America's Reputation In The Toilet

US and Iranian negotiators met in Geneva earlier this week in what mediators described as the most serious and constructive talks in years. Oman’s attending foreign minister, Badr Albusaidi, spoke publicly of 'unprecedented openness' signalling that both sides were exploring creative formulations rather than repeating entrenched positions.
Discussions showed flexibility on nuclear limits and sanctions relief and mediators indicated that a principles agreement could have been reached within days, with detailed verification mechanisms to follow within months.
Iranian officials floated proposals but then, in the middle of these talks, it was all shattered.
Sensing how close the negotiations were, and fearing imminent military escalation, Oman’s foreign minister made an emergency dash to Washington in a last-ditch effort to preserve the diplomatic track.
In an unusually public move for a mediator, he appeared on CBS to outline just how far the talks had progressed.
He described a deal that would eliminate Iranian stockpiles of highly enriched uranium, down-blend existing material inside Iran, and allow full verification by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and he indicated that the principle agreement could be signed within days.
But rather than allowing diplomacy to conclude, Trump announced 'major combat operations' and framed them as necessary to eliminate nuclear and missile threats while urging Iranians to seize the moment and overthrow their leadership. Iran responded with missile and drone attacks targeting US bases and allied states across the region.
Not only did diplomacy fail but it failed amid visible progress. Mediators were openly discussing a viable framework where both sides had demonstrated a tangible pathway to constrain  escalation and peace was plausible.
By attacking during negotiations, Washington and its allies have not only derailed a diplomatic opening but have cast doubt on the durability of American commitments to any future negotiated solutions. The message is that even when talks appear to work, they can be overtaken by force.
What might have remained a contained nuclear dispute now risks expanding into a wider geopolitical confrontation.
Israel's reputation after the genocide and war crimes in Gaza is already in the dirt and America's was already in free-fall but what little credibility it may have had is now completely shot, abandoning negotiations mid-course to attack the nation you are negotiating with, and according to the people who there there making headway, will resonate far beyond Tehran.

Israel And America Attack Iran

Despite still being in negotiations, Israel and America have attacked Iran and their first action was to bomb a girls school which killed at least 85 girls in an amazing show of either ineptitude or disregard for human life and as we see in the ongoing Genocide in Gaza, Israel do not care a jot about who is under their weapons.
The man of peace in the White House has followed up his arming of the genocide, the first attack on Iran and then Venezuela with a war on Iran and both the most warmongering nations of our age used the same justification that  it was a 'pre-emptive strike' to stop Iran from building nuclear weapons.
Offering absolutely no evidence that they were, the Americans said in the last few days that Iran could be as close as a week away from having industrial-grade bomb-making material which we have heard so many times before.
In 1992, the wanted War Criminal Benjamin Netanyahu said Iran was  'three to five years' away from reaching nuclear weapons capability' and in 1995 he repeated the three to five years claim and in 1996 he addressed the American Congress and warned that Iran acquire nuclear weapons was 'extremely close'.
Then in 2009 he said that Iran was 'one or two years away from developing weapons capability' and in 2012 he claimed Iran was just 'a few months away from attaining nuclear capabilities' and in 2105 he arrived at the UN with a cartoon bomb and a marker pen warning that Iran was 'weeks away from having enough enriched uranium for an entire arsenal of nuclear weapons'.
As America was then being run by adults, they treated the Netanyahu nonsense with the contempt it deserved (or as Joe Biden called him 'A fucking liar') but the danger was that one day he would get a complete moron in the White House and all his Birthdays came at once when the low IQ Donald Trump, in desperate need of a diversion from the ever closing noose that showed him as a pedophile,  showed up and not only gave the green light to attack, but actively helped Israel attack its local rival.   
It should be mentioned that in 2015 a deal called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was signed between Iran and six major world powers (Russia, China, the US, Britain, France, and Germany) where the IAEA kept constant checks on the Iranian Nuclear program which was working until Donald Trump, under pressure from Israel, withdrew the USA from it while calling it the worst deal in history...and then tried to negotiate a deal which he could claim the credit for.
After two rounds of negotiations, and saying that Iran refused to say they would never build nuclear weapons, despite them literally saying: 'Iran would under no circumstances ever develop a nuclear weapon' the day before, here we are with Iran being bombed by a war criminal committing a genocide and a sex fiend in the White House desperate to make people look away from the 38,000 mentions of his name in the Trumpstein files and the missing pages of victims accusing him of numerous sex assaults.
The irony is that Iran is probably at the weakest it has been since the Revolution and were in no state to attack anyone but with this unilateral action which has not been sanctioned by the United Nations or the American Parliament, Iran is now attacking other Middle East nations which house American troops, making the situation much more volatile and dangerous than it needed to be. This was not a war of necessity because as the pre-emptive part shows, instead it is a war of choice and a political act.
The sham act of diplomacy harks back to the great American WMD misadventure in Iraq when it was said that Saddam was stockpiling Nuclear, Biological and Chemical weapons and while diplomacy was spoken and despite Hans Blix and his Weapons Inspectors actually on the ground visiting everywhere George W Bush sent them to check and coming up empty handed, the White House decided to just invade anyway resulting in over a million dead Iraqi's and a nation that remains a basketcase and hotbed for terrorism ever since. As we know and knew then, Saddam said he wasn't, Bush said he was and it turned out one of them were telling the truth and he didn't have an American accent.
I am no fan of Iran, yes, Iran is run by an awful, murderous Administration who need to be dealt with diplomatically but far worse is Israel who is run by a Genocidal Administration who have been conducting it for over 75 years and backed the Americans who have a long history of warmongering who are currently under the control of a narcissistic idiot who was recently threatening to invade another NATO country.
Ideally they will blow themselves up and leave the rest of us in peace but it won't happen and we will have to deal with the fall out, such as the 85 young girls shielding in a school or the other 201 people killed today by Israeli and American jets or the number killed by Iranian missiles in Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and the UAE.    
A Trump tweet from 2012 has been almost permanently on my Facebook feed today which stated that President Barack Obama would start a war with Iran to shore up his re-election effort and to distract from his supposed faults as a leader would do so to save face or because of his inability to negotiate properly and show how tough he is.
Obama never did attack Iran but then he wasn't Netanyahu's bitch and never had stories of his sexual assaults and pedophile behaviour to cover up, Trump has.

Special Guest Blogger: Mike Peters

Right then. Let’s get this over with.
Someone’s got to do it, and frankly, I don’t trust any of you lot to get the details right. You’d probably have me snuffing it in some ridiculously glamorous, rock-and-roll fashion. Choking on a champagne bottle backstage at Wembley, perhaps. but Bollocks to that. If I’m writing my own send-off, we’re going to have a bit of truth, a bit of spit, and a whole lot of polish.
In my hometown of Prestaten, I was vaguely famous for a bit. The local paper might have taken my picture. I could probably get a free pint in the correct pub, provided the landlord was in a good mood and remembered who I was.
In Tokyo, once, we were very famous for about three hours. A thousand Japanese kids sang '68 Guns' back at us with more passion than we’d ever mustered ourselves. It was breathtaking. Then we got on the bullet train to the next city and were just four gormless-looking blokes with bad haircuts trying to order noodles. That’s fame, that is. A beautiful, fleeting, and utterly confusing moment in time.
And for a little while the flags came out. The hair got bigger. We were The Alarm, the band with the pretentious name and the un-ironic love of anthems. We sang about the Spirit of ’76, about strength, about love. And people, remarkably, sang along. We got to be on Top of the Pops. I stood next to David Bowie once and was too intimidated to say anything other than a very quiet “Alright?”. He probably thought I was a roadie.
So what's the legacy of a sweaty git from North Wales who shouted into a microphone for forty years?
Is it the gold discs on the wall? I’ve used one as a coaster for a mug of Bovril, so that feels suitably punk. Is it the songs? Maybe. I still get a proper kick when I hear someone humming Rain In The Summertime in a supermarket checkout queue. A small victory, but a victory nonetheless.
Of course, the universe has a wicked sense of humour. It gave me five goes at dying from Cancer but the cheeky sod picked the wrong bloke. Cancer thought it could have a go, but it didn’t bank on a lifetime of punk rock stubbornness or the sheer bloody-mindedness of a Welshman who hasn’t finished his tour. Bollocks to cancer, I said in 1995, 1996, 2005, 2022 and 2024 before it finally got me in 2025.

