Commendable But Almost Impossible

Rishi Sunak is having a bit of a week. It started off with everyone booing him when him and Piers Morgan made a £1000 bet live on TV about how many immigrants will be sent to Rwanda and then there was his little aside about transgender people when the mother of murdered transgender, Brianna Ghey, was watching from the House of Commons public gallery and it ended with him turning up to a Dentist to announce his NHS Dental Treatment plan only to be told that that particular dentist he chose didn't do NHS Treatment.
One lady summed it up nicely when asked what she thought of Rishi Sunak, blew her big chance to appear on that evenings News by calling him a 'Total Bellend' which to be fair he is, but unusable at 6pm when small children could be watching.
What trouble with the bruhaha over his Transgender jibe was that it swallowed up the reason why Brianna's mother was in the Commons in the first place, to say that under 16's should legally be banned from accessing social media apps on mobile phones.
If a phone has an internet connection then it can still access the social media websites, kids are much more tech savvy then we give them credit for and they know about VPN's and things which would allow them to circumnavigate any restrictions so that wouldn't work.
I asked one of the IT guy's at work and he shrugged and was more interested in why i had my wet gloves draped over my laptop. Duh, because they're wet obviously.
I asked another one who said that it would be almost impossible to stop youngsters accessing the sites and the age verification currently used is next to useless as as you just need to tick a box to say you are over 16 or enter a date of birth which makes you over 16 so he thinks the only way is to pass the buck to the social media sites to face fines or legal action if they allow under 16's to access their sites or use some sort of Ai so an account is suspended automatically if someone is being a dick on them.
Unfortunately, Mrs Ghey's idea is commendable and understandable considering what happened to her daughter but it seems almost impossible to impose.
Now i have to find the IT guy again because my laptop seems to be playing up, it's as if water may have has got into it or something.

Today Is...National Toothache Day

Whenever we see ancient skulls, you can't help but notice that most still have a good portion of their teeth and you think hang on, did they have dentists back in Ancient times and the answer is not really, but they did have some brilliantly mad ways of stopping toothache which you could try.  
In 19th Century Ireland, they would either spit in a frog’s mouth or if the pain was so bad, they would pop a frog in their mouth to draw out it's healing powers to cure your toothache but if that didn’t work, you could try put a potatoes in your pocket which they thought helped for some reason.
Smearing honey on your aching tooth was a popular form of toothache relief in the middle ages and Ancient Babylonians thought it meant you was possessed and the only cure was sleeping next to a human skull and kissing and licking it seven times in the night to get rid of the evil spirit.
The ancient Romans believed that gargling urine as mouthwash would help keep teeth white and free from decay, although it doesn't say if it should be your own, while the the ancient Egyptians believed in making a paste from crushed up mice to cure toothaches and it was also handily great for earache also although the crushed up spiders was strictly for the teeth and did nothing for any aching ears.
Ancient Greeks gargled with Donkey’s Milk (who even knew there was such a thing as Donkey’s milk?) but the default treatment for a toothache was to just pull the sucker out, but dental implants in bygone days were either bamboo pegs (China), piece of copper (Egypt) or just take the teeth from dead animals and use them.
Trimming you fingernails on Friday would keep that pesky toothache away as would placing a hard-boiled egg anywhere in a teething baby’s room, placing a slice of onion to the ear on the side of the aching tooth or slice a rabbits head open and rubbing the brain juice on the gums.
Thankfully dentistry has made huge advances so the next time a person has both hands and several dental instruments shoved in your mouth while telling you not to move just think, it could be worse. It could be Ancient Rome and the Dentist has just urinated in your mouth.

