing your nuts off.
Scott’s plan involved Ponies which sank into the snow and had to be shot, motorised sledges which broke from the cold immediately and good old British spirit which is fine until you got no ponies or sledges left.
Unsurprisingly we got there first, planted the Norwegian flag, had a quick nip of something medicinal to ward off the frost, and thought, Right, that’s done. Pole conquered. Now, where’s my lunch?
And so, we come to it. The curtain call. The bit where the great explorer gets… well, lost.
All my life, dedicated to navigation, to finding my way across the most featureless landscapes on Earth, only to go missing on what was supposed to be a simple rescue mission.
An airship crashed in the Arctic so I hopped in a French seaplane to go and find him. A routine jaunt,  when we took off from Tromsø, and then we simply ran out of map and, it seems, sky.

Got Any Integrity Richard Tice?

When it was revealed that Labour Deputy Prime Minister, Angela Raynor, had bought a Flat which should have been registered as a second home, which meant she should have paid an added £40,000 in tax, Reform's Richard Tice said that Rayner should be sacked for her tax errors and: 'If she has any integrity, she will resign' so a bit award that he has now been revealed he owes HMRC £100,000 plus £30,000 interest for unpaid Corporation Tax.
The error stems from his property investment firm, Quidnet, which he still owns and failed to register to become a Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT), which meant it paid no Corporation Tax hence the big bill now.
Tax expert said it was: 'A really basic tax mistake and not some deep tax nerd point' and the Tax Policy Associates said that they would expect Richard Tice to know it and if not, his advisers certainly should which does look as if that will come under the HMRC title of 'Carelessness' which carries one of the higher rates of penalties for denying the Chancellor.
Obviously, as Tice is not one to take the blame for anything when he can try and blame someone else, said in his defence it was a all stitch up as: 'The relentless effort to tarnish my good name is the kind of behaviour that deters other successful business people from going into politics. The consequences are very real - as we can all see with the current Labour Cabinet, which is entirely devoid of business experience. The result? A flatlining economy and dire public services. All in a nation facing humiliation on the world stage' which shows that he obviously will not resign from carrying Nigel Farage's bags around and has no integrity himself for owing twice as much as Raynor, who's head he called for for owing half as much.

Undecided On No Hits Tour

The Pet Shop Boys are back on tour but this one is billed as 'No Hits' and they are just playing Album tracks and B sides.
I can't describe myself a big Pet Shop Boys fan, i didn't mind them and even had the first Album 'Actually' but then i guess this isn't aimed at people like me, which is why they are playing smaller venues and is probably just going to attract hard core fans who have the albums and the singles so they will know the songs which is fair although if I went to see a band who i liked, i would expect to hear some of the most well know songs which is why it conflicts me .
Part of me applauds them for doing it and part of me thinks it's the big hits which people want to hear when they shell out to go see a band but then this shouldn't bother me because i wont be queuing up to go see them, but it may set a precedent for other bands who i may well be standing in line for.
I'm still undecided but i'm leaning more towards good luck to them but I hope it doesn't become a thing amongst other bands.

Is the Pope Catholic?

The battle to be the absolute biggest moron in the Trump Government can feel so closely fought but in the end, it’s always Trump himself isn’t it, nobody is going to outdo him for sheer moronicness but the Vice President must have givejn the Orange (probable) Pedo a scare this week when he began questioning the Pope of all people on religion.
Now I have no time for either the Pontiff or the bunch of children in the White House but i did find myself rooting for the man in the funny hat after Trump pictured himself as God and then tried to gaslight mainly his not too bright supporters that he thought it was him dressed as a doctor.
The Pope said a few days later that he was not seeking to debate Donald Trump when he criticised 'tyrants who spend billions on wars in a speech for which the Government who have spent $80bn so far on a war they needlessly started and are despretly hoping comes to an end soon, took offence and pushed forward the man who has been a Catholic for about 10 mins, JD Vance.    
The vice-president said that: 'I think it’s very, very important for the pope to be careful when he talks about matters of theology' for which the Vatican must have asked if they can't talk about matters about theology, than who could? They literally describe themselves as being God’s vicar of Christ on Earth, it's their raison d'être so to speak.
All very concerning for the low watt Catholic Trump supporters in the US who face a choice between supporting their (probable) pedophile they have been supporting or the guy who actively calls himself Gods voice on Earth although it is hard to any sy6mpathy with them having to choose, if they are supporting Trump in the first place than their moral radar is very off centre to start with.
Trumps relationship with Christianity has been long debated, but if a Hell exists then his best bet against eternal damnation is being so radioactively unpleasant that Satan would balk at spending five minutes with him, let alone an eternity.
England has a history of breaking from the Pope when our own sociopath tipped the toys out of his pram when the Pope refused to let him divorce and remarry so maybe it is all a ploy to break with the Church and create their own but with Trump running it you just know like everything he touches, it will be even more of a shitshow and will probably reduce the age of consent down to (checks his entry in the Epstein Files), 13 or something.