Morons Led By Idiots

On Tuesday the Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said that: 'Iran would under no circumstances ever develop a nuclear weapon' and then on Wednesday Trump said in his rambling, lie filled speech that military action against the Middle Eastern country could happen soon as: 'We haven’t heard those secret words, 'We will never have a nuclear weapon.'
Now we know that the Fuchsia Fascist isn't the brightest watt bulb and he is distracted by the Trumpstein files in which his names appears thousands of times alongside his one time pedophile best friend but surely he would have someone in his vicinity who could say to him..'Well, actually....'
To think that this is the team who could launch an attack on Iran for any number of reasons, reasons which seem as trustworthy as the Mango Moron being left alone with a woman (or male if the Trumpstein files are to be believed) and all this to make a deal which is going to be the same as the one which was working and he pulled out of previously.  
As for the claim that the attack in June last year 'obliterated the Iranian Nuclear facilities and put them back years', now the Americans are claiming that Iran could be as close as a week away from having industrial-grade bomb-making material, which is some achievement unless obliterated and years means something else in the American dictionary.
While Iran remain watching the American gunboat diplomacy in action off their coast, Cuba is now back in the Trump wonky eyeline after four Cuban nationals were shot and killed on a US-registered speedboat that entered its waters and opened fire on a patrol boat.
In a statement, the ministry said the 10 passengers on the speedboat, which it claims was registered in Florida, had been living in the US and that: 'According to preliminary statements by those detained, intended to carry out an infiltration for terrorist purposes' and pictures were shown of Assault rifles, handguns and Molotov cocktails among the items seized.
Florida congressman called it 'a massacre' and Florida's attorney general said: 'The Cuban government cannot be trusted, and we will do everything in our power to hold these communists accountable' and probably said that with a straight face while every Irony meter in the World exploded because as it is said 'Americans don't get irony' and saying some other Government is not to be trusted is the actual definition of Ironic.

The Trumpstein Files Fallout

The fall out from the Trumpstein files has been particularly bad for Jeffrey Epstein buddies Andrew and Mandelson who have both been arrested here in the UK while in Slovakia a diplomat has resigned, Sarah Ferguson has been booted out of her own Charities, the former Prime Minister of Norway has been has been charged with gross corruption and the Chairman of DP World has resigned while in the US? Zero, zip, nada.
The largest scalp so far has to be Andrew Mountbatten Windsor who is quite rightly hiding behind seats of cars zipping him between police stations but the Royals have not covered themselves Glory over the whole sordid tale.
Four years ago the thought of this useless liability testifying in a New York courtroom forced them to look down the back of every sofa they owned to raise £12m to shove towards the late Virginia Giuffre’s who was launching a civil case alleging that the former prince abused her on three occasions in London, New York and the US Virgin Islands.
Obviously the senior Royals, including the late Queen, decided that it shouldn’t get to court at almost any cost and hoped that it would shield him and be the end of it and shut down the accusations.
Then the latest bunch of Trumpstein files were released and there he was again with it staring everyone in black and white that he had had been performing misconduct in public office by sending sensitive information to his pedophile buddy, the one he swore he no longer had contact with although he very much still did.
The Royal approach went from one of shielding the massive arse to 'Standing ready to support Thames Valley police' and tagging on that they: 'Remain focused on the victims' although the previous focus seem to be shutting up one of the victims who had the dirt on one of their own.
Andrew himself told Emily Maitlis in that car crash of an interview that he would certainly help US investigators with their Epstein inquiries if asked after the US attorney for the southern district of New York stated that Andrew had offered 'zero' cooperation and the situation remained unchanged.
The Royals found that that doing nothing wasn't working but as calls for the logs and Buckingham Palace guest list to be made public go unanswered, the strategy now seems to be say the right things but still do nothing.
Hopefully the two charges will lead to some kind of domino effect but if you are in America, waiting for one of the main protagonist's in this sleazy and depraved story to get hauled off to a waiting Police Car, you may have a long wait because the man whose name runs through it like a urine stain on a Moscow Mattress, is the one responsible for releasing and redacting them.

Special Guest Blogger: Brian James

If there’s one thing I’ve managed to leave behind besides a trail of broken guitar strings, questionable life choices, and a suspicion that my liver once had a secret identity, it’s the legacy of being the guy who helped start something called The Damned and if you’re scratching your head wondering who I am, don’t worry, I occasionally forget myself. But hey, that’s the price of fame, right?
I’ll be the first to admit it, The Damned didn’t exactly launch with the subtlety of a Shakespearean sonnet. 1976, London, and a bunch of pubescent misfits with safety-pinned trousers and more attitude than a Chihuahua in a dog park.
I was 16, playing guitar in a band named after a swear word (Bastard if you are wondering) , and already delivering a performance so over-the-top, one audience member fainted. Was it the heat? The mosh pit? Or the fact that our drummer had never played drums in his life? Probably the latter.
Prior to The Damned, Vanian, Sensible and Rat Scabies had been members of the band Masters of the Backside with Chrissie Hynde as our singer but we almost had Sid Vicious at the front, but he never turned up for the audition so we went with Dave Vanian instead thankfully.
We were about as professional as a street fight at a bakery but that’s what made us famous in the eyes of the punk press. The NME called us 'the first punk band to play like we meant it' which, in hindsight, was code for 'these kids are rubbish but they’re having fun' and we were and that was when I invented the iconic Damned guitar sound
We were the first punk band from the United Kingdom to release a single, 'New Rose' release a Punk studio album and tour the United States and we toured with the Sex Pistols and the Clash but many of the tour dates were cancelled by organizers or local authorities and to be expelled by the Sex Pistols for being too out of control and when you had those people in your line up it showed just how crazy those times where.
We smashed up hotels before it was at thing, Captain Sensible took to coming on stage naked from the waist down and pissing on the audience and we were banned from British TV for six months after smashing up the set of the The Old Grey Whistle Test.
Rock bands don’t usually go down in history for their harmonized sevenths or their ability to tune an instrument. They go down for the stories. And The Damned? We had stories.
It was said that I made a guitar sound like a cat fighting a washing machine but we did get letters from kids who said that our music got me them through their school exams to which our  reply was 'You’re welcome but maybe revise a bit more'.
You didn’t miss a scandalous rockstar overdose or a fiery plane crash. No, I just died of a heart attack which isn't very punk but after lifetime of mayhem, music, and the occasional questionable fashion choice (leather corsets, anyone?). I never chased fame, I just chased the next gig, the next laugh, and the next pint.
If you ever find yourself wondering what happened to the guy who helped start The Damned, just remember: life’s too short for boring music, and rock ‘n’ roll is just punk with better hair. Now go out there, be a bit of a menace, and maybe learn a power chord or two.

Source Of National Pride

 
Your nationality is merely a quirk of Geography, if I was born 25 miles further South and i would be cheering for France in the World Cup but as i wasn't my passport and driving licence have me down as a British Citizen and i will be humming the Three Lions song all summer.
I asked a couple of lads who were hanging a flag on a lamp-post last summer what made them so proud they had to advertise it from the street furniture and the answer was: 'Well..we are English ain't we' and filled the following silence with '...and we live in England' which was very observant of him and served as a reminder to me just in case i thought I had woken up in Japan that morning.   
When pressed on specifically what made them proud to be from the UK his pal came to his rescue with: 'All the things we invented and winning the wars and stuff' although when asked what invention in particular he replied. 'All of 'em'.
Obviously two people isn't a large large sample size but luckily Pew Research Center did a larger one and asked people from 25 nations what makes them proud to be where they are from.
People in the UK, it found, are most proud of the 'kind and honest people' but being proud of the people you are caught inside your own national borders with was surprisingly high.
Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Israel, Japan, South Korea, Spain and Turkey also answered that the thing that makes them most proud are their fellow citizens.
The arts and culture of their nations was top for the French, Italians, Mexicans, while the Greeks, Hungarians, Polish consider their history with a sense of the most pride but it is their system of Government which tick the box for the Germans, Indians and Swedes.
Being proud of their freedoms tops the list for the Dutch and the Americans but for Indonesians it is their country’s diversity and multiculturalism, Kenyans the Peace and safety their country gives them while on the opposite African coast the Nigerians are most proud of their natural resources and South Africans have a special place for their country’s services.
Obviously some nations have much more to be proud of, some not so much, but i hope Pew's next poll asks what are they least proud of which would be much more interesting and it should be noted that in the UK, Religion, Companies, Natural Resources and Food did not get a single mention.

