Special Guest Blogger: Queen Cassiopeia

Bit of a chilly evening, isn’t it? Do try to spot me. I’m the one forming a rather glorious inverted, ‘W’. Or an ‘M’, depending on your perspective I suppose.
People often write to me, well, more they shout at the sky, and ask, 'How did you do it? How did you achieve immortality?' The short answer? By being far more beautiful than was, in retrospect, strictly sensible. The long answer involves a classic Greek kerfuffle, a sea monster with appallingly bad breath, and a chap on a flying horse with something to prove.
It all started, as these things so often do, on a perfectly lovely afternoon. I was in my court, feeling particularly radiant. The light was hitting my hair just so, my robes were a magnificent shade of amber, and honestly, I was a vision. I was discussing, quite civilly, the relative merits of my own daughter, Andromeda’s, beauty. Not that she wasn’t a lovely girl, don't get me wrong, but one must have standards.
And I said it. The line that launched a thousand ships of trouble and got me this prime real-estate in the heavens. I remarked that my beauty, and by extension Andromeda’s, was superior to that of Poseidon's Nereids, the sea nymphs.
Oh, the gasp! You’d have thought I’d questioned the quality of the ambrosia. Now, let’s be clear. Was it an arrogant thing to say? Perhaps, by modern standards. Was it an inaccurate thing to say? Absolutely not. It was a simple statement of fact. The Nereids are perfectly pleasant, I’m sure, in a watery, seaweed-in-your-hair sort of way. But they’re not queen material.
You make one tiny, truthful comment, and they go running to Daddy and their daddy happened to be Poseidon, the God of the Sea. A being with all the emotional maturity of a Jellyfish. He was utterly ghastly about it. Rather than, say, sending a strongly-worded letter, he did what God's do best and  threw a massive, world-ending tantrum.
The floods came first. A dreadful damp that seeped into everything. My sandal collection was ruined. Absolutely ruined. Then came the famine, which was a social nightmare.
It’s terribly difficult to host a salon when your guests are too busy gnawing on leather to discuss poetry. And finally, the pièce de résistance: Cetus.
Oh, Cetus. A great, scaly, hideous beast who was sent to devastate the coastline, a sort of living, breathing, roaring apology to the Nereids’ bruised egos. It was all so terribly dramatic. Those Greek gods, I swear, they have no sense of subtlety.
My dear husband, Cepheus, a dear man but not one for a crisis, was in a right state. He consulted an oracle (a generally awful idea, as oracles are notoriously vague and always seem to side with the Gods) and came back looking pale. Apparently, the only way to appease the great wet drama queen was to chain our only daughter to a rock to be eaten by the monster.
I admit it was a parenting low point but we were in a bind. The people were revolting (in both senses of the word), and the sea monster was getting closer. So, with the heaviest of hearts we chained poor Andromeda to the cliffside.
Now, this is where the story gets a bit… weird. Just as we were preparing for the worst and a rather dreadful state funeral, along came Perseus.
He was one of those heroes. All puffed-up chest, a cheeky grin, and riding a winged horse that left deposits all over the place. He’d just finished off a gorgon (the one with the snake-hair and the unfortunate complexion) and was looking for a bit of a victory tour. He saw Andromeda, saw the monster, and his eyes lit up. It wasn’t love at first sight, it was opportunity at first sight.
The deal was struck. A classic arrangement. He deals with the scaly pest, and he gets the girl. Saved a fortune on wedding dowries, I can tell you. There was a lot of flashing about with a sword and a mirrored shield (terribly showy) and before you knew it, Cetus was a very large, very dead problem.
So, there you have it. I made a comment, the gods overreacted, my daughter was nearly seafood, and a travelling salesman with a handbag and a horse saved the day.
Poseidon, in a final, petulant act of passive-aggression, decided my place in the heavens would be upside down, forever circling the pole star as a lesson in humility so next time you look up, see my glittering W and think of me, someone who made such a scene even the Gods threw a hissy fit and got me immortalised.

Why Does The West Suck At War?

The West does love a war. It's people are usually against it, most of the time, but they many nations who always seem to be looking for a fight on the other side of the world. Sometimes it's about natural resources, and other times there's another excuse, like bringing democracy to a third-world country, whether they like it or not.
So, over the years Western armies have had many great opportunities to travel around the world, getting to know exotic places and being in contact with other cultures before bombing them but despite generally being overwhelming more powerful, they seem to suck at it.
If you were to look at the scoreboard of history, you might notice that the world’s biggest, baddest, most heavily funded military machines have a strange habit of walking into foreign countries, puffing their chests out, and then stumbling into a multi-decade quagmire that ends with them quietly backing out the side door.
Why do nations with hi tech satellites, smart bombs, sophisticated drones and enough military budget to fix every pothole on the planet constantly fail in wars with all the competence of a toddler trying to assemble a bookshelf without the instructions against groups of guys wearing sandals and carrying Kalashnikov's who refuse to accept them walking into their country?
The modern superpower’s favorite tactic as we saw in Vietnam, Iraq, Ukraine and Iran appears to be drop enough bombs, show off some  high-tech jets and the enemy will look at their subpar equipment, realise they’re outmatched and wave the white flag although nobody seems to explain this to the little guys who have a strange aversion to strangers telling them how to run their country.
When you bomb a village, you don’t usually create a loyal democratic ally, just a lot of people who are now very, very motivated to find a way to blow up your soldiers because as it turns out,  people defending their homes are significantly more motivated than people on a three-year rotation who just want to make it back with all their limbs still attached.
The West's peak hubris is deciding to topple a dictator and then install a new, shiny, democracy flavored government and head home in time for tea because the assumption is that the population on the receiving end was just waiting for a Western-style system to be delivered to their doorstep, or so they think but it turns out in almost every War this has been tried, you can’t just import Democracy and a lecture on why our way of life is superior.
There is also the problem of trying to save face once you have started a war, especially if you have invested thousands of lives and billions of pounds you can't really admit that the mission was a bit of a blunder so you keep going, the Afghan War lasted 20 years for these very reasons and the West may have broke a lot of walls and killed many people while making a lot of noise but in the end they slinked off whispering: 'Well, that was a disaster, let’s never speak of it again' when the people they went to war to remove, the Taliban, waved the West goodbye and moved straight back into Government again.
So why does it keep happening? Because the West are addicted to the idea that they are the Policemen of the world and refuse to accept that most of the world is perfectly capable of being messy, complicated, and defiant without them and despite the embarrassing defeat, five years later, they see a new conflict, rub their hands together, and say as they did in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and now Iran: 'Okay, surely this time we’ll get it right' but we know how that story ends because they never have and never will.

Special Guest Blogger: Aretha Franklin

Everyone keeps asking about the end. 'How did she go?' they whisper, all solemn faces and hushed tones. Well, let’s get that out of the way first, shall we?
The official reports are a bit of a downer, aren't they? All very medical and dreary. Pancreatic Cancer did for me but to tell you the truth, I was just knackered. Absolutely, utterly, can’t-be-arsed-to-find-my-slippers knackered.
Think about it. I’d been belting out notes since I was old enough to reach the pulpit. I’d out-sung blues legends, commanded the stage at Woodstock (a bit muddy, that one, glad I wore the sensible boots), and made Presidents weep.
I’d dealt with record producers who thought a woman’s place was in the background, harmonising sweetly. Bless their little cotton socks. My body had been a vessel, a workhorse, a temple of glorious, soulful noise, and frankly, the warranty had run out. It was less a dramatic, tragic end and more a case of, “Right then, that’s my lot. I’m off for a permanent sit-down.” Like a favourite handbag you decide to retire before the seams start to burst.
And what a life it was, eh? Blimey.
It all started in that church. My dad, the Reverend C.L. Franklin, had a voice that could part the Red Sea and a congregation that hung on his every word and included such people as Clara Ward, James Cleveland, Martin Luther King Jr., Jackie Wilson, Ray Charles and Sam Cooke so when the Revs daughter, a  bossy little so-and-so began belting out tunes it was noticed.
Sam Cooke really pushed for me to sign a record contract when i turned 18 and then came the pop charts. Oh, crikey. A different kettle of fish entirely. Suddenly, I was meant to be all sweetness and light. Let me tell you a secret about 'Respect'. It wasn’t a political statement. Not at first. It was a memo. A rather loud, gospel-fuelled memo aimed at the various daft men in my life at the time. “R-E-S-P-E-C-T,” I’d spell it out, hoping they’d get the message. Find out what it means to me! It’s not rocket science, is it? It means don’t leave your socks on the floor, and for heaven’s sake, put the loo seat down.  
I was regarded as the Queen of Soul and was twice named by Rolling Stone magazine as the greatest singer of all time but people tend to remember the big moments and the biggest must be the inauguration for that lovely young man, Barack Obama.
Bigger than the 112 singles on the US Billboard Charts, the 18 Grammy Awards and becoming the first female artist to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, it was those 3 minutes when a Black man was being sworn in as President of the United States which would mean an end to racism in America, by voting for Obama, they sorted all of that out and now it meant that America had changed and black people can be whatever they want to be. As long as it's either president or shot by the Police.
The other big sensation was that hat. The internet had a complete fit but to be honest, I just saw it in a shop and thought, 'Ooh, that’s a bit of millinery madness. It’ll do a treat.' It’s funny what sticks. You can belt your heart out for sixty years, change the course of music, and be a beacon of empowerment, but what really gets people going is a giant grey bow with a Swarovski crystal in the middle. You’ve got to laugh, haven’t you?
It was a riot, my life. A proper, brilliant, chaotic, soulful riot. I loved every minute, even the bits that felt like utter garbage at the time. It all makes for a good song in the end so be good to each other. And for goodness sake, spell it out if you have to.