Special Guest Blogger: Nat King Cole

Hello, darling. About time i was asked to do this but but no I had to wait behind the woman who was in MASH! Priorities, people.
Anyway. I know the profound injustice of being remembered mostly for The Christmas Song which I recorded on a 98-degree August day, while wearing a woolen jumper and mentally hallucinating chestnuts. Roasting. On an open fire. Bless my heart.
Let’s start at the beginning, being born in Alabama in 1919, son of a preacher, raised on hymns and the firm belief that dancing was probably a sin. My father thought I was going to be a minister.
I started on the organ, played in church, in the school band and later in speakeasies in the King Cole Trio, I named it after myself. Bold? Perhaps but we were a hit. Piano, guitar, bass and me, crooning like a love letter dipped in honey.
And the ladies? Oh, the ladies. If I had a shilling for every time a woman swooned after I sang Mona Lisa, I could’ve bought my own island and declared it a sovereign nation.
Being a Black man with a voice like warm cognac in mid-century America was… complicated. After being spotted by Bing Crosby and signed to Capitol Records, I broke barriers like the first Black person to host a national TV show only to have it cancelled after a year because advertisers weren’t ready because apparently America wasn’t ready for a black man singing love songs to a national audience.
After moving to a house in Los Angeles and days later finding a burning cross on my front lawn and my dog dead from eating poisoned meat and an attempted kidnapping i decided i wasn't ready for America either so I pivoted.
I went big on albums and became the velvet-voiced diplomat of integration with songs such as Unforgettable, When I fall in Love, Smile, . Some folks said I wasn’t Black enough but frankly, I was just a man who liked good suits, fine music, and the occasional martini.
And then the end. Lung cancer. Bit of a buzzkill, really but i knew smoking was bad. I mean, they put a warning on the packs these days in bold, capital letters but back then Cigarettes were practically a fashion accessory. You weren’t a proper singer if you weren’t coughing elegantly between takes.
I died in 1965. Age 45. Too young, really and just when I was getting good at golf.

Strait Open But Aren't They Forgetting Something?

Keir Starmer is in Paris for a meeting about the Strait of Hormuz but Iran appears to have already declared the waterway is 'completely open for the remaining period of the ceasefire' and already the price of a barrel of oil has dropped by 10% .
The blame for the steep rise in the first place falls entirely on the two antagonists America and Israel, but while the blocking of the Strait of Hormuz was/is a big problem, i fail to see how the tankers flowing again is going to ease the problem when most of the oil infrastructure is damaged.
Qatar's Ras Laffan Industrial City, the world's largest LNG facility, took massive damage from an Iranian missile and Israel struck Iran's South Pars gas field, the world's largest natural gas reserve.
All sides targeted each other's energy infrastructure, refineries in Saudi Arabia, Gas fields in UAE, petrochemical plants in Qatar and when one of these facilities are hit, its isn't a quick job to rebuild.
Some of these facilities took a decade to plan and five years to build and if a missile goes through one,  you're looking at a couple of years to get it running again. If the structural damage is severe, and fires tend to do that, you're looking at a complete rebuild.
I am sure that Trump and his fellow infant's will claim victory and hope the whole World has amnesia that the person who caused such global economic upheaval and almost drove it off a cliff was the same person who pointed the car at the cliff in the first place.
Still, making Americans worry about the cost of filling up their cars stops them from thinking their President is a pedophile, which he almost certainly is, so job done there Donny.