Special Guest Blogger: Ray Reardon

Welcome dear reader. I’m Ray Reardon, six-time World Snooker Champion, notorious for my sideburns, my stare, and my uncanny resemblance to a vampire who’s just been told he’s out of blood pudding.
I was born in Llanelli, Wales, in 1932 before television, before colour, before anyone even knew snooker was a thing people could get paid for. I originally played pool in the local pub, which, funnily enough, was just down the road from my local mortuary. People said that was symbolic. I said it was just poor urban planning.
I became a policeman and for a while, I was out there barking at kids for smoking behind the chip shop and then someone showed me a snooker table, and I thought, Blimey, this is a much softer job than chasing drunks, so I hung up the truncheon and picked up a cue. The rest, as they say, is history.
Six World Championships. Six!
They called me Dracula because of the hair, the sharp cheekbones, the eerie focus. I never denied it. I even bought an off-the-shoulder cape once. Wore it to a post-final press conference.
Now, don’t get me wrong. Snooker wasn’t always glamorous in those days. We played in smoky halls with sticky carpets but despite the surroundings i perfected the art of silent intimidation. While others were laughing, showing off, or doing backflips after a 50 break, I’d just stand there staring. Unblinking. Like a particularly intense owl.
I didn’t need crowd chants or flashy waistcoats, i'd line up my shot and with the crowd hushed, bosh, perfect contact. Ball in pocket. No reaction. Just a slow, deliberate re-chalking of the cue and looking like I’d just escaped from a Hammer Horror film.
Let’s be honest. These days, snooker’s full of lads doing TikTok dances after potting the pink. They’ve got neon cues, earpieces, and haircuts that make mine look like a haystack but where’s the drama? Where’s the brooding silence? Where’s the menace?
I hear that Ronnie O’Sullivan’s breaking my records. Good for him. Honestly. Though I’d like to point out that when I was winning titles, we didn’t have slow-motion replays, sports psychologists, or energy drinks, we had tea, fags, and sheer bloody-mindedness.
But yes, I’m considered a pioneer. A man who helped turn snooker from a pub pastime into a televised sensation. I was famous, all right.
I passed away in 2024, aged 91. Which, for someone who looked like he hadn’t seen sunlight since 1953, is actually quite impressive. I died of old age which, in vampire terms, is like dying of boredom.
There was no grand final. No last dramatic frame. Just me, putting on my slippers and shuffling off.

Better In Than Out

I have long thought that the future of the European Union is one large European nation run along the line of the United States of America and i am certain it will happen at some point.
The 27 strong EU is already an influential and major player on the big Global decisions and it was heartening to hear the president of the European Council, Antonio Costa, announced that expansion remains a strategic priority.
This was said in a meeting with Western Balkan leaders in Albania, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and Kosovo and members of the European Parliament’s influential Committee on Foreign Affairs (AFET) travelled to Albania and Montenegro to discuss the entrance criteria and reforms required to join what is already the World's largest single market.
The Treaty on the European Union states that any European country may apply for membership if it respects the democratic values of the EU and is committed to promoting them but the main conditions are  stable institutions guaranteeing democracy, the rule of law, human rights and respect for and protection of minorities, a functioning market economy and the capacity to cope with competition and market forces in the EU and the ability to take on and implement effectively the obligations of membership, including adherence to the aims of political, economic and monetary union.
Negotiating to join the European Union takes an average of just under ten years although other countries have spent much longer in negotiations, Cyprus and Malta took nearly 14 years to officially join and Turkey started in 2005 and Serbia in 2009 and are still at it so the rules of entering the exclusive club are pretty strict but very rewarding.
As Great Britain is finding out with our moment of mass stupidity that once outside of it, it is MUCH better to be inside it.

Special Guest Blogger: Rick Buckler

It’s a funny old business, this legacy lark. Especially when you were the bloke at the back, the one whose main job was to stop the other two from galloping off into the sunset at 180 beats per minute.
So, pull up a stool. Not a drum stool, mind you. My back can’t take it these days. Let’s have a natter about life, death and the peculiar business of being moderately famous.
People ask me what it was like, being in The Jam at the height of it all. And honestly, most of the time, it was a blur of polyester, perspiration, and the thump-thump-thump of a bass drum vibrating through my entire skeleton. My view, you see, was usually Paul Weller’s shoes and Bruce Foxton’s backside. A fine backside, I’m told, but it’s not exactly the panoramic vista you get from the frontman’s microphone.
We were young, daft, and dressed sharper than a packet of needles. And we were loud. Lord, were we loud. I’d be up there, bashing the hell out of my kit, trying to count us in and out of the songs without losing a limb, and I’d look out and see this sea of parkas and mods, all going absolutely mental. It was brilliant. Terrifying, but brilliant.
You don’t have time to think about your legacy when you’re 22 and trying to remember the fill for ‘In the City’. You’re just trying not to mess it up. For me, the achievement was simply getting to the end of the set without my head exploding. And, you know, getting paid. That was a decent achievement.
Now, being the drummer in a famous band is a peculiar sort of fame. You’re well-known, but you’re not known-known. You’re the other one.
You can be walking down the street, and someone will do a double-take. You see the cogs whirring. They know your face. They know that face. They’ve got it on a poster at home, somewhere between Abba and David Essex.
It’s a weird existence. You get the recognition, the stories, the occasional free pint in a pub where the landlord’s a committed Mod. But you also get to pop to Tesco for a loaf of bread without causing a national incident. It’s the best of both worlds, really. All the glory of having been there, with none of the nuisance of having to wear sunglasses indoors.
So, when did I die? The first time, metaphorically speaking, was in 1982. The day Paul decided to call it a day. Blimey, that was a shocker. It was like being on the fastest, most exhilarating rollercoaster in the world, and then someone hits the emergency stop button and tells you to get off. The ride was over.
And just like that, Rick Buckler the Famous Drummer was no more. He became, well, just Rick. Rick from Woking.
You can’t exactly spend the rest of your days reliving ‘Going Underground’. You’d go spare. So I did what any self-respecting retired rock god would do. I got a job. A proper job as a furniture restorer.
I kid you not. I went from hammering out beats for thousands of screaming fans to painstakingly repairing a delicate Chippendale chair legs. The noise level went down considerably, and the smell changed from stale beer and sweat to French polish and sawdust. And do you know what? I loved it. It was quiet. It was satisfying. You could see the results of your work right there in front of you. You can’t exactly put a perfect three-minute pop song on the mantelpiece, but you can a beautifully restored grandfather clock.
So, the rock star died. And in his place, a slightly baffled man with a passion for wood stain was born but i decided i could actually spend the rest of my days reliving Going Underground and set up a tribute Jam Band with Bruce Foxton and wrote several books about the Band because knocking out a dovetail joint is cool, but being a former rockstar is much more profitable.

Britain Tells USA You're On Your Own This Time

Last week the Chagos Island deal was a good one so said the Americans and this week it is a catastrophic mistake so what happened?
The most orange coloured American President ever asked if he could use the base in Diego Garcia which houses it's B2 bombers to start a war with Iran and Keir Starmer replied: 'Nah, we're not doing this one' and as the base is on British-controlled territory, America can only use them with Britain's explicit permission.
Britain has has been America's accomplice in genuinely awful stuff for decades, acting like a well trained poodle for all of America's dodgy wars over the past few years in Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya but Keir Starmer did what Tony Blair never did and said we will need some better justification for bombing a sovereign nation.
Trump took the time out trying to make people forget that he was best buds with a notorious pedophile and probably partook in it himself, turned an even brighter shade of Orange and took his phone in his teeny tiny hands and ranted about how Britain was 'making a big mistake' in not helping him eradicate a highly unstable and dangerous Regime which is the ultimate pot and kettle when it comes to dangerous and unstable regimes.
What the sex pest President was asking Starmer to do was become a partner in a military strike on another nation, without a UN mandate, without a declared state of war, without a clear legal framework so when the bombs drop and Iran retaliates and the whole Middle East goes up like a cheap Aldi barbecue, we get to share the blame so Britain, who ethnically cleansed the land so they could build the airbase i the first place, went: 'Sorry, this one's too dodgy even for us'.
Last year when America attacked Iran's nuclear sites and only succeeded in making some big dents in some mountains, they flew the B-2 bombers directly from the States so they didn't need the UK then so why now and the only reason is similar to George W Bush's push for nations to join him in the Iraq misadventure, the legitimacy of having an ally on side so the optics are of a coalition rather than some suspected pedo starting a war because nuclear negotiations are moving too slowly for his childlike short attention span.
You have to remember that there was a working nuclear plan in place between the USA, EU and Iran before Trump pulled his side out of it and is now trying to use 19th Century gunboat diplomacy to bully Iran into another one or they will be bombed, and once they are bombed so will other places in the Middle East such as Israel as Iran hit out.
Whether the Mango moron attacks, strikes a deal or the whole thing somehow gets walked back, i am proud to say that Britain listened to Trump, and then treated his request with all the respect that Trump treats a Moscow Hotel Mattress, 

The Right To Repair

Wow the EU do come out with some cracking legislation and under this one going through the European Parliament, manufacturers of certain products will be required to make them easier to repair.
Many manufacturers, intentionally build products in a way that does not allow for disassembly, making it impossible to replace defective components when they break so  consumers are forced to scrap the entire item, when there is actually very little wrong with it.
Thanks to the new EU legislation, manufacturers of washing machines, dishwashers, televisions, lights and fridges are required to make their products easier to repair and spare parts will also have to be made available to professional repairers.
The EU state it will prolong the lives of popular household items and dampen demand for new ones, thereby reducing carbon emissions, cutting waste and saving consumers money.
Manufacturers, seeing their profits in Europe taking a huge dip, fought for concessions restricting the rights of consumers to repair products themselves which is fair, amateur repairs to phones and other electronic devices could prove dangerous and we all remember the Grenfell fire which killed 72 people and was started due to a faulty fridge which highlights the dangers posed by defective electrical goods, and raises legitimate questions about non-specialists repairing them.
As our parents said, they don’t make them like they used to and soon that will hopefully be true and something to celebrate.