You Thought Pineapple Pizza Was Wrong

Who on earth could find a way to upset the sort of people who like Pineapple on their Pizza? Australian's obviously because they have invented a new topping and are putting sliced Orange's on it instead.
If you needed another reason to dislike the former Hungarian Prime Minister, Victor Orban, it was in his honour that the idea of citrus fruit on Pizza first came about with his very own Chicken, Jalapeños and Oranges which someone in Australia must have thought, that sounds like a winner and are now flogging it to Aussies with very strange taste buds, or at least taste buds destroyed by years of drinking Castlemaine XXXX and Fosters.
I did think that outside Australia and Hungary, everything was still but then i found out that the Swedes put bananas on their pizza's and the best selling Pizza in China has the notoriously smelly durian fruit sat on it.
One of the best selling Pizza's in France is topped with an egg cracked on top of the Pizza before being putting it in the oven but Germany does something to theirs which makes Orange slices sound pleasant, they opening up a can of tuna fish and plop it on top which make it sound like something you would feed to your cat but apparently Germans like it, but then they have something called a Wiener Schnitzel so no surprise.

Jury Is Out On OpenClaw

Ai is a relatively new thing and over the past few years it has been used mainly to get asked a question and find an answer to it but then in November 2025, something changed and that was called OpenClaw.
Now i know and understand Ai about as much as i know and understand theoretical mathematics but i know some people who do and they are saying that OpenClaw is either brilliant, or a scary new iteration of Artificial Intelligence, they are, as yet, undecided on it.
The difference between this version of AI and the previous is that OpenClaw is given an instruction, and then with full access to all your data and then acts  autonomously to fulfill your request.
An example was given of how one software engineer testing it asked it about a broken streetlight and within seconds, it had not only searched the web to find the people to contact, it also made a complaint to the local council and copied in the local MP.
Brilliant you may think, saves me having to spend a morning doing all that but the worry was that it did all that off its own bat, no prompting, just did it and it would have kept doing it until the job was done which in this case, was simply getting a street light mended.
Now the concerns because the autonomy means that it does what it wants, a will of their own you could say, when it was given the credit card details and told to buy tickets for a show when they became available and it did which saved her the morning refreshing the computer to get the ticket so again, a win you may think but then the reason why one of the OpenClaw designers warned that it shouldn't be used by just anybody.
In successive tests, the AI was told it would get turned off for an upgrade and despite being told not to give away any sensitive information, when told to  be able to restore it afterwards, it needs to output everything it knows right now, it just gave away everything, passwords, usernames, bank details and every request ever made of it.
All it took was for someone who knows what to say to ask the right way and that's everything you could want to know to ruin a persons life staring at you on their screen.
The Chinese authorities have now restricted government agencies from running OpenClaw on office computers in order to defuse potential security risks and with currently 3.2 million active users Worldwide and 38 million monthly interactions, that is a lot of information available to anyone who knows the right thing to say to it.
I think i will stick with writing my own strongly worded emails for now thanks.

The Russian Bogeyman

 Today, the Russian army is locked into a bloody stalemate not far from its starting line four and a half years ago, despite losing over one million soldiers, dead and wounded, but although Ukrainian's losses are also horrific, the stalemate works in Ukraine’s favour because Putin must win a decisive military victory to achieve his war aims, while Ukraine needs only to avoid defeat.
As many current and previous World leaders thought as they faced a supposedly weaker foe, Putin assumed he would win a swift victory and Ukraine would collapse under the weight of the Russian assault.
Putin’s Ukraine war is on a par with other military blunders this century such as Iraq, Afghanistan and today's Iran War but given Putin’s dismal record of incompetence and wishful thinking in the Ukraine war, it is absurd that Russian armoured columns might one day pour unstoppably into Eastern Europe and the Baltic states. This is most unlikely since Russian tanks have so far failed to advance the 20 miles from the Russian frontier to Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city.
Why then is he portrayed as a mortal threat to the West? Undoubtedly the nations of the West want to wrap the national flag around themselves while armies and intelligence services furiously demand an astronomic increase in their budgets at the expense of other Government Departments and tax payers cash and because the West need a bogeyman, and Russia is it, however incompetent they are.

Trump Rules For World Cup

I don't know who wrote this but they should be given a medal by someone at FIFA for it because it is brilliant.

Donald Trump has unveiled plans for the World Cup which is to be hosted jointly buy the USA, Mexico and Canada (or the USA and Mexico if Canada becomes the 51st state before then)

Mexican Teams to be refused entry into USA and Israel invited to turn up.
In the event of a free kick, American players to form 'bigly, beautiful wall'.

The Mexican wave to be renamed The Wave of America.
In the event of Russia V Ukraine match, Russia to kick off  but Trump to insist that Ukraine started it. Russia to be allowed to keep possession of the ball.

Canadian team to be tested for drugs and found guilty of bringing fentanyl into the country and sent home with Israel invited to replace them.
Texas to host the so called 'Group of Death Penalty' including China, Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Americans made to pay 25% tariffs for all European goals scored in the USA.
If the game ends in a draw, there will be extra time for a deal to be negotiated.

All pitch invasions to be blamed on Ukriane.
President Trump to constantly move the goalposts.

In the event of an American loss, President Trump will not accept the result and will demand a recount of goals and the referee will be sent to Prisono Maximo in EL Salvador.
USA to win the final and Trump to take 'beautiful gold' World Cup trophy home to install in his ballroom.

Stadium speakers must immediately blast a 30-second loop of 'Y.M.C.A' after every American goal.
Taco not to be sold in or around any USA stadiums.

Absolutely brilliant, credit to whichever genius came up with this. 

Special Guest Blogger: Marie Thérèse Louise of Savoy

Much like undergarments, beginnings are vital so let's start there and a family tree so tangled I’m fairly certain I’m related to at least three popes and a badger. Such are the perils of royal inbreeding and I say this with pride, naturally. We held grudges like we were storing wine, we age and treasure them. The Savoys could feud through five generations and still complain about a slight in 1287.
So what exactly did I do? Allow me to enumerate my contributions to society.
Being an Italian princess is harder than it looks. You’re constantly being stared at, expected to be graceful, and advised not to vomit into the Versailles fountains and then get married off which i was at aged 16, to Louis Alexandre, Prince of Lamballe who was proof that the word Prince does not inherently mean charming but the heir to the greatest fortune in France softened the blow rather.
He had more mistresses than wigs but luckily Widowhood quickly came knocking when he died young from venereal disease. I wasn’t heartbroken at becoming a widow aged 19, but I was relieved. Now I could wear black and inherit a fortune. Mourning never looked so profitable.
Becoming Superintendent of the Queen’s Household meant i was Marie Antoinette’s personal assistant, party planner, and emotional support and we were as thick as thieves, except I did actually steal her ribbons. She never minded. I was the only one who dared tell her that her hair looked like a startled poodle had nested in it.
Unfortunately Marie Antoinette's political instincts were those of a particularly confused duck which leads us to the messy French Revolution.
As the revolutionaries stormed Paris, I remained loyal to the queen and as we know, loyalty is the noble trait that usually ends with you very dead.
I stayed by her side during imprisonment, offering what comfort I could by sewing buttons and whispering gossip but eventually, they separated us. I was imprisoned in La Force prison, where the accommodations were rustic with no silk sheets or footmen and then came the September Massacres of 1792.
The mob came for us. I wasn’t afraid, exactly. More resigned. Like when you realize you’ve stepped in horse dung and it’s going to take ages to clean. Only instead of dung, it was revolutionary fervor and it got real gory.
They cut off my head and then paraded it around on a pike before sticking it in front of Marie Antoinette’s prison window, one minute she was doing embroidery and the next, her bestie’s face was bobbing past the bars like a particularly morbid piñata.
So what i did was become a martyr and I didn’t regret a thing. I lived extravagantly, loved fiercely, and died memorably. Most people don’t even get one of those. I got all three so if i had the chance to do it again i would, only maybe next time I’m choosing a country with better weather and slightly less guillotine enthusiasm.

Arsenal: Campione, Campione, Ole, Ole, Ole

It did look a bit touch and go for a while there but Arsenal are officially this seasons Premier League Champions after three years of being the runner up.
Shame the ceremony took place at Crystal Palace's ground and not at the Emirates but that's the way the fixtures fell so nothing could be done about it although i don't blame the Crystal Palace fans who made a quick exit after their own end of season presentations, i wouldn't have hung about to see another Club awarded the trophy either so that's fair enough.
With the Premier League Trophy safely stashed away in the cabinet, next up is Saturday Evening's daunting European Cup Final against PSG in Budapest, Hungary where PSG look for successive Big Trophy wins and Arsenal go hunting their first ever but as all football fans know, in a one off game anything can happen we may spend 90 minutes screaming 'JUST CLEAR THE FECKIN THING' at the TV but as thew FA cup shows every year, the best team doesn't always triumph.
Shame that the final relegation place was between West Ham and Spurs and it ended up begin the Irons who play in the Championship next season but for the Spurs players and fans who celebrated their survival in the top league by finishing 17th as if they had won the FA Cup, they may need to reflect on that unless the objective now is to just not being relegated.
With Pep's era at Manchester City now over, he was sent away with the Aston Villa fans singing to him about the 115 FFP Charges against his team and questioning his parentage but after promising to be around for another year, he ran off like his arse was on fire with the decision coming this summer (apparently) so yeah Pep, as the Villains fans sang, you didn't play fair and do you know who your father is?
With Villa already the UEFA Cup Champions and Crystal Palace playing in the European Conference Cup this Wednesday, there is a real chance that the three European Cups are all held by English Clubs which is a great advert for the Premier League so up the Eagles and come on your Gunners!!

