Special Guest Blogger: Grigoriy Nelyubov

Since time immemorial there have been stars that have flown so high only to come crashing down to earth with all the grace of an American at a free buffet and i was literally an ace away from being one of the first few men who flew the highest because i was a Russian Cosmonaut at the time of when the Soviets were spanking the American's in the Space Race.
We had sent the first animal into orbit and the first human's in space in Vostok 1 and Vostok 2 and i was all set to pilot Vostok 3 until i had a problem with a drink, or rather the dozen of them i had drunk when returning from a weekend pass when i got into an altercation with an army patrol at a train station checkpoint and punched one of the guards.
I was a captain and pilot in the Soviet Air Force and while the Americans sought mature test pilots for their first spaceflights, the Soviets recruited young pilots with the intent of training them for a career as spacemen and out of 3,000 applicants, i was picked as one of the original 20 Cosmonauts for the Soviet Space missions and after all the tests and exams, it was Yuri Gagarin, Gherman Titov and me who were chosen to ride the first manned missions in that order.
Now the Soviet missions were very much seat of the pants stuff, the best most of us guys hoped for was a merciful, quick death and on the launch of Vostok 1 three press releases were prepared, one for success, two for failures but when Yuri circled the Earth in 1961, global housewives stopped a-cleanin’, dogs sat up in their basket, birds stopped a-twitterin’ and cow-milkin’-device-type-things stopped…cow milking and he came back safely to be a hero not just in the USSR but Worldwide.  
A few months later Titov went up and came down again a day later with the first photograph's of Earth from space and then it was to be my turn and a planned 3 day mission circling our Planet...until that train station incident and i was arrested for drunk and disorderly conduct.
The duty officer agreed to ignore the whole incident and not send the report if i apologised, but i got all 'Do You Know Who I Am?' which couldn't really be taken as an apology but i thought they won't kick me out, i'm off to the stars soon and even when they reported me to the authorities i was confident they would dismiss it but the only thing dismissed was me from the Cosmonaut corps.
I went back to flying planes while my former comrades blasted toward the stars and my own nation airbrushed me out of ever being part of Soviet Space history but missing out on global fame led me to drink heavily which is how i ended up wandering around drunk one morning and straight into the path of a speeding train, wiping me from history permanently.

Special Guest Blogger: Greek God Hades

The son of Cronus and Rhea, when the family fortune was divvied up, my brothers Zeus got the Sky and Poseidon the sea and i got handed the Underworld which wasn't a bad gig, although a dingy and dull place it was a very popular joint because since the dawn of man, there has always been evil or 'the absence of good'.
In the start there was always some hero nipping down to rescue someone or other so i told them that Tartarus or the Land of the Dead is supposed to be for the dead only you guys so i got my enormous guard dog Cerberus to keep watch on the entrance to the Underworld and nobody argues with him, less of a dog and more of a three-headed monster hound with slavering jaws really.
There are certain living people i did welcome though, including my wife Persephone who does cheer things up down here a little, if only for three months of the year but that is the deal we arranged with her mother Demeter and her father Zeus because i did sort of kidnap her while she was out picking flowers and her mum cast a curse on the land that it would stay barren and nothing would grow until i released her.
Being the nice chap i did exactly that, i even gave her a pomegranate to eat on the way back although i clean forgot about the rule that if you taste the food of dead you must return to our land for part of the year, that bit i forgot to mention which is why when Persephone is down in the underworld with me from December to February, when you living types then have winter as per her Mother's instructions that nothing would grow until she is topside again.
For someone who was reluctant to marry me, she had a jealous streak about my ex-girlfriends, she not only ripped Minthe to pieces but then trampled the pieces into garden mint.
The Roman's took a shine to me and although they changed my name to Pluto, they kept me as their own god of the dead and gave me the job of the master of ores and precious stones and all was good until the Christians took over and seemed to make Hades into some sort of torture chamber for wrong doers but worst of all was they replaced me with Satan who was just the furry little half man half goat Pan who was way down the league of minor Gods until they showed up. The cheek, replaced by a pervy old goat shagger.