Andrew Arrested

We would have to go back to King Charles I in 1647 to find the last time such a senior member of the royal family was arrested and that didn't rnd well for him as he was executed two years later for treason.
I imagine the knock on the door at 8am this morning at the Sandringham Estate in Norfolk was a lot less hostile than that conducted by the New Model Army back then but here we are with Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the former Prince Andrew, arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office which is 'a serious wilful abuse or neglect of powers relating to the role in public office', according to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) and carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.
The force previously said it was reviewing allegations that a woman was trafficked to the UK by sex offender Jeffrey Epstein to have a sexual encounter with Andrew as well as claims he shared sensitive information with the US sex offender while serving as the UK's trade envoy between 2001 and 2011.
A former Police Chief said that this is massive because you don't have to arrest somebody that they are investigating, they can ask them to provide a statement or even invite them to a police station for a formal chat without arresting them so to actually arrest him, would suggest there is some significant and strong evidence.
Famously lying at every turn in his interview with Emily Maitlis with regards to Virginia Giuffre who took her own life, he will not know be able to flip off questions quite so easily and they will drill down on the allegations that she had had sex with him when she was 17 and claimed she had been trafficked by Jeffrey Epstein.
A statement from her family reads: At last. Today, our broken hearts have been lifted at the news that no one is above the law, not even royalty. We extend our gratitude to the UK's Thames Valley Police for their investigation and arrest of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor'.
What effect this had on the future of the Royals is unknown but as it has been revealed that the King paid £3m of the reported £12 that Andrew gave to Giuffre in an out of court settlement to keep her from spilling the sordid beans on him, so he isn't is coming out of this clean.
Despite famously saying that he has a condition that means he doesn't sweat, i imagine the former Duke is sweating profusely today.

Special Guest Blogger: Tony Slattery

Am I famous? Was I ever? It’s a slippery little eel, fame. For a brief, glittering, and frankly blurry period in the nineties, I was what you might call ‘televisual’. I was on the box so often you probably got sick of the sight of me. A whirlwind of questionable shirts, razor-sharp (and occasionally razor-dull) wit, and a metabolism powered by adrenaline, champagne, and cocaine. Mostly cocaine to be honest. Whose Line Is It Anyway? was the epicentre of it all. Thirty minutes once a week of pure, unadulterated improvisational terror, followed by a lifetime of people shouting 'Songs from the hat!' at me in Sainsbury’s.
They don’t make them like that anymore, do they? The modern route to fame seems to involve crying in a jungle but in my day, to get on the telly you had to at least have a go at being interesting. You had to learn your craft like I did at the Cambridge Footlights and then earn your stripes in grotty comedy clubs above pubs, dodging flying peanuts and the occasional heckler . It was a grind. It was character-building. It gave you something proper to be grumpy about later in life.
And then there were the ‘lost years’. The period where the main stage was swapped for a much smaller, sadder one. I won’t bore you with the details but it was what we call in the business 'an extended period of illness' and I hardly got any work although i did get the gig as the vending machine in Red Dwarf.
You know what though? It’s part of the tapestry. A rather frayed, beer-stained and smelling of Cocaine part of the tapestry, but it’s there. You can’t tell the story of the triumph without acknowledging the time you spent face-down in the carpet and waking up three days later. It adds texture.
Which brings me to the main event: my demise. Since we’re here, let’s get it right. How did I die?
Tony! Your suggestion from the audience is… a fatal heart attack!

E=MC2 v Pythagoras's Theorem

Despite not owning a jacket with leather elbow patches, my friend is a complete math's geek and for some reason that even now that i don't remember why, we were discussing E=MC2, i assume it was Big Audio Dynamites 80's hit of the same name because i can't see how we would get into it any other way.   
It all took a nasty twist when we went from a song about films to him saying that 'Many people think that E=MC2 is the most history changing equation but it isn't, there is one that had even greater impact'.
Obviously i did what any sane person would do and tried not to encourage by asking 'What's that then?' but he ignored what i assumed was my lack of interest by telling me anyway, Pythagoras's theorem.
According to someone who was oblivious to someone eyes glazing over while franctically searching for a sharp implement to shove in his ear, he explained that this theorem is a fundamental rule in geometry stating that in a right-angled triangle, the area of the square on the hypotenuse (\(c\)) equals the sum of the areas of the squares on the other two sides (\(a\) and \(b\)), expressed as \(a^{2}+b^{2}=c^{2}\) and is used to calculate unknown side lengths, with the hypotenuse being the longest side opposite the \(90^{\circ }\) angle.
Or something, i had lost the will to live by then but managed to squeak out a: 'Oh, that's good then' and willed my phone to ring for an emergency at the Office which would mean i would have to leave IMMEDIATELY!
I cut short some more boring stuff about math's by asking what use is Pythagoras's Theorem in my everyday life and after going through a couple of things which was to do with Construction (I'm not a builder) and Robotics (I'm not a scientist) he hit upon making sure pictures are hung straight.
So there you go kids, stay in school and pay attention in your Math's classes because one day you may look at a painting and see it is everso slightly wonky and you can straighten it and you will have Pythagoras to thank.
Either that or you can nudge it and then say to someone 'Does that look straight to you?' which is what the majority of people do who heard the word Pythagoras at school and thought..ppft...when will I ever need that and looked out the window at the trees instead.

Divorce Rings

The World Bank Population and Vital Statistics website shows that the countries that have the highest divorce rates are Maldives (5.52 per 1000 people), Liechtenstein (4.9), Russia (4.7), Kazakhstan (4.6), Belarus (3.7) and  Georgia (3.7) with the United Kingdom coming in at 2 per 1000 people with 23% of couples filing for divorce between 5 to 8 years of saying their vows with the most common reasons cited being adultery (32%), growing apart (27%), and lack of communication (11%).
The average age at divorce is 47 for men and 45 for women so many middle aged divorcees can now get in on the action of Divorce Rings.
Apparently it is now a thing that to celebrate? commiserate? becoming single again people are taking their engagement and wedding rings to jewellers and asking them to mash them together into new finger furniture.
The new fashion is to wear the ring on the middle finger to tell the World that you are divorced which could be seen as advertising your new found free and single status  although a quick look at the ones i have seen they are..to be kind...not delicate looking things.
I guess as it is two rings welded into one (or the repurposing of symbolic pieces reclaiming the life event as a positive move )they will be quite big and clunky looking things but if you are looking for a positive and empowering way to mark the end of a marriage and the start of a new, independent life then go for it, at least it's better than a tattoo.

Special Guest Blogger: Geoff Capes

As you're reading this, I’m obviously dead.
I'm Geoff Capes. Yes, that Geoff Capes, the bloke who once lifted a small car like it was a bar of chocolate, won two World’s Strongest Man titles, and taught an entire nation that yes, fat blokes can run, well sort of.
Now, as I lie here reflecting on my legacy, I must say: it’s been a bumpy ride. Like a sack of spuds on a lorry. But a glorious one.
Let’s be honest, I wasn’t born strong. I was born large, weighing 12.4 pounds (5.6 kg) at birth. In my case, strength came as a welcome bonus to sheer mass. If the Olympics had a category for Men Who Take Up Two Seats on Trains, I’d have won gold, silver, and bronze just to be thorough but i had to make do with the two times Commonwealth champion, twice European indoor champion, competed at three Olympic Games and holding the British record for the shot putt.
Not many people know that before I started lifting cars, I was a proper athlete but then I got dropped so I moved on. Into strongman.
But back in the day, back when mullets were fashionable and trousers had elastic waists,I discovered something miraculous: I could lift things. Not just things. Heavy things. Cars, fridges, And people actually paid me to do it. Mad, that.
My finest hour? Winning World’s Strongest Man. Twice. In 1983 and 1985.
There was a time when I could carry an anvil uphill while being pelted with snowballs in Finland but at the end I struggled to carry my own body weight from the sofa to the fridge and i settled to a lifestyle of breeding budgerigars and goddamn it I was good at that to, becoming a European and World champion with my Recessive Pieds.
Being a hefty 27 stone does has an effect on the body and my heart said stuff lugging all this around and packed in but I gave Britain something to cheer for. Not in football. Good Lord, not in football. But in strength. I made people believe that a man with a paunch, a perm, and questionable fashion sense could still rise to the top.

