Israel Gunning For UNRWA

Israel has long had the United Nations in their sights, literally sometimes as witnessed recently, but Israel has been gunning for the United Nations for decades as the folder of resolutions against it has burgeoned, most notably the Resolution 242 which assert that Israel must withdrawal its forces from the occupied Palestinian territories.
Another one is UN Resolution 2334 which condemned 'all measures aimed at altering the demographic composition, character and status of the Palestinian Territory' which calls for the ending of the land grab and the building of settlements on occupied land.
A number of recent incidents reveal the poor regard the United Nations is held in Israel, the attack on United Nation outposts i Lebanon and the demand that they leave the country they are attacking and yesterdays vote to ban UNRWA which delivers aid to Palestinians having failed to convince the major donors to the organisation with their non-existent flimsy evidence that it is packed with Hamas operatives.  
Following the refusal to allow UNRWA to operate in Gaza and threatening the lives of the Palestinian population, the UN are now considering sanctions on Israeli government members, a review of trade ties and a fresh reference to the International Court of Justice which has already ruled that Israel is performing 'what comes under the banner of Genocide'.
Israel’s ban of the UNRWA will leave already starving Palestinians without a lifeline and the UN Secretary General, António Guterres, has said banning the UNRWA would be a catastrophe in what is already an unmitigated disaster and Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Japan, South Korea and the UK have issued a joint statement condemning the ban and America, which has been Israels financial and military backer during this genocide and the previous ones, are being reminded by thir own Government agencies that their own laws requires that it stop weapons transfers to any country that obstructs the delivery of U.S. humanitarian aid.
The Unicef spokesperson, James Elder, said today that by stopping the the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency, 'it’ll likely see the collapse of the humanitarian system in Gaza' buit that has long been Israel's plan, to make Palestine unlivable, shift the inhabitants elsewhere and claim the land.
Israel is fast becoming the Pariah in International relations and while the United Nations has an array of weapons it can use against Israel, sanctions along the lines of South Africa in the 80s and 90s must be installed by the countries of the World so Israel cannot literally, get away with murder.

Arsenal FC And The Sudanese War

At first glance is isn't easy to see how Arsenal Football Club and the war in Sudan are linked but there is a big clue in the Grounds name, The Emirates Stadium, and the sponsor on the shirts, Fly Emirates which is Emirates Airlines owned by the United Arab Emirates (UAE)
With wars in Gaza and Ukraine, the one in Sudan doesn't get much coverage in the media despite 12 million displaced and a death toll hitting 150,000 and the widespread destruction of critical infrastructure in the nation while performing being .
The UAE have been backing the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and Rapid Support Forces (RSF) financially and militarily who have been implicated in crimes of genocide, ethnic cleansing, mass rape, forced displacement, and killings yet despite this, Arsenal FC has shamefully extended its partnership with Emirates Airlines to 2028, a government-owned entity of the UAE.
The UAE, driven by its own economic and political interests, supplies the arms and funding in exchange for unfettered access to Sudan’s resources so by continuing a partnership with the Emirates implicitly links the club to the atrocities in Sudan, all while allowing the UAE to sportswash its image.
Arsenal FC should then take a stand for human rights by ending its partnership with Emirates Airlines but with the shirt deal alone bringing in £50 million per season, shamefully it isn't going to happen anytime soon.

Israeli Economy Not So Great

As Israel are finding out Genocide isn't cheap because it costs money to drop bombs on refugees sheltering in schools and hospitals but luckily for them they have Uncle Sam footing the bill although to be fair to Joe Biden, he is complaining that they are using it to bomb refugees sheltering in schools and hospitals while he willingly hands over money and weapons to allow them to continue doing it.
With America shovelling the best part of $3.8 billion in military aid to Israel every year, this doesn't completely cover the bill and with Israeli military spending ballooning to $5 billion economists are saying the end of the war could come more to Israeli stuttering economy rather than any moral reason as social programs are neglected in favour of the military.
Last year the Israeli government spent $27.5 billion on the military last year according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute or 5.3% of GDP, beaten only by Ukraine's 37% of GDP fighting off Russia’s invasion.
In the last year Israels economic output shrank 5.6%, the worst performance of any of the 38 countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and the call-ups and extensions of military service are threatening the labor supply and tourism has completely tanked.
Moody’s Ratings has lowered the Israeli government’s credit rating two notches to Baa1 or a moderate credit risk as the debt has risen to 62% and can be expected to hit 80% if the fighting continues for another year and Israel maintains a military presence in Gaza as expected.
The credit downgrade will lead to higher borrowing costs, cuts to public services and higher taxes according to a former head of Israel’s central bank and The Israeli Manufacturing Association claimed that people like me, who happily boycott Israel goods, has cost it a 5% drop in the Israeli export economy.
Obviously Palestine and the West Bank will need to be completely rebuilt when the war ends and nations are offering to fund it but no so much Israel with only America seemingly keen to fund them but it gives Benjamin Netanyahu something to think about besides his place in the Hague cell awaiting him for war crimes.

