Today Is...German Democratic Republic Formed

Regardless of your ideology, when you have to build a 5 meter high wall topped with gun turrets to keep people from escaping, you are on shaky ground which is exactly what the German Democratic Republic did after it announced they would do it to their part of the defeated Nazi Germany, what Winston Churchill referred to as the Iron Curtain.
With the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union (USSR) agreeing on dividing Germany into occupation zones, Stalin's Soviet section saw more than 3.5 million East Germans, 20% of the entire East German population, defecting from the East into West Berlin so built chain fences, walls, minefields
and other obstacles along the length of East Germany's western border with West Germany and a huge no man's land cleared to provide a clear line of fire at any escapees.
Under the Soviet rule, East Germany described itself as a socialist workers and peasants state and was run by the German Communist leaders backed by Soviet troops and made the teaching of Marxism–Leninism and the Russian language compulsory in schools in the GDR.
Housing, basic goods and services were heavily subsidized and set by central government and it did become the most successful economy in the Eastern Bloc and in a referendum 95% of East Germans voted to keep the wall although how viable a referendum is when the people asking the questions are heavilly armed is debatable.
The GDR ceased in 1989, Germany was unified and the Berlin Wall was pulled down and one of the first faces they saw was Baywatch actor and not very good singer David Hasselhoff who gave a concert on the Wall which led to call of 'ARRGHH...Errichtet die verdammte Mauer wieder!' or 'ARRGHH...Put that blooody wall back up!'

Today Is...King Louis XVI Forced From Versailles

Anyone who has ever been to the Palace of Versailles in Paris cannot help have their flabber be gasted at the sheer opulence of the place where the French Royals lived while their countrymen died in squalor, disease and poverty.
You can also understand how the French Queen's reply of 'then let them eat cake' when told that the peasants were starving to death and had no bread to eat didn't go down too well with the locals and led to a revolution and her head ending up in the guillotine's basket although ironically she didn't actually say it, it was a case of Chinese whispers which went from someone said to end up as Marie Antoinette said it and because of her Austrian ancestry she was not very popular with the French at the time anyway, everyone believed it so she lost her head for something she never even said but if she had known what was going to happen i expect she would have said something far worse and nothing about cake whatsoever.
Although France had a lot of Kings called Louis which they annoying number in Latin numerals, this one was the 16th to save you having to work it out. 
On this day in 1789 a mob descended on the Palace of Versailles and demanded that the royal family decamp to the Tuileries Palace in Paris where the Monarchy would be more accessible to the people if he lived amongst them which didn't go down well with him so once he got there he tried to escape but was caught after someone recognised him as that guy off the money and after being tried by the Revolutionaries who called him 'Louis the Last', his body was relieved of it's head when he died at the guillotine a year later and the French Monarchy was no more.

Today Is...World Teachers’ Day

The saying is that those who can't, teach but that is so wrong because being a teacher is one of the toughest jobs in the world with long hours, grading papers at night and planning lessons on weekends to instruct large classrooms of students who mostly don't want to be there and dealing with their parents if the little darlings misbehave.
That said it can also be one of the most rewarding because a teacher is best placed to change the kids lives for the better, building confidence and giving them lessons which will (mostly) stay with them through their adult life.
When i was teaching it was in Further Education so i didn't really have too much interaction with Parents but that is the part i would struggle with, especially if they criticize your methods or your teaching plans and even worse if you see the parent has obviously done the homework for their child, the amount of teachers i know who have shown me different handwriting on the home-work where an adult has done it for them.
The internet also bring problems for teachers, a few years ago i had an email from a teacher in America. Apparently he had set his class some homework to write on a topic and half the class turned in almost identical reports so the teacher wrote it into the school's plagiarism software and traced it back to one of my posts.
The class had obviously stumbled across my blog and a post on whichever the subject was, i think it was a Christmas one, and pretty much copied and pasted it and turned it in.
Amusingly, the teacher said that most of the students hadn't even de-Englishfied it and it was full of English spellings and America don't seem to make use of one of five vowels so even if just one of them had done it, they would have been sprung anyway.  
Now i have no problem with copyright, once i click the post button i send my posts out into the wild to fend for themselves and therefore available to anyone to do what they want with them if they wish, but a word of advice for students if their teacher is currently looking at bunch of homework books and wondering why it looks suspiciously like that English woman's post on renewable energy.
By all means take what i say if you want and paste it into a Word Document and claim you spent hours writing it but at least change some of the words, stick it through a Thesaurus, delete some bits and add some bits to disguise it but at the very least, if you are not sat in an English classroom, de-Englishfy it.
Happy to help.

