Another One Bites The (Moon) Dust

For those of us with an interest all astronomy, it is a depressing fact that 1969 saw the first man to walk on the moon and 1972 saqw the last one because we haven't bothered going back since.
With the death of Eugene Cernan, of the 12 men who have walked on the moon, six are now dead and of the remaining half dozen the youngest is 81 so we could very soon have nobody alive who has walked on anything other the our own planet.   
Eugene Cernan was the last person to walk on the moon although that was due to his seat being closest to the door of the lunar module so he was last in and had to shut the door behind him.
During the interviews being shown during clips on the TV, he said something quite revealing, stating that to his mind man went to the moon 'too early considering what we’re doing now in space'.
He did make a good point because the next step should have been moon bases and manned landings on Mars but almost 50 years on we have abandoned our lunar partner and we are still trying, and failing, to successfully land probes on the red planet so landing a man on one of our nearest planetary neighbours is still a pipe dream.

May's Calamitous Self-Harm For Britain

If nothing else you have to admire Theresa May's bravado.
Finally she has spelt it out what Brexit will look like and it is no access to the Single Market but maybe remaining a member of the Single Market and removing ourselves from the Customs Union but having a deal to stay in it and absolutely, definitely no longer making contributions to the European Union every year although there could be some European programmes that the UK will contribute to.
All in all it came across as very much 'WE ARE BRITAIN AND WE WANT THIS...if you don't mind awfully and can we still be part of the club if that's okay with you all'.
She even sounded tough when she warned that trying to punish the UK for leaving would be an act of 'calamitous self-harm' for the remaining EU members, yep, all 27 of them.
I would offer very short odds on what Theresa May wants and what the EU offer will be very different things, as they have said countless times, access to the Single Market, the largest on the planet, means accepting free movement of people and paying for the privilege, no deals, take it or leave it.
That Theresa May is now saying we will leave regardless of any deals is beyond delusional, as were those who voted for Brexit, seemingly content to do the equivalent of taking our shop out of the middle of the high street with 500 regular million buyers and relocate it in an out of town retail centre with tens of millions of shoppers.
Why would any country choose to deal with Britain and its 65 million potential customer when it can get a better deal across the channel in Europe with its 500 million potential customers or China's 1.3 billion or India's 1.2 billion.
For all the bravado, the Prime Minister and the 52% who voted for Brexit are the ones undertaking the 'calamitous self-harm' which will become apparent in the two years after Article 50 and the demands May is making now turn out to be so much hot air as the economic implications begin to bite and Britain's influence on all things global shrinks to the lowest it has ever been.

BuzzFeed and Journalism

Obama was the first black President but Trump is about to make history as the nation's first orange one but the colour everyone is interested in is Golden, as in the colour of the showers that the next President has a preference for.
As if he isn't mock-worthy enough already, the four times bankrupt businessman has given further ammunition to anyone who wants it despite his protestations that the prostitute piss party in the Moscow hotel room did not happen.
Although Trump seemed to take umbrage at CNN, digital media 'BuzzFeed' were the outfit who made the decision to publish an intelligence report apparently commissioned by Trump's Republicans opponents, filled with salacious and unsubstantiated claims about the next Presidents outrageous behaviour in Russia.
The news website posted the unredacted documents with a warning that the contents were 'unverified and potentially unverifiable' but put the rest of the media in the position of either ignoring a story in the public domain which they had sat on for weeks as it was not independently verified or repeating the allegations with the previous mentioned caveats which they almost all did.
Some critics have rounded on BuzzFeed, calling it irresponsible for letting loose 'gossip and rumour' who replied that: 'Publishing this document was not an easy or simple call, and people of good will may disagree with our choice. But publishing this dossier reflects how we see the job of reporters in 2017' and repeated the warning that reason to doubt the allegations.
My reading of the situation is that both the UK and US intelligence chiefs appeared to be giving the 'rumours and gossip' some credibility so have a weight of legitimacy about them coupled with Trump's own strong rejection of reports that Russia had hacked the US election and his subsequent back-down which shows an immediate knee-jerk reaction to dismiss and belittle anything which doesn't show him in a good light until the proof is such that he has to accept it.
Throw in the racist, sexist and 'pussy grabbing' remarks and mocking of the disabled reporter along with the arguments with the parents of the dead soldier which show his moral bar isn't set very high and you could very well believe it all.
As for Buzzfeed, to publish unverified intelligence is irresponsible and a bit troubling that they see it as the way journalism works in 2017 which it isn't and should never be, a minimum of double sourcing is lesson one in any college journalism course. 
To their credit the UK and US broadcasting media rejected reporting the allegations until they were in the public domain and then draped them so full of caveats that they watered them down (excuse the pun) as much as possible to leave nobody in any doubt that these allegations were unverified.
What this does seem to show is the difference between 'new media' and 'old media' who are aware that their credibility is at stake if they publish or broadcast something as meaty as this without proof to say nothing of possible slander proceedings, something that 'new media' seem indifferent to.
Whether it turns out to be true or not, the mud has been thrown and it will amusingly stick to Trump throughout his tenure and i'm happy with that as he is well worthy of all mockery coming his way but my concern is that Buzzfeed will be considered 'journalism' which it isn't because Editors of any respected news organisation know that to publish information it knows may not be true and has no supporting evidence is not how journalism works.