The Best Time Of The Year To Go On A Cruise

My husband has mentioned the idea of a cruise for next years holiday and i am wary of agreeing to it because to me, on a cruise you are completely at the whim of the weather so with this in mind i asked my Weather chum that according to the Weather Singularity which tells us what weather we can traditionally expect at a certain time of year, when is the best time to clamber aboard a ship and sail around the Oceans?
'Between 5th January to 9 March is a complete no-no as this is the time of storms so very wet and very windy' she explained 'although 10 March to 22 March is pretty settled and mild before it picks up again on 23rd March until 23rd April when everything quietens down again until 17th May when it gets warm and dry until 19 June when wet and windy weather hits until 27th June.
27th June until 16 August sees the 'Phew, whatta scorcher!' headlines until 17th August when the Autumn storms with wet and windy conditions arrive but 1 September until 17 September is traditionally a last blast of fine summer weather but 18th September to 13th November is usually stormy and windy.
14th Nov to 24 Nov is generally a settled period and then from 25 Nov to 12th December is the most stormy periods of the year with a quiet period between 18 December and 24th December and then from 25th December to the end of the year brings gales and heavy rain.
To avoid spending a lot of money to only see the rails of the Ship as i hurl over the side i see the windows of opportunity for a Cruise are 10th March to 22nd March, 23rd April to 18th June, 27th June to 16th August, 1st September to 17th September and 14th November to 24 November.
As this is information from a person with decades of Meteorological experience and my husband is a bloke who's experience of anything weather related is looking out the window, anything outside of those  100 Days he can go on his own and i will go somewhere less likely to have me doped up on Stugeron and ginger biscuits to get through.

Go To The Equator To Weigh Less

I was listening to a report on the Radio about the astronaut returning to Earth from the ISS and having to go to hospital which it was suggested by the reporter was due to months of being weightless and i had to sigh but it is a common misconception that astronauts in orbit are weightless.
They are not, they are in free-fall along with whatever they happen to be in at the time although they are not subject to such a great gravitational pull as us on Earth, about 90% so they weigh approximately 10% less but you don't have to go 250 miles above the Earth to cheat the scales, you just need to go to the Equator.
Due to the Earth rotating and the Earth bulging slightly in the Middle, you would weigh 0.5% less if you weighed yourself in Ecuador, Brazil or Kenya and the further you move North or South towards the Poles, gravity would pull on you harder and your weight would increase and if you took your bathroom scales to either of the Poles, you would weight 0.5% heavier.
You could also go up as gravity at sea level is stronger than if you increase your altitude and the furthest you can go up without sitting in a rocket is Mount Everest which is approximately 8850 meters high and comes with a gravitational reduction of around 1.5% but to be fair by the time you have clambered up there you would be a few pounds lighter anyway.
Probably easier to just not eat that last doughnut.