Worse Iran Deal Than JCPOA

 
It is pretty obvious to almost everyone that Warmonger and wanted War Criminal Benjamin Netanyahu played Donald Trump like a fat Piano with regards to Iran and now Epstein's best pal is desperate to save his own skin by desperately looking for a way to bring and end to it with some sort of deal with Tehran but will it be as good as the one they had, and tore up?
Back in 2015, after 20 months of negotiations, six World powers signed the Iran Nuclear deal, JCPOA.
Under that deal, Iran reduced its enriched uranium stockpile by 98%, capped enrichment at 3.67%, ripped out two thirds of their centrifuges, poured concrete into the core of their plutonium reactor and opened every facility to international inspectors and it worked with The IAEA, Pentagon, US Intelligence all confirming full compliance over a dozen times.
The final compliance report said that 'Iran was transparently, verifiably, and fully implementing the deal' and but one country wasn't happy about it, Israel.
Netanyahu flew to Washington and called the JCPOA an 'historic mistake' and then spent the next 3 years ranting about it and waiting for the right low IQ moron to come along, and he did, Donald Trump.
In May 2018 Netanyahu stood up at the Israeli Ministry of Defence and attempted to undermine everything that had been achieved and repeated the same line he had been saying for decades that Iran were only weeks away from a nuclear bomb and eight days later, Trump tore up the JCPOA calling it 'horrible' and 'one-sided and said he’d get something better.
In retaliation, Iran started doing everything that the JCPOA had explicitly banned and then Trump started his first war, in his words 'obliterating' Iran's Nuclear facilities but which turned out to be dropping a few heavy bombs to make some dents in a mountain for which experts said merely put back Iran's nuclear facilities weeks, so not obliterated then or else the Iranian facility builders are the world's best builders.
Then this year, during negotiations, Operation Epic Fury for a myriad of incompetent reasons including Iran was weeks away from making a nuclear bomb, a bomb that the deal which was in place was verifiably stopping from happening so now six weeks into a war only Trump and Netanyahu wanted, the Strait of Hormuz is shut down, oil prices are through the roof, shipping in chaos, fuel prices spiking in every country, thousands dead, Cities reduced to rubble and Trump desperate for a deal to bring it to an end.  
The latest proposals from Iran are a 5 year pause on enrichment, no agreement on centrifuges and Iran refusing to ship out its enriched uranium while what they previously agreed to was, without dropping a single bomb, 15 year enrichment restrictions at 3.67%. 10 year centrifuge limits, 25 years of uranium mine monitoring, 98% of Iran’s stockpile removed, full IAEA inspection access and Iran was complying as confirmed by every international body on earth.
America recently handed Iran a 15 point plan to end the war and Iran replied with a 10 point plan of their own and it is that 10 point plan which Trump said was 'a workable basis on which to negotiate' and the list include the lifting of all primary and secondary sanctions on Iran, continued Iranian control over the strait of Hormuz, US military withdrawal from the Middle East, an end to attacks on Iran and its allies, full compensation for damages suffered by Iran during the war, the release of frozen Iranian assets and a UN security council resolution making any deal binding.
Obviously negotiations will water some of those down, and the main sticking point seemed to be the 20 year pause on enrichment with Iran offering only 5 but you don't need to be a diplomatic expert to see that what is on offer now is something objectively worse than what went before it , one nuclear expert called it 'a dollar store JCPOA' and still the genocide master in Tel Aviv is doing his best to ruin even that, phoning the criminally inept JD Vance after the just one day of Islamabad talks to make sure the deal stays broken.
The adults in the room now are Pakistan who are offering to host another round of talks before the current ceasefire end on 21st April, a war that was started  to fix the problem Netanyahu and Trump created and the proposed solution is worse than what existed before any of it happened.
As one person said to me 'Maybe Trump asked Melania to make that speech to bring the attention back to the Epstein files and stop people talking about what an absolute shitshow he has made of Iran'.