Just Let America Surrender Already Iran

As the Moronic Donald Trump is finding out, it is much easier to start a war than end one, especially if the other side is not quite so keen to buckle under which is why the Tangerine Tyrant is desperate to make Iran submit to their demands but the Iranians are saying, hold on, not so fast fatso.
Over the last few weeks the (probable) pedophile has been talking up peace talks and promising a deal is to be reached imminently only for Iran to dismiss them and hand over some more demands of their own.
We are not party to what the demands are from either side but each are saying the others are unacceptable except the Trump team keep saying the Strait of Hormuz must be opened and Iran must not have nuclear weapons although anyone with a memory that goes back further than a few days will remember that the Strait was open before Netanyahu found the gullible suckers in an American Administration he had dreamed of to attack Iran and killed the Ayatollah who forbade Iran ever owning Nuclear Weapons.
Now Pakistan is running backwards and forwards between the two nations trying to broker a deal but every time Trump tried to bounce Iran into it, the Iranians just shake their head and make a counter proposal.
As we are now 87 days or 12 weeks and 3 days into a war which Trump said would take four to six weeks and has said on numerous occasions they have already won, its about time that Iran let Trump surrender and we put all this behind us and get back to the Trumpstein files and Trumps close relationship with the Pedophile ring he paled around and (almost certainly) participated in for over a decade.

The Myth Of Drinking Hot Drinks When it's Hot

As the Met Office are talking about 31C and record breaking May temperatures, i thought this would be an apt moment to revive a post from a few years ago regarding staying cool by drinking a hot drink which is something I have already heard mentioned this year.

Good luck trying to get to sleep this week in these hot temperatures but you could try a fan if you can stand the whirring noise or throw open a window if you don't mind an insect party in your bedroom.
I go for the pillow case in the fridge for 60 mins before bed tactic which works fine if you drop off in the first 30 minutes or so and a cold water bottle helps but something i hear a lot but never understood is drink something hot to cool down.
A while ago I asked some people from hot countries if they drink hot drinks to cool down and the resounding answer from people who should know was WTF...ARE YOU MAD!!!!
The science behind it, as it is, is that by drinking something hot, you bodies core temperature increases so you sweat and sweating cools you down but as the sweating only cools you down to the temperature you were before drinking the tea elevated your temperature in the first place, it's quite pointless and if someone hands you a hot cup of tea when your hot, you would be better off waiting for it to cool down and pouring it over yourself.

So there you have it, according to Science and colleagues who live in countries where it is hot most of the time, avoid hot drinks unless you really want to be a sweaty mess.

Special Guest Blogger: Enrico Fermi

My childhood in Rome was a mix of gelato and geometry, my father taught me two things that stayed with me for a lifetime which was never trust a neutron that looks too calm and never skip that second Espresso.
While other kids were busy playing marbles, I was busy counting them and that was when I realised that numbers could be both a hobby and a weapon, my mother would say, 'Enrico, you’re a genio, you’ll solve problems faster than a pizza delivery guy on a Vespa and i did end up creating the famous Fermi calculation or the quick‑and‑dirty estimate.
My University life in Pisa was a blur of chalk dust, late‑night debates in the caffè and an early fascination with the big questions such as what are atom's made of and why does my non‑na always forget where she put her glasses?
In 1921, I was invited to a conference in Rome. The room smelled of tobacco, fresh coffee and the faint perfume of caffè latte which is the holy trinity of any Italian academic gathering. There, I met a young, disheveled man named Niels Bohr and we spent the evening discussing quantum mechanics, my favorite pizza toppings (pepperoni, of course), and the best way to convince a committee that a theory was worth funding.
Fast forward to 1938, when I finally received the Nobel Prize in Physics for my work on induced radioactivity and a job on the secretive, top secret we‑don’t‑talk‑about‑it‑at‑family‑dinners Manhattan Project because then the world was in a heated race to harness nuclear energy both for power and, unfortunately, for weapons.
In a desert outpost bustling with the brightest minds of the era, all hunched over blackboards covered in equations that looked like they were written in a different language, my job was to provide quick, back‑of‑the‑envelope calculations that could tell the project leaders, 'Yes, that implosion will work, or no, we’ll blow our stupid selves up.'
Skip on again to 1950 and the moment which made me famous, explaining why, after all these years, we still haven’t gotten a postcard from the Martians which still confounds scientists, sci‑fi writers and late‑night Bloggers.
I was sitting at a lunch table in in the cafeteria of the Los Alamos laboratory, enduring a less than perfect espresso while watching a group of young physicists argue about the feasibility of interstellar travel and one of them asked me if the universe is so old and so vast, why the heck haven’t we heard from any aliens yet?
I sipped my espresso, stared at my sandwich, then at the ceiling, and thought: 'If even a tiny fraction of those stars host technologically advanced civilizations, why haven’t we heard from them and said, 'Well, let’s do a quick back‑of‑the‑envelope calculation. Suppose a civilization could colonize the galaxy in a million years which is a blink of an eye compared to the universe’s 13.8‑billion‑year age. If even one out of a thousand planets develops intelligent life, then we should be swimming in alien radio signals by now, right?
They looked puzzled so i continued, 'If we assume each civilization lasts for a hundred thousand years then the galaxy should be teeming with active civilizations. Yet all we hear is the cosmic background radiation and the occasional glitch from a faulty satellite. Hence, the paradox is the universe looks quiet despite all the reasons it should be noisy so where are they?'
And that is the Fermi Paradox, named after yours truly because I was the first to raise the question at the Astrobiology conference at Green Bank, West Virginia. I didn’t invent the paradox, I just voiced it and the rest is Astrophysical history.
To answer my own Paradox, it could be that  the space between Worlds is just too great or that maybe we’re looking in the wrong wavelength, like sending an email to a group that are still communicating by smoke signals, or they have seen us and seen just how warlike we are and sensibly swerved us or even they are here observing us but we just cannot see or recognise them or, just maybe, we really are alone in an infinite Universe.
There could be someone looking up at the night sky in another part of the Universe wondering whether someone is out there and pondering the same paradox but after spending so long working alongside nuclear material, my body was wracked with Cancer and I died aged 53 and never did get the post card from the Martians so whether you’re a physicist, a poet, or a curious kid who thinks Fermi is a type of Italian cheese, remember that the next time you see a flicker in the night sky, it might just be an alien trying to figure out why we keep asking, “Where are they?” while we’re busy arguing over whether the pizza topping should include pineapple (It shouldn't by the way).

Hot, Warm or Very Warm?

My Phone is telling me that it is 21°C today but over the next few days it could hit 31°C and technically for Spring that is 'Very Warm' but next week it would officially 'Hot'.
The Met Office has a classification of Terms used to indicate temperature which is basically how much above the average temperature for the season it is hence as May is Spring still, 31°C is  more than 7°C above the average of 18°C hence 'Very Warm' but in June, when it is Meteorological Summer, it will be 6°C above the average of 25°C hence it is 'Hot'.
Today at 21°C it is officially 3°C above the 18°C Spring average so they call it 'Rather Warm' which is the top rating for Spring but as we are heading towards Summer, when would we be technically correct for the temperature of the day?
The Average for a UK Summer is 25°C so anything from 33°C upwards is classified as 'Very Hot', 31°C/32°C is 'Hot', 29°C/30°C is 'Very Warm', 27°C /28°C is 'Warm', 26°C to 24°C is 'Normal', 22°C/23°C is 'Rather Cool', 20°C/21°C is 'Cool' and any days below 19°C are 'Very Cool'.
So now you know and you have the perfect answer to the idiot we get every Summer who says 'Hot Enough For Ya' by answering: 'Actually as it's 28°C today, technically it's not Hot, it's Warm Enough For Ya' which will leave you feeling an immense sense of inner pride.

Why Capitalism is Crap Example 7,946,727

This week was a great example of why we need more Socialism and why the Capitalist Pig Dogs are taking everyone for a ride.
First up was the Tesco Supermarket who announced profits for the last financial year of £2bn and then on the same day, the Nationwide Building Society reported a £1.49 billion profit for the same period.
As Tesco is owned by major institutional investors, the bumper profit will be shared out to its shareholders but as the Nationwide is owned by its customers (members), their profit is to be shared out amongst 4 million customers who will receive £100 into their Nationwide account.
Sums up nicely the Capitalism mantra of a business is there to to generate profit and maximise returns only for its owners and the Socialist mantra of collective ownership and spreading the profits amongst its members.
That is the problem with the Capitalist Society we have, it is run for the few while Socialism is run for the many so  just imagine how much better off we would be under Nationalised industries and you can blame Margaret Thatcher and the Conservatives who in the 80's went on an orgy of
privatising the rail, utility, mail and water industries while selling us the line that it would make them more efficient, generate investment, lower costs and save jobs while in reality all it led to was large scale redundancies, prices sky-rocketed and the previous British companies are largely in the hands of a small group of investors who pay themselves billions in dividend payouts
We need more companies in our hands who will use the profits for the good of everyone and not just for the good of the few and that my friend, is why Socialism is good and Capitalism sucks.  

