Don't Make Foolish Decisions Jamaicans

As beautiful as Jamaica is, you wouldn't want to be there on holiday at the moment as a Category 5 Hurricane is barrelling towards a direct hit on the Caribbean Island.
The slow moving Hurricane Melissa has strengthened even further and is now packing winds up to 175 mph and is expected to hit Jamaica tonight or tomorrow morning, bringing with it a 13ft storm surge and rainfall of up to 40in.
The Jamaican Government has been urging people to hunker down and 'not to make foolish decisions as we are in a very, very serious time over the next few days.
'There is going to be a lot of water. We are forecasting unheard amounts of rain for Jamaica' said the weather correspondent from NBC News, 'This is an island that has experienced hurricanes before, but nothing to this extent.'
The two times Jamaica has been hit directly under a Hurricane was in 1951 with Hurricane Charlie which was a Category 3 and is considered as Jamaica's deadliest natural disaster of the 20th century with rainfall of 17in and wind gusts of 125 mph with 152 fatalities.
Hurricane Gilbert in 1988 was also a Category 3 and came with a storm surge of 19 ft and 34.3in of rain leading to flooding and a total of 45 deaths.
As Melissa is so slow moving, 5mph, it will linger longer over the island and dump even more rain so the flooding is being called potentially catastrophic so good luck Jamaicans, listen to the Government advice and don't be foolish but it proves once again that if you mess with Mother Nature, she bites back hard.

Iraq War Blueprint Being Used For War In Venezuela?

Since the start of September, the Trump administration has busied itself with blowing up boats in international waters stemming from Venezuela under the guise that, according to them, they are carrying narcotics cargo destined for consumers in the United States.
Donald Trump called it an action 'of self-defense' against 'unlawful combatants' motivated by 'the inability or unwillingness of some states in the region to address the continuing threat to United States persons and interests emanating from their territories.'
Obviously, as a man who lies as easily as he breathes, it should be delved into but the American media is either unwilling or just too damn awful to dig into it and see if Trump is not just pushing the envelope but shredding it to bits and if he is, why?
Firstly, International Law experts are saying that the actions break all sorts of international law violations from the physical violation of another state’s sovereignty and wrongful intervention in a sovereign states affairs and violates Article 2(4) of the United Nations Charter and customary law.
Secondly, if the intention is to curb overdoses on U.S. soil from drug use, fentanyl is the largest culprit and the vast majority of that crosses into the US hails across the border from Mexico, not South America but telling is the Trump assertion that Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro is the leader of a drug trafficking organisation although no evidence has been provided.
Everyone is who anyone involved in the Drugs War states that Venezuela isn't involved in this fentanyl business in any meaningful way and the Mexican cartels certainly don't share the market with anyone, and certainly not with Venezuela.  
Venezuela is a large supplier of other illegal drugs but not as much as the much more significant drug producing countries like Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia, which are the largest producers of the coca leaf in the world which cocaine is made from and transport through Venezuela and then mainly leave the country from ports on the northern coast of the country.
America's own intelligence Community disputes this and the National Intelligence Council head,  Michael Collins, was sacked when he pointed this out and Trump went on to continue with the them by saying that  he had authorised the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to conduct covert lethal operations on Venezuelan soil and more broadly through the Caribbean, saying: 'We are certainly looking at land now, because we’ve got the sea well under control'.
He has ordered a growing military presence threateningly close to Venezuela so what is going on in that age addled brain of Trump?
Intelligence states that these boats from Venezuela are not heading to the US and that many of the boats targeted for strikes by the Trump administration do not even have the requisite fuel or motor capacity to reach the U.S, but are mainly heading to the nearby islands of Trinidad and Tobago, and from there they largely go to West Africa and Europe.
It's widely accepted the two most exported drugs from South America are cocaine and marijuana and the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention in the US says that synthetic opioids like fentanyl are responsible for most overdose deaths there and fentanyl is not produced in South America, whatever the president says.
So is he mistaken and misinformed, or does he has another motive.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio is a fervent supporter of the Venezuelan opposition, the recent winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, María Corina Machado, who must be salivating at the prospect of regime change and Rubio has been pushing for Venezuela's president Nicolas Maduro to be toppled for years now, redirecting millions of dollars in money previously allocated for “pro-democracy” measures in Venezuela.
A few weeks ago,  Maduro offered to turn over some of his nations oil resources to the U.S. in exchange for a cessation of hostilities, another that Trump himself acknowledged, telling reporters that: 'Maduro offered everything. You know why? Because he doesn’t want to fuck around with the United States' but Trump rejected the offer, Rubio making the argument that the best way to secure Venezuela’s oil reserves was to facilitate regime change in Venezuela and make a better deal with a new government.
So while Trump and his gang continues to insist their military manoeuvres are simply part of a wider counter drugs operation, it's hard to imagine that getting rid of an 'unfriendly' leader in a country with huge oil reserves, the largest in the world, to bring in a 'friendly' leader in the opposition who they can do business with, is not part of their equation.
In echoes of George W Bush's war in Iraq, the pieces are being moved into place, the lies are being spluttered and the useful idiots are repeating them while a next to useless media refuses to ask the obvious questions and the self-proclaimed peace maker in the White House could be preparing America for a war with Venezuela and following the same, blood stained and disastrous blueprint used by Bush and Blair in 2003.

