2022 Father Time & The Grim Reaper

Old Father Time walked up the pathway to the bench, the 2022 sash in his hand ready to be replaced by the one for 2023. Already seated there was the Grim Reaper and Time noticed that he had been there a while looking at the amount of cigarette butts littered around him.
'You're late' said Death as he moved his scythe to allow the old man to sit down.
'You're early' replied Time and Death shrugged 'Not so busy this year, the pandemic seems to have slowed down and not so many wars, at one point last year i thought i was going to have to take on an apprentice'.
'Less wars is a good thing i guess' said Time before adding 'not for you obviously'.   
'It's a strange one as i can normally rely on America and the UK to invade somewhere but they have both been a big disappointment this year, one has a leader who is never awake long enough to pick a fight with anyone and the other one kept changing leaders'.
'That Russian guy helped keep the numbers up i guess' said Time folding his tattered, old sash and picking up the the reapers 2022 Book of Death and flicking through it casually.   
'Big name this year was that British Queen' said death cheering up, 'there was also Mikhail Gorbachev, Shane Warne, Ray Liotta, Sidney Poiter, Kirstie Alley and  Irene Cara, Taylor Hawkins, Meat Loaf, Jerry Lee Lewis, Terry Hall so we could have a pretty good band if we wanted'.
Time nodded and sighed at the name Olivia Newton-John.
'Ah, lovely lady, i did put her off a few times but the Big Guy said i couldn't do it again' he shrugged. 'So what's new with you?'
'Mother Nature has really stamped her foot down this year' replied Time pulling the 2023 sash over his head and flattening it down against his thin chest, 'Floods, record heat temperatures, snowstorms, she really is going all out to make these humans pay for polluting her Planet'.
'It's the idiots own fault' laughed Death looking at his pocket-watch, 'a woman scorned and all that'.
'They have had enough warnings' agreed Time pushing himself up off the seat, 'Are you ready?'
'I suppose' replied Death picking up his scythe and pulling a cloth from his pocket and giving the edge a quick wipe, 'no rest for the wicked and 2023 is going to be busy, Mother Nature will make sure of that' Death said tucking his Death Book into his shroud before adding' And don't ask, no spoilers'
'Do you think things will ever change?' asked Time.
'Nah, always going to be wars and always going to be those religious types killing each other because they think their God is more loving and peaceful than the other' which made Time chuckle 'very true'.
'Same time next year then' said Time as he waved a hand and shuffled left through the door marked 2023.
Death watched him go and then walked in the opposite direction whistling the tune of (I Just) Died in Your Arms.

Greta Thunberg V The Sex Trafficker

2022 comes to an end with one of the greatest stories of the year and it all begins when former kick-boxer and professional misogynist Andrew Tate, who was reinstated on Twitter, decided to celebrate his comeback and attempt to bolster his chauvinistic reputation to his fans by sending a tweet to Climate activist Greta Thunberg which said: 'Please provide your email address so I can send a complete list of my car collection and their respective enormous emissions'.
The brilliant Greta, not one to back down, replied: 'Yes, please do enlighten me. email me at smalldickenergy@getalife.com.'
It would be funny enough if the story ended there but it goes up another level when her hysterical reply gained traction and began trending, being liked 3.5 million times and shared directly 650,000.
Tate, obviously miffed that he had been so thoroughly taken down by a female, smouldered about it and hours later tweeted out a video in which he tried to reassert his masculinity by blathering on about what a virile, red blooded man he was in a dressing gown, with a cigar and a pizza box which clearly had Romanian branding on it which tipped off the Romanian police to his location and the Romanian Police were after him for alleged rape and sex trafficking.
Not long afterwards, the Authorities swooped and arrested him and his brother and they are now both sat in a Romanian cell awaiting trial.
Again, if it ended there it would be glorious, the fact that if he had not tried to demean and humiliate Thunberg he would not have attracted the attention to himself which saw him arrested but the majestic Greta had one more tweet to send which was the final coup de grâce to the whole sage.
Her tweet simply said: 'This is what happens when you don’t recycle your pizza boxes' and has been liked 2.6 million times.