A Labour Budget V A Conservative Budget

The Labour Party sure did get left with an awful economic inheritance by the Conservative Party, what they assumed to be a £8 billion shortfall turned into £22 billion once they lifted the bonnet on the public finances and saw the extent of the damage, and now Treasury officials are mentioning it could be as high as £40bn once the promised payments made by the outgoing Conservatives are taken into account.
The problem Labour have is that they need to plug that gap before they can even begin implementing their plans to restore the public services to rude health after 14 years of awful right wing ideology ran everything into the ground and a Government can only improve the economics by bringing in more or paying out less.
The latter was the Conservative choice and by them taking an austerity hatchet to public services, things quickly fell apart and despite slashing and cutting at everything while pushing tax to the highest it has been for 70 years, they left not only every department poorer but also the nations ledger, so what are the new Labour Party to do?   
They have ruled out a return to austerity, that never worked last time obviously, so they are instead looking to increase the amount they bring in but their manifesto pledge was to not increase taxes on working people in terms of income tax, national insurance and VAT so it is expected the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, will announce an increase on what they have called 'unearned income'.
Increases in Inheritance Tax and Capital Gains Tax are widely expected to be announced on Wednesday and i see no problem with that, as the name implies Inheritance Tax is paid on the value of your estate when you die and includes property, money, investments and possessions and is currently taxed at 40% on anything over £325,000 which is where the smart money is going on what will be changed, with the £325,000 figure being reduced as well as the 7 year rule for 'giving away' assets increased to 10 years.
Capital Gain is paid on anything bought and sold for a profit such as shares, land or gold and is currently taxed at 10% or 20% and hints have been heavilly dropped that these percentages will be increased, possibly in line with the sellers tax rate as well as 'loopholes' which are used to reduce the tax rate dropped.  
Taxing 'Unearned wealth' is the line Labour keep repeating and both of these are unearned and would not hit  most 'ordinary' families such as a rise in the income tax rate, increase in National Insurance or a reduction in Personal Allowances would so go for it Labour and lets hope it raises enough to get the country out of the funk of the Conservatives disastrous right wing ideology which did hit ordinary families as a look at your payslip bears out.

Oops...Too Late

 It has been said that you should stop AI before it becomes too engrained into your lives. Oops, bit late i say.
I assume many of you woke up and glanced at your iPhone this morning which unlocked itself using the AI enhanced facial recognition function and maybe asked Alexa to put on some music, tell you the news headlines or weather and traffic using the AI speech recognition system while you ate breakfast .
You may have then driven your car to the workplace using the AI in the Sat Nav to identify the presence of obstacles, lanes, intersections and traffic lights and manoeuvre into that awkward parking spot.
While at work you may have got an alert on your phone from your AI powered Amazon Ring doorbell to tell you that you have a package delivered, maybe the Tesco delivery which was ordered over their Ai assisted website.
Lunchtime and you sit in the canteen scrolling through your phone reading news articles, scrolling through social media, making Google searches and buying more things online and therefore leaving a trail of clues about who you are and what you might want to spend your money which advertisers use AI to sift through this data for insights into your age, gender, lifestyle, disposable income and whether you’re into cooking, water skiing, makeup tutorials or sci-fi and allows companies to serve up specific, targeted adverts to you.
After you drive home you turn the lights on with your AI system and maybe set the robot vacuum cleaner off and fire off a few texts messages using autocorrect and maybe play a few games in an AI generated virtual environment before using your Alexa to find out the weather for tomorrow and setting your phone's alarm to do it all over again.
Yep, stop Ai before it gets too engrained into your human lives indeed.  

Question Of Reparations For British Role In Slavery

In 1519, the first vessel carrying slaves sailed between Africa and the Americas was Portuguese and so began the transatlantic slave trade but by 1651 the British became the primary carriers of Africans to the New World, a position they continued to maintain until the end of the trade in the early 19th century.
It always irks me to hear our Politicians proudly repeat that the Brits were the first to abolish slavery as if it is a badge of honour because it's like praising a bully for stopping repeatedly punching you in the face and we punched West Africans hard for over 200 years and at the end of the abhorrent trade Britain had transported 40.5% of enslaved humans, Portugal 30.8%, France 18.6%, Netherlands 6%, Denmark 1.1% and Spain 0.1%, a total of 10.7 million arriving in the Americas out of the 12.5 million put on ships.
That we stopped herding people onto ships and transporting them to awful conditions to work for free on sugar, cotton, and tobacco fields while bolstering Britain's economy is hardly something to boast about as is the fact that on abolishing the Slavery Act the British Government paid former slave owners compensation for loss of 'property' that totalled the equivalent of £300m today, the Slaves and their families received nothing.
Quite rightly some countries demand reparations for all they had suffered under British rule and this week both the King and Prime Minister were in Samoa for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting and again faced calls for reparations.
Fifteen Caribbean governments have presented a 10-point plan for reparatory justice including a formal apology for slavery and a development program to help the nations with their economies.
Experts have put a figure on how much Britain should pay and reached a figure of anything between £205bn and  £18.8trn and both the King and Keir Starmer have avoided directly addressing the subject, the King saying he understood: 'how the most painful aspects of our past resonate' and Keir Starmer has dodged the question by saying we can't change history and he thinks we should be looking forward and not back.
A financial package of the amounts mentioned will not be forthcoming from the UK Government, it would struggle to find sums quite so astronomical and the word 'Sorry'  is a declaration of legal responsibility for which there could be a legal implications so that won't be uttered either but what is being mulled over is the cancellation or reduction of debt and setting up and funding health and education institutions.
Brit's today aren’t directly responsible for the actions of their ancestors, but we are responsible for somehow making sure that the abhorrent actions of our ancestors are at least acknowledged and widely known and castigated because as American author James Baldwin wrote: 'Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed if it is not faced'.