Cannabis Is Not A Safe Drug

According to experts at the UK Border Force, seizures of Cannabis in the 90s contained approximately 4% tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the psychoactive ingredient which produces the high while today the average THC level of seizures is at least four times higher at 16%.
You can generally tell a long term cannabis smoker because their brains are just that little bit slower, a fraction of a second to react and my own back of a fag packet reading is  backed by the overwhelming evidence from mental health professionals that smoking cannabis, particularly in your teenage years, there is a risk of mental health problems.
Cannabis was always considered a soft drug, far less dangerous than hard drugs like heroin and cocaine but even back then i remember talking to Mental Health staff who said that the reputation of cannabis as harmless was just plain wrong.
I have a lot of time for the leader of the Green Party, Zack Polanski, but his call to legalise cannabis which he states he has never tried, is just all kinds of ignorance.
A psychiatrist leading an early intervention in psychosis team at the Institute of Psychiatry in London, said that studies show that 'if the risk of schizophrenia for the general population is about 1%, the evidence is that, if you take ordinary cannabis, it quadruples to 4% and if you smoke the strongest strain (above 10% THC), you push it up to 8%'.
Data from 11 countries in Europe found that regular users of cannabis containing 10% THC were five times more likely than non-users to develop psychosis and severe mental damage in cannabis-consuming teenagers whose brains are still developing, were 11 times more likely to suffer a psychosis than non-users. In Denmark, researchers estimated that of male patients between 21 and 30 who suffered from schizophrenia, up to 30% of the cases were due to cannabis use.
The evidence for the cannabis-psychosis connection is now as strong that to call for making Cannabis legal and more freely available is downright dangerous and foolhardy.
as  the legalisation of cannabis legitimises it and sends a message that the government views it as relatively harmless whereas the message should be that cannabis can send you insane.

Brit Humour

 

How funny is this??? Visitors to the London Subway were greeted by the above poster to try and entice people to Visit America.
In the first picture is a smiling Donald Trump and his best buddy the pedophile Jeffrey Epstein with a young girl.
In the second are a couple of American racists in Trump red hats carrying burning crosses.
In the third is a young boy in a school holding a gun surrounded by dead classmates and in the fourth smiling ICE officials carrying away a crying, young girl.
So a pedophile president, racists, school massacres and incarcerating kids and non-whites are what the pictures show and to be honest, is exactly how people outside of America see this current rabble.
British sense of humour, love it.

Special Guest Blogger: Alex Salmond

Greetings, I’m Alex Salmond, former First Minister of Scotland.
Let me start by saying, growing up in Aberdeen taught me anything it was that that the North Sea can throw a decent tantrum.
My political awakening? That came during a heated debate over whether Scotland should be allowed to keep the oil. Spoiler: We were.
I joined the SNP because, frankly, I couldn’t stand the alternative: a lifetime of Tory or Labour and it was me who fought for the abolition of university tuition fees and the scrapping of prescription charges, you are welcome Scotland.
Ah yes, 2014. The summer of white stags, white Bens, and white-knuckled negotiations. Running the independence campaign was like herding Highland cows with a map written in Gaelic. But we nailed it. I mean, 55% said nay, but really it was a moral if not actual victory.
Highlights? Oh, where to begin. The debates where I schooled the lot of them with the precision of a man who’d spent decades practising how to say 'Westminster' with the disdain of a cat who’s just been forced into a bath. The media coverage, which treated Scotland’s political future like a particularly dramatic soap opera. And let’s not forget the night of the result, when I donned my kilt.
Then came Brexit, the political equivalent of a rogue wave. Suddenly, Scotland was the only place in the EU that couldn’t decide if it wanted to be there. I retired from politics in 2017, not because I’d seen enough, but because I’d seen too much. The SNP? They elected Nicola Sturgeon as my successor, which was a bit like choosing your most brilliant, no-nonsense cousin to take over the family estate. She’s done wonders.
I hope they remember the Independence fight and the oil and not the the 14 offences, including attempted rape and sexual assault because i was found not guilty and nor the Russia Today Show i fronted for several years and certainly not how i died of a heart attack while reaching over for a bottle of tomato ketchup while at a banquet in North Macedonia.

Nothing New Under The Sun

There was no Social Media in the 17th Century but what they did have was the Printing Press which caused a very Social Media like fuss when the cost of printing reduced so much that anyone could print anything, and they did in the form pf pamphlets.
The sudden explosion of cheap print unleashed a tidal wave of inexpensive pamphlets that could be produced and distributed with unprecedented speed. Before this surge, most information flowed through relatively narrow channels but suddenly, anyone with modest resources could circulate opinions in the streets.
This led to what historians describe as pamphlet wars, in which anyone with a beef weaponised print to attack their enemies, circulate conspiracy theories, and harden ideological lines. The tone of many pamphlets was and filled with character assassinations and exaggerated claims designed to inflame readers.
Authorities were so alarmed by the loss of their narrative control that Parliament passed measures such as the Licensing Order of 1643 in an attempt to suppress 'scandalous and unlicensed printing'.
Today the British Government are attempting their own version of the Licensing Act to suppress scandalous and unlicensed digital messages, especially those aimed at our children so confirming that old proverb that nothing is new under the Sun meaning events today are merely repetitions of what occurred before, only now with Mobile Phones rather than a more unwieldy Printing Press.

Gissa Job

As a young lass of 16 i walked into a career of Journalism and 40 years later i am still doing it so with 11 working years left i often think i would like to try my hand at something else before i hang up my notepad and start complaining about my state pension but looking around i didn't see much to entice me away from my office desk optimally positioned next to the kitchen.
According to new research from the business financial platform Tide, British job applicants are missing out on lucrative tech sector careers because they don’t understand the roles, even after it has been explained to them but i was intrigued by the advert i saw for an Empathy Engineer in the Tech sector.
£110k a year and all it called for was experience in being a proactive disruptor with excellent communications skills and a world-class library of proven frameworks.
'Dear Sir/Madam' i emailed, 'I am interested in your Advertisement for an Empathy Engineer so please forward details of what the post entails' and the reply was 'someone who considers the social, cultural and emotional factors that influence how society interacts with technology, and focuses on blending the human perspective with tech-driven problem-solving'.
'Thank you' i replied, 'What exactly does that entail?' and the reply came 'Implementing game mechanics, narratives and experiences that foster empathy, emotional intelligence and social awareness among players, promoting meaningful connections and understanding within virtual worlds'.
Unfortunately I missed out on that one which i was gutted about but there was also an advert for a belonging manager at the same company.
'Dear Sir/Madam' i emailed, 'I am interested in your Advertisement for a Belonging Manager so please forward details of what the post entails' and the reply came 'The role of a belonging manager is to embed an inclusive culture at the heart of the organisation, ensuring employees feel valued, included and heard'.
Ah ok, think I will stick to Journalism for the moment if it's all the same. 

Immigrant Ratcliffe Bemoaning Immigrants

Manchester United owner Jim Ratcliffe is one of those special types of patriots, the type that would do anything for his country except live of pay taxes in it.
Overlooking that his squad is made up of 75% non English born players, the businessman who urged people to vote for Brexit and then naffed off to Monaco once it turned into a car crash, has been spouting off about how Britain is being colonised by immigrants.
He backed up his assertion by quoting completely wrong figures and explained that immigrants cost the UK too much money although it must have slipped his mind when he went begging the Government for £125 million to pay for funding his business Ineos or the £2 billion Wembley of the North stadium project despite having £17.5 billion shoved away in his off shore bank account.
While the usual right wing dullards such as Nigel Farage have of course applauded the United co-owner’s ‘straight-talking’ it has not gone down so well in less racist circles. The UK prime minister, the Greater Manchester mayor and assorted United fan groups have been among many, many folk to condemn his deranged comments about and making a point of pointing out the hypocrisy given his own immigrant status as a tax-dodging resident of a Mediterranean principality.
Keir Starmer took a break from fighting to save his own job and barked that Ratcliffe should apologise but it was more likely the FA assessment into whether Ratcliffe has brought the game into disrepute and banned from Old Trafford that forced him to weasel the non-apology apology that he was sorry if his choice of words offended anyone.
Obviously, only sorry that Britain is not as enlightened as him for being appalled by his terrible, far right-wing views.

