Marching Into The -ber Months

Today is the last day of summer, when we wake up tomorrow morning it will be the 1st September and the first day of Autumn and boy have i heard some people whinging today.
Amnesia about all the stingy things, the sunburn and having to rip the pillow from your sweaty face each morning as we recall halcyon days where we sat outside watching the dying embers of the barbecue while sipping continental lager at 2am or sitting around a swimming pool sipping a cocktail while your feet sway rhythmically in the cool water.
Well, wake up because that's all over and it's now the steady march towards cardigans, big coats and gloves and i can't say i'm that upset as out of the four seasons that our wobbly, lopsided planet provides, Summer is bottom of the list.
Autumn brings a riot of colour as the trees shed their leaves, we get to wear woolly jumpers again, watch sunrises at an acceptable hour and we get that hour back that we handed in back in March.
Most importantly we get into the -ber months and everyone knows that once you get a -ber at the end of the month it is a short stop off at Halloween, then Guy Fawkes Night and then we are into the throes of most wonderful time of the year...CHRISTMAS!!

Taxing Times For Apple

You would have thought that if someone was being made to shovel over £11bn into a nations coffers, the recipient country would be whooping it up but the Irish are a strange breed and far from eyeing up a cut in taxes or a installing some hospital equipment, they are doing all they can to make sure to show that they don't want it.
After a three year investigation which showed that Apple's headquarters was an empty office in Dublin which had no staff, the European Union have decided that the tech giant's tax arrangements enabled it to pay a tax rate of as little as £50 in taxes on every £1m of profit  was illegal and they must hand over a cheque for £11 billion for tax that they had evaded paying.    
Far from happy is Ireland's finance minister, Michael Noonan, who has said that he 'disagreed profoundly' with the decision and would seek an appeal.
Apple chief executive Tim Cook threatened that if they had to cough up the amount of back-tax due, it would have: 'a profound and harmful effect on investment and job creation in Europe' before strangely explaining that the company paid all the taxes it owed despite just being revealed they haven't been paying all the tax they owed hence the £11bn bill.
Ireland of course are concerned that if Apple are made to pay what they should rather than the pathetic amount, £50 in every £1m they make in profit which is presently thrown towards the Irish Government, they will up sticks and go somewhere else where they can evade paying the tax they should.  
The EU's have other multinationals in their sights including with Amazon and McDonald's tax arrangements under investigation and and Starbucks ordered to pay up to £26m back tax due to the Netherlands.
I am sure that if Irish taxpayers tried the same thing and protested that if they were made to pay the tax they owed rather than throw the Irish Governments a few crumbs now and then, the Government's tax collectors would disagree just as profoundly and refuse to accept it, wouldn't they?  

Little Help

The Royal Navy recently took delivery of six shiny new destroyers and they looked very nice gleaming in the sunshine of Portsmouth Harbour but the problems happen when it leaves Portsmouth because the billion pound ships break down in warm water leading to the Government announcing that at present the warships cannot operate if the water is warmer than it is in Portsmouth harbour.
Not letting an issue like that stand in their way, the Government has now dispatched one of the six, HMS Daring, to the Persian Gulf to help the fight against Islamic State in the region, tasked with protecting US aircraft carriers as they launch airstrikes in Syria and Iraq.
That is if it gets there at all because the ship has already broken down twice when it left dock and had to be towed back to the cooler water of Portsmouth as its engines 'degraded catastrophically causing total electrical failure' as the First Sea Lord Admiral Sir Philip Jones told the House of Commons’ Defence Committee.
If i was the American Navy i would make sure that alongside all the military hardware they bring along a good, sturdy rope because i can see our lot asking for a tow back to Portsmouth very soon.