Budget Ideas For The Chancellor

As the Budget looms over the hill, the kite flying by the Government has began in earnest as they throw out possible ideas and wait to see the reaction which allows the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, to either deny they were ever a serious plan while scribbling them out of her list or putting a little tick next to them ready for November 25th.
The issue the Government have is that in their election manifesto they said they would not increase VAT, National Insurance or Income Tax so with those restrictions holding firm, she will need to get creative or at the very least nick some policies from the other Parties.
The Green Party said they will introducing a wealth tax of 1% on assets above £10m and 2% on assets above £1bn and in a BBC Poll, 75% of Britons would support it so expect that to be aired at the dispatch box.
The Liberal Democrats suggested a mansion tax on homes worth more than £2m and in the poll 69% of the public put their thumbs up to it so another to add to the list.
An exit tax for people who are relocating themselves out of the UK for tax purposes and will be required to pay tax on unrealised capital gains sounds good to 60% as does reforming the council tax so it is proportionate to the exact value of the home as opposed to the current system based on which value band it falls in which 56% say should be in the final report.
Merging income tax and National Insurance together into a single tax is seen positively by 43% but that is pretty much the last of the ideas which won't get rotton fruit thrown at her because making road users pay car tax on the for the distance they travel on public roads is only supported by 38% and reducing the top rate of tax to be less than 40% is seen favourably by 29% and poo-pooed by 50%.
The least favourable idea is scrapping different income tax levels and replacing them with a flat' income tax that is set at the same level for everybody which only 20% say they would approve of byt 65% say on yer bike.
So if we take the popular ideas, how much would the Chancellor raise?
Economists at the London School of Economics suggest that a Wealth Tax could raise around £24bn a year, Mansion Tax £2.5bn, Exit Tax £500m per year and the merging NI and Income Tax would increase the take by £6 billion so potentially £33bn, equivalent to sticking 4p on Income Tax so bit of a no brainer really, hitting mostly only the richest except the merging idea which would mostly affect Pensioners currently not paying National Insurance but they all vote Tory or Reform anyway so no loss there.  
Of course, my own ideas of scrapping the Nuclear Weapons (£200 bn saved), reverse the madness that was Brexit (£140bn raised), a windfall tax on banks and utilities (£20 billion raised) and ditching the Royals (£100m saved) would flood an extra £360bn into the UK coffers so feel free to use any of these Rach. 