Special Guest Blogger: Loretta Swit

I went from Loretta Szwed to Swit to Houlihan to Holahan and back to Szwed during my 87 years with each surname summing up my life into neat little parcels of time.
Szwed was when i was had been a high school cheerleader and captain of the girl's basketball team and then when I was employed at a variety of clerical jobs including the secretary to the ambassador from Ghana to the United Nations.
Then i Americanised my name to Swit when i began acting on Broadway before becoming the name most people know me as, Margaret 'Hot Lips' Houlihan in MASH.
I played a strong, complicated, occasionally lipstick-wielding woman in a military hospital during the Korean War who could cry on cue, scream into a P.A. system but of course, being known primarily for screaming CAPTAIN! across a compound isn’t exactly the kind of legacy poets write sonnets about. But hey, Hot Lips! Like I was some sort of exotic cocktail garnish. I wasn’t even particularly hot in those days, my lips were chapped from the wind and my hair was permanently frizzed from humidity and trauma. But sure, call me Hot Lips. I’ll take it. I earned it.
For eleven years, from 1972 to 1983 and for all but 11 of the 256 episodes of the show, I woke up, put on an army uniform that fitted like a sausage casing, memorised dialogue that swung from hilarious to heartbreaking in the span of a commercial break and all in a fake tent in California.
Only Alan Alda, Jamie Farr, William Christopher and myself started and finished the series and every season I was nominated for an Emmy Awards and won two, in 1980 and 1982.
In 1981, I played the role of Christine Cagney in the movie pilot for the television series Cagney & Lacey, but was my contract with MASH meant i wasn't able to play the role in the television series but when MASH ended in 1983 i went from Houlihan to Holahan when i married actor Dennis Holahan, the guy who played Per Johannsen, a Swedish diplomat with an embarrassing injury who became briefly involved with Hot Lips in an episode of MASH.
I did carry on doing TV work and milked the MASH reunions for all it was worth and even wrote a couple of Books but of the main twelve members of the MASH cast, there are now only four left as I bugged out from natural causes which will make the next MASH televised reunion a much quicker show.

Back In The EU (Almost)

Keir Starmer is hinting that Britain could adopt single market rules without MPs’ vote as part of UK-EU reset and i am more than happy with that although i hold my hands up on grounds of hypocrisy as i would be spitting feathers if it was the other way round.
If Donald Trump has been good for one thing (other than protecting pedophiles in the USA), then it is for pushing us back towards our European neighbours and Labour Ministers are planning to fundamentally reshape Britain’s relationship with the European Union, with new legislation that could result in the UK signing up to EU single market rules without a normal parliamentary vote.
It is undeniable that coming out was economic madness as the trade deals around the World we were promised failed to materialise leaving our GDP 4% worse off and Ministers are arguing that the move which is expected to be launched before the Summer recess, will add billions to the UK economy, help temper the cost of the conflict and boost sluggish productivity.
The move is possible under so-called Henry VIII powers, named after the 1539 law that allowed the monarch to rule by decree, which allow ministers to approve laws without full scrutiny from parliament using secondary legislation which enforces laws without needing new Parliamentary acts although it will need to be rubber stamped in Parliament and with a stonking majority of 174, that's just a formality .
Ministers are saying the move will promote trade without breaking the government’s promise to not rejoining the customs union, single market, or returning to freedom of movement which even I find a bit of a stretch but what the hey, the Right Wing numbnuts have been doing enough damage recently so up there's as the saying goes.
'The EU is our largest trading market, almost half of our total trade was with the EU in 2024' explained one Minister, 'We’re all paying a cost of living penalty for all the barriers at the border, so it is sensible to make deals to remove those barriers and undo the damage' which all makes sense but maybe it would be better to re-run the Referendum and get the agreement of the British public but if they have to be sneaky about it, i'm surprisingly okay with that also.