Today Is...Mary Queen of Scots Executed

The only surviving legitimate child of James V of Scotland, Mary was six days old when her father died and she inherited the throne and at aged 6 she was betrothed to Francis, the Dauphin of France, and was sent to be brought up in France and married Francis aged 16 and ruled as Queen Consort of France until his death in 1560 and Mary returned to Scotland and questions about whether her subjects had a duty to obey her, her being a Catholic and all.
Things got sticky so she abdicated and fled to England in a fishing boat seeking the protection of her cousin, Elizabeth I of England who greeted her by slamming her into various castles dungeons and after 18 years and some forged documents began circulating that decided she was guilty of plotting to assassinate her and take her throne, she demanded she be beheaded for treason.
The executioner asked for forgiveness, Mary replied that she hoped he would put an end to all her troubles and he did but not straight away because the first blow missed her neck and struck the back of her head, the second blow only cut halfway through her neck so it took a third blow of the axe before he could hold her head up and declare her officially dead.
All her belongings were burnt, along with anything which had her blood splattered on it from the execution and in one final Royal up yours, her dying wish that she be buried in France was refused by Elizabeth and she was buried in a Protestant Cathedral in Peterborough.

More Sheer Madness In Gun Loving America

The latest in an extremely long line of gun related WTF reaches our shores from America, this time how the parents of a 15 year old boy who shot and killed four of his classmates and injured six more has been found guilty of involuntary manslaughter.
The boy had been bought the gun by his parents as a gift days before and that is the WTF bit, not the fact that anyone can buy a gun in America, hell the gun laws over there are so whack-a-doodle that you can go in a shop and buy them with your breakfast cereal in some stores, the fact that parents decided not to buy
their son a new PlayStation Game or a bike, but thought that what he would really like was a gun!
Luckily America is thousands of miles away geographically and just as far ideologically when it comes to gun safety and as the gun nuts seem to have the Politicians in their pockets through donations, that isn't about to change but there was an eye opening statement from an American Politician on the News this morning where he said that as much as they would like to really clamp down on the lackluster gun laws: 'No politician would ever be elected if they proposed banning guns'.
In my mind, i generally come down on the side of no as to whether the parents should be facing jail time for their children's behaviour but in this event i think hell yeah, they bought their 15 year old son a gun which he used to murder 4 innocent students with so damn straight they are responsible for what he did with a thing which is designed and built to propel bullets into people at high speed.

Today Is...Safer Internet Day

When it got caught red handed, the American Government said it wasn't spying on the US (and UK) citizens, it's carrying out counter terrorism efforts by collecting and storing virtually every Internet phone call, email, text message, Internet searches, social media communications and virtually all other electronic information. That's okay then.
They argue that the surveillance programs have helped in the fight against terrorism and pointed to a specific plot against New York's subways which ruffled a few feathers at Scotland Yard because they said that it was them who passed on the information to the American Authorities that prevented the subway attack and not Internet snooping.
Obviously there are some words and phrases that if typed into Google will bring you to the attention of the authorities such as Assassination, Dirty Bomb, Militia, Terrorism, Anthrax, Ammonium Nitrate or How To Assassinate a World Leader but there are a host of innocent words that could also see you bundled onto an aeroplane and landing in Cuba wearing a fetching orange jumpsuit.
Luckily the Department of Homeland Security has released a list of keywords and phrases it uses to monitor social networking sites and online media for signs of terrorist or other threats.
The more of the 'alert' words the shadowy types find in an email or electronic communication, the further up the list of potential evil-doers you rise but some of the words on the list are seemingly Innocent but hide evil intentions, such as Drill, Authorities, Stuck, Recruitment, Aid, Watch, Blizzard, Salmonella, Cancelled, Agriculture, Exercise, Subway, Recovery, Southwest, Landing, Cloud, Pork, Wave, Electric and Worm and the mention of North Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan, El Paso, Iran, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Nigeria, China, Colombia, Mexico and San Diego which much play havoc with the San Diego Cloud Authorities email system.
I don't understand why the number 2600 attracts unwanted attention but if you are STUCK in the SUBWAY with a bad case of SALMONELLA from a PORK chop whilst on the way to a RECRUITMENT Day in the SOUTHWEST during a BLIZZARD, you may want to rethink sending that text or email.