Death Penalties For Palestinian Prisoners

Since 1967, one million Palestinians have been detained in an Israeli Prison and currently 10,000 Palestinians are being held in Israeli jails and the occupied territory, according to prisoners’ rights group Addameer.  
Of these, 3500 are administrative detainees meaning they are held without charge or trial on renewable six month terms of imprisonment but a new law passing through the Knesset could soon sort that out as the National Security Committee under Ben-Gvir are seeking approval to impose the death penalty on any Palestinian who intentionally or negligently causes the death of an Israeli citizen out of racial or ideological hatred, or with the aim of harming Israel'.
In a system long built around mass arrests, indefinite detention and an apartheid justice system, Palestinian Right Groups are suitably worried that the Israeli regime, fresh from a genocide against the Palestinans, aims to legitimise the killing of Palestinian prisoners.
The bill, mandates the death penalty for any detainee 'convicted of murder motivated by racism or hostility toward a particular public, and under circumstances where the act was committed with the intent to harm the State of Israel and the rebirth of the Jewish people in their homeland, mandatorily, not optionally or at the court’s discretion.'
Ben- Gvir said that executing Palestinian 'terrorists' would free up prison space, publicly saying that Palestinian prisoners should be 'shot in the head', and called for them to receive only minimal sustenance and this week threatened to withhold his party’s support for coalition legislation unless the prisoners’ execution bill is brought to a vote within three weeks as well as stating that: 'Now that we have received the Israeli captives from Gaza, we must return to war and open the gates of hell upon Gaza. The captives were the only reason we stopped the war. We must continue the war on Gaza, whether the Qataris and the Turks are there or not. Qatar and Turkey are our enemies.'
In a nation that had no qualms with committing genocide against Palestinians and all manner of war crimes, that they are seriously considering turning prisons into execution sites for the people they are militarily occupying does nothing to help their case that they are not the current modern day version of the Nazi's who were so rightly reviled for their genocide and prohibitive executions.

Halloween In The UK

In the list of money spent on celebrations in the UK, Halloween is towards the bottom with the £776m spent on decorations and scary costumes well below that is at Christmas (£46.4bn), Mothers Day (£2.4bn), Easter (£2.3bn), Valentines Day (£1.5bn) and Fathers Day (£1.1bn) and beats only Bonfire Night (£497m) in the main celebrations so why is Halloween not such a big thing here?  
Some shops do make a bit of a token gesture to flog us Halloween stuff, my local B&M has half an aisle full of cobwebs and spiders and skeleton and vampire costumes but it also has 2 aisles of Christmas things so make of that what you will.
A YouGov found that only 28% of Britons will celebrate Halloween in some way this year with the most common contribution being carving a Pumpkin and watching a scary film to mark the occasion.
I'm not really sure why Halloween has never really taken off over here, some people do make an effort but personally, while not going out of my way to ignore it, i don't do anything to actually celebrate it although i do appreciate the horror films played wall to wall on the TV  but mostly i see it as one of the days, along with Bonfire Night, to get out of the way and then it is a clear run through to my favourite celebration, Christmas. 

War, What Is It Good For? Absolutely Nothing

It seems like every time you turn on the news there is a conflict being shown and a recently published report by the United Nations and the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), show that there really are more active conflicts now than any time since the second World War.
The Peace Index shows that in 97 countries, peace deteriorated with 92 countries currently involved in conflicts beyond their borders leading to 110 million people who are either refugees or internally displaced.
Last year recorded 162,000 conflict related deaths, the second highest toll in the past 30 years, with the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza accounting for nearly three-quarters of these deaths.
One key factor the UN point to is the use of relatively inexpensive drones which makes it much easier for non-state groups, as well as smaller or less powerful states, to compete in conflicts with larger states or governments. The number of drones used by Governments last year rose by 150% increase while the number of non-state groups which committed at least one drone attack increased by 1,400%.
Since 2023, militarisation has increased in 91 countries and globally the military spending has increased by over 10%.
Africa is the most affected continent with 28 interstate conflicts involving one or more state actors, Asia has 17, the Middle East 10, Europe 3 and the Americas 2.
'There are worrying signs that militarisation is likely to increase in the near future' said the PRIO, 'with the very high number of smaller conflicts means that the risk of an outbreak of more major conflicts is higher now than at any other point'.
Humans. What a bunch of morons.