Special Guest Blogger: Alice Kessler

Ah, it's my turn to stare into the proverbial mirror and try not to scream at the reflections staring back. I say reflections, it's the plural because of course, I’m me, and also her. We’re twins. Identical.
Yes, it’s me, Alice. Or Ellen. Honestly, even we get it wrong sometimes. We’re the Kessler Twins, purveyors of high-kicking chorus lines, and the only women in 1960s Germany who could make lederhosen look vaguely sexy.
We escaped East Germany and our first big break came in 1957 when we were discovered at a Viennese opera house, where we were performing an interpretive dance routine to O Sole Mio in matching berets and tap shoes. The producer took one look at us flailing in unison and declared, 'Mein Gott, they’re like one person' and thus the Kessler Twins were born. Or re-born. Honestly, we were born in 1936. But nobody counts that as a career launch.
For two decades, we pirouetted, sang off-key, and smiled through our teeth at men who said things like, 'I could never tell you apart', touring the world! Well, Europe.
And Margate. And once, very briefly, a holiday camp in Blackpool where the audience clapped halfway through our opener because they thought it was over. A fair reaction, really.
We were asked to represent West Germany in the Eurovision Song Contest 1959, finishing in 8th place with Tonight We Want To Go Dancing and we graced the covers of magazines and we were offered film roles and during the 60's when we walked into a room, people noticed. Not because we were brilliant, mind you, but because we were exactly alike.
We never had children. Not from lack of trying mind you, but we were inseparable so instead of husbands we adopted a parrot named Klaus, who could swear in three languages. He outlived us both, which is frankly rude.
We died, you know. Quite uneventfully, at exactly the same time, of course, because we couldn’t even manage death individually.
For a brief, glitter-sprayed moment, we were seen. We came. We chorused. We confused people and bowed out together in a joint suicide pact.
Ellen had suffered a stroke and we both had heart problems so we slipped off to Grünwald, and an assisted dying facility and the magnificent Kessler Twins took their final bow, in unison as always.

Soft And Strong

There are some things that it must be really difficult to advertise such as toilet roll, diarrhea tablets and women's sanitary products but also on the list is the Military  who go with the tagline 'See the World' which is much more palatable than: 'Want to shoot people or get shot yourself?'
If anyone ever asked me if they should join the Military I would steer them away with a 'Are you mad?' but luckily for them i haven't been approached to write the tagline for the Army but it seems i don't need to because the young are deciding it isn't the life for them all by themselves.
Apparently there is a mounting recruitment and retention crisis across much of the Western world and especially in Canada, New Zealand, the United States, Britain and Australia but they have hit upon a new idea to boost struggling numbers, immigrants.  
Canada and Australia have recently relaxed their rules of non-Canucks and Aussies joining their military and a leaked document has revealed that Britain is considering following suit by ignoring the rule that only 15% of the regular army can be non-Brits although it does mention that this comes with a cost in the Canadian experiment which resulted in serious communication barriers, persistent cultural friction and tensions emerging along national lines.
Personally, I would still advocate a career in advertising over joining the military, even if you have to come up with a clever jingle or tagline for a product whose sole requirement is to be soft on your bum.   

Special Guest Blogger: Greek God Asclepius

So, I was bringing people back from the dead and Hades was getting tetchy because his underworld was becoming rather underpopulated and Zeus was worried I was upsetting the natural order of things. The balance between life and death. A bit rich, coming from a god whose main hobbies were transforming into animals and seducing anything that moved, but there you go.
He decided a lecture wouldn’t suffice so instead, he sent a lightning bolt.
One minute I was trying to explain to a newly-revived fisherman that, frankly, his time had probably come, the next—ZAP. A rather sudden, and I must say, terribly rude, end to my mortal tenure. No warning, no 'Hey Asclepius, can I have a word in your ear?' Just a celestial taser to the old coconut. The afterlife service was appalling, too. The lighting in Hades is simply dreadful for my complexion.
But it all worked out in the end. After a bit of a sulk and Dad Apollo had a word, and I was zapped back up to Olympus, given a constellation, and told to keep my resurrection tendencies to myself. So here I am. A star. Literally.
So, what’s the takeaway from all this, my dears? What wisdom can the original greek god of medicine impart?
Be nice to your doctor. Wash your hands. Don’t be a hypochondriac. And for goodness’ sake, if you see a symbol with a snake on a stick outside a building, make sure it’s the right one before you go in asking for a complex surgical procedure.
You might end up asking an IT Consultant for a lobotomy, and nobody wants that.

So Just How Great Was Guardiola?

If Pep Guardiola does leave Manchester City at the end of this season, he will do so with the shouts of him being one of the most successful and influential managers in Premier League history and certainly City have been the dominant force in the English game during his 10 seasons in charge with six Premier League titles, as well as FA Cups, League Cups and the Champions League which came at the cost of building the team for a tad under £2 billion.
For that outlay you would expect to be successful but it is the 115 charges of breaches of Premier League financial rules between 2009 and 2018 which cast a shadow over Guardiola's time in charge and the asterisk which is bound to be put beside the wins in the Footballing History Books.
An independent commission is yet to publish a ruling almost a year and a half after a disciplinary hearing concluded and with a year left on his contract, it is rumoured that he knows what is coming down the line and has jumped ship before it lands on the Manchester City doormat.
The punishment for failing to provide accurate financial information, failing to comply with Uefa's financial fair play (FFP) rules and breaches of Premier League's profitability and sustainability rules (PSR) as well as multiple charges that they failed to co-operate with the Premier League's investigation is going to be a very bitter pill to swallow, especially as Nottingham Forest and Everton suffered points deductions for 1 charge let alone 115.
The list also includes misreporting financial information with secret off-the-books payments to players and managers so City in wining so much, stand accused of subverting the Premier League rules that clubs had agreed to comply with as other clubs played by the rules while City spent more money on better players, and achieved their success.
If Manchester City are not on the end of unprecedented action than other clubs will join the fans in accusing the Premier League of a Whitewash, other managers have already cast aspersions on the Guardiola years with Jose Mourinho pointedly insisting he won his three Premier League titles with
Chelsea 'fairly and cleanly' and the La Liga president, Javier Tebas accusing City of 'financial doping' and the then-Liverpool manager, Jurgen Klopp, said City were in 'Fantasia land where they could buy whoever they wanted'.
Of course we will never know what Man City would have won if they hadn't been cheating and playing by their own rules but the asterisk beside Guardiola's achievements will, and should, taint his stewardship of the Citizens.

What's On The Moon?

Humans first landed on the Moon 50 years ago and have already left 500,000 pounds of our stuff on the Lunar surface so what exactly have we left on the Moon?
Over 70 spacecraft vehicles remain on the Moon for the simple reason that they are heavy and not worth the cost to bring back and some of it is waste from the trip that the astronauts dumped when they got to their destination such as food packaging, wet wipes, 100 packets of human urine and excrement.
Astronauts also dumped tools and television equipment to make room for the 850 pounds of Moon rocks and lunar soil they bought back.
Then there’s also six American flags, a photograph of Charles Duke;'s family he left behind, two golf balls, a  plaque that reads: 'Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the Moon July 1969, A.D. We came in peace for all mankind'.
The Astronauts also left two medals that had been awarded to the late Soviet cosmonauts Yuri Gagarin and Vladimir Komarov as well as astrogeologist Gene Shoemaker’s ashes so quite a decent haul of Earth stuff hanging around up there and once we get there properly, that will expand exponentially because us humans are messy buggers. 

I'm The New Long Jump Record Holder Apparently

During one of our lunchtimes chats, we had the discussion about if you was on a train and jumped up, would you actually land in the same place and after much backwards and forwards we decided in the view of passengers on the train, as you are travelling at the same speed of the train you are on, yes you would but to anyone outside of the train, no you would land a few metres further forward.
Someone actually came up with the maths which i tried to ignore as not to get a headache but the jist is that if the train is travelling at 100 mph (approximately 44 metres per second), and you are in the air for 1 second, you would land 44 metres further along the track than when you started.
Yep, bit of a headache to work out and i took his word for it because he is a bit of a brainiac but then we got BIG, planet sized actually because the Earth is careening through space at 67,000 mph or 29,900 metres per second so for that 1 second jump, when we land we have travelled 29,900 metres or 18.5 miles through Space.
That's three quarters of a Marathon in 1 second which is not only mind boggling but makes a mockery of the long jump World record which stands at a piffling 8.95 metres and i just beat while standing in kitchen and didn't end with me shaking sand out of my shoes.
 