Special Guest Blogger: Steve Wright

Hello, Posse. Or should I say, the Celestial Posse? It’s your old mate Steve, filing what you might call my final show report. No need to adjust your screen, you’re not dead. Well, I mean, we’re all dying slowly from the moment we’re born, aren’t we? Cheery thought, that. But I’m the one who’s already popped his clogs, shuffled off this mortal coil, handed in his P45.
The big switch-off itself, you ask? Very peaceful. Very dignified. Was listening to a bit of Barry White, getting ready to make a cup of tea, and then… unexpected technical difficulties at The Steve Wright Experience. The big transmitter in the sky just decided to, well, stop transmitting. One minute I was wondering if I had enough Hobnobs, the next I was floating past the pearly gates being asked for my reference number. Turns out it was the same one as my BBC staff pass. Typical. Efficient, the big man upstairs. Loves a good bit of bureaucracy.
I’m told I left behind a ‘legacy’. Honestly? I just that I made your drive home from work a bit less rubbish.
I hope my legacy is that time I played a ridiculous record you hadn’t heard since you were 14, and you sang along at the top of your voice, badly, in traffic. I hope it’s that I made you snort at a ‘Fascinating Fact’ about a man from Swindon who could balance a fridge on his chin. I hope it’s that for three hours every weekday, I was the daft, slightly saucy friend in the passenger seat, pointing out the absurdities of it all.
That was the secret, wasn't it? It was all a bit of a laugh. The show, the ‘Posse’, the ridiculous characters like Mr. Angry from Purley, lazy Sid the Manager and Gervais the Hairdresser… it was all born from the simple idea that life is often bananas, so we might as well join in.
We spent years in a tiny studio, playing records and talking nonsense. And for some reason, you lovely lot tuned in. Millions of you. I still can't quite get my head around it and the Best DJ of the Year was a great moment although voters probably thought I was someone else and not silly old Steve from Greenwich, him from Thames Valley Radio then Radio Luxembourg before landing at the BBC with a face perfect for radio (there was a reason why i didn't present that many Top Of The Pops) and a profound fondness for a decent biscuit.
You know, they have ‘Fascinating Facts’ here, too like did you know that when you here they don’t judge you on your good deeds or your sins? They judge you on your karaoke song choice. If you picked ‘Angels’ by Robbie Williams, you’re fast-tracked. If you chose ‘Agadoo’, you have to sit in a corner and think about what you’ve done.
So, legacy? Somewhere, a car is stuck in a jam on the M25. And the person inside is probably having a terrible day. And I hope, I really, really hope, they’ve got the radio on. And I hope it’s playing something that makes them tap their fingers on the steering wheel. Something brilliant. Something silly. Something that, just for a moment, makes everything feel okay.
After dying from a ruptured stomach ulcer, it was time to fade this old jingle out so to finish my famous line that i wish my first word was 'quote, so when i die my last could be unquote so thank you for everything...unquote.

I'm With The Kids

The ITV Peston Show runs a Youth Tracker which polls 18-25 year olds and the latest poll has some interesting results with 86% saying they would rejoin the EU.
The 2016 means that all of those polled would not have been old enough to vote at the time but they are ones who face the future outside of the European Union, and they can obviously see what a car crash it has been thanks to the 52% who either listen to the warnings or just didn't care and will continue to be until someone has the nuts to hold another referendum.
This generation never asked for Brexit, yet it affects them the most so there is hope that at some point, and hopefully not i the far flung future, we can reverse the calamity of Brexit although there are some deluded souls who are still pretending that the future will be brighter outside of the EU who obviously haven't been paying attention.   
The Poll also found that they think Jeremy Corbyn would be a better Labour leader than Keir Starmer and i would heartily agree if that ship hadn't already sailed and Corbyn was now in a separate left wing Party.
More good news is that almost 60% say they would never vote Conservative and the big winner with that age group is Zack Polanski, the leader of the Green Party.
I think the Kids are alright, we just need them to progress into politics and we can put the downright awful years of the Conservatives and Keir Starmer behind us.

Next Step In Forcing Governments To Fight Climate Change

In the 80s and 90s the environmental call was to make people aware what was coming if we didn't change our ways but i was always optimistic that once people realised the trouble we're in they would do whatever they possibly could to mitigate climate change.
I imagined it would be universal and Global Governments would all work together in a similar way to how they did in the late 1980s to protect the Earth's ozone layer by phasing out ozone-depleting substances emitted by human activities.
Here we are now in the 2020's and its getting hotter thanks to man made climate change where in the 1980's CO2 where 338-339 parts per million (ppm), they have continued grow to over 422 ppm today and actually increased from roughly 1.6 ppm per year in the 1980s to over 2.6 ppm per year in the last decade.
Climate scientists are saying that the current Australian heatwave with the heat reaching record-breaking temperatures of close to 50C, was five times more likely to occur thanks to man made Climate Change so weather warnings get louder, weather maps get redder yet they are somehow ignored.
We can take action individually but to make wholesale change it is going to take work at the Government level so what will it take for the dishonest, greedy and selfish politicians who continue to accept donations from fossil fuel companies, and therefore put their interests above its citizens?
It is unlikely that even whole cities burning or a planet wide drought causing a series of weather-related crop failures will focus minds because the 2.5 million annual deaths from air pollution, over 546,000 yearly deaths from heat exposure and 154,000 from wildfire smoke are not causing pause for thought so maybe we should start holding our governments to account for the scale and the climate related deaths.
Surely that is the next step, for families who have lost loved ones in the increasing number of fires, extreme hot heat, floods and other climate change induced disasters, to start suing the politicians who keep green washing their policies, approving new fossil fuel projects and continuing policies that add to the emissions that cause climate change, instead of doing everything that they can possibly do to introduce policies to cut emissions and fight climate change.   
If the laws we currently have cannot make people responsible, perhaps we need new laws. And if our politicians won't legislate them, perhaps we need different politicians.

Special Guest Blogger: Timothy West

Ah, hello. Timothy West here. Or rather, Timothy West there, honestly, if this is eternity, they really ought to sort out the heating. And the Wi-Fi. I’ve been trying to check my IMDb page for a full twenty minutes. No signal. Frankly, it’s disgraceful.
So yes. I am, as the youngsters say, dead. D-E-A-D. Pushing up daisies. Six feet under. Kicked the bucket. It’s rather disconcerting, really. One minute you're eating a rather excellent scone at the National Theatre, the next you're being ushered through a celestial security checkpoint by a bloke in a toga who insists his name is Kevin who patiently explains that harps are not a thing.
So i was a furniture salesman first and then an Actor. All Creatures Great and Small. Upstairs Downstairs. Edward & Mrs. Simpson. I’ve had a go at everything, haven’t I? Theatre? Check. Shakespeare with the RSC. Television? Oh, yes — so much television. Radio? You bet, I’ve narrated more audiobooks than the entire cast of The Archers combined. Movies? The Day of the Jackal anyone?
But let’s not pretend I was Olivier. I was more… reliable. The sort of chap they’d call when Olivier was busy being Olivier and needed someone dignified but not too imposing and doesn’t mind wearing a wig.
And the wigs! Good lord, the wigs. I’ve sported so many hairpieces and some of them looked startled badgers had taken up residence on my head.
I married well, Prunella Scales. Yes, that Prunella. Sybil from Fawlty Towers. Tiny, fierce, and capable of silencing a room with one raised eyebrow. We were happy, even when I accidentally called her 'Sybil' during an argument about bin day.
Now, as I drift through this peculiar post-life limbo (still no harp, Kevin, still no harp), I wonder: what did it all mean?
Did my 1978 portrayal of a constipated vicar in Crown Court change the world? Perhaps not.
Did narrating 14 seasons of Great British Railway Journeys teach the public anything useful? Well, they now know how to pronounce Eccles correctly so that’s something.
So here’s to the lot of it, the spotlight, the flop, the wigs, the scones, the snoring, the love, the pratfalls, the CBE for my services to drama and the occasional bout of mistaken identity (no, I am not John Thaw).
I lived. I worked. I tried (mostly) to be kind. I once forgot my lines during a live broadcast and blamed it on 'technical difficulties' which was neither true nor dignified. But I got away with it as us National Treasures can occasionally.
My demise came when first i fell over and damaged something important and months later I’m dead and looking for Kevin to tell him I want that harp. And a better signal. And possibly a cup of tea. I expect eternity to be slightly better organised than this.

Israel Confirms Accuracy Of Death Toll In Gaza

Ever since the Gaza genocide started, Israel and its supporters took every opportunity to disparage and dismiss the death and injured figures in the occupied Palestinians territory, arguing that they were overblown or even fabricated by Hamas to try and encourage everyone to treat the awful death toll with suspicion.
The UN has always stated that the numbers were accurate as the data published by the Hamas health ministry includes the full details of the deceased and confirmed by Gazan hospitals and morgues.
Now that a senior military intelligence official admitted last week that Israel has checked, and accepts the death toll published by Gaza’s health ministry, which currently stands at more than 73,600, those who peddled the line that the death toll was not to be trusted are shifting the goalposts and arguing that while the overall death toll of 73,600 may be accurate, what actually matters is the ratio of civilians to militants among them which is extremely low.
This lie falls apart immediately as details from Israel's own military database which was seen by several media outlets and  being used in it's Genocide prosecution at the ICJ, indicated that 83% of Gaza’s dead were civilians.
One Israeli Officer said: 'People are promoted to the rank of terrorist after their death' including children to bolster the weak Israeli defence that they are killing terrorists or Hamas members  wheres according to data obtained from this database, Israel had killed 8,300 militants, the other 65,300 you are safe to assume were civilian Palestinians slaughtered en masse with impunity and recklessness.
Tragically the health ministry’s figures do not include the grim figure of the 10,000 bodies at least still thought to be under the rubble nor do they include deaths from Israeli caused starvation, disease, hypothermia and treatable health conditions which studies show mean the true total may in fact have gone well beyond 100,000.
We won’t know for certain how high the horror death toll since 7 October really is until Israel stops bombing Gaza and stops preventing the media from being able to report from the strip on the abhorrent genocide Israel has, and continue, to commit.  