Everyone Has To Start Somewhere

Everyone’s got to start somewhere, even world leaders so you may be working in a factory, driving a bus or sweeping the corridors of a hospital but it doesn't mean you can't go on to rule a country and make World changing important decisions because some of the most famous politicians started out in less glamorous surroundings.
Italy's Silvio Berlusconi went from singing on cruise ships to hosting bunga bunga parties in the house of the Italian Prime Minster and Irelands Michael Higgins worked as a waiter and the President of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, took that less worn route of going from Bus driver to President.
Johanna Sigurdardottir, Iceland’s Prime Minister was a Flight attendant on Icelandair and Adama Barrow, President of the Gambia was a security guard in Argos and Dmitry Medvedev, former Russian Prime Minister, began his working life sweeping the streets of Leningrad and Nicolas Sarkozy, former French President, also pushed a brush as a cleaner in Paris.
Justin Trudeau, the Canadian Prime Minister was a nightclub Bouncer and you wouldn't mess with Khaltmaagiin Battulga, President of Mongolia, who was a wrestler and another person whose first job was inflicting pain on people is Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov who today rules over Turkmenistan but started out as a dentist.
Borut Pahor, Slovenian president was a Male model and Recep Erdogan, Turkish president sold Lemonade as did Angela Merkel, former Chancellor of Germany who worked as a waitress.
The former President of Guatemala, Jimmy Morales, was fine with people laughing at him as he began as a Comedian as did Volodymyr Zelensky, President of Ukraine, who starred in a TV series in which he weirdly played the role of the President of Ukraine.
Donald Tusk, former president of the European Council was a painter and decorator and Joe Biden also knows his way around a paint brush as he was a handyman before working his way up to President while President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazi was a peanut salesman and Tony Blair played in a band called Ugly Rumours and his predecessor John Mayor worked in a factory making garden gnomes.
Xi Jinping went from building site labourer to President of China and Boiko Borisov, Bulgarian prime minister was a bodyguard and Donald Trump's first job was picking up empty bottles from his father’s construction sites to redeem for cash and Barack Obama began life selling ice cream.
Pope Francis was a Nightclub bouncer in Buenos Aires so never give up because today you may be emptying the office bins of some dullard who doesn't even acknowledge you or serving drinks to some obnoxious man who clicks his fingers at you and calls you Sweetheart but one day you may be in a position to whack his tax up or build a motorway through his garden.   

Dropping Birth Rates

Over the past 70 years, the global birth rate has dropped from 5.0 children per woman to 2.2 today which is bordering the 2.1 is considered the replacement level for a continuing population so what's to blame?
Multiple studies are finding that women who live in more heavily polluted areas are conceiving significantly less often, a survey of 18,000 couples found that those who lived in dense urban areas were 20% less capable of conceiving.
In America, a study of 632 women by the Massachusetts General Hospital Fertility Clinic found that women in environments with high concentrations of fine particulate matter in the air, lost their eggs and were rendered infertile earlier in life. For those who tried IVF instead, a study published in the periodical Human Reproduction in 2024 found that in neighborhoods with high levels of pollution, IVF conception failed 38% more often.
Men are also deeply susceptible to potency damage from pollution with low sperm count leading to a decrease in fertility and 7% of men are infertile all their lives.
Pollution seems to be the enemy to a continuing population then but in America, the most expensive place i the World to give birth, i would put it down to each birth costing an eye-watering uninsured patient will be charged $18,865 and $2,655 if insured for a straightforward birth.
If a caesarean section is required then the price goes up to $25,820 for the uninsured and $3,200 with insurance so we can see can see why a birth the country only has a birth rate of 1.6 and is declining
although with 8.2 billion humans clogging up a Planet which experts have said can only sustain 7.7 billion people, maybe not having so many of us isn't a bad thing.