Psychic Review 2022 Was Another Bust

There is a lady who lives in my block who insists on telling me important things which my Grandad wants to pass on to me. He died in 1987 but apparently he comes to her at certain times to whisper in her ear although he refuses to tell her what his unusual middle name was as proof it's him and not just some batty woman hearing imaginary voices in her head stopping me by the lifts.
Whether she is a well meaning nut or actually believes in it i don't know but people do come to her for tarot readings and things and as far as i am aware she doesn't charge and just does it for fun but there are some people out there who will spout off for a couple of tenners or more and every year i do the psychic predictions on here and every year they are, to be polite here, shite.
All of the psychics i have ever used on here charge for their services and last year's was Nicolas Aujula who charges between £350 to £1950 for him to consult the spirits and find out what is in your future.
That's the theory but in reality of the 10 predictions he gave for 2022, he scored nothing, none, nought, zero, a duck, nowt, zilch, zip, nada, sweet F.A., not a sausage and just in case any Klingon's are reading, pagh.
Usually the physics get at least one right just by pure chance but Mr Aujula was so far out that he wasn't in the same country let alone ball park so i'm not even going to bother to explain how wrong he was, they are here if you are interested but let's just say if you are willing to pay him £350 for a prediction then let's hope that you find a new hobby once you start taking the right medication.
With that in mind, i'm not going to bother doing it this year for two reasons, the Psychics have finally cottoned on that smart arsed bloggers write down what they say and review them at the end of the year and point out that their predictions have been spectacularly wrong and the second reason is that of the psychic channels i have visited, the predictions have been of the vague 'Hollywood star dies' and 'Massive Earthquake in Asia' type which will obviously come true over the next 12 months, predictions i could make and i wouldn't fake i was told them by some long dead spirit and then charge anyone £350 for them. 

A to Z of 2022

How are we at the end of 2022 already?
It doesn't seem like it was 12 months ago that i was singing Auld Lang Syne and doing that strange cross armed handshake thing with a bunch of people i didn't know but the calendar doesn't lie so here's my A to Z of what went on since the new Calendar went up on the wall 52 weeks ago.   




A - Abortion Rights In America. What abortions rights you ask? Exactly. Chalk one up for the Bible Squad.

B -  Boris Johnson. He came, he saw, he got caught lying once too often and his own party refused to work with him and when the Conservative Party think you are a liability while they have Priti Patel and Suella Braverman sat right there, you know you have hit rock bottom. Was the worst Prime Minister ever until his immediate successor relegated him to second worst.   

C - Climate Change. Mother Nature stamped her feet and said it's not my job to keep you mugs alive, take this and broke almost every weather record in a tantrum.

D - Deliver, Deliver, Deliver. Liz Truss threw this into every speech and she did deliver, shame it was a wrecked economy after her 6 week debacle.

E - Elon Musk. A man who bought Twitter for $44 billion then fired the board of directors, laid off 50% of the workforce and then resoundingly lost a poll he set up asking if he should quit.

F - FIFA. Took the World Cup to Qatar who said everyone was invited as long as you’re not gay, into science or ask about the 6,000 dead workers or anything.

G - Gorbachev. Everyone's favourite Russian despite accidentally taking the Soviet Union out of existence but embracing Capitalism with a commercial for Pizza Hut.
 
H - Heat or Eat. A much used phrase during the economic debacle this winter but many old people couldn't decide and conveniently for the Government died instead rather than bother them with such things.

I - Inflation. The Bank of England's job is to keep it below 2% so when it hit 11% boy there was some red faces, mostly people doing star jumps to keep warm because they now couldn't afford to turn on the heating.

J - James Webb Space Telescope. Replacement for the Hubble Telescope which means we can now see even more galaxies, black holes, quasars, stars and asteroids which we can smash our old satellites into.

K - King Charles III. Took over as Monarch aged 74 and his first act as sovereign was to moan about the pens in Buckingham Palace.  

L - Lionesses. An England football team who is actually good and won a major competition? 22 women chase a ball for 120 minutes and, at the end, England actually win and we all get a good view of Chloe Kelly's sports bra.

M - Matt Hancock. When you are responsible for tens of thousands of deaths and breaking the rules you demanded other people follow, going to Australia and eating the genitals of various animals is sometimes the only answer. He finished 3rd after a concerted effort from his Office which stank as did his breath, of Kangaroo anus.   

N - Nuclear Fusion. Scientist created a nuclear reaction that combined two atoms to create one or more new atoms with slightly less total mass where the difference in mass is released as energy where energy equals mass times the speed of light squared. Nope, nor me but they seemed excited about it.