Trumps Not Mad Or Senile, He's Just An Awful Person

After his burst of mad social media tweets recently, the talk is of just how senile or plum crazy Donald Trump is now but i just think he is, and has always been, an odious, awful human being who is so used to getting his own way that he throws a toddlers purple hissy fit if he doesn't get it.
As for the war of his choosing in Iran, it is pretty obvious now that he is having buyers remorse with Israel telling him that by taking out the leadership on Day 1, the Iranians would buckle and he would sweep in and take the oil with a USA friendly Government in place like he did in Venezuela but that didn't go to plan and now he is desperately scratching around declaring America won with nobody actually believing they won anything.  
Amusingly, Trumps own Administration are saying that  he should not be taken literally and does not mean exactly what he is saying meaning even they believe that nothing their President says can be given any credence.
He may be mentally unwell or even senile or suffering Dementia but even his own supporters turned on him recently over the Genocidal 'Wipe Out A Civilisation' and the Trump as God picture which he tried to defend as he thought it was him as a doctor and therefore treating his own supporters as a honking great throng of halfwits.
His skin may be bright Orange but it must have the thickness of single ply Tissue Paper because he takes any slight as a reason to launch a childish broadside at the opponent, which today included the Pope, but none of this is the behaviour of a normal person which means Americans have to be looking towards the 25th Amendment which allows them to remove him if he is unfit for Office.
Personally, leading an insurrection to overthrow Democracy, the criminal charges for fraud, being one of the Planets leading liars and the sex pest tag hanging around his neck was not enough and the Epstein files which has a growing body of evidence that he not only knew about Epstien's pedophile behaviour, but indulged in it also which is why he is desperate to hush it up.
Who America votes for is their own business but i was genuinely staggered by the inability to see that an obviously dreadful man will obviously do dreadful things over and over again which is exactly what we are seeing now but most annoying is that thing which politicians always do once they are safely out of office, say that they never agreed with him and he was terrible which by then is far too late.

After Artemis II, What Next?

They have flown at 17,000 miles per hour, travelled 685,000 miles and spent 10 days in space, a trip that took Nasa’s Artemis II crew the furthest humanity has ever been from the Earth but now that the astronauts are back on Earth, what's next?
For Nasa and for all of humanity in whose name the astronauts said they were travelling, the question is where will this achievement lead?
There is a space race with China to get the first feet on the Moon for 50 years and Nasa hopes to do that with Artemis IV by 2028 but the whole Artemis project has been facing delays are are 5 years behind their original timescale, Artemis III was pencilled in for 2023.
If III succeeds, then comes Artemis IV, which aims to finally put astronauts onto the moon but China is working to a similar schedule, with the hope of getting to the moon by 2030. And it is working fast and has already put landers on the moon, and is due to test the spacecraft later this year, and experts suggest that its timelines could be a little more realistic than the ones offered by Nasa.
Although i refuse to buy into the Nationalism which comes with Space Exploration, inevitably the winner to leave fresh footprints on the Lunar surface will get the glory but various political demands from inside the US and China will require that both get to the moon as quickly as it can.
There have been people who do not share my enthusiasm for Space Travel, asking what's the point of it all but that's to not notice the Earth's faces growing challenges from climate change and resource scarcity to geopolitical instability from which we may well need to escape one day.
Then there are the considerations of asteroid impacts, supervolcanic eruptions or nuclear war, Stephen Hawking warned, 'I don’t think the human race will survive the next thousand years, unless we spread into space' and he was a proper brainiac.
Then there are the technological advancements it generates right here on Earth, satellite communications, GPS, weather forecasting, advanced materials, medical imaging, miniaturised electronics in smartphones and laptops.
Finally, the cost is often mentioned but consider this, the projected estimate for the whole Artemis project is $93 billion, the war in Iran costs America $2 billion dollars each day, the 40 day war therefore cost 86% of what it cost to fund the entire Artemis project which should shut up the people who are saying to me the money would be better spent here on Earth because when the money is here, we just spaff it away on missiles and bombs to kill each other with.