Today Is...Library Day

Today marks National Libraries Day, one of the most important institutions that we have and according to the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy (CIPFA) 240 million books were borrowed from the 3,450 libraries left in Britain.
The most borrowed authors of last year were James Patterson, Julia Donaldson and Daisy Meadows. Roald Dahl was the most borrowed 'classic author' with Enid Blyton and Agatha Christie making up the top three.
The title that was most checked out by the British public was the 'Personal' by thriller writer Lee Child, 'Never Go Back' also by Lee Child and the crime mystery 'Abattoir Blues' by Peter Robinson.
The most borrowed audio-book was Lesley Pearse's 'Without a Trace' read by Emma Powell.
I seemed to have spent a good portion of last year plowing through the Stephanie Plum books by Janet Evanovich, a great accidental discovery about a female bounty hunter who mixes it in a world of supernatural characters and as there are 22 novels, 2015 was certainly a Stephanie Plum year although i also managed to squeeze in a handful of Ben Elton books and re-read 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep', a book so far removed from the 'Blade Runner' film it spawned that to say the usual 'loosely based on the novel' isn't loose enough.

Today Is...The Creation Of Synthetic Plastic

You are what you eat and what we are eating is plastic according to a trial at the Medical University of Vienna who found tiny shreds of it in the digestive systems of people from eight different countries including the UK.
Plastics pervade all aspects of society. We sleep on plastic-filled pillows, clean our teeth with plastic toothbrushes, type on plastic keyboards, drink and eat food from plastic containers so it’s impossible to go through a day without encountering plastic of some kind but as we are becoming increasingly aware, our widespread adoption of plastics has not been without consequences to our health and the environment.
Plastic pollutes our landscapes, oceans, air and bodies and it was Belgian Chemist, Leo Baekeland, we have to thank as he pioneered the first fully synthetic plastic today in 1907.
He beat his rival, James Swinburne, to the patent office by one day. His invention, which he called Bakelite, combined two chemicals, formaldehyde and phenol, under heat and pressure and it sparked a consumer boom in affordable products but the chemical properties also made it difficult to dispose of, with some types taking tens of thousands of years to degrade in landfill or worse, where it seeps into our food table.
Theories given for why plastic is being ingested by humans include from plastic eating fish, drinking out of plastic bottles, eating food that’s been wrapped in plastic and tiny plastic particles floating in the air which then land on our food.
The scientists couldn't tell if ingesting plastic is causing any internal damage to our bodies but there is evidence that plastic is absorbed through the stomach and accumulates in the internal organs of animals so probably yep is the answer to that question.
If the knowledge that our food is literally killing us isn't the wake up call that we need to cut out plastic and stop littering the planet with the stuff then we are even more dense then we already think we are.