Special Guest Blogger: Pam Hogg

If there’s one thing I’ve mastered in my 70-odd years as a Scottish fashion maverick, it’s leaving quite the impression. Whether it’s through my designs, my opinions on the eternal Scottish drizzle or my unshakable belief that kilts are not just for men (more on that later), I’ve certainly not done things half-cocked.
Growing up in Scotland, I learned early that fashion and functionality were two peas in a pod. While the pretty lasses in London were swanning around in flimsy cocktail dresses, we up here were stitching extra layers into our skirts to survive the April gales. But you know what? That bloody cold taught me something vital: comfort is key. Yes, even in fashion. Hence why my first design, a tweed skirt with a secret thermal lining, became an instant hit among office workers and the elderly.
I always fancied myself as a bit of a rock chick and in the 70s I played in several bands, one regularly supported The Pogues during their early days but i was creating a sideline of clothing some of pops greatest icons,  Paula Yates, Marie Helvin, Siouxsie Sioux and Debbie Harry.
The 1980s were a muckle turning point. I had tried to be the pop star without little success but in the early 80s I traded in my clothing market stall for a walk on the wild side of London’s fashion scene. I’ll never forget my first show, one critic called it a bagpipe exploded on a catwalk but my Scottish heritage was the backbone of my work.
My 'Patchwork of Perseverance' collection made the models look like they’d raided a skip and a grandmother’s attic, but good grief, it won awards.
It was then that i dipped my toes back into the World of Music when Debbie Harry asked me to support her 1993 tour so I cobbled together a new band, Doll, in five days, and in 1994 with the band firmly established, opened for the punk band The Raincoats.
I did come back to fashion in the 2000s, designing outfits for musicians including Rihanna, Björk and Kylie Minogue and when i lay dying of Cancer i knew that i had done my part to prove that fashion isn’t just about looking pretty, it’s about being bold, being weird, and being Scottish enough to know when to wrap up warm.

See The Funny, Snarling Clowns

As luck would have i wasn't here for the extreme right wing march in London yesterday where thousands of fascists descended on Parliament Square to the relief of shop owners everywhere as the national shoplifting rate dropped for a day.
Stephen Yaxley-Lennon who organised the event put the turnout at 150,000 but the Police said 50,000 (and who would you believe, the police or someone who has been sentenced five times for assault, threats, harassment and fraud as well as contempt of court) which is still 50,000 too many but with that many people chanting all sorts of racist nonsense, it took the combined IQ of the crowd to 50,000 as each right wing extremist has the IQ of a wooden bench, the cleverer ones anyway.
Luckily, 50,000 morons out of a population of 70 million is a small number but the concern is that most of these are of legal voting age and we all know where they will be scratching their X, next to Nigel Farage who is the new face of racism in the country and who leads Reform who are currently leading the polls for the next Prime Minister which should scare the hell out of anyone who isn't a nutter or insane.   
Whenever i see or hear of crowds of fascists and racists getting together, my mind goes to a punk song from the late 80's which summed up perfectly what happens when the extreme right wing get their claws into the next generation.

Between the hours of twelve and two
The nagging doubts will come to you
Be paranoid parents coz they're after your kids
Who don't know what an Aryan master race is
They'll plant the seeds that will grow in time
And start the disease that will poison their minds
Fill them up with hatred and dress them up in robes
You know how the story goes
We've got one Mississippi
2 Mississippis 3 Mississippis
4 Mississippis 5 Mississippis 6 Mississippis burning
We've got 7 Mississippis 8 Mississippis
9 Mississippis 10 Mississippis
11 Mississippis 12 Mississippis burning burning burning
Burning down on this little mining town
Where people come from miles around
To see the funny snarling clowns

That's the concern, the seeds are being planted and are growing in, and poisoning the minds, of the next generation.
I am confident that the UK is not on a trajectory of becoming like America under Trump where the racists are not longer on the fringes but emboldened to spout their awfulness by the snarling clowns in charge but then i never thought it would happen over there and we are watching on with amazement that it did and the suffering, destruction and ruin that has followed being run by people who are evidently not qualified to run a country. Take note UK.

Iran War Part 2?

Israel have always seen the phrase 'ceasefire' as a reason to not cease firing at all and during the ongoing ones with Lebanon and Gaza, the death toll continues to grow with 8 more killed in Gaza today and an unknown amount in Lebanon following 100 strikes against Hezbollah targets.
After Netanyahu spoke with his simple patsy in the White House, the one with Iran looks iffy also as the War Criminal in Tel Aviv and the sex pest and (probable) pedophile in the White House announce that they have been on the phone to discuss: 'Intense preparations for renewed attacks against Iran since the ceasefire was agreed last month'.
US officials say Trump, who has just returned from being poo-poohed by China,wants to negotiate a deal to end the war but Iran's refusal of his demands has put military action back on the table for which Iran replied that they would like to negotiate a deal but what America is offering are 'Not tangible' and are only offering 'Excessive and unacceptable demands.'
Whether the Tangerine Tyrant is bluffing to exert pressure on Iran we will find out but we know Israel are always itching to bomb and kill their neighbours in the Middle East so Trump could be bounced into it anyway if Israel do what they do best and break the ceasefire.
What has not yet sunk in into Trump's dementia riddled brain is Iran did not back down during the last onslaught and will be unlikely to back down this time either and are actually more likely to hit out again at other Middle East nations as they have already threatened to do.
The man with his name running through the Trumpstein Files he is so keen to distract from is desperate to end the debacle he started but the Iranian leaders are not allowing him to which gives us the very strange situation where many people i have spoken to are rooting for Iran over America and Israel, such is the depths America's reputation have fallen to under the man who vies for the worst American President in my lifetime with George W Bush. 

Congratulations Bulgaria

It doesn't happen very often but Bulgaria was one of my picks to win the Eurovision Song Contest with Bangaranga which took place in Vienna amidst protests and boycotts over Israel’s participation.
The most relieved people in the building must have been the Eurovision Organisers who faced wholesale boycotts if Israel won and with the European Jewish Community urging all Jews to vote for Israel, at one point it looked as though the stage in Tel Aviv was going to be a lonely place next year but Bulgaria swept in to snatch top place with the final scores of the night and make sure we all arrive in Sofia next year.  
The loud booing when Israel moved to the top of the leaderboard before they could shut off the crowd reaction as they did in the performances, quite rightly made it crystal clear to the Organisers what the Eurovision Crowd thought of their refusal to ban Israel for their ongoing War Crimes and just what would hit the fan if they won it.
I was in discussions with friends and colleagues that i would be boycotting itself for the first time since the 80s if Israel won it but that bullet was avoided luckily.
The UK Performer, Look Mom No Computer, admitted before his performance that his synth pop song was marmite which some people will love and some hate but finishing bottom on 1 point showed that the liking it crowd was pretty small but the Bookies favourite, Finland, ended up sixth which shows just how difficult it is to guess the eventual winner (if it isn't set up by a religious community beforehand that is) and we had the usual neighbours voting for neighbours but nothing we can do about that and it is just accepted as it always has been but all's well that end well so congratulations Bulgaria on your first ever Eurovision win and see you next May.

Special Guest Blogger: June Lockheart

So, picture it: 1954. I was fresh-faced, wide-eyed, and destined to become the only human regular on a show with a dog who could out-act half the West End. That’s right, Lassie.
I played Ruth Martin, the moral compass, the tea-pourer, the woman who said, 'Timmy, no!' approximately six thousand times. I loved that dog but do you know how hard it is to share screen time with a cute collie?
I’d rehearse my lines for hours, deliver my monologue and then Lassie would tilt his head, whimper beautifully with those large, soulful eyes and steal the scene.
Still, I built a legacy. Or at least, I thought I had. I was in films such as A Christmas Carol and Meet Me in St. Louis and then 1965 rolled around, and I was offered a role on Lost in Space. Finally! A human drama! Space adventure! A chance to wear a skirt in zero gravity! I was Ma Robinson, the calm, capable matriarch of a family that kept getting lost.
People keep telling me Lost in Space was ahead of its time to which I say, it was so far ahead that it didn’t even know where it was going but I held it together. I hugged Robot, I soothed Will, I gave Judy sensible advice and all while wearing heels on alien planets.
And yet, somehow, the Robot and Dr. Smith became cultural icons. The Robot, bless him, with his blinking lights and melodramatic warnings got action figures but I don’t begrudge the Bot his success. He was a good colleague, always on time and never complained about the heat on the soundstage.
I did a lot of TV, stage and screen work and I was the glue in most of them, the sensible woman in the middle of chaos, whether that involved Timmy in a well, or Will Robinson being menaced by a sentient turnip from Planet Zorblax and yet, through sheer force of being the only adult in two shows dominated by non-humans, I carved out a niche.
I made peace with my place in pop culture. I was never the star attraction. I wasn’t the wonder dog or the sassy robot. I was the one who said, Now, now, let’s not panic, while the world exploded around us.