The US Flag Code

America, it seems, have a few obsessions ranging from making sure they keep guns handily placed around their homes for when the Government oppresses them, Israel, God and a new found passion for all things lavatorial from either smashing them up or dictating who can use them.
Other things they have a preoccupation for is their national anthem and the flag, the latter you can see being burnt in most Middle Eastern countries but such is the enthusiasm with the national emblem that they have a Flag Code which covers all aspects of etiquette in relation to the Stars and Stripes which is enshrined in law, including how to behave when someone starts warbling 'Oh, say Can You see...'         
So what should you do when the national anthem is played?
The code states that you must stand and face the flag, if there is one with the right hand over the heart, while military personnel and veterans should salute continuously throughout.
Hats or caps must be removed and while you do not necessarily have to sing along to the anthem, it is expected.
The Flag Code states that it should not be used for any advertising purpose or printed on any material for temporary use and should also never be part of a costume or sports uniform, or used as 'wearing apparel, bedding, or drapery' which may start a few Olympians worrying as they ran around to celebrate their success covering themselves in the stars and stripes. 
The flag should never be displayed upside down but surprisingly it is not illegal to burn the US flag and is actually encouraged as the code states that flags should be 'destroyed in a dignified way, preferably by burning'.
So next time the news shows a bunch of middle eastern men dancing around a flaming Old Glory it is not because your nation has just bombed yet another wedding ceremony by accident, don't take umbrage, they are merely destroying your national flag in a dignified manner as per the instructions of the US Constitution so rise up from that chair guarding the toilet door, take off your baseball cap, find a flag to peer at and sing along..'Oh say can you see by the Dawn's early light...'

Summer And Lovin' Spoons

So how's your summer been? Three more days and then Autumn comes slamming in and it's goodbye evening cocktails on the veranda in flip-flops and hello hot chocolate on the sofa in Ugg boots.
Each summer there is a song that follows us around like a bad smell and this year i have been haunted by a song which came out before i was even born, The Lovin' Spoonfuls 'Summer In The City'.    
Not only has it been on the radio several times but it put in an appearance in a couple of TV shows including one of the Die Hard films on television.   
I have therefore decided that the Cosmos is trying to tell me something via the medium of Heart FM and Bruce Willis but reading through the lyrics of the song, what it is saying is beyond me unless it is telling me i have a dirty 'n' gritty neck.
I won't be going out to find a girl anytime soon, dancing all night or looking for a kitty but i did go on a roof top one night to watch the Perseid Meteor Shower but it was too cloudy to see any.
I can only conclude that the Cosmos has used it's powers to tell me i need to buy some more spoons so to shut it up and stop it reminding me constantly, i went to buy some.
Then i remembered as i stood trying to decide exactly which type of spoons i was meant to buy, on my last day at work before the break my colleague used my teaspoon to throw a weird looking bug out the window so i told him to throw it away as i wouldn't be using that one again.     
I would have hated to have turned up back at work Tuesday and not been able to measure out a teaspoon of coffee and sugar so thanks Galaxy.
PS...I have also washed the back of my neck also just in case i misunderstood.

Conspiracy Theory: Jim Morrison Still Alive

There are many conspiracy theories around dead musicians so it can be confusing to remember who is dead and who isn't so while Elvis, Tupac and Kurt Cobain are still alive and well but living in hiding somewhere, poor old Avril Lavigne and Paul McCartney are toast and were replaced by look-a-likes but certainly alive, according to some, is the Doors front man.

The official story is that Jim Morrison died of heart failure, widely attributed to a drug overdose, while sitting in the bathtub of his apartment in Paris.
That's funny some say because there are those who swear they saw him saying goodbye to his girlfriend Pamela Courson at an airport in Paris days later and a bank worker in San Francisco claims that Jim completed a bank transition in his own name, days after his supposed demise.
The theory is that Morrison had a motive for faking his own death, the 20 plus paternity suits he had pending, the six months prison time  and two years probation he faced after he was found guilty of indecent exposure during a concert.
Throw in there was no autopsy, the funeral was a hurried affair attended by just five people and the only person to see Jim dead outside of the hospital staff was his girlfriend, Pam and she died later of a heroin overdose adding fuel to the fire that she simply went to join Jim wherever he was holed up.

