Sacking The Royals

We can sack Royalty? I didn't know that until yesterday when the King de-princed his brother who will  now just be known going forward as Andrew or that lying pervert friend of the massive pedophile.
As a bonus his awful wife, Sarah, has also been made surplus to requirements and both now face looking for somewhere else to live out their weird arrangement because they have also been booted out of their 30 bedroom mansion although i doubt if they will turn up at the Council Offices, more likely by way of punishment they will have to make do with a slightly smaller mansion because the Royal household does seem to have quite a portfolio of them knocking around.
People are quite rightly asking why now after we have known for a decade about all the dirty little secrets about You Know Who and his sex offender buddies especially after that car crash of an interview with the BBC where he denied even knowing Virginia Giuffre despite that infamous picture and handing over £12m to keep her from spilling all in court but for some reason, the King has chosen now to drag him out of the Royal Family by his earhole.
It is rumoured that the Queen wanted the whole sordid tale kicked into the long grass for someone else to deal with after she had gone and the release of the Epstein emails and the book by Giuffre made that grass shorter so off he goes to live out his life as that sexual deviant who used to be a Prince.      
I assume that the remaining Royals are hoping now that Mr Mountbatten Windsor is out of the picture, the monarchy’s future is secured but as now we know that people can be fired from the Royal clan, let's see who else can be handed their P45.
Prince Harry must be sweating at the moment as he would be the obvious choice to be told his services are no longer required and when was the last time anyone heard from Prince Edward or Princess Anne so they wouldn't be missed much and all those Dukes and Duchesses, apart from handing over the FA Cup once a year, what are they for so bin the lot of them.
What the King’s statement does appear to show is that he didn't believe his brother's lies either but while worse is expected to come for Andrew, he does have one friend left and he is sat in the White House refusing to release the files which would incriminate him even further and mainly because the lardo in the Oval Office's own name is written large in it as well so Trump may turn out to be his best friend, after Epstein obviously.

Shock Horror At Today's Adverts

It doesn't really matter to me what colour the people are on TV when they are buying beans from a Supermarket or showing how good Flash Wipes are for cleaning the kitchen floor but it seems to bother some people, and most of those people seem to be Right Wing Politicians.  
While the Conservative Party gammon faces are going red with anger at the lack of white faces in Birmingham, up popped the Reform Politician, Sarah Pochin, to moan about too many non white faces in TV adverts, saying that: 'It drives me mad when I see adverts full of black people, full of Asian people'.
Yep, if she doesn't see another non-white face in a 15-second spot for a toilet cleaner you didn't know you needed, she will literally lose her mind...and probably wet her pants.
Ironically, the racist rant is the domain of Talk TV and GB News, one of which had to ditch its TV shows in favour of radio because its failed to attract the advertisers and the other which is boycotted by all the main advertising firms due to being a bit unwatched and racist so if it wasn't for the stink she created being all I refuse to buy Quality Street until there adverts show them being eaten by an all white Aryan family, it would have gone unnoticed.
It does go to show that we seem to have moved into a period where some people feel they are able to say things which should have been unsayable long ago but here we are with right wing politicians feeling there are enough supporters who will agree with any old rubbish they fart out, even the racist trollop.
We seem to have imported from Donald Trump's weird little regime in America the idea that free speech means you can utter any old crap and act all indignant if you try to stop them but i will never try to stop you saying what you want, say it loud and clear because the louder and clearer the better we know who the idiots and morons are to avoid, like Sarah Pochin.

Ai Looking A Bit Bubbly

The Bank of England and a few other places are warning that the Ai bubble is in danger of bursting which would sound scary if only I knew what it meant, so i asked someone who should know and came away still not certain if i'm being honest.
From what i could glean, a bubble grows when new investors drive the share price of something up to unsustainable heights and then when they realise that the thing isn't as good or as profitable as they thought, they start selling their shares which causes prices to fall and more investors sell their shares and the whole thing comes crashing down, or in economic terms, the bubble bursts.
OpenAI's boss Sam Altman did say this week that: 'There are many parts of AI that I think are kind of bubbly right now' which doesn't sound great if you have invested in an AI company. 
A burst bubble results in massive financial losses for investors who bought into the hype, during the dot-com bust in the early 2000's, £5 trillion was lost and apparently the AI bubble has inflated even bigger, 17 times bigger according to some financial analysts which will make one hell of a pop if it does go with a bang.
More people, such as the people at the Bank of England and the International Monetary Fund are now saying that these AI companies are overvalued and mentioned circular financing with Nvidia investing $100 billion in OpenAI who buy their chips from Nvidia so they are therefore giving OpenAI the money to buy their chips with and the infrastructure needed from another Nvidea company, Coreweave,  so the company invests in its own customers so they can continue making purchases which is a headache, especially as OpenAI has never turned a profit but has cost the company a projected loss of $27 billion.
If investors don't see a return for their outlay soon then they could try and get some of their money back and things could go poof pretty quickly and the people who seem to know are saying we have the first signs of a bubble and the pin which could very well pop it.