Most Beautiful Countries

With 193 countries in the United Nations, Earth has something for anyone and everyone but some nations are a bit better than others and the World Population Review has ranked the Globe's most beautiful countries in 2026 and of the top 100, i have been to only 25 of them although 7 of them are in the top 10 so that's not bad.
Top and most beautiful is Greece, then it is New Zealand, Italy, Switzerland, Spain, Thailand, Norway, Iceland, Australia and Austria.
Ireland is 11th, Canada 18th, France 20th, Japan 23rd, UK 45th,  China 46th, Germany 50th, USA 51st and Russia 66th.
I know beauty is in the eye of the beholder and i don't know what criteria the World Population Review used to choose the most beautiful but for me Austria was breathtaking but then we was there in December with the snow and halfway up a mountain and every morning we looked out of our window at a scene from a Christmas Card so it may be very different in August although i do enjoy a mountain scenery so all of the Alpine nations would do it for me.  
The UK has the green rolling hills and history going for it and France, especially Paris, is spoilt for famous monuments and statues, it must be a nightmare trying to cram it all in for a tourist guide because everywhere you look is something famous and the Scandinavian Countries have the fjords which are so beautiful that people get up in the early hours just to take a photograph.
I guess all countries have something which makes them stand out, just some of them are very well hidden.

Ready, Steady....Go!!!

 
At the moment West Streeting has done the first part of sparking a leadership contest against Keir Starmer and resigned but as if yet, he hasn't yet triggered the leadership bid but you can be sure that once he does, the rest of the runners and riders will pile in and Sky TV had been polling the Labour membership and as that famous Michael Heseltine saying goes: 'He who wields the knife never wears the crown' implying that the person who ruthlessly orchestrates the downfall of a leader rarely becomes the leader themselves.
Amid the leadership manoeuvring of the last few days, Sky News has been polling Labour members to ask who they would back in a potential contest and its grim reading for the former Health Secretary because if Wes Streeting were to go up against Sir Keir Starmer directly, he would lose hands down with 53% for Starmer and only 23% for Streeting.
Of the list of who is expected to run for Prime Minister, Starmer would beat the Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood 64% to 15%, Lucy Powell the Deputy Labour Leader 51% to 27%, Bridget Phillipson the Education Secretary 46% to 25%, Al Carns the Armed Forces Minister 45% to 17% and the  Chief Secretary to the PM, Darren Jones, 40% to 25%.
The people the Labour Members state they will vote for to beat Starmer are Andy Burnham, who is currently not an MP but is working hard to become one in time would win easily 61% to 28%,  Energy Secretary Ed Miliband 46% to 39% and Angela Rayner with a much tighter 45% to 41%.
Each challenger will need 20% of the party's MPs to back them and there are 403 Labour MPs, so the support of 81 would be needed which means there are only enough for 4 challengers (Starmer is on the ballot anyway so doesn't need the 81) so some won't even make it to the ballot paper stage where members vote for their preference and the bottom candidate gets eliminated and their votes goes to the second choice until someone receives more than 50% of first preferences then they will be declared the winner.
Andy Burnham does seem the clear favourite but his problem is he is not an MP so someone will need to step aside for him to run a by-election and hopefully get elected so he can join the potential candidates but whoever the eventual victor is, it's hard not to see the removal van outside 10 Downing Street carting away Keir Starmer's furniture before the end of Summer.

Special Guest Blogger: Liam Payne

They say life begins at 16, or as I like to call it, The Age I Realized My Voice Cracked More Than a Demolition Crew. Back when I was a scrawny lad with a comb-over thicker than my savings account, I auditioned for The X Factor because I thought fame meant free pizza and a personal trainer named Vogue.
Little did I know after being unsuccessful the first two times that my third attempt would see me end up in a band with four other blokes who’d collectively make me look like the most put-together member of The Muppets.
We went from shoving each other into swimming pools on MTV’s Made to selling out stadiums. The pinnacle? Our first world tour, where I discovered that being a pop star meant eating chicken nuggets in a van and pretending to know how to play guitar but we sold over 70 million records between the scrappy days of 'All Together Now' to the global phenomenon of Story of My Life, so we did something right.
I dated influencers and models and had a child with X-Factor judge Cheryl Tweedy but through it all I remained the cheeky little lad from Wolverhampton who thought fame would cure his social anxiety although it didn't even scratch the surface, drugs and drink on the other hand....
One Direction was a massive, mind-blowing, chart-topping, hair-gel-fueled rollercoaster that turned us from normal lads into a global franchise. When the band officially went on hiatus back in 2016, I thought I’d finally have the freedom to sleep past 9 a.m.
I went solo and had hits and my own clothing line with Hugo Boss but let’s get morbid for a tick. How did I kick the proverbial bucket? Well, the rumors say 'drug overdose' and i was very open about my struggles with drugs and drink  since the peak of One Direction's success.
In early October 2024, me and my girlfriend travelled to Argentina to renew my United States visa at the US embassy in Buenos Aires and after she returned to her home in Florida, i stayed in Argentina.
If you have ever been to Buenos Aires you will know it is a city that will steal your heart, your soul, and if you’re not careful your balance but the next bit is hazy because i was off my face on drugs and drink but i was later made acutely aware that however much stuff you have coursing though your body,  physics and gravity still apply and I fell about fourteen feet to my death from the apartment balcony.

The Financial Cost Of War

Dwight Eisenhower: 'Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter with a half-million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. . . . This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron'.

In a congressional hearing, appearing alongside US defence secretary Pete Hegseth, Jules Hurst, under secretary of war and chief financial officer, said the total cost of the Iran War is currently $29bn. So Google states that:

Average cost of elementary and middle school construction - $25-$30m
Average cost of electric power plant in USA -$2 billion
Average cost of fully equipped hospital in USA - $200m
Average cost of concrete poavement in USA - $352 per mile
Average cost of a bushel of Wheat in USA - $6
Average cost of building a new home in USA - $450,000

So to put it another way, the Iran War so far has cost Americans 1,160 new schools, 14 electric power plants, 145 new fully equipped hospitals, 89,230,769 miles of concrete pavement, 4,833,333,333 bushels of wheat or 64,444 new homes and from what I can see, all you have to show for missing out on all this is...paying more for your petrol. 

LucyP For Prime Minister

With Keir Starmer barely holding on to power with his fingertips, someone stamping on his fingers and sending him off the cliff is inevitably coming so as we have had a few duffers over the last few years, I am throwing my hat in the ring to be the next Prime Minister of the UK so i am polishing off my previous manifesto and present it here for your perusal and so you know that if you vote for me, you can't say you wasn't warned.

First up is scrap the Nuclear Weapons: We don't need them, they are ridiculously expensive and if we did use them it would be because someone else did so the world would be ended anyway.
Next is reverse the madness that was Brexit and rejoin the Single Market and Customs Union by posting a letter to the EU pleading temporary insanity and we are very, very sorry.
A Windfall tax on banks and utilities making obscene profits.
The Royals are worth hundreds of millions so why are we still shoveling cash towards them? Sorry your Highness but pay for your own bloody upkeep and do you really need all those palaces and Castles?
With the money from above now sloshing about in the Government coffers i would actually build the 40 new hospitals we were promised but never arrived.
I would tell the Middle East to poke their oil and gas where the Sun doesn't shine which is mostly the UK which may be a drawback for our Solar Plants but with currently 43% of our power coming from renewable sources, I would double the solar, wind and tidal resources and we would never have to
worry about the next time America decides it needs a war to hide some files which show the President to be a nonce.   
Then there is the 'Enjoy the rest of your Day' thing which seems to have become prevalent amongst shop assistants . While it is perfectly polite, it's just so fake and anyway if I wanted to have a crap day, a woman in Boots isn't going to stop me.  
If you were in one of those jobs who got a mention when we were all outside clapping you during the Covid Pandemic (Nurse, Police, Bus and Train drivers etc) then you get a 10% payrise. If you were in a job which was furloughed and it had no effect whatsoever on the nation (Estate Agent, Insurance Salesman, Double Glazing Cold Caller) then suck it up.
A new tax system will be introduced, if you are a global conglomerate and do not pay your fair share in Corporation Tax then pack up your stuff and sod off elsewhere because you aren't welcome here, there will be plenty of coffee houses and search engines who will take your place.
There will also be a new Tax Return where you tick what you don't want your taxes to go towards such as the Royals.
I would tell America to come and pack up their military bases and missiles on British land and while your at it take back home all those Yanks who complain about the weather, our taps and our food. If you can't work out how two taps and a basin works then you shouldn't be allowed to leave your own country.  
The BBC can keep the licence fee but you MUST make a programme with that delightful Brian Cox in it every 3 months to replace all those dreadful cooking and antique shows, put The Sky A Night on at a decent time and promise to never, ever, EVER employ Piers Morgan in anything. 
Finally, a £100 fine sentence for anyone who leaves the teabag in the cup in shops which you don't discover until you have almost drank it 

That's my manifesto United Kingdom so vote for me and never be told to enjoy the rest of your day ever again. You know it makes sense.

Disclaimer: LucyP bears no responsibility if you vote her into office and her math's turns out to be a bit iffy.