Rain, Rain Go Away

It was explained to me once that the difference between Drizzle and Rain is that if you can see the drops landing in a puddle it's rain, if not it's drizzle but Great Britain has far to much stuff falling from the clouds to have just two names for it, so we have 188 apparently.
As Meteorologists are saying that it has rained somewhere in Britain every day since January 1st then i imagine over the last 40 days every name has been used and as we have another week at least of the wet stuff, i imagine a few more could be added by the time we have a day when we don't need an umbrella but why has it been such a wet start to 2026?
Usually we can blame being on the cold and wet side of the Jet Stream and that is true but we also have to look at Scandinavia, or rather the High Pressure system which has taken up residence there and not allowing the low pressures systems to whizz across the UK and soak the pavements of anyone else on the other side of the North Sea.
The Jet Stream has been buckled down towards Spain and North Africa due to the extreme cold air sinking down from the Arctic over North America so the Low Pressure systems have been  having a rare old time crossing the North Atlantic and unhindered by the Jet Stream deflecting them up towards Iceland and away from us, they have been steering a path for  our shores bringing frequent rain but whereas generally they throw themselves across us within a day, they have been stopped by the Scandinavian High which has been sat over Sweden and Norway and caused blocked weather patterns so the rain system stalls, slow down and gets stuck over England because the High Pressure doesn't let it continue.
By the time that Low has dumped all its rain on us and starts to fizzles out another one has come along and takes it place which is why so many places have has record amounts of rain so far this year.
The Met Office is saying that there are signs that the High Pressure is shifting slightly or enough at least to let the Low Pressure systems continue on their trek over the UK and into the North Sea but they were keen to emphasis that there are only hints of this and to not leave the brolly at home just yet.
Getting your hair wet everyday isn't fun but at least it gives you the chance to impress people with your knowledge of when it is raining, drizzling or just plain old chucking it down again.

Special Guest Blogger: The Vivienne

First things first, the obituary must lead with the important stuff. I was the nation’s first-ever Drag Race UK champion and fabulous. My exit was reportedly more stylish than Posh Spice’s entire 1998 tour wardrobe, and caused significantly less international incident.
Yes, that’s the stuff. I want my legacy to be cemented in the facts, darling. I won. The first one. A small, humble achievement, you might have heard of it. Before me, there was just… well, there was Drag Race, but it was all a bit… American, wasn't it?
I brought a certain Scouse grit, a specific brand of polished bitchiness, that the world just didn't know it needed. I turned the UK from a charming little novelty act into a global powerhouse of drag and I did it all on a diet of fags, gin, and a relentless, borderline pathological desire to be the shiniest thing in the room.
What else will they remember? The looks, my God, the looks. I’ve corseted my ribcage into shapes that would make an architect weep. I’ve glued down more eyebrows than I’ve had hot dinners. My body was a roadmap of pain with aching feet from stilettos that could double as murder weapons, a back held together by sheer force of will and the occasional dose of ibuprofen.
But was it worth it? Listen, when you can walk into a room looking like a divine, otherworldly creature who has just beamed down from Planet Fierce to inform the mortals that their hair is, frankly, a bloody mess… yes. It’s always worth it.
Of course, The Vivienne doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Behind the sequins and the attitude is a fella. A lad from Liverpool called James who pays the council tax and occasionally forgets to take the bins out. This is where the self-deprecation comes in, you see. The Vivienne is a legend. James is… fine. He’s the one who has to deal with the aftermath. The one who scrubs the glitter out of the sink.
James is the sensible one. The one who tells The Vivienne, 'No, we can’t afford that custom-made crystal-encrusted gown, we’ve got rent to pay.” And The Vivienne, bless her, looks back from the mirror and says, 'Bollocks to that, get the credit card babe'.
He was the yin to my yang. The calm to my storm. The one who remembers to buy milk. And while you all came for the queen with the sharp tongue and the even sharper cheekbones, a little part of my legacy is the quiet fella who just wanted to make people laugh. He’s the engine in this ridiculously over-decorated, high-maintenance sports car. And he was absolutely knackered which is why we both pegged out at the age of 32, dead after a cardiac arrest bought on by a Ketamine overdose.
Let’s be frank. In 100 years, will anyone really remember my season 9 snatch game? Probably not. Will they recall the exact shade of lipstick I wore for the final? Unlikely. My legacy isn’t in the trophies or the TV appearances. It’s not in the brand endorsements or the sold-out tours.
My legacy is the permission to be a bit of a bastard. To be witty, and sharp, and maybe a little bit too much for some people. To wear the absurdly high heels even though you might break your ankle. To tell someone their outfit is a disaster with a wink and a smile, because life’s too short for bad fashion and long faces.
So I say stay Vivacious. Or don’t. See if I care.
 

Booing At Opening Ceremony

Prior to the Opening Ceremony of the Winter Olympics, The International Olympic Committee President made a plea for respect and to not boo any of the competitors carrying their flags, and just in case the San Siro Stadiums Music was turned up and the crowd noise dimmed on TV but at the first glimpse of the Israeli and the American flag, it was obvious that the music still wasn't loud, or the crowed noise dimmed enough, to disguise the crowd of 75,000 making their feelings known .    
As the games are spread out across Northern Italy at five Games Clusters, each Cluster also reported jeering, booing and whistling as the Stars and Stripes and Star of David showed itself.
The IOC faced pressure to ban Israel from competing over the genocide in Gaza but they rejected those calls, saying the usual thing about it not being political although that falls apart when you consider Russian and Belarus athletes are only allowed to compete under a neutral flag if they haven't openly backed the war in Ukraine so that's a nonsense excuse.
Ukraine and Venezuela received enthusiastic roars though and I am assuming many of the 232 American Athletes will be wandering Italy saying 'American? Nah mate, Canadian'. 

History Of Computing Words

Usually whenever i get email and it is whanging on about Computers i send it winging its way straight into the Junk Folder but i had a great one from The Museum of Computing regarding the history of everyday computer terms.
Interestingly, some words from our online vocabularies have been with us a lot longer than their modern meanings apparently.
People were talking about Streaming in 1368 but they meant a beam of unbroken light and not  the playback of an online video or listening to 80s songs on Spotify.
If you asked about Hardware in 1450 you would be shown tools, utensils, nails and even arrowheads because it was what they called metal items back then because there wasn't much call for Hard drives or Motherboards back then.
A Firewall today may keep your computer safe from viruses but in 1578 it was literally a barrier-like wall of flames although it later became a thick partition wall inside a building before the computer nerds made it mean keeping your computer safe.
Surf has been used since the 1600's to mean the foamy crash of the sea on the shore before dudes with surf boards stuck an -ing on the end and then dudes with an internet connection in the 90's took it to mean surfing the net.
The first broadband was the name of a technique for drying corn way back in the early 1600s and Upload and Download is from 1870 and was what farmers did to their carts, meaning putting on and taking off large bales of hay.
Bandwidth was a word uttered by Meteorologists in 1885 to mean measuring how large a band of rain was to help their forecasting and it was Offline and Online was a phrase you would hear from railway workers in 1918 and meant something that was transported by rail, or not.
We have the 2nd World War to thanks for Spam, as fresh meat was in short supply in 1937 so the army servicemen were sent tinned 'spiced ham' which was less perishable and we’ve been dealing with unwanted spam in our inboxes ever since.
When Richard Dawkins wanted a word to mean a unit of cultural transmission in his 1976 book, The Selfish Gene, he came up with Mimeme which was edited down to Meme as it rhymed better with Gene.

Thank you The Museum of Computing although i can't promise i wont still junk the next one you send me.

Special Guest Blogger: Denis Law

If you’re reading this, one of two things is true: either you’re still alive and scrolling aimlessly, or you’ve finally tracked down the ghost of a 70s footballer so let me cut to the chase, you’re here because you want to know about my life, my career, and how I tragically exited this earthly pitch. Spoiler: it involved pancreatic cancer, not a tackle.
But hey, let’s not dwell on the how, let’s celebrate the why. Buckle up and listen to how I went from kicking tins to kicking goals.
I was born in Scotland but even as a kid, I knew I was destined for greatness because while other boys were playing keepy-uppy with their socks, I was dribbling a tin can around.
My move to Manchester United in 1962? Well, that was the real 'I told you I was special' moment. So good was that team that even the other team supporters started tipping their hats.
In 1968, we won the European Cup. I scored 238 goals for United. I was the first British player to earn a FIFA World Player of the Year nomination but off the field I was a husband, a father, and the master of the 'I’ll do the dishes later' excuse. My wife, Evelyn, put up with me for 63 years.
They put up a statue of me at Old Trafford. It’s me in my prime mid-sprint, muscles flexed an plenty of hair gel and i always envisioned i would go by maybe a heart attack mid-fight with a linesman, or a sudden burst of glory in my 90s, sprinting through a shopping mall like it’s the Champions League.
Instead, I got pain, forgetfulness from the Alzheimer's disease and vascular dementia and the ref blew the final whistle.