Questions Being Asked Over Ukraine Support

As things stand, currently most people are behind the Ukrainians in their fight against Russian aggression but as prices increase and the credit crunch really starts to bite, already the question being asked is how much longer will people be willing to pay such exorbitant prices for things like petrol and heating before they start shouting enough?
Recent polling by the European Council on Foreign Relations suggests the increasing cost of living crisis is causing more concern than achieving justice for Ukraine with: 'a growing gap between the positions of many governments and the public mood in their respective countries'.
It doesn't help the cause in the UK as it is widely perceived that Boris Johnson is strutting around pretending to be a world statesman in order to distract us from the mess of his making in the UK and it is becoming a bit of a joke how he always mentions Ukraine whenever another of his never ending discrepancies are uncovered.
It has already been mentioned to me that that Moscow will not back down and supplying Ukraine with defensive weapons only enables them to hold the Russians off temporarily while they have very little chance of actually winning the war so people are already wondering what are we making sacrifices for?   
Support for the Ukrainian conflict is still high but at some point, probably in October when the new round of fuel price increases come along or even before when inflation continues upwards and the pay rises don't materialise, the few voices may well swell and it will become a chorus of sorry Ukraine but we just can't be squeezed anymore and the politicians will have a decision to make.

Special Guest Blogger: Hannibal Barca of Carthage

There are not many Tunisian military commanders in the history books but i'm in them and i an known as the one of the greatest military commanders in history with one of the greatest treks to fight a war.
My father started it, marching his army across Northern Africa and across the strait of Gibraltar to take on the tribes of the Iberian Peninsula and when he died in battle, my brother-in-law took over and made a deal with the Romans that we would not expand North into their domain if they did not expand south into ours.
We were merrily dicing and slicing Spaniards and Portuguese until he also died which left me in charge and i upped our conquest game which spooked the Romans who began claiming lands in our patch so i sent a delegation which said either get out or face war.
They chose the latter but i had a plan, turned out it was a massively stupid plan which ended up killing most of my army, but my plan was to sneakily attack the Romans from the Alps which was considered damn near impossible.
With 38,000 infantry, 8,000 cavalry and 38 elephants, we started the march from Iberia over the Pyrenees and the Alps into Northern Italy but we got stuck at a narrow, snowy pass and my men were concerned that the elephants would trigger an avalanche and kill them all so i tried to demonstrate to them that it was perfectly safe to pass along.
I chose to do this by ramming my cane into the snow, which in turn triggered an avalanche, which wiped out almost half my infantry, a quarter of my cavalry and most of the elephants but the rest made it across okay and we went to Italy and even with my depleted resources, fought Rome in their own backyard for 15 years.
The use of elephants was a masterstroke, the Romans had never seen them before and sending one of those rampaging through a town and into the Romans ranks caused mayhem until one of them worked out that blowing a horn at the elephants would cause them to turn tail and run straight back at us.  
The Romans invaded North Africa and i had to return to defend my homeland but by time i got there the Roman's had taken over so i made peace with them but they heard i was plotting with the Greeks to kick them out so i ran off to Greece to act as a general in their own war against Rome but died from an infection after i cut my finger on my own sword whilst mounting my horse.
You may ask how someone who ended up killing more of his men than the Romans ever did and ended up being killed by an accident with his own sword can be considered one of the greatest strategists ever but i took on Rome with only half of my fighting force so if i had not accidentally killed them i would have taken Rome and history would be very different, the art, literature, laws and architecture would be a lot more Tunisian for a start.

Special Guest Blogger: Greek Goddess Aphrodite

Coming into existence from the foam of your fathers discarded penis could really screw up a young girl but i did manage to snag a Greek God as a husband, shame it was Hephaestus who didn't get hit with the ugly stick, he got hit by the whole damned tree.
As the goddess of beauty, passion and love, i was so gorgeous that there was a six month waiting list for birds to suddenly appear every time i was near so obviously having a husband who whenever he looked in a shiny surface, his reflection would look back and shake it's head wasn't ideal but there was no lack of hunky Gods ready to lend a hand and other more intimate body parts to me, Dionysus, Hermes, Poseidon, Zeus but especially Ares who would visit while hubby was toiling away in his workshop.
Everything was going well until Helios saw us and told Hephaestus who trapped us together in a net and dragged us to the God's on Olympus who demanded we never see each other again although considering that we had seven children together, that didn't happen although i did spread the love around including with mortals.
One of my children was Priapus who the Queen of the God's, Hera, cursed as she was jealous of my superior beauty. Her curse was for him to be born hideously ugly and with an oversized penis. Basically, what any man would accept and the sight of Priapus offended the small-dicked Greek God's who cast him out of Mount Olympus and lived on Earth and became adopted by the Roman's who had small statues built of him in their gardens which became the Gnome's still in existence in modern gardens today.
As for me, i created Pandora, yes that one, who released evil into the world but as the goddess of all things love, i did have a mean streak such as cursing all the women on the island of Lemnos to stink after they refused to sacrifice to me.
It started off well, all the men refused to procreate with them and started having sex with their female slaves but then the women murdered the entire male population of the island and well...my bad.
Just as my son was taken on by the Roman's, so was i and after a name change to Venus, i was also immortalized in stone in the Venus de Milo although for some reason i don't appear to have any arms which were broken off at some point but as i am considered the ultimate vision of beauty and i'm topless so i think most men wouldn't notice if my arms were missing, 7 foot long or bright purple with polka-dots.