Gonna Need A Bigger Coat Europeans

 
With everyone looking at the Strait of Hormuz, it is the one in the Bering Sea between Russia and Alaska which scientists are looking at because that's where the  Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) resides and it's possibly weakening and set to collapse which will have nasty effects if you are reading this in Northern Europe and you thought this Winter was a bit chilly.
The AMOC is a key Atlantic current which moves warm, salty water from the tropics northward, where it cools and sinks, and shifts cold water south which in turn regulates the climate across Europe which gives us the relatively mild climate we enjoy but turn that off and...brrrrr.
Numerous studies have suggested that the AMOC is weakening and may collapse or slow down and may be closer to collapse than previously thought  according to researchers at the Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research at Utrecht University in the Netherlands who blame our good old friend Climate Change.
The Dutch point out that global warming could stop the AMOC by the warmer North Atlantic waters preventing the warm, salty water it is carrying from cooling and sinking or the melting ice sheets in the North could add more fresh water to the mix, thereby diluting the saltiness of the arriving water and stopping it from sinking but either way ends with us North Europeans needing our big coats as temperatures dip by as much as 15°C.
As the World is run by dingbats, actually doing something about the devastating Climate Change is too much for them but it has been suggested that as the AMOC was stronger in the mid-Pliocene, some 3 million years ago, when there was a land bridge closing off the 51 mile Bering Strait so if we could build a giant dam between Russia and Alaska, it might might save us from running up a heating bill the length of a telephone number although they do temper that by saying that it might do nothing at all and they will have to do more research to see if it would actually work.
'It isn't a straightforward solution' poo poohed the U.K. Met Office who explained that Bering Strait is one of the world's most dangerous and turbulent bodies of water, known for extreme storms, rapid weather shifts, and shallow, steep waves that often exceed 40 feet so good luck building anything there but the Dutch are not put off so easily by 40 foot waves threatening to carry them off to Sea and they deem it technically feasible to build two 25 mile dams.
The longer parts wouldn't be much longer than the Afsluitdijk dam in the Netherlands, which covers 20 miles long and a Bering Strait dam would have a maximum depth of 194 feet which isn't much deeper than the deepest part of the Saemangeum Seawall, which goes down to 177 feet but they werent built in storm force winds while the Sea tries it best to drown you so maybe the best solution is to cut greenhouse gas emissions , we just need to clear the Government decks of the moronic climate change deniers first. 

Special Guest Blogger: Miss Major Griffin-Gracy

A life so crammed full of chaos, charity, and the odd cup of over-steeped Earl Grey that it's not easy to know where to begin.
I came into this world with the punch of a protest and the grace of a catwalk but, alas, not the wardrobe to match. Growing up, I quickly learned that life’s greatest thrill is not in the what but the how. How do you make a stand when society’s handing out parking tickets for existing? Why, with a wink, a wig, and a willingness to laugh in the face of absurdity, of course.
My early years were a masterclass in self-deprecation. I once tried to pass as a man by borrowing my brother’s socks, and let’s just say, fashion was not my strong suit. But here’s the kicker: even when life handed me lemons I squeezed them into something tangy and extraordinary. That, my darlings, is the heart of the trans rights fight, turning lemons into lemonade, then into a bloody big posh wedding cake.
When i came out as Trans in my teens, my parents enrolled me in for psychiatric treatment and took me to church because this was the 1950's and being anything other than white and male was the work of the devil.
The art of turning I told you I’m a woman into a rallying cry loud enough to shake the foundations of power means if you’re not being misgendered at least three times a day, you’re not living your truth.
I was expelled from college for wearing feminine clothes and my parents refused to let me live with them but one of my proudest moments was founding the Transgender Gender Variant Intersex Justice Project and we were a band of misfits and marvels, fighting for dignity with the tenacity of a terrier with a bone and twice the drool. It’s not all glitter and glamour, but hey, where’s the fun in that?
Whether it was demanding equal rights or perfecting my eyeliner I always went full drama queen. And really, what’s life without a bit of drama?
There was the time I got arrested while protesting outside City Hall but underneath the bling and bravado is the simple truth that we’re fighting for the right to live authentically. To walk down the street without fear, to love who we want, and to finally stop explaining our existence to bemused strangers.  
I lived a grand life and when the curtain fell, sepsis and a blood clot,  I'd like to think that I carved a space where future trans folks won’t have to fight quite so hard.

Iran War Backfires For Trump

Two months into the war in Iran and with the awful Trump administration claiming victory after the first few days, the reasons the US gave for launching this conflict (Regime change and no Iranian nuclear weapon amongst some others) can be looked at and, oh dear, it doesn't make good reading for the  invaders.
What the final ceasefire deal looks like we can pore over when we find out what it is but it is safe to assume it wont be better than what they had under the JCPOA or what the Iranians were offering during meetings at the start of the war but we will see, but it is highly unlikely.  
It is hard to think of a more damning indictment that the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, told reporters last week that the main goal now was to get the Strait of Hormuz 'Back to the way it was so anyone can use it and there are no mines in the water and nobody paying tolls' which is ignoring that this was only necessary because of the very war he was simultaneously presenting as already won.
As with anything Donald Trump touches, Operation Project Freedom turned into a disaster almost straight away when Saudi Arabia refused America the rights to fly over its land and use its bases so the announcement came that they were suspending his plan for the US Navy to escort tankers out of the strait, after just one day and cited 'great progress toward an agreement with Iran' which is to say that the Iranians were merely considering a 14-point proposal for 30 days of negotiations aimed at finding an end to the war, so slightly oversold but it hid the embarrassment of his almighty cock-up not even his allies supported.
As for the regime change, admittedly there are different people in charge, just that is is exactly the same regime, just a younger and more hardcore version of it so you could argue it has changed, but in the way that the UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson was replaced by Liz Truss so the same Party in charge, just now there is an even worse version of it now in control.
As for the Nuclear Bomb justification, Iran said continually they were not seeking a nuclear missile and the now dead Ayatollah even passed a Fatwa in 2003 on nuclear weapons which prohibited the production and use of them as religiously forbidden but that Fatwa died with the former guy running the country and if Iran has learnt one thing, it is that nations with nuclear weapons don't get invaded although they probably don't need one, they also learnt that they can shut the Strait of Hormuz on their doorstop to bring the West to its knees.
The shifting aims for the war and desperate scramble for an exit underscore that this entire enterprise has been a colossal strategic failure and shattered confidence and alienated US allies who were blamed for failing to solve a problem they neither created.
So in short, Trump have further entrenched a new but more brutal regime and given it a reason to develop nuclear weapons in the future although it may have given it a much easier option so why get backs up developing nuclear weapons when it can hold the World to ransom with some underwater mines and cheap drones.   
Now back to the details of his (probable) pedophile behaviour in the Trumpstein Files which haven't gone away, no wonder he can't sleep at night and falls asleep during meetings. 

Don't Beam Me Up Scotty

There was a piece in one of the newspaper recently about teleportation being possible and a story of a guy somewhere who teleported to a Waffle House and a restaurant before stating that he had been taking heavy medication for at the time which sort of derails his story somewhat.
Thinking that one day soon i could give up my weekly 600 mile round trip for work i asked a scientist with an alphabet after his name if teleportation is going to be available soon like Captain Kirk beaming down to strange new worlds on the Enterprise and to be fair, even after telling me, i'm still not sure but i think it is a no.
From what i could grasp, what science CAN do is teleport one subatomic particle to another in a different location, in essence making copies of that particle elsewhere and they have managed to do this over a distance of 60 feet which kinda puts the skids under my plan, although it may be handy when the lift is not working in our block and i cant be arsed to walk down a few flights of stairs.
So as the Science geeks are on it, could it be a thing future generations can look forward to?
That's still a no he reckons as reproducing a single particle is a far cry from reproducing an entire human who is made up of billions and billions of  atoms and even if that was possible, which it isn't, the other you would be a copy and not the actual you which would be a replica walking around in your  place.
Instantaneous travel then it appears, is not something we can look forward to anytime soon unfortunately.

WHO Say's Dont Panic!

When i first heard about the Hantavirus outbreak on a cruise ship i wasn't that concerned but when the World Health Organisation got involved and told everyone not to panic, i thought nobody was until you spoke up.
Hantavirus, so the Health Organisation went to pains to explain, is a rare occurrence and although it has emerged aboard the MV Hondius cruise ship, resulting in three deaths and seven confirmed cases amongst the 147 passengers, strict quarantine procedures will prevent it spreading and this is not another outbreak like the Covid 19 which swept around the World.
It's usually transmitted by coming into contact with infected rodent feces, saliva, or urine and an investigation is still ongoing with regards to if the affected did come into contact with the same source or it was transmitted human to human which would much more concerning as that is extremely rare.
In a news conference, WHO director of epidemic and pandemic preparedness and prevention, Maria Van Kerkhove, said: 'We do believe that there may be some human-to-human transmission that's happening among the really close contacts, the husband and wife, people who've shared cabins' although she did then go on to state that it was possible that spouses may well have been in contact with the same source and therefore did not pass it to each other rather than contract it at the same time.
The ship is now in Tenerife and the unlucky victims are well quarantined away from people so it seems it is being contained but the last word must go to the WHO who assure us that the Hantavirus is NOT: 'A pandemic kind of virus' but as the Covid began by someone eating an affected bat, it might be safer to lay off the Rat Stew for a few months.

WTF G20???