15 Minute Cities

Somehow the idea of a 15 minute City where everyone lives within a 15 minute walk or bike ride from all basic services such as schools, clinics or parks has turned into a sinister plot to confine people to their local areas for the sake of the environment.
That would be the nutty Conspiracy theorists again then who have been peddling that the 'real' idea of a 15 minute City will mean nobody will be allowed to travel outside of the their own City and it will be policed by CCTV which would be a bugger for me as my commute is almost 16 cities there and 16 cities back again.  
The ultimate goal is to reduce traffic and emissions because if everything you need is within cycling or walking distance, the car will sit in the garage more and several councils have plans to incorporate 15-minute cities into their future plans while a number of major European cities such as Barcelona and Paris have already began work on them.
I do like a good conspiracy theory, obviously you would need to be as mad as a bag of frogs to believe them, but some do and believe that there are plans afoot to confine people to their local area just like the coronavirus lockdowns but unless they are planning on moving everyone's employer within walking distance, it ain't happening.

Finally A Good Idea On Smoking

I was a smoker from age 13 to 40 before i switched to vaping and as i have got older the amount of people i know who continued to smoke and have gone on to get lung cancer means that it is not a coincidence so i have some sympathy with the Governments plans to raise the legal age for buying cigarettes in England by one year every year in a crackdown on smoking until no-one can buy a tobacco product
Currently the legal age to buy tobacco is 18 in the UK so rather than banning them, increasing it annually will mean that anyone who currently smokes will be able continue to do so but the next generation will struggle to get their hands on them.
As a smoker i tried to quit many times and it is very, very hard because of the nicotine addiction so making it increasingly hard to start in the first place makes sense as does the plan to restrict vaping by making it less attractive and again, i find it hard to argue against their arguments
The first is that the e-cigarette companies are aiming their wares at the under 18 market with flavours such as ice cream, bubble gum and candy floss.
The second is that the 'safe' aspect of vaping will tempt people to try smoking who would not have necessarily have and i have already met people who have tried vaping, liked it and then tried a cigarette.
Disposable vapes are already being phased out by the end of the year so there are many things i dislike about the Conservatives but this idea is one i find myself nodding along to because smoking kills and there are many people i know who smoke who i would like to have around for a few more years yet.

Today Is...Sputnik I Launched

Today in 1957, mankind took the first of many big steps when The Soviet Union launched a satellite a little smaller than a football from Kazakhstan into into orbit around the Earth but that journey began 72 years before that date when in 1885, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, described in his book, Dreams of Earth and Sky, how such a satellite could be launched into a low altitude orbit using rockets.
His theory greatly influenced later rocketeers and was the blueprint for the Soviet Union's accomplishments in it's early efforts in space flight and changed the course of human history forever.
The small beeping satellite transmitted for three weeks before the on-board batteries failed but the shiny sphere continued circling the Earth for a further three months before burning up while re-entering Earth's atmosphere, having completed 1,440 orbits of the Earth, and travelling a distance of 43,000,000 miles gathering crucial data on the Earth's upper atmosphere and gave birth to an era of technological innovations and space exploration as it also sent the first radio signals back to Earth.
Apart from the Symbolism and propaganda during the Cold War, being beaten to the punch by the Soviets spurred America into a Space Race which culminated in the Apollo 11 landing in 1969.
Since Sputnik humanity has come a long way in terms of space exploration, having launched manned missions to the moon, rovers on Mars, and spacecraft that have traveled to the edge of the Solar System. All of these accomplishments were only possible due to the historic launch of Sputnik which must rank as one of the most important chapters of human history.

Today Is...National Boyfriend Day

Love is blind so they say so you may never have thought that your boyfriend falls under any particular type but they do and they will be one (or more) of the following but you never know whether one of these guys is THE ONE until you date them and you have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find your Prince.
Maybe he is the goofy one who makes you laugh with his silly jokes or the practical one who doesn't let silly things like emotions cloud his judgement and wouldn't know a romantic thought if it crapped on his head.  
At the other end of the scale you get the boyfriend who needs constant reassurance that you love them and the mushy one who has stepped out of a romance novel and will do things like stand outside your window with placards with I LOVE YOU written on them or the Sports geek will take you to football match on a date and if he isn't doing something sporty, he is talking about it and gets excited about things you’ll never truly get, such as Tottenham Hotspur.  
The pushover who is far too accommodating and will go along with everything you say, the guy who will surprise you with flowers and chocolate, let you pick the movie and spend time with your family but that can become to clingy but overall any of the above are fine but there are some who you should ditch or preferably avoid in the first place.
Such as the jerk which out of all the different types of boyfriends there are, is the worst type of egotistical, narcissist and definitely not potential husband material as nor is the overly possessive one who asks who you are texting and gets moody if you go out with friends rather than him and will want to know where you were and who else was there.
The bore who thinks he has it all figured out with a good job and a savings account and can tell you all about how tax and insurance works and then there is the guy from work who you may share a common interest in hating your boss but it can be a really awkward if you break up and still have to see them everyday.
The Best boyfriend is one who is a boy, and a friend and had made that switch from best friend to the boyfriend and share the same interests and already know each other very well and truly loves you and will shower you with attention, applaud your accomplishments and treat you well.
Unfortunately, you may have to go through some bad relationships until you finally find yourself on a date with Mr. Right, think of the others as practise.