Economics And The Prince Of Aldovia

Things had taken a downward turn and the country was entering recession and there i was in the canteen trying to decide whether to enter 80p for the last Snickers Bar or just give the machine a good shake when the big, big, BIG boss walked in and said 'Ah, i'm glad i bumped into you'.
Immediately my mind went to 'Bugger, what have i done' and as my mind raced back over any recent indiscretions he said that due to the economic turmoil we were going to go big on Economics and as i was once the financial advisor to Prince Richard of Aldovia could i give a quick 30 min update on some of the terms and what they mean to the younger staff members.
Obviously my mouth said 'Of Course, no problem' but my mind went 'Crap. I knew that putting that fake entry using people from a Christmas Movie on my CV would come back to bite me on the arse' so i set about thinking how could i blag my way out of this because knowing anything about economics to me is like a diet sheet to Boris Johnson, never the twain shall meet.
I turned up to see about 40 fresh young faces waiting with notepads and pens poised, ready to jot down whatever pearls of wisdom i imparted so i shuffled my papers, looked at the clock and took a deep breath and began.
I started by saying that the most important thing was to pitch your efforts at the lowest of the potential audience, so think PE Teacher or Estate Agent, and avoid using long words like Stagflation, Deflation and Hyperinflation because it would only confuse them.
Happy that i had craftily avoided having to explain what they were as i had no idea, i looked again at the clock and saw i still had 29 minutes to fill so then went on to give some long, winding explanation of how the prices at the petrol pumps was a great example of how a shortage of a commodity means that the producer can charge more for that thing and because the demand is high, they can charge more for it.
A few hands went up but i managed to deflect by saying could they keep any questions to the end as we are pressed for time and i had a lot to get through and the hands, thankfully, went down again.
The clock said 15 minutes to go so i shuffled my papers while i desperately tried to remember the recent chat i had with a Financial Expert at the start of the year but all i could remember about that was her lovely, stylish red kitten heel shoes and coming out of the interview with the word 'Coat' scribbled down, damn my lack of attention and the ease which my mind wanders to a tropical island where David Boreanaz is serving me a Sea Breeze while dressed in only a pair of tight speedos and a glint in his eye whenever mind numbingly boring topics are mentioned.
With ten minutes to go i went for the good old fashioned blag, throwing in as many economic terms that i could drag forth from my brain so i said some people advocate Keynesian Economics that focuses on changes in the economy over the short run and as we all know short term planning can play havoc with everything, a good example is Leeds United. Under David O' Leary they paid top price for players and stretched the clubs finances too far and while they made it to the European Cup and recouped what they lost, when they missed out they were forced to sell those players to keep the club afloat and...10 minutes of talking Football and throwing about some random economic sounding words such as capital, deficit, fiscal and consumer goods, i saw it was half ten and announced the meeting over.
Eager hands shot up again and i explained that unfortunately the meeting had over-run and the boss would have my guts for garters if i kept them any longer but if they did have any questions, to email them to me and i would answer them.
Breathing a huge sigh of relief i shuffled them out the door and making a mental note to delete all emails i received today, went back to the canteen and the snack machine to see that the last Snickers had gone.
Oh how i wish i was back in Aldovia sometimes! 

Danger To Religion If Life Found Elsewhere

The Curiosity Rover found that ancient Mars had the right chemistry to support living microbes and the Perseverance Rover which has been trundling around the Martian landscape since 2021 has not only discovered proof that the rocks on the Red Planet interacted with water multiple times over the eons, but they also contained organic molecules.
The Perseverance Team are quick to temper expectations that organics is not a confirmation that life once existed and there are both biological and non-biological mechanisms that create organics and they won't know for certain until the samples are returned and studied here on Earth, in 2030, but it does throw up some very interesting questions, especially for those of a more religious persuasion.
For centuries the domain of the church has been chipped away at as Science challenged the events of the Bible, people such as Copernicus and Darwin, and religion has had to adjust itself to try and stay relevant but at some point in the future we will discover life on other planets, or it will discover us.
With advances in telescopes, space exploration and the discovery of even more exoplanets which could sustain life, it is only a matter of time before we find evidence of life elsewhere amongst the trillions and trillions of other planets which should prove uncomfortable for the God squad.
The likely answer would be the religious leaders would 'find' the answer written in their holy texts somewhere but if the other life is intelligent enough to have it's own theories how how and why they are there, it could get interesting.
Science has done its best to show religion for what it is, a man-made concept to explain things they did not know how to explain at the time, but the discovery of life in the other reaches of the Universe should be yet another body blow to religion on it's way to becoming something that future, enlightened generations will look back on as a curiosity.