A Little Skirmish

At least 104 people, including 46 children, have been killed overnight in Gaza after Benjamin Netanyahu ordered new military strikes after Israel claimed a soldier was killed on Tuesday afternoon by 'enemy fire'.
The Israeli military said that the ceasefire had been reinstated following a series of operations in which it targeted what it described as 'terror sites and terrorists' inside Gaza and the laughably self described man of peace, Donald Trump, justified the attacks saying that Israel had the right to launch them following what he described as an incident in which Hamas allegedly killed an Israeli soldier during an exchange of gunfire in Rafah.
Among these attacks was the targeting of a cancer patient camp, the Insan camp, in the ground of a hospital, tents camps for displaced people, individual homes and civilian vehicles.
Hamas has denied responsibility for the shooting and said that the attack on the Israeli soldiers were not following orders from Hamas and might not even be part of Hamas at all as Israel and the US has been arming rival groups in Gaza.
Hamas accused Israel of breaching the ceasefire agreement and i wouldn't trust the truth to come from either side, one a terrorist organisation and the other who has been pursuing genocide for decades but  Trump toady, Vice President JD Vance, responded saying the ceasefire in Gaza was holding, describing the violence as 'little skirmishes here and there'.
How the moron can call it a little skirmish where over 100 people with almost half them children shows just how much America is bending it over to take it from Israel which it continues to back despite it being on the list of current genocide committers just shows how this is going to go.
We need the Peace Keeping force in place to stop Hamas or whoever aiming their weapons at Israeli soldiers and to stop Israel from murdering innocent people in Gaza as part of their ongoing genocide to clear them out and claim the land for themselves.    
Unfortunately, nobody is willing to commit their troops to stand directly between Israeli bombs and Hamas bullets so on we go, with a ceasefire that never really stopped the killing and which Israel or Hamas can break at will and America dismiss as 'a little skirmish' when over 100 people are killed in attacks.

Don't Make Foolish Decisions Jamaicans

As beautiful as Jamaica is, you wouldn't want to be there on holiday at the moment as a Category 5 Hurricane is barrelling towards a direct hit on the Caribbean Island.
The slow moving Hurricane Melissa has strengthened even further and is now packing winds up to 175 mph and is expected to hit Jamaica tonight or tomorrow morning, bringing with it a 13ft storm surge and rainfall of up to 40in.
The Jamaican Government has been urging people to hunker down and 'not to make foolish decisions as we are in a very, very serious time over the next few days.
'There is going to be a lot of water. We are forecasting unheard amounts of rain for Jamaica' said the weather correspondent from NBC News, 'This is an island that has experienced hurricanes before, but nothing to this extent.'
The two times Jamaica has been hit directly under a Hurricane was in 1951 with Hurricane Charlie which was a Category 3 and is considered as Jamaica's deadliest natural disaster of the 20th century with rainfall of 17in and wind gusts of 125 mph with 152 fatalities.
Hurricane Gilbert in 1988 was also a Category 3 and came with a storm surge of 19 ft and 34.3in of rain leading to flooding and a total of 45 deaths.
As Melissa is so slow moving, 5mph, it will linger longer over the island and dump even more rain so the flooding is being called potentially catastrophic so good luck Jamaicans, listen to the Government advice and don't be foolish but it proves once again that if you mess with Mother Nature, she bites back hard.

Iraq War Blueprint Being Used For War In Venezuela?