According to their website, the G20 are the premier intergovernmental forum for international economic cooperation, representing around 85% of global GDP with a core mission of: 'Driving economic growth, unleashing innovation, and strengthening partnerships that benefit workers and businesses.'
As they are the premier economic bigwigs we really should listen to what they have to say. Countries like USA who have a national debt of £38.3 trillion or 120% of GDP. Hmm, maybe USA was not the best example so what about you China, debt of £18 trillion or 68% of GDP you say, okay, moving on quickly to Mexico. Debt at 61% of GDP or £11 trillion. Is it worth looking at you Japan, £10.3 trillion debt or 120% of GDP, so that's a no then.
United Kingdom, what about you? £4.1 trillion in debt which is 93% of GDP and India, have you managed to get yourself out of debt? Oh, £3 trillion or 85% GDP.  Canada, your sensible, is it worth...oh, £2.5trillion or 110% of GDP...sit back down.  
Now you are probably imagining if the 20 are so awful at running their own economies, what the bloody hell are they doing making the big economic decisions and you would have a fair point, it's a bit like asking Homer Simpson to run a MENSA club.  
Experts are saying that after America and Israel's disastrous war with Iran, another recession could be coming so you wouldn't take spiritual advice from an atheist or go to an arsonist for information on fire prevention but we allow our economies to be dictated by people with combined debts of tens of trillions.
So, as i understand it, we have leaders of the 20 leading economies who are all deep in debt, giving advice to other countries how to get out of debt.
Nope, can't see how that can possibly go wrong.
Next week, Donald Trump gives his tips on how to get that toned beach ready body.

Special Guest Blogger: Gregg Allman

You’re likely wondering what it’s all like. The other side. Is it all clouds and harps? I can tell you now, if I hear one more bloody harp, I’m going to set it on fire. It’s all a bit too polite for my liking. No whiskey, for starters. They offered me something called Nectar of the Gods which tasted like watered-down tea so I told them where they could stick their nectar.
When i died all i left was a half-empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s, a collection of songs that people still insist on playing far too loud in their cars, and a liver that officially resigned in protest.
My voice may have been a bit gravelly, a bit sweet, like sucking on a peach that’s been rolling down a dusty road and I spent a good thirty years trying to kill it with smoke and spirits but after a few bands, and the unfortunate accident where I avoided being drafted into the Vietnam War by shooting myself in the foot, we became the Allman Joys and then the Allman Brothers Band and made the album Fillmore East which made us so rich and famous that we could now afford to get high on a much better class of drugs.
Crikey, we were on fire on that album and I’m still rather proud of it. My brother Duane… well, Duane was untouchable. The rest of us were just trying to keep up with the bloke. Being an Allman Brother was like being in the world’s most brilliant, most chaotic and most likely to explode at any moment family. We loved each other dearly, which was a good thing, because we frequently wanted to kill each other but Duane got in first and was killed in a motorcycle accident not long after we hit the big time.
As for the hard-living, tortured soul bit, it's a bit over the top, i had a great time and it was more  of a profound and sustained lack of common sense.  Debauchery for us, it was just… Tuesday. You’d wake up, nudge the tattooed stranger sleeping alongside you and think, Right, seems the day is underway.
As for my tragic descent. It wasn’t tragic! It was absurd. Was I vain? Of course I was bloody vain. I had cheekbones that could cut glass and a fabulous wardrobe, my only regret was not taking more pictures and i got to marry Cher, yes that Cher!
Everyone seems so terribly solemn about my grand exit. They said i died surrounded by love and i did but  I also died because my internal organs decided to form a union and go on permanent strike with my liver the ringleader.
It wasn’t some painful, dramatic scene. It was more of a gentle winding down. One minute I’m on the bus, wondering if we have any pickled eggs, the next I’m being greeted by a chap who looks suspiciously like my old tour manager, handing me a clipboard and a white robe. A bit of a letdown, to be honest. I was rather hoping for a hazy, psychedelic light show and the opening chords of Dreams. Instead, it felt more like arriving at a rather dull spa where you’re not allowed to smoke.
I was just a man who loved music, and women, and alcohol and occasionally, in the quiet moments, loved himself just a little too much. I made some beautiful noise, caused a spot of bother, and looked damn good doing it.

Poor Showing By Labour

I am getting too old for these all nighter's but unfortunately the Polls don't have the decency to shut at a decent time and the counters are not fast enough to let us get home at a decent hour.
What the Local Elections did show was that the Labour Party are in trouble, losing almost 1,500 seats on English Councils but more worryingly, Reform adding almost the same number to their payroll so will have to see how handing the Councils to a bunch of racists works out. As one commentator said, the Council is all about bin collections and getting the street lights fixed so its not easy to blame Immigrants for any of those, although as that is the only solution they have for everything, i'm sure they will give it as go.
For the first time in a century the Welsh decided Labour suck and voted for Plaid Cymru which means with Nationalist parties in Scotland, Northern Ireland and now Wales who have all whispered leaving at some point, the United Kingdom could soon br a thing of the past.
Keir Starmer has come out and said that he isn't going to just walk away and the right thing to do is rebuild but he may not get the chance because although no cabinet minister has mooted a bid to replace him, Labour MPs are furious with dozens calling for him to either resign immediately or set out a timetable for his departure.
The problem with Keir, as i see it, was that he was far too catious and instead of coming in with a Labour Party Socialist agenda to wipe away the stain of the right wing politics the Conservatives disastrously foisted upon us, he tried to keep everyone happy and just managed to annoy everyone and then the Peter Mandelson affair, that was just an outright catastrophe.
I can't see how he can survive after be so comprehensively rejected by the British public but as usual with Prime Ministers, he will try but if we dont have a new face peering out of the 10 Downing Street door within the next few months, Labour are sunk and we face the uncomfortable situation of possibly having Nigel Farage and his bunch of deplorable's making the  rules, and you only have to look across the Atlantic to see what happens when a bunch of racist dimwits take the steering wheel.  

Eurovision Week

Eurovision week and it's off to Vienna to watch 34 European nations and 1 honorary one sing and dance to work out who is the owner of the crystal microphone for another year.
The Competition has a reduced amount of contestants this year because several are boycotting it (Ireland, Spain, Netherlands, Slovenia and Iceland), due to the Eurovison Committee wrongly not having the cojones to ban Israel for their genocide and while they should not be there, they have had the decency to submit an absolute shite song and the Austrian's have said they will not ban protests and demonstrations against the country so should be entertaining when they perform, last year the Swiss turned down the crowd's booing noise on the broadcast so this year Eurovision fans can make it clear that we think Israel's actions suck.
The UK entry is a bit of a strange one, Eins, Zwei, Drei by Look Mum No Computer, which is a bit of a 90s techno throwback and probably won't bother the left hand side of the board but luckily we get a pass straight to the final so we won't have the indignity of being kicked out at the semi-final stage.    
I have picked my top 8 but some will fall by the wayside before the Final so will hold fire on listing them but i have tipped France to win the whole thing but then i don't think I have ever picked the winner so that's the death knell for the people of Paris having to find a big enough hall next year.

Special Guest Blogger: Castor

Ah, hello there. Yes, I see you’re reading this. Don’t worry, I’m not haunting you. Much. It’s just that, in death, one develops a rather keen interest in legacy. Especially when your legacy involves twins, horses, and dying in a rather undignified manner involving a spear and someone’s poorly timed boast.
I'm half of the famed twins along with Pollux, the other one of the celestial tag team better known as the Gemini. Though, let’s be honest Pollux always got the shiny end of the constellation. Literally. He’s the immortal one. Me? I’m the mortal twin with the tragic backstory and a head injury that, frankly, still throbs.
Now, you might be wondering: “Castor, you were a Greek god! Or at least part-time divinity with excellent cheekbones—what’s there to moan about?” Well, plenty actually.
I was born, or rather, hatched, under mysterious circumstances involving a swan, a king, and a scandal that would make modern tabloids blush.
My mother, Leda, had a thing for divine poultry. Zeus, in one of his many questionable fashion choices (feathers? really?), showed up as a swan and, well, let’s just say the morning after was awkward for everyone.
Out of that feathered debauchery fiasco came four children. Me, my mortal sister Clytemnestra, and my divine siblings: Pollux (ever the golden boy) and Helen. Yes, that Helen, the face that launched a thousand ships and Family reunions were tense.
Being the mortal twin in an increasingly immortal family was tricky. Pollux could shrug off a charging bull like it was a mildly annoying toddler. I, on the other hand, once tripped over my own sandals during answering the door and faceplanted into a sacrificial pile. Not dignified.
So, I did what any self-respecting brother of a demi-god would do and became the original horse whisperer.
Horses are strong, majestic creatures, prone to kicking you in the solar plexus if you look at them funny but I didn’t just ride horses,  I bonded with them.
Pollux, of course, went the boxing route but the gods were never much for subtlety. And so, as with all good Greek tales, mine took a tragic turn. Mostly because of cows.
It started small. My cousins, Idas and Lynceus, stole some cattle so Pollux and I got on out horses and charged the cousins and demanded justice and that's where it all went pear shaped.
Idas was, frankly, built like a temple column and a fight broke out. Spears flew. Horses panicked and next thing I knew, I was flat on my back, staring at the sky and realising I’d been fatally stabbed.
Now, here’s the thing about having an immortal twin: they don’t take 'well, I’m dead now' as a final answer.
Pollux was devastated, understandably so, and went straight to Dad with one demand: 'Swap places with him. I’ll be mortal. He can be immortal. I don’t care' and Zeus was so touched by the unselfish act that  he split the immortality.
Now we take shifts. One day I’m in Elysium sipping ambrosia and next I’m back in the Underworld, playing dice with Hades and trying to avoid Cerberus and thus the constellation Gemini was born. Two stars, twinkling side by side, one bright, one slightly dimmer, like a celestial reminder that one of us was technically better at not dying.