Today Is...Random Acts of Poetry Day

I have always thought of Latin as one of those things that is only any good to people who want to go on and teach Latin to other people who then want to go on and teach Latin and the same goes for poetry.
I am not much of a fan of poetry, it has just never really appealed and rather controversially, it appears easy to do and every now and then there is a push to market Poetry and try and make it 'cool' again but every time it fails so i am obviously not the only person who could quite happily never have to listen to rhyming couplets ever again.

As for poetry, it has become the art form of choice for lovelorn lovers so here's one for you:

To poetry writers everywhere,
You may find this poem unfair,
Your cloud may wander in the air,
But for your writing i just don't care,
I don't want to be misunderstood,
Just i don't think poetry is very good.

It's adolescents with floppy hair,
With broken hearts they must repair,
Their deepest thoughts they must bare,
With rhyming couplets of despair,
We all get passionate about things some time,
Just we don't make it into a bloody Rhyme!

This art form once had a romantic air,
Elaborate men with passion and flare,
If, The Raven, a wonderful pair,
But now decent poems are very rare,
I don't call all poets unexciting,
Just your chosen form of writing.

So to you poets to make you aware,
This recent outbreak of poetic fare,
Is pretentious and a little bit square,
And not a practise that i will share,
I am not mocking lovers dismay,
Just write things in a normal way.

As Poe once said from his reclining chair,
His nerves all shredded and his whitening hair,
It wasn't the Raven that gave him the scare,
T'was the thought of a poet standing there,
So take a lesson from the Raven on Poe's Door,
And make words rhyme..'Nevermore'!

Today Is...International Coffee Day

Back in the 80s coffee was a thick, bitter, brown liquid which came in granules or a syrup like substance which you stirred into hot water and would leave a thick ring around the top of the mug which you would have to scrub with a brillo pad to remove.
Before it became known as a Cafe au Lait or a Latte, my coffee of choice was a coffee made with milk and as we moved through the millennium years, drinking coffee became more fashionable and especially drinking coffee outside as pavement cafes became a thing as the likes of Starbucks and Costa took coffee drinking to a new level and away from chipped mugs and a choice between Nescafe or something the owner found in the back of the shelf and smelt vaguely like coffee.
Over two billion cups of coffee are drunk every day and the Johnny come lately of coffee is the decaf which has all the taste of coffee, without the point of coffee.
I get that if we all sat around drinking obscenely strong coffee all day, we would be twitchy messes on the verge of a cardiac arrest so maybe it is good that we can now factor in highs and lows when calculating our daily coffee intake although science has come good again in the fight against things that are said to be bad for you with coffee now being nudged to the 'good' side as a ten year study has found that people who drink coffee live longer with 4 cups a day giving a 64% lower risk of dying early.
They also found that you can tell a lot about a person by earwigging what they ask for at the counter so espresso drinkers tend to be moody, hard-bitten, unreliable and not very loyal and if the order is for a black coffee the drinker has a no-frills approach and can be quiet, moody and difficult but prone to
brief bursts of extroversion while the cappuccino drinkers are bubbly personalities who tend to get bored easily.
The instant coffee drinkers are cheerful but unadventurous, straight forward types and the sort who ask for a decaf are high maintenance, fussy attention seekers prone to bouts of pretentiousness.
The frappucino drinker is flighty and shallow and don't make the best partners which just leaves us latte drinker who are described as happy and willing to please but prone to attention seeking behaviour, can be too laid back for their own good and can come across as arrogant.

The Right Wing Venn Diagram

To anyone else, if you find an extreme political group actively agreeing with your idea's then you may want to take a step back and reconsider if you want to be associated with such awful people but no such qualms for Suella Braverman whose inane chuntering around the failure of multiculturalism and how being discriminated against for being gay or female is enough to gain you asylum in Britain have been thoroughly endorsed by the extreme right wing groups currently polluting the UK and using up air which could otherwise be used by less abhorrent people.
LBC's Iain Dale, a man who put himself right of center, had an interesting thought last night on his show that it is no coincidence that the last three Home Secretaries, Sajid Javid, Priti Patel and Suella Braverman (we can't count Grant Schapps as he was only there for 5 days) have been children of immigrants themselves and all have said awful things which would seem them charged with racism if a white person said them, but because they are castigating the very people they themselves once were, they can get away with it.
Priti Patel was arrogant enough to proudly admit that her parents, and therefore her, would not have made it into the country under the rules she herself introduced as Home Secretary and as Dale noted in a nod towards the saying about women, if you are not a white Brit then you have to be seen to be even more
anti-immigrant to be considered half as anti-immigrant and he could have a point.
In recent times, the Conservatives have moved so far to the right that they were sharing the same space in the Brexit debate's as Nigel Farage's UKIP who David Cameron himself described as fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists and now are espousing an immigration and multiculturalism policy which is endorsed by groups like the BNP and other extreme, violent right wings groups who will obviously take the tacit approval of the Government to cause violence and protests against immigrants and non-whites.      
We may not yet be in the same circle as the fascists of the 1930's era but in the Venn diagram of right wing abominations we are certainly overlapping.