Since the start of September, the Trump administration has busied itself with blowing up boats in international waters stemming from Venezuela under the guise that, according to them, they are carrying narcotics cargo destined for consumers in the United States.
Donald Trump called it an action 'of self-defense' against 'unlawful combatants' motivated by 'the inability or unwillingness of some states in the region to address the continuing threat to United States persons and interests emanating from their territories.'
Obviously, as a man who lies as easily as he breathes, it should be delved into but the American media is either unwilling or just too damn awful to dig into it and see if Trump is not just pushing the envelope but shredding it to bits and if he is, why?
Firstly, International Law experts are saying that the actions break all sorts of international law violations from the physical violation of another state’s sovereignty and wrongful intervention in a sovereign states affairs and violates Article 2(4) of the United Nations Charter and customary law.
Secondly, if the intention is to curb overdoses on U.S. soil from drug use, fentanyl is the largest culprit and the vast majority of that crosses into the US hails across the border from Mexico, not South America but telling is the Trump assertion that Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro is the leader of a drug trafficking organisation although no evidence has been provided.
Everyone is who anyone involved in the Drugs War states that Venezuela isn't involved in this fentanyl business in any meaningful way and the Mexican cartels certainly don't share the market with anyone, and certainly not with Venezuela.  
Venezuela is a large supplier of other illegal drugs but not as much as the much more significant drug producing countries like Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia, which are the largest producers of the coca leaf in the world which cocaine is made from and transport through Venezuela and then mainly leave the country from ports on the northern coast of the country.
America's own intelligence Community disputes this and the National Intelligence Council head,  Michael Collins, was sacked when he pointed this out and Trump went on to continue with the them by saying that  he had authorised the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to conduct covert lethal operations on Venezuelan soil and more broadly through the Caribbean, saying: 'We are certainly looking at land now, because we’ve got the sea well under control'.
He has ordered a growing military presence threateningly close to Venezuela so what is going on in that age addled brain of Trump?
Intelligence states that these boats from Venezuela are not heading to the US and that many of the boats targeted for strikes by the Trump administration do not even have the requisite fuel or motor capacity to reach the U.S, but are mainly heading to the nearby islands of Trinidad and Tobago, and from there they largely go to West Africa and Europe.
It's widely accepted the two most exported drugs from South America are cocaine and marijuana and the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention in the US says that synthetic opioids like fentanyl are responsible for most overdose deaths there and fentanyl is not produced in South America, whatever the president says.
So is he mistaken and misinformed, or does he has another motive.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio is a fervent supporter of the Venezuelan opposition, the recent winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, María Corina Machado, who must be salivating at the prospect of regime change and Rubio has been pushing for Venezuela's president Nicolas Maduro to be toppled for years now, redirecting millions of dollars in money previously allocated for “pro-democracy” measures in Venezuela.
A few weeks ago,  Maduro offered to turn over some of his nations oil resources to the U.S. in exchange for a cessation of hostilities, another that Trump himself acknowledged, telling reporters that: 'Maduro offered everything. You know why? Because he doesn’t want to fuck around with the United States' but Trump rejected the offer, Rubio making the argument that the best way to secure Venezuela’s oil reserves was to facilitate regime change in Venezuela and make a better deal with a new government.
So while Trump and his gang continues to insist their military manoeuvres are simply part of a wider counter drugs operation, it's hard to imagine that getting rid of an 'unfriendly' leader in a country with huge oil reserves, the largest in the world, to bring in a 'friendly' leader in the opposition who they can do business with, is not part of their equation.
In echoes of George W Bush's war in Iraq, the pieces are being moved into place, the lies are being spluttered and the useful idiots are repeating them while a next to useless media refuses to ask the obvious questions and the self-proclaimed peace maker in the White House could be preparing America for a war with Venezuela and following the same, blood stained and disastrous blueprint used by Bush and Blair in 2003.

Budget Ideas For The Chancellor

As the Budget looms over the hill, the kite flying by the Government has began in earnest as they throw out possible ideas and wait to see the reaction which allows the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, to either deny they were ever a serious plan while scribbling them out of her list or putting a little tick next to them ready for November 25th.
The issue the Government have is that in their election manifesto they said they would not increase VAT, National Insurance or Income Tax so with those restrictions holding firm, she will need to get creative or at the very least nick some policies from the other Parties.
The Green Party said they will introducing a wealth tax of 1% on assets above £10m and 2% on assets above £1bn and in a BBC Poll, 75% of Britons would support it so expect that to be aired at the dispatch box.
The Liberal Democrats suggested a mansion tax on homes worth more than £2m and in the poll 69% of the public put their thumbs up to it so another to add to the list.
An exit tax for people who are relocating themselves out of the UK for tax purposes and will be required to pay tax on unrealised capital gains sounds good to 60% as does reforming the council tax so it is proportionate to the exact value of the home as opposed to the current system based on which value band it falls in which 56% say should be in the final report.
Merging income tax and National Insurance together into a single tax is seen positively by 43% but that is pretty much the last of the ideas which won't get rotton fruit thrown at her because making road users pay car tax on the for the distance they travel on public roads is only supported by 38% and reducing the top rate of tax to be less than 40% is seen favourably by 29% and poo-pooed by 50%.
The least favourable idea is scrapping different income tax levels and replacing them with a flat' income tax that is set at the same level for everybody which only 20% say they would approve of byt 65% say on yer bike.
So if we take the popular ideas, how much would the Chancellor raise?
Economists at the London School of Economics suggest that a Wealth Tax could raise around £24bn a year, Mansion Tax £2.5bn, Exit Tax £500m per year and the merging NI and Income Tax would increase the take by £6 billion so potentially £33bn, equivalent to sticking 4p on Income Tax so bit of a no brainer really, hitting mostly only the richest except the merging idea which would mostly affect Pensioners currently not paying National Insurance but they all vote Tory or Reform anyway so no loss there.  
Of course, my own ideas of scrapping the Nuclear Weapons (£200 bn saved), reverse the madness that was Brexit (£140bn raised), a windfall tax on banks and utilities (£20 billion raised) and ditching the Royals (£100m saved) would flood an extra £360bn into the UK coffers so feel free to use any of these Rach. 