O - Omicron. The milder smaller brother of the Covid-19 virus which allowed the World's Governments to forget it ever existed in the first place.
 
P - Palace Racist. When you ask someone 5 times where they are 'really' from and they continually say Britain, it is safe to assume they are British unless you are 83 year old Lady Susan Hussey who refused to believe a black person can also be British.

Q - Queen Elizabeth II. Responsible for 70 years of rule and an extra day off in September to watch her funeral which nobody did. Thanks Lizzie.

R - Rishi Sunak. Rejected by his own MP's then rejected by his own Party Members but got to become Prime Minister by default anyway because he was the only one stupid enough to put his name forward once Liz Truss buggered it all up.

S - Strikes. All the Nurses, Teachers and train drivers who kept us alive and kept the nation running through the two years of lockdown found out that clapping on the streets and being called Heroes doesn't translate into them being paid an inflation equaling pay rise, the Government telling them to take the real-terms paycut like everyone else. Damn Cheek

T - Trump. As the saying goes, if at first you don’t succeed, sulk like a toddler and baselessly claim that an election was stolen from you and then try, try again which is what the lardo has done with his announcement that he will run for President again. Low IQ Americans everywhere got excited at his potential comeback.

U - Ukraine. Invaded by Russia which meant that they got the sympathy vote at the Eurovision Song Contest and relegated us to Runner Up. Plans to request France invade us just before the next one were postponed when we got given it anyway as Ukraine was deemed too unsafe to host it.

V - Voting. Three Prime Ministers in 3 months, the second one voted for by 48,000 Conservative Party members and the third one voted for by 150 MP's so in one of the oldest Democracies in the World, a nation which goes to war to enforce Democracy elsewhere, its not such a thing.  

W - Will Smith. The actor learnt a valuable lesson when he slapped Chris Rock across the face at the Oscar Ceremony. Wear gloves next time, his hand must have stung something cruel afterwards.

X - SpaceX. Making great strides in Space Exploration and the capsules looks really cool inside which is surprising as the company is run by a complete tool.

Y - Ye. Never the most cerebral of people, the musician formally known as Kanye called 400 years of slavery 'a choice' and followed that up teaming up with anti-Semites, lunching with Donald Trump and twittering swastikas while telling people to stop hating on Hitler, denied the Holocaust and said he was 'going death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE'.  

Z - Zelenskyy. A comedian who became the leader of his nation and is inspiring and leading them against one of the Worlds military superpowers which is different to most western leaders who make people laugh AFTER they take power.

It Didn't Have To be Like This

The MET Office have ominously announced that 2022 was the hottest year on record and the year kept breaking new extreme weather records and scientists warn that extreme weather due to climate change is set to get worse, stating that the 10 years which recorded the highest annual temperature since 1884 have all been since 2002.
In England during three days of the late-July heatwave, 900 more people died than usually do at that time of year as UK temperatures hit 40C for the first time ever, grounding flights, buckling train-lines and causing devastating blazes that destroyed homes.
Europe suffered a record number of wildfires and pollution levels along with its worst drought in 500 years and the World Food Programme called the drought in Africa the world's first climate change-induced famine.
A heatwave in India and Pakistan followed by record-breaking monsoonal rainfall wiped out 50% of some crop yields and displaced 32 million people, destroyed 1.7 million homes, and killed more than 1,700 people.
The climate situation is urgent and has been known and understood by scientists since the 1950s, i picked up the cause in the mid 80s so we have had at least 70 years to do something and for all the COP summits, we have not done enough to give up the air polluting fossil fuels.
The Carbon Dioxide levels are still increasing and we are in a perilous position but you do have to wonder how many disasters will it take for our leaders, the people who can actually bring about the needed changes, to take some meaningful action?
So people will die and land will be taken by the rising sea levels but it really didn't have to be this way, although it looks like it will be.