Bye Bye Keir

I had such high hopes for Keir Starmer and the Labour Government but it seems that they have done all they can to make sure they only one serve on term and the Peter Mandelson scandal has pretty much rubber stamped that Starmer will be lucky to see May out with the keys to Number 10 jingling in his pocket.
Bringing someone who had already been sacked twice was a strange choice but the feeling was that as Mandelson and Trump moved in the same Epstein circles, he would be a good choice as our diplomat to deal with the capricious  American Leader even if it meant, as Starmer admitted, he knew about the links with the now dead pedophile when he appointed him.
Now that it has all blown up in his face, it is hard to see how Starmer can carry on as the Prime Minister but even more worrying for Labour is, there is no natural choice to step into his Hush Puppies.
I was backing Angela Raynor before her tax scandal was exposed so I have cooled on her and Andy Burnham has been blocked  from becoming an MP so he can't do it and the only other alternative is Wes Streeting and he is as popular as a fart in a lift with the other Labour members so successors are thin on the ground.
My suspicison is that he will hobble on until the May 7th Local Elections and then be toppled because nobody will want to take over before then, especially as Labour is expected to be giving a right royal walloping by the general public so heads will be kept low until then so he can be blamed for the poor results.    
The Cabinet seem to be pinning the blame on Morgan McSweeny who was the man who persuaded Starmer that Mandelson would be a good choice and it is he that they are hoping will be the sacrificial lamb but ultimately it was Starmer who had the final say and his excuse that he asked Mandelson about his links with Epstein, and Mandleson lied to him, seem at best extremely weak but in all honesty i wouldn't mind seeing him go, i'm just worried who we will get in his place.  
Unless someone rises unexpectedly out of the pack, i would have to hold my nose and say Raynor but being the least worst option is not a ringing endorsement. 

Winter Olympic Penisgate

The 2026 Winter Olympics are upon us and for the next 16 days we will be watching people slip and slide their way onto the podium and Britain, the land of on average 13 days of snow per year, are confident that we can beat our best medal haul from a Winter Games of five this time around and are optimistic that they will be loading 7 or even 8 onto the flight back home from Italy.
The  Skeleton, Figure Skating, Freestyle Skiing, Snowboarding, Bobsleigh and Curling are the disciplines which UK Sport have put circles around to finish in the top 3 but our grand total of 34 medals is not great compared to Norway who top the all time medal table with 405 but then they do have the advantage of lots of snow which is a bit of an advantage.
What we do seem to hear of at every Olympics are drug cheats and this year there has already been claims that some ski jumpers are trying to gain an advantage by injecting illicit substances and as the potential scandal is being called 'Penisgate', have a guess where the injections are going.  
Last year two of Norway’s Olympic medallists, were given three-month suspensions after the team was found to have secretly adjusted the seams of their suits in the crotch area at the 2025 World Ski Championships which made the jumpers suits larger and therefore reduced their descent rate due to the increased wingspan but now that gig is up, apparently some ski-jumpers have been reportedly injecting their penises with paraffin or hyaluronic acid in order to enlarge their penis's and fly further.
I have no idea what it does or how it works but the World Anti Doping Agency President, Witold ­Banka, has said he will take a look at it which shouldn't be too hard because those suits are pretty tight so it shouldn't be that difficult to see a skier who has injected his penis, the tears in his eyes should be a tell tale sign even if the first thing to cross the line isn't the tip of the ski's.

Special Guest Blogger: James Earl Jones

Yes, I died. It happened. My voice, once described as a thunderstorm whispering sweet nothings into your soul, finally took a permanent break.
But let’s be honest, folks, I didn’t die so much as fade out dramatically with a voiceover. I mean, if you’re going to exit this mortal coil, do it with gravitas. Do it like the final scene of a Shakespearean tragedy, except you’re not, your Darth Vader.
Let’s take a stroll down memory lane and its a funny thing about being the voice of God, Mufasa, and the soul of every public service announcement about deforestation, I didn’t talk until I was five. That’s right. My voice took a leisurely detour through selective mutism and my parents just said i would speak when i was ready, and boy was I ready but I never meant to become the voice of evil space emperors although I didn’t get royalties on the voice for decades because I signed away the rights for $7,500. Seven thousand. Five hundred. For the voice of Darth Vader.
But hey, I’ve got a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, a couple of Tonys, an Oscar (lifetime achievement, but still no small feat when your face isn’t usually visible). And let’s not forget The Lion King. I played Mufasa. A lion. A majestic, noble lion.
I lent my voice to everything, commercials for cereal, car insurance, mobile phones. I once narrated a commercial for toilet paper but you got to earn a dollar, even if it does smells faintly of aloe vera and lavender.
I finally lost my battle with diabetes aged 93 but don’t want to be remembered only for the voice, I want people to remember that I was an actor but your voice matters,even if you don’t use it for decades. Even if it sounds like a mountain clearing its throat. Speak up. Tell your story. Recite Shakespeare. Narrate your grocery list and order a chicken sandwich in Gregg's as if you are about to start a World War.

Epstein’s Little Helpers

While the horrors of the Epstein files continue to reverberate, Britain can at least be proud that anyone associated with him has been vanquished with Peter Mandelson losing his Labour membership and out of the House of Lords and will probably end up in a Prison Interview Room for all manner of wrongs  while Prince Andrew lost everything including his name and his wife Sarah Ferguson has been removed from her own Charity and what was left of her reputation after being photographed sucking on the toes of someone not her husband, is in ribbons.  
Maybe the Police interviews will come along later but as yet nobody named in the files has had a knock on the door and while being in the file does not mean you are guilty, it does mean that you obviously knew what was going on and said nothing.
Epstein’s little helpers have included Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Richard Branson, Noam Chomsky, Ehud Barak, Steve Bannon as well as Mandelson and the former Prince and Ghislaine Maxwell has claimed in recent court filings that 29 men and associates of Epstein were 'shielded by the US government through secret settlements' which could explain why the files that have been released have been so heavily redacted and why the remaining 3 million files are staying locked in a filing cabinet.
This shows that there really was a network of incredibly famous and powerful men willfully looking the other way at 'their friends' underage sex crimes and many carried on looking the other way even after he was convicted.
Strangely the go to excuse seems to be that they were unaware at the time that Epstein and friends were trafficking females and sexually assaulting minors which seems extremely unlikely but some even carried on being best pals even after his conviction for abuse of minors in 2008.
As for Donald Trump, his name runs through the files like a stick of rock and he has been accused of many awful and depraved things and they are probably true, he has been found guilty of sexual assault, his own wife said he raped her while he was forced to shovel $130,000 to a porn star to buy her quiet and then there was the tape where he actually admitted he grabbed women's genitals so it isn't a stretch to believe that he was in on the game with Epstein all the way through their decades of friendship.
What all the releases show is that all these figures knew what Epstein went to prison for and overlooked it as evidenced by their continued association with him
Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor famously said he cut him off in 2008 but email exchanges from after 2008 showed him to be a liar, Sarah Ferguson was emailing him in 2011, Musk in 2012 and 2013, Branson in 2013, Barak in 2017 and Bannon in 2019  
Twenty of the Epstein survivors recently released a statement saying that information about them was included in the latest file release:, 'While the men who abused us remain hidden and protected' and that is the problem at the heart of it, the lack of consideration for the abused and trafficked women and girls by so many of the richest and most powerful men alive.

Special Guest Blogger: David Lynch

Look, I didn’t plan to die. I mean, sure, I’ve seen the script, everyone’s got one, and mine had “Fade to black. Roll credits. David Lynch dies. Fade out.” Classic third act. But the whole thing came rather abruptly. And frankly, I wasn’t dressed for it.
When I died, one minute I’m in my cabin in Montana, sipping black coffee so strong it could revive a fossil, and the next I’m floating above my body like a confused helium balloon at a children’s birthday party.
Dying has given time to reflect on my legacy. What did I leave behind apart from movies and TV that made people say: 'What did I just watch?
I started out as a painter. Yes, believe it or not, before I was terrifying suburban moms with Eraserhead, I was just a quiet guy in Philadelphia trying to express myself through oil on canvas.
Then I made Eraserhead. A little movie about fatherhood, industrial decay, and a deformed baby that took five years to shoot and Critics called it unwatchable and audiences called it a mistake and yet, somehow, it launched my career. Such is life.
Then came The Elephant Man. A beautiful, tender film about humanity and compassion and after that, I did Blue Velvet. I wanted to show the rot beneath the picket fences. I succeeded.
And  then, a town with more secrets than a therapist’s notebook and people loved it.
But enough about my filmography, I’m proud of what i made. Sure, I confused people but I never tried to make sense and I did it all while wearing the same outfit every day since 1985, black suit, white shirt, pencil tucked behind the ear like a brain antenna. I didn’t dress for fashion. I dressed for focus. Also, dry cleaning is expensive.
So what would I consider my greatest achievement? The Palme d’Or? The Oscar nominations? I would say awakening inside people the realisation that life is short and very, very strange