Conspiracy Theory: Mars Already Inhabited

We have done the Moon and now our attention is turning to the Planet Mars and talk of a manned mission is taking shape but some are convinced that not only did we go there a long time ago but we have a colony already set up on the red planet. 

Without doubt we have made an almighty mess of this planet so it is natural that we search elsewhere in our Solar System for somewhere else to populate ands Mars is a candidate and while some people speculate if there is life there, others know there is because it's us.
In 2014, a woman who would only call herself Jackie claimed that she used to work for NASA and that she saw evidence that we have colonies on Mars—or that there are actually intelligent Martians living on the red planet. According to her story, she was helping bring the Viking Lander down on the Martian landscape when she saw two figures walking toward the lander. She claims that she and her colleagues nearby had their feeds cut out as this happened.
They ran upstairs to try to get a better look, but their superiors had locked the doors and taped up any cracks so they could not look through.
The woman is open to speculation as to whether it was aliens or fellow humans but she is convinced there is something already there.

Conspiracy Theory: The Real Reason For The LHC

Beneath Switzerland sits the Large Hadron Collider which we thought was groups of people with white lab coats with pens in the top pocket bashing together particles to further our scientific knowledge of atomic particles but some people know the real reason, to create a portal to awaken the Egyptian God of Death.

The ancient Egyptians had an object named Ta-Wer aka 'Osiris device' which was a stargate machine capable of opening inter-dimensional wormholes to allow their Gods (specifically Seth and Osiris) to travel across the underworld.
The science bit is that nothing can travel faster than light but a 'shortcut' could be opened to connect two distant if a huge amount of energy is used to 'bend' the space, forming an interconnected tunnel in space-time where matter could pass.
The LHC, being a particle booster, is capable of creating such huge amount of energy similar to the required cosmic conditions to spawn wormholes, or a huge Stargate device.
Makes you wonder.

Conspiracy Theory: Aliens

There is no shortage of alien conspiracy theory out there from UFO crashes at Roswell to humans being the result of a giant alien experiment.

Depending on who you speak to, Aliens are either watching us, were directly involved in creating us or are in communication with our World leaders who keep it hushed up to stop panic spreading but the most widely believed theories show that aliens are out there somewhere doing something.
One theory hinges on the presence of 'junk' DNA of unknown function in our bodies which shows aliens tinkered with our ancestors DNA long ago or created them to begin with which serves as a kind of trademark to show that we are the creation of extraterrestrial life forms.
Another theory is that ancient aliens influenced human life in the past. The ancient aliens were directly involved in the evolution of primates, including humans. It has been suggested that they helped in the development of human cultures, technologies and even religion.
An opposite conspiracy theory is that aliens generally avoid making their presence known to humanity, or avoid exerting an influence on development, preferring to observe us using equipment located on Earth or elsewhere in the Solar System and on occasion throw us a curve-ball such as an earthquake or warming climate to see how we cope and evolve.

Conspiracy Theory: Chemtrails & HAARP

If you look up into the sky on a clear blue day, you might catch a glimpse of the latest Government conspiracy to control our minds and/or alter the weather.

On any clear day you can see the unusual pattern of thin clouds that look almost—but not quite—like aeroplane contrails. These are chemtrails, which the government sprays over the population to spread mind-controlling chemicals, biological weapons, or weather-altering super-technology, depending on whom you ask.
The theory states that the chemicals spewing out of government planes are designed to create 'ionospheric disruption' that can be used to manipulate weather patterns with the resulting engineered Hurricanes, floods and droughts.
Others believe that they don't even have to charter a plane and they are doing it here on the ground through the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP).
This theory is that that someone out there, usually the Americans or Israelies, have a secret weapon that can alter the climate at any given point of the Globe by disturbing the ionosphere and cause all manner of climate disasters.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) say in theory they could, they even have a name for it, Lithosphere-Atmosphere-Ionosphere Coupling, which is a geek way of saying heating the ionosphere.