Right Wing Terrorism

The Parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) have said in its annual report that the threat posed by the right wing is steadily increasing and has been since 2017 and they have more people on the MI5 radar than ever.
The Counter Terrorism Prevent scheme, introduced after Islamic Terrorist attacks, is now predominantly focused on far-right extremism so the obvious question is what happened around 2017 which led to the right-wing becoming such a destructive force.
It is clear that hateful far-right sentiments are rising across the world but it is over the last decade that right wing dogma surged and in the UK we can put that firmly in the camp of the Brexit vote which made immigration one of its main planks and was a reason cited by many the reason why they voted for Brexit.   
People like Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson and his government used words like 'immigrant invasion' to stir up ill-feelings and the usually subdued right wing found  allies in the seat of power and were emboldened to bring their racist rhetoric to the fore.
In America, an already racist nation, Donald Trump never even tried to hide his racist tendencies and the American right rose to his immoral utterances and the nation is dangerously split down ideological lines while in other places like Brazil, Israel, Poland and Hungary extreme right wing xenophobic leaders spit out their poison to oppress and present 'others' as somehow lesser human beings.
On the extreme end of the right-wing ideological chart is Fascism and that is where many of the right-wing are heading although many will disagree because of the connotation of previous Fascist states which caused so much death and destruction in the last century.
That's not to say that there is not left wing terrorism, the extreme end of the left wing ideological chart is Communism and that has been responsible for tens of millions of deaths itself so there should be no finger pointing but i don't know anyone advocating Communism on the left, there energy seems to be on making society fairer for all and that is the difference.
The left wants a cleaner less polluted world, equality and a fairer society while the right seem to be advocating for a society which seems some members of it oppressed, the poorest in society denigrated and the harsh inequality to remain and they seem to have found leaders who want the same selfish things.
The right's views have always been abhorrent and ill-thought out but as the likes of Trump, Bolsonaro and Johnson are taken out of politics, their dangerously misconceived views have lit a bonfire which we are now struggling to put out.  

New Israeli PM Bad For Human Rights

As Russia is discovering, any nation that invades and tried to steal land from another is rightly castigated but there is one nation that despite stealing land from its neighbours and militarily occupying them for 70 years, seems to get a free pass, Israel.
Considering that Israel was created following horrific persecution, that the same nation has been willingly imprisoning, murdering and occupying its neighbour for 7 decades doesn't seem to resonate with some, especially the American religious Churchy types who ask others to not only pray for Israel but demand that their Government continue to subside them in their efforts to wipe Palestine off the map.
One of the worst Israeli Prime Ministers has been Benjamin Netanyahu who to be sworn in as Israel's prime minister for the sixth time despite facing charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust by him and close political allies but as Israeli law allows a Prime Minister to remain in office until they are convicted of a crime, his swearing in will go ahead.
In the new extreme right wing Netanyahu government are people like Itamar Ben-Gvir who has been convicted of incitement to racism and urged police to shoot to kill during Palestinian protests against their brutal occupation and Bezalel Smotrich who will be the Defence Ministry and who advocates the annexation of the Occupied Territories.
Israel had been condemned in 45 resolutions by United Nations Human Rights Council, almost more resolutions condemning Israel than on the rest of the world combined, and they include condemnation of war crimes and crimes against humanity and there is a responsibility for the international community to take decisive action towards Israel taking a woefully long-overdue steps towards peace with their neighbour.
When a country acts badly, whether its Russia in Ukraine, Saudi Arabia in Yemen, UK and US in Iraq or Israel in Palestine, it should be condemned. When a country continually acts badly, it should be continually condemned and i don't buy the right to defend itself argument, every nation in the World has that right, including the Palestinians and your right to defend yourself is on shaky ground when you are defending yourself against the people you have been murdering and occupying for seven decades.
We should not meekly remain quiet for fear of being anti-Semite while Israel continues to violently colonize  Palestinian land in one of the greatest atrocities since the 2nd World War, and with Netanyahu at the helm, now is the time for the World to treat Israel as the Worlds Pariah.

Tories Literally Bad For Our Health

The UK is the 6th largest economy in the World, every penny the Government spends is a political decision, it is they who decide who gets what and how much so it is hard to accept that they cannot afford to fund the NHS when they are spending hundreds of billions on nuclear weapons and £50bn on a train-line which will get people from London to Birmingham 20 minutes faster.
The truth is that since the Conservatives took power in 2010, they have closed hospitals and deliberately underfunded the NHS, paying 1% instead of the usual 4% per annum required for it to run smoothly which is why it is in crisis today.
A shocking statistic from NHS England is that in 2010, 3,697 waited over four hours to be seen in an Accident and Emergency Ward, today, after 12 years of mismanagement, that figure is 130,528 and today my local Hospital was one of several who announced a Crisis and requested that people only go to A&E departments if they have 'a life-threatening emergency' and urged patients to use other services, including NHS 111, GPs and pharmacists.
It is a widely held belief, and one which i agree with, that the Conservative game has always been to run down the NHS to such a state that we end up crying out for it to be privatised so we can get a hospital bed.
Throw into the ring the tens of billion in cuts and the 44 hospitals and treatment centres that have been closed with a loss of 15,000 beds and it is no wonder the NHS isn't coping and a shocking 30,000 extra deaths per year are attributed to Government cuts.
It is said that Conservative Governments are bad for our health and now they literally are.