Death Penalties For Palestinian Prisoners

Since 1967, one million Palestinians have been detained in an Israeli Prison and currently 10,000 Palestinians are being held in Israeli jails and the occupied territory, according to prisoners’ rights group Addameer.  
Of these, 3500 are administrative detainees meaning they are held without charge or trial on renewable six month terms of imprisonment but a new law passing through the Knesset could soon sort that out as the National Security Committee under Ben-Gvir are seeking approval to impose the death penalty on any Palestinian who intentionally or negligently causes the death of an Israeli citizen out of racial or ideological hatred, or with the aim of harming Israel'.
In a system long built around mass arrests, indefinite detention and an apartheid justice system, Palestinian Right Groups are suitably worried that the Israeli regime, fresh from a genocide against the Palestinans, aims to legitimise the killing of Palestinian prisoners.
The bill, mandates the death penalty for any detainee 'convicted of murder motivated by racism or hostility toward a particular public, and under circumstances where the act was committed with the intent to harm the State of Israel and the rebirth of the Jewish people in their homeland, mandatorily, not optionally or at the court’s discretion.'
Ben- Gvir said that executing Palestinian 'terrorists' would free up prison space, publicly saying that Palestinian prisoners should be 'shot in the head', and called for them to receive only minimal sustenance and this week threatened to withhold his party’s support for coalition legislation unless the prisoners’ execution bill is brought to a vote within three weeks as well as stating that: 'Now that we have received the Israeli captives from Gaza, we must return to war and open the gates of hell upon Gaza. The captives were the only reason we stopped the war. We must continue the war on Gaza, whether the Qataris and the Turks are there or not. Qatar and Turkey are our enemies.'
In a nation that had no qualms with committing genocide against Palestinians and all manner of war crimes, that they are seriously considering turning prisons into execution sites for the people they are militarily occupying does nothing to help their case that they are not the current modern day version of the Nazi's who were so rightly reviled for their genocide and prohibitive executions.

Halloween In The UK

In the list of money spent on celebrations in the UK, Halloween is towards the bottom with the £776m spent on decorations and scary costumes well below that is at Christmas (£46.4bn), Mothers Day (£2.4bn), Easter (£2.3bn), Valentines Day (£1.5bn) and Fathers Day (£1.1bn) and beats only Bonfire Night (£497m) in the main celebrations so why is Halloween not such a big thing here?  
Some shops do make a bit of a token gesture to flog us Halloween stuff, my local B&M has half an aisle full of cobwebs and spiders and skeleton and vampire costumes but it also has 2 aisles of Christmas things so make of that what you will.
A YouGov found that only 28% of Britons will celebrate Halloween in some way this year with the most common contribution being carving a Pumpkin and watching a scary film to mark the occasion.
I'm not really sure why Halloween has never really taken off over here, some people do make an effort but personally, while not going out of my way to ignore it, i don't do anything to actually celebrate it although i do appreciate the horror films played wall to wall on the TV  but mostly i see it as one of the days, along with Bonfire Night, to get out of the way and then it is a clear run through to my favourite celebration, Christmas. 

War, What Is It Good For? Absolutely Nothing

It seems like every time you turn on the news there is a conflict being shown and a recently published report by the United Nations and the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), show that there really are more active conflicts now than any time since the second World War.
The Peace Index shows that in 97 countries, peace deteriorated with 92 countries currently involved in conflicts beyond their borders leading to 110 million people who are either refugees or internally displaced.
Last year recorded 162,000 conflict related deaths, the second highest toll in the past 30 years, with the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza accounting for nearly three-quarters of these deaths.
One key factor the UN point to is the use of relatively inexpensive drones which makes it much easier for non-state groups, as well as smaller or less powerful states, to compete in conflicts with larger states or governments. The number of drones used by Governments last year rose by 150% increase while the number of non-state groups which committed at least one drone attack increased by 1,400%.
Since 2023, militarisation has increased in 91 countries and globally the military spending has increased by over 10%.
Africa is the most affected continent with 28 interstate conflicts involving one or more state actors, Asia has 17, the Middle East 10, Europe 3 and the Americas 2.
'There are worrying signs that militarisation is likely to increase in the near future' said the PRIO, 'with the very high number of smaller conflicts means that the risk of an outbreak of more major conflicts is higher now than at any other point'.
Humans. What a bunch of morons.