Merry LEON Day!!!

Today is exactly 182 days since Christmas Day in 2021 and tomorrow it will be exactly 182 until Christmas Day 2022 which i think deserves some sort of celebration and as i found out last year there is, and it's called LEON Day which is very cleverly, NOEL backwards.
I found out about it accidentally a few years ago and ever since we have kept a Christmas Film on the TIVO Box to watch on June 25th and i have done my best to spread the word hoping that it will catch the imagination and grow into a thing, not the full blown second Christmas, but a more simpler, cut back affair.
As we all know, the Christmas Story is actually just a cheap rip off of Saturnalia with Jesus copied and pasted in to replace the Roman's Gods and i assume if it does grow into something, then the Churchy types will be busy finding someone to fill his boots in June and they already have a Saint who's feast day is today, William of Montevergine.
Looking at his Wikipedia page, his story includes a donkey and Kings and he also performed miracles, ordering the wolf that killed his donkey which did all the towing and other tasks and demanding the Wolf to literally do the donkey's work instead.  
He also turned down a prostitute who wanted to test his faith which may not be quite so easy to spin into a jaunty LEON's Day Carol the kid's can sing but we can let future generations worry about that as well as what bird will replace the Robin on LEON Day Cards and who will be the Santa replacement because we can't expect him to do the rounds twice in one year and the kids have to have someone to write to.
Ugly T-Shirts to replace Ugly jumpers, Strawberry Milkshake instead of Eggnog, pot plant palm tree instead of Poinsettias, the possibilities are endless so June 25th needs to be observed as it marks the point when this year’s Christmas starts coming closer than last year’s Christmas and that has to be worth celebrating.

Special Guest Blogger: Anne Bonny

As a red haired Irish woman of course i was known for my quick temper and fighting skills which were ideal qualifications for a career in piracy, a profession in which women were very much under-represented.
After my father moved his mistress, my mum, and i from Ireland to Carolina to escape his wife's family, we did quite well financially and ended up owning a plantation with servants, one of which i stabbed after an argument which my father frowned upon but not as much as the man i began dating and then married, a poor sailor and small-time pirate named James Bonny.
So frowny was pop in fact that he disowned me and kicked us out of his house which i subsequently tried to burn down in retaliation which is how we ended up in Nassau in the Bahamas, a haven for pirates and a financial opportunity for my failed pirate husband who became an informer to the local Governor which resulted in a multitude of pirates being arrested.
As i had got to know many of them in the taverns, i really disliked the work my husband had taken up as i said to Calico Jack Rackham one day who not only offered to pay for me to get out of my marriage, but offered to take me pirating on board his ship, the Ranger.
My husband refused so one night i packed my things and sailed off into the sunset with Rackham or at least as far as Cuba. I dressed as a man as nobody would know i was a woman although when i became pregnant with Rackham's child it was pretty obvious, despite spending their lives at sea, even pirates know enough biology to work that one out.  
After a quick stop off in Cuba again to give birth, i rejoined Rackham and continued the pirate life shivering timbers around the Caribbean and i was even named on the infamous 'Wanted Pirates' list but the life of a pirate generally ends in death or capture and it was the latter for me, caught while we were so drunk celebrating a capture of a ship that the Governors troops just walked on and clapped us in irons.    
Convicted and sentenced to be hanged, i was spared because i was pregnant again and received a stay of execution and then was released after my father pleaded my case and i returned to Carolina where i married, had children, and lived out the remainder of my life in peace and harmony.

Thank You For Travelling With Us

The transport secretary is deciding whether he can change the law to get agency workers deputise for striking rail workers in yet another ill thought out idea from the desk of Boris Johnson.
The RMT head pointed out that agency workers won't have the training or skills of the people they are replacing so being the helpful person that i am, i have written a note which they can pin to the front of stations.

'Thank you for travelling with South West Trains. This is the first time the driver has ever driven the Brighton to Cardiff route and no one else on the train or in the control centre has a clue what they are doing either so please bear with us and we’ll do our best to get you somewhere close to your destination without losing too many of you through accidents on the way. Thank you for your patience and travelling on South West Trains today'.