Special Guest Blogger: Horseman Pestilence

Hi, I'm Pestilence. First Horseman of the Apocalypse. Destroyer of Empires, Harbinger of End Times and the winner of the Inaugural 1654 Leighton Buzzard Hide-and-Seek Championship.
While I am no longer splashed across the tabloids and hot on the lips of the masses so much, I was an indelible part of your history and was a household name for many centuries but it wasn’t all rainbows and pustules overnight.  
I cut my teeth in Asia in small mammals, rats mostly. Hardly glamorous, but it got me ready for my big break which was my move into humans, a move that would change the course of your lives forever and with my technique perfected, i made a direct line for the largest Empire of the time, that of the Romans.
At that time the mighty Roman Empire was being picked apart by invasions, corruption, debts and even Jesus finally said 'sod this' and packed it all in which plunged the entire continent into what’s commonly been known as the Dark Ages which was a bit of a rubbish time to be alive due to one of the worst pandemics the world has ever known, called the Black Death courtesy of the ultimate harbinger of misery, lil ol me.
Taking what i learnt, i knew i could take a disease from rats to humans with a bite but humans were wary of letting a rat bite them so i used fleas, practically undetectable until the sneaky little buggers had taken a big bite out of an old man’s butt and that was it. I was in.
As infected rats died, their hungry fleas made the switch to human blood and i was up and running and it wasn’t long before i was in the tavernas and the workshops, the brothels and the palaces and I worked my way around the whole continent bringing you fever, headaches, swollen lymph nodes, muscle pain, tissue necrosis and then when i was done playing, I  handed you over to the fourth horseman, Death.
I was flourishing and the Plague was a spectacular debut, but not my magnum opus which came nearly a thousand years later with the Black Death in an era before hand sanitizer and face masks, the preferred method of hygiene was to sniff vinegar and encourage children to smoke so unsurprisingly I saw off 50 million souls, almost two thirds of the population. A Golden Age indeed and possibly too successful because the lousy squashed and insanitary conditions in which i thrived got cleaned up.
You learnt about hygiene, about contamination and infection and inoculations and nowadays it isn't easy to start a global pandemic unless it is a completely new one, the golden oldies are being inoculated against now and it isn't easy to come up with new ones although i did have some success with Smallpox and more recently Covid but otherwise now is it a few isolated incidents, the odd mini flare-up in small communities, but with modern medicine, most are treatable although the rise of the anti-vaxxers in recent years does give some hope of an overdue return and that that my best may be yet to come.

Rules For Modern Men

GQ Magazine (the GQ stands for Gentlemens Quarterly) have gone all Men, What Are You Like? and have compiled a list of 125 Rules for Modern Men.
Now 125 is a lot but as they say:  'Knowing how to be a gentleman used to be straightforward but that’s not exactly the case anymore' and have produced a tick list 'to craft the ultimate guide to being a well-mannered gentleman in 2025' but i will be buggered if i am going to wade through all of them so i will pick out the most pertinent which annoy me such as:  

Rule 1. Take out your earphones when you’re talking to someone. Especially if you are listening to something naff like Susan Boyle, in that case actually take them out before even hitting Play.

Rule 5. Always sneeze as if you’re at a library or a funeral. Damn right, nothing worse than sneezing in such an exaggerated way that people 3 counties over hear it.

Rule 12. Greet people you know with a single kiss on the left cheek. Nope, if i don't know you and you come in for a kiss i'm going to knee you very hard in the knackers.

Rule 28. Clean your sheets every week.  You don't anyway?

Rule 52. Stand up to greet people when they arrive. That is fine but go for the kiss thing and it's knee, knackers and then you speaking in Soprano for the next two hours.

Rule 87. In general: Talk less. Not much to say about this, except shut ya face sometimes.

Rule 88. Ask questions about the other person than talk about yourself. True, nobody cares and if you sound boastful you will be forever called Billy Big Bollicks.

Rule 96. Offer up your seat on public transportation. At best just don't man-spread and take up 3 seats with your akimbo legs.

Rule 116. Pick your socks up off the floor. And underpants, towels, plates, mugs. Actually, if you put it down pick the bloody thing up again.  

Rule 123. Don’t get into bed with dirty feet. You really need to be told this???

If i can add a few more:

Rule 126. Don't Hog The Remote Control. Dive bombing through all 150 channels in two minutes and settling for golf or snooker and then falling asleep within ten minutes...grrr.