Special Guest Blogger: Irving Berlin

Ladies and gentlemen, may I have the honor of your attention as I regale you with the tale of my illustrious career, my untimely demise and why I’m still not over the time I accidentally invented Christmas.
I was born Israel Beilin which is a name as cumbersome as a Brussel sprout soufflé. My parents, humble German-Jewish immigrants, arrived in the United States with precisely two things, a trunk full of secondhand coats and a deep, abiding distrust of sausages made by anyone else.
We settled in New York, where I quickly learned that if you want to make it in America, you must first shed your accent, your last name, and any hope of pronouncing your own surname without a yawn. Thus, Israel became Irving and Beilin became Berlin. Classy.
The golden days of Tin Pan Alley! A time when composing a hit song was as simple as scribbling a melody on a napkin, tripping over a piano bench, and accidentally creating the next standard.
My early years were a whirlwind of renting a room in Yonkers for $2.50 a week and scribbling lyrics by gaslight. Or kerosene. Or whatever passed for light before electricity decided to show up.
Then came Alexander’s Ragtime Band, and suddenly I wasn’t just a man with a questionable moustache, I was a man with a musical career. And let me tell you, nothing solidifies your place in society like a song that makes every person in America tap their feet while pretending they’ve never heard it.
White Christmas. Yes, that one. The song that has made me eternally wealthy, I was making money off a song about snow for the rest of my life.
The truth? I wrote it on a dare. I was in Hollywood, visiting my son, and the weather was so disgustingly sunny it hurt my soul. I muttered something about missing the snow and the cold, and lo! Bing Crosby turned to me and said, 'Write a song about it.' And so I did. But here’s the kicker: I had never seen a white Christmas in my life. I was winging it.
By the time I shuffled off this mortal coil at 101, I’d written over 900 songs and outlived Cole Porter, George Gershwin, and about five of my own nieces.
My death? Quiet, dignified, and mercifully free of dramatic last words. I was napping, as one does when you’re 101 and your joints and other body parts have given up the fight.

Even Erdogan Thinks You Suck Benji

Shortly after the United States and Iran agreed to a ceasefire earlier this week, Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan Erdogan, warned Donald Trump in a telephone conversation of possible Israel provocations and sabotage to undermine the agreement to which the Warmongering Israeli Prime Minister responded that: 'Israel under my leadership will continue to fight Iran’s terror regime and its proxies, unlike Erdogan who accommodates them and massacred his own Kurdish citizens'.  
Not one to take criticism, Erdogan took off his gloves, told his Government to hold his beer and called Netanyahu the 'Hitler of our time' and pointed out the proceedings at international courts and an arrest warrant issued against him by the International Criminal Court at The Hague for genocide and how he faces being tried in his own country and is likely to be sentenced to imprisonment.
The rest of the Turkish Government joined in and said they stood by innocent civilians and would make added efforts to see Netanyahu held accountable for the war crimes he has committed and called Netanyahu the ringleader terrorist of the 21st century's massacre and terror network.
'The brazen remarks by Netanyahu directed at our esteemed President, are a clear manifestation of a guilt complex' wrote the Turkish Foreign Minister on X. 'The audacity of someone whose hands are stained with children's blood, someone pursued by international law, to presume to lecture Turkey on morality is merely an indicator of his efforts to cover up his own crimes against humanity, and it holds no validity whatsoever' and then went on to threaten to invade Israel: 'Just as we entered Karabakh, just as we entered Libya, we will do the same to them. There is nothing to prevent us from doing it'.
Not a nation to take too kindly for having their war crimes and ongoing genocide repeatedly mentioned, Israeli Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu said that Erdogan doesn't impress anyone with this circus and described the Turkish president as a megalomaniacal dictator who sees himself as an Ottoman Sultan while being no more than a pathetic tyrant of a country with a collapsing economy and a dead democracy and Minister of National Security, Ben-Gvir, posted: 'Erdogan, do you understand English? F*ck you.'
When you are being accused of being a tosspot by Erdogan of all people, you know you are on the wrong side of history.

EU's Problem Child Could Be Problem Solved

When your closest political allies are Vladimir Putin, Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump, then you really should be worried when the elections come around and quite rightly Viktor Orban is facing a very real threat to his 16-year leadership of Hungary.
Polling leading up to today's election has seen Orban far behind Peter Magyar's centre-right Tisza party leading 57%/43% and the arrival of American Vice President JD Vance recently in support of Orban probably didn't help in a nation which has faced protests for a change and against his support for Israel committing War Crimes in Gaza.
Orban has been described as the leader of a mafia state and running an autocracy and according to Transparency International, Hungary is the most corrupt country in the European Union and have dropped 69 places in the Press Freedom Index, between Benin and Malaysia and the European Parliament stated that Hungary can no longer be considered a full democracy and that the country has become an electoral autocracy.
When asked by a BBC reporter if he was worried he could lose, he replied that: 'We always win. We always win' but if the polls are correct, Orban is on his way out and the EU's  problem child may soon be a problem solved.