2022 Top Blog Posts

Well that was an interesting year dominated by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the British Prime Minister changing three times and the Queen hanging up her Crown and no surprise that the top 5 Blog Posts on the blog this year were on those subjects.

Top post was Removing Russia From UN Non-Starter which was Ukrainian President Zelensky asking for the UN to remove Russia as a permanent member of the Security Council due to its invasion of his county and how that idea wasn't going to fly because the USA and UK we also permanent members and they have been invading nations left, right and centre and they hadn't been removed and China would probably block it anyway.

Second, Boris Bigging Up His Record In Government, was the vain attempt by Boris to salvage something from his time as Prime Minister after his own Party refused to work under him and forcibly removed him for being the Worst Prime Minster in living memory, little did they know that the person they replaced him with would shortly make him the second worst Prime Minister in living memory.  

Liz Truss's time as Prime Minister would have been funny if it hadn't have had such severe consequences, that she was in power for less time than the process to get her there and then when she did get her hand on the levers of power, she tanked the economy within 4 weeks and was forced to quit and it seemed to everyone but the Conservatives who supported her until it become obvious just how much damage she was doing and the third most viewed post, We Could Be In For A Very Bumpy Ride, explained how her ideological zeal could mean big problems. Turns out i was right, how about that!
 
Thankfully, America was rather quiet last year but big news was their draconian ruling on Abortions and the God 'N' Guns post explained how it couldn't happen here because there are two things very different this side of the Atlantic, we don't have madcap, bat-shit crazy law that allows people to own guns and God is something only the very few Brits have to worry about and it was the God bit over there that that made this atrocity happen.

The fifth most views post was Stop Googling, We Get One Day Off, which followed the death of the Queen and answered the question i got asked the most which was yes we do but just the one, the day of her funeral.

Special Guest Blogger Awards

Welcome to the award ceremony for the Special Guest Bloggers where genres are rewarded with, well nothing because the only criteria was to be dead and be famous and every genre has been represented by the 712 famous dead bloggers.

The views have been counted and the first award is for the most popular Pope which goes to the Pope who came up with the idea of Purgatory, Pope Eugenius IV.

Science has played a huge part in mankind moving on from the idea that the Sun went around the Earth and leeches attached to body parts was a medical miracle but the top scientist from all the science bods represented used only a cardboard box and a cat of undetermined life, Erwin Schrödinger.

Someone once said that If music be the food of love, then play on but this man stopped playing in 2004 when his prostate gave out on him, the most popular musician is Johnny Ramone.

There have been over 4,000 Gods since man first looked around and thought ‘How did all this get here?’ and invented something to explain it and the top God has come all the way from New Zealand, the Maori god of darkness, Whiro.    
  
Christianity may be the Johnny Come Lately of religious ideologies but it has taken the World by storm thanks to an adventure novel called the Bible and this award goes to the most popular Bible Character and in a very strong field this guy may only have had a small part in the book but forms the Ying to Gods Yang, please put your hands together for Satan.

There has been many Saints, probably more than the Catholic Church has scandals but the top Saint is the man who called himself 'the only Saint who ever who died of the squirts on the way to war', the man seated closest to the toilets, Saint Louis of France.

The next award is for top actor or actress and I am delighted to say Olivia Newton John, you are the one that we want.

Great Britain has had a Royal backside on the throne since the 9th Century but the most popular Royal backside was sat on one until September 2022 so give us a wave Queen Elizabeth II and then come up and get your Top Royal award.

The final award is for the top writer who also happens to be the most viewed special guest blogger of all time, a man who wrote about what he knew and what he knew was how to steal anything which wasn’t nailed down, Ladies and Gentleman, put your hands together and then put them on your valuables, the most viewed Special Guest Blogger, Mr Francois Villon.  

That concludes our award ceremony so thank you and congratulations to all our winners of the awards which were so popular that people were literally dying to get their hands on them. Boom Boom!!