Rule 127. If you pee on the bathroom floor, wipe it up. It's approximately a 2ft drop from midriff to toilet bowl!! How do you miss so damn much???

Rule 128. If you got a sniffle, don't keep mentioning it. Laying on the sofa moaning and acting as if you are about to write your last will and testament doesn't help, wuss.  

Rule 129. Offer to park the car. We haven't left in the middle of the road for exercise, it's because the parking space is too small.

Rule 130. If you start a sentence with 'I'm not sexist/racist/homophobic but...' then don't say it. I wont defend to the death your right to say anything, i will let you say it and then point out what an absolute dick you are.

Rule 131. Do not buy a kitchen utensil as a Christmas Present. That shiny new frying pan would look lovely against the decorations as it twists through the air to bounce off your head.

Special Guest Blogger: Ilya Ivanov

I was  a professor who specialised in artificial insemination and i was good at it, whilst working as a researcher in the Askania-Nova natural reserve I perfected artificial insemination for horse breeding and was so successful that i could take the sperm from one stallion and use it to fertilise up to 500 mares instead of the usual 20–30 and horse breeders from around the World were clamouring for my services.
Then in 1927, backed by the Soviet government, I attempted to create an entirely new creature from existing representatives of both ends of the human evolutionary spectrum: a hybrid of man and ape and as we share almost 99% of our DNA, i failed to see how it couldn't work.
After years of frustration in pursuit of my 'humanzee', I finally got my chance when the governor of French Guinea gave me free rein to conduct a breeding program at the botanical gardens near the capital of Conakry.
My son and I took two captured female chimpanzees, named Babette and Syvette, held them down with nets and squirted into them human sperm taken from a local man.
Unfortunately for the fate of mankind, neither chimp became pregnant and then nor did a third chimp, Black, who was knocked out with chloroform and inseminated.
So I decided to switch tactics and approached the governor with the idea of introducing chimpanzee sperm into hospitalized women, without their knowledge.
The governor said no so I returned to the Soviet Union and obtained permission to impregnate women there, provided they were willing and kept in isolation for a year.
I did found a volunteer, a woman, identified only as G who wanted to do her bit for science so i got an orangutan named Tarzan but the government officials then got cold feet and reconsidered their support of my experiments and slapped me into prison for alleged counterrevolutionary activities.
Soon after my release, I died from a stroke unfortunately without leaving a humanzee, or a hurangutan, as my legacy.

The Ai View Of Falling On A Bruise

Love this, asking Ai for a breakdown of Falling On A Bruise, i got this

Based on an analysis of its content, the blog "Falling On A Bruise" (http://bruisefalling.blogspot.com/) exhibits a strong left-wing or anti-establishment/liberal political leaning.

The blog expresses views that are critical of religious social conservatism and critical of certain power structures, all of which align with the left-leaning side of the political spectrum.

The author is strongly critical of social conservatism which is a position typically associated with the political left or secular liberalism. The author is also critical of powerful figures and reflects a skeptical view of the establishment.

The blogger's posts are driven by issues they perceive as unfair, which align with left-wing political views.

The blog does include posts which are politically neutral, but the overtly political posts all lean to the left and are written in an informal, first-person style, expressing strong opinions, commentary on various subjects and commentary on political figures and often employs provocative language.

While references are based on actual news, you can trust this blog for the author's strong opinions and perspective and it functions more as an expressive, polemical, and entertainment-focused commentary platform.

The writing is characterized by a strong, opinionated, and often cynical or critical voice. It frequently uses informal language, sarcasm, satire and strong rhetorical framing to express the author's viewpoint on controversial topics in informal, sometimes provocative, and satirical writing.

In summary, the blog often use strong, blunt, and sometimes sarcastic language to criticize public figures and institutions but it is engaging, provocative, and highly opinionated, making it effective for expressing the author's viewpoint on current events. The topics are serious and often controversial, reflecting an interest in social justice, political ethics, and cultural issues.

The blog Author projects a persona that is outspoken, critical, passionate, and heavily opinionated on social and political issues.