No Peace Deal Yet

After 21 hours of negotiations, the Americans and the Iranians swept back home with nothing to show for it and each blaming each other for the failure.
Iran said that they never heard anything to make them think that America would stick to any deal made and the Americans said that Iran refused to budge on accepting the American terms on the Nuclear issue so now we wait to see what happens next, hopefully more negotiations and not a return to war but already the Mango Moron in the White House has escalated things by saying that the US Navy will blockade the Strait of Hormuz immediately with the help of NATO who he stated are willing to help although nobody in NATO has said this and were against joining in the Trump folly and which the British Prime Minister wasted no time to announce that they will be doing it on their own as the UK will not be involved in it.
Obviously, as is usually the case with the man known for saying something and then chickening out and who was saying he would destroy a civilisation only a few weeks ago, he is already watering down his proposal saying that any blockade might take some time to implement rather than immediately and which Iran said the only way to open the Strait would be through negotiations and if America escalate, they will respond.
It may be worth remembering that before Trump launched the war, negotiations were ongoing and when America and Israel started the war, Iran were offering to blend down their stockpiles of highly enriched uranium, allow full verification by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and repeated that they had no desire to build a nuclear weapon and the facilitator at the talks, Oman's Foreign Minister said that the agreement could be reached within days, and then Trump and Netanyahu blundered in amidst a war cry of eliminating Iran's nuclear threat.
The talk is that War Criminal Netanyahu, who has been trying to persuade American Presidents to go to war with Iran for 40 odd years, finally found one simple enough to go along with it although now he is desperate to end it as his poll numbers sink and even his own side are questioning the wisdom of what he has done.
The Peace Agreement was for 10 days so we still have time to bring the negotiators back and try again because the alternative is a return to war and if America and Israel could not reach their war aims, whatever they were, in the past 40 days, it is highly unlikely another 40 days will but the already tragic death toll will certainly increase.  

Special Guest Blogger: Steve Marriott

Alright, settle down, settle down. Turns out, the afterlife isn’t all harps and halos. It’s more like a celestial waiting room with slightly dodgy wallpaper and a right poncy bloke in a robe who looks a bit like a roadie I once knew.
I never really thought about things when i was in Small Faces, I was too busy trying to remember the words to 'All or Nothing', avoiding getting my head kicked in by jealous boyfriends and figuring out how to spend the three quid I had in my pocket.
I was always a titchy Mod. The pint-sized geezer with the voice like a foghorn and a haircut that could take your eye out. Blimey, we looked a sight. All those brilliant, ridiculous clothes. Italian suits, tailor-made, but still looking like I’d been dressed by a blind man in a rush. I was five-foot-four, but on stage? On stage, I was ten-foot-tall and built of pure, unadulterated noise. Me, Ronnie, Mac and Kenney… four cheeky bastards from London, crammed into a van, causing chaos wherever we went.
We had a laugh, didn't we? We’d write a song like 'Lazy Sunday' in ten minutes, a bit of a daft piss-take, and it would shoot to number one while the serious-minded muso types were chewing their beards in confusion. That was the joy of it. We weren't trying to be Beethoven. We were trying to get out of our council flats and have a good time.
Of course, a good time costs money. And we were seeing about tuppence of it. I still wake up in a cold sweat thinking about Don Arden. The ‘Al Capone of Pop’. A lovely man, I’m sure. If your idea of lovely is being rooked blind while he’s calling you a genius and pocketing your entire publishing. That was a lesson in never, ever sign anything without your mum reading it first.
Then came the Pie. Humble Pie. What a racket. We decided to get ‘heavy’, we did. Grew our hair, put on the denims, and turned the amps up to eleven. People called us a ‘supergroup’. A supergroup? It felt more like a super-headache most days. Me, Peter Frampton, Greg Ridley and poor old Jerry Shirley, who had the monumental task of keeping us all in time and out of jail.
We went to America. Oh, they loved us over there. All that noise and sweat. They didn't care that I looked like a garden gnome who’d swallowed a trumpet. They just wanted to be hit over the head with a wall of sound. So we hit them. And it was a blast. A proper, messy, glorious, rock and roll blast. I bought a 16th-century pub in the country, filled it with dogs and kids, and pretended I was a sensible country gent. What does a rock star do with his first big cheque? Buy a Rolls Royce? Snort Colombian? Nah. Buy a pub. Logical, innit?
I like to think a few of those tunes hold up. If you can put on 'Tin Soldier' or 'Itychoo Park' and not want to wiggle a bit, then you’re probably dead.
They say I influenced a whole generation of punk rockers. The punk rockers! All that spitting and safety pins. A bunch of surly oiks telling me I was alright. Well, I’ll be. At least they had the decency to nick good chords.
I wasn't a saint. Far from it. I was a nightmare to work with and had a temper like a firecracker and an ego the size of a small planet. I loved a drink, a smoke, and a proper row. I made mistakes. Bankrupted myself more times than I can count. Lost friends. Let people down. I was a human being, not a bleeding monument.
Cor blimey, what a way to go. There I am, back at the old gaff, having a smoke and listening to a tape. Next thing I know, I’m waking up with a stinking headache and St. Peter is giving me a right telling-off for smoking indoors. The papers called it tragic but the only tragic thing about it, apart from the obvious, is that it was started by a cigarette. How bloody typical! All that effort, all that noise, all that life… snuffed out by a bleedin’ Woodbine. You couldn't write it.