Special Guest Blogger: Henry Kissinger

One sign that you have lived a successful life is that people don't break out into wild laughter and applause when you die but nobody said being a politician was easy. To get to the top, you have to make some pretty hard decisions, the sort of decisions most of us wouldn't consider as they would appear callous, criminal, murderous and, above all else, cold-hearted, but i had no qualms about any of that stuff.
Instigate a coup to overthrow the elected Government of Chile and install a murderous thug for 17 years of torture and executions? Yep, i did that.
Fund a collection of brutal Brazilian army officers and block any attempt to stop them during 21 years of extreme torture? That would be me again.
Ignored Cyprus call for help and give approval to Greece and Turkey to invade Cyprus? Yeppers.
Solve the problem of the newly installed Argentinian dictatorship wanting to exterminate the opposition in a killing spree as swiftly as possible by saying ok but if you are going to do it, do it quickly? Well i was nothing if not a problem solver.
Had the idea of stopping Vietnamese soldiers hiding in Cambodia populated areas by carpet bombing the Cambodia populated areas. Sure if killing up to 500,000 innocent Cambodians and allowing Pol Pot to take charge but on the plus side it must have taken out a few Vietnamese also. Probably.
Promised the Kurds America would back them in their fight against Saddam Hussein and then once the revolution began, withdraw all financial and military support and ignore the resulting massacre? Another tick for me.
Block the US Government intervening when the right-wing regimes of Chile, Uruguay, Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia and Paraguay pool their resources to murder every single dissident on the South American continent, known as Operation Condor? Me again but they obviously they never killed all of them, just 80,000 of them.
Gave Indonesian Suharto the green light, as well as increasing US aid to the Indonesian military, to invade East Timor and kill a third of the island’s population. Of course i did.
Sure, sometimes your choices, actions and inactions can result in millions of deaths and make an already ultra-violent century even more destructive but also they can lead to a Nobel Peace Prize which i received for my work on the Vietnam Peace Accords, despite the whole Cambodia and
annihilating civilians en masse thing which they kindly overlooked.
As i was lying dying of heart failure in my home aged 100 i did wonder what my legacy would be but i needn't have worried because as soon as i got to the afterlife i noticed they had fired up the barbecue for my arrival, damn big one also but i did wonder how the likes of Hitler, Stalin and Mao made it there,
i guess they took into account my warm heart and then i realised, where i was i would have a i have a warm heart, feet, head, actually everything.
Still, that's the problem with today's politicians, damn snowflakes frown upon killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people.

Today Is...World Cancer Day

When i was in school back in the 80's there was a Cancer Aware poster campaign which said every 4th person will develop some form of cancer, the number now seems to be 1 in 3 with an increase in Cancer cases in young adults.
Always considered an older persons curse, the latest Office of National Statistics figures show diagnosis has increased by 40% in the last 16 years, with 1,300 more cases of young people getting cancer each year. 
Fast food diets and lack of exercise could be responsible for a rise in these cases in young adults scientists have warned with the science adviser at Children with Cancer UK, saying there seems to be: 'a correlation between the lifestyle of young people and a significant increase in the number of teenagers being diagnosed'.
The science part is explained as: 'They tend to be doing a lot less exercise and there's also a lot of fast food being eaten, which is fine in moderation, but we know they do contain cancer giving substances. So if you eat well-cooked meat and burgers and it goes into your colon and hangs around because you're not doing much exercise, it's more likely to cause damage'.
The stark rise is most evident in colon cancer which was not considered a young persons cancer but is up by 200% and thyroid cancer which has more than doubled.
Around 4,000 children and young people develop cancer each year in the UK and it is the leading cause of death in children aged one to 14.
If that is not a wake up call to cut down on the McDonald's and Burger Kings then i don't know what is.

Historic Day In Northern Ireland

To anyone of a certain age what happened today in the Northern Ireland Parliament today really is a historic moment and serves as a reminder of what can be achieved if the effort is put in,
When i was growing up the Irish Republican Army (IRA) bombs were devastating all parts of England and Northern Ireland and Sinn Fein led by Gerry Adams was the political mouthpiece for the terrorist group, his voice was dubbed over due to the Government ban forbidding British TV networks broadcasting interviews with the Sinn Fein leader.
Twenty six years after the Good Friday agreement where the IRA laid down their arms in return for self-government of Northern Ireland and the release of IRA prisoners, Sinn Fein's leader, Michelle O'Neill, entered the Northern Ireland Parliament in Stormont as First Minister.
Her speech as she received the top role in Northern Ireland included that: 'As an Irish republican I pledge co-operation and genuine honest effort with those colleagues who are British, of a unionist tradition and who cherish the union. Despite our different outlooks and views on the future constitutional position,
the public rightly demands that we co-operate, deliver and work together."
She ended promising to: 'Serve everyone equally' but although it may seem unimaginable to my and my parents generation, it is a sterling example of what can be achieved by just sitting down and talking and serves as an example to all those people who say you can't negotiate with terrorists. You can and sometimes good things can come from it if you just try.