Melania Getting Ahead Of The Story?

That Melania Trump address was a bit strange yesterday, especially as her husbands disastrous war in the Middle East has knocked the Trumpstien files off the front pages for a while so the question is why say anything and why now?
In her statement, Melania said she never had a relationship' with the late pedophile or with his associate Ghislaine Maxwell, saying they only had a casual correspondence and criticised what she called the lies which were defaming her reputation.
There was that 2002 email she sent to Maxwell where she wrote: 'Dear G! How are you? Nice story about JE in NY mag. You look great on the picture. I know you are very busy flying all over the world. How was Palm Beach? I cannot wait to go down. Give me a call when you are back in NY. Have a great time! Love, Melania' which seems a bit more than a casual correspondence.
The first lady also said Epstein did not introduce her to her husband, President Donald Trump, and that she is not one of Epstein's victims, nor had she flown on his plane or visited his island and she she have any knowledge of his actions.
Some are saying that she is trying to distance herself from her husband who was the pedophiles best bud for decades as well as a growing pile of evidence that he was involved in sex assaults and pedophilia himself and is named at least 38,000 times in the files that we have seen so far and with more releases imminent, could be trying to get ahead of whatever is coming down the track in the next few weeks.
I assume also that she knows what is coming down the track and is desperate to get her 'Wasn't me' in first but I know a couple of ex-Daily Mail journalists who will be paying all this very close attention.

Special Guest Blogger: Greek Demigod Arcas

Ah, the sweet serenity of eternity. What a delightful way to spend forever. If you’re reading this, I assume you’ve heard of me, Arcas, the slightly confused mortal who accidentally tried to club his mother (who in my defence happened to be a very large bear at the time). Yes, that story. The one where Zeus, in his infinite wisdom, yanked us both into the sky to become constellations.
Let me tell you as charming as the afterlife is, it’s a bit cold. And static. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Allow me to regale you with the most hilariously awkward chapter of my life, before I became a permanent fixture in Ursa Major, forever frozen mid-swing with a stick.
I was born in ancient Arcadia, which, let me tell you, is a place of breathtaking beauty if you don’t mind the shepherding, the goats and the fact that your mother is a hunting goddess named Callisto.
Mum had the misfortune of catching Zeus’s eye but Hera did not appreciate the situation so, in a fit of divine pique, Hera transformed my mother into a bear and here’s where things got awkward.
One day, while out on a hunt I came face-to-paw with my own mother. She didn’t recognize me, obviously, because 1. She was a bear, and 2. Hera’s curse made her forget her mortal life.
But still! I was just about to swing my club and end her existence when Zeus froze us both in place and mumbling that we had potential as constellations, here am i forever mid-lunge, my stick forever mid-swing, while my mother, now Ursa Minor, glowers at me from the tip of my club.
So, here’s the thing about becoming a constellation. It’s not all poetry, sailors using you for navigation or romantic stargazers whispering your name because where most people know Orion, Perseus, or even that twinkling twerp, Sagittarius but Arcas? I’m a mythological footnote but being a constellation my main role is to forever point people in the direction of Polaris.
So always check if your mother’s been turned into a bear. And if you ever find yourself immortalised in the stars, pack a flask because its chilly up here.