The 12" Extended Remix

One of my overriding memories of my music buying youth was queueing up outside HMV for Guns N Roses 'Use Your Illusions I and II' which was released at midnight in 1991.
I took it home, ripped off the wrapper and kept getting shouted at to 'TURN THAT BLOODY RACKET DOWN, IT'S 2AM' by my dad as i wheeled through the songs.
What Guns N Roses were famous for were their long songs and the Illusion albums had Civil War at 8 minutes, 9 minutes of November Rain and Estranged and a whopping 10 minutes of Coma.
For us children of the 80s the only way you would get a song over 5 minutes was to buy the 12" Extended Remix and i still have a few knocking around although i don't own a record player and they haven't seen a record needle held down by a taped on 2p piece since OJ Simpson was in the news for not killing the wife that he killed.  
Since them days music has gone from vinyl to cassette to CD and now you pay for a download so you don't even get to handle the medium it comes on now but most sadly you don't get the 12" extended version of songs.
I have a box somewhere stock full of 12" remixes of 80s and 90s records and occasionally i drag it out, look at the artwork and wonder whatever happened to the mustachioed dancer from Frankie Goes To Hollywood.
While many of the 12" extended versions were just an instrumental version with the original song tacked on the end there were some classics and almost completely different songs which almost makes me nostalgic enough to go out and buy a record player so just i can hear them again.
I won't though because despite what some people say, songs never sounded better on vinyl, they sounded scratchy and hissy while digital is just so much clearer but in a tremendous own goal for the record industry, easier to copy and pass around but i do miss the artwork and the 12" extended versions.
Oh, and the FGTH guy with a 'tache went off to live in New Zealand and released an album called The Cowboy Years in 2010, so that's nice for him. 

Trump Taking The Piss

He has the golden hair, golden skin and even a golden lift and now the next President of the United States has a golden shower as well if the blackmail papers are to be believed.
I don't know if the voters who put their cross next to Donald Trumps name are regretting it yet but we have entered a golden age for anyone who likes seeing someone who is already an embarrassing idiot make an even bigger fool of themselves on the world stage.
According to the British spy who ran up an incendiary 35 page document on Trump, he is not only in the pay of the Russians and about to spend the next four years running America for the benefit of those in Moscow, but he also enjoys a good old fashioned pee party with prostitutes in hotel rooms.
All lies and fake news the man-baby may have blustered, comparing it to Nazi propaganda spread by sick people but the UK and US intelligence have taken it seriously and both nations are now launching full investigations into whether the intelligence can be substantiated.
The BBC are reporting that CIA Officers have said that there is even more compromising material about Trump in Russian hands which has yet to be revealed and that the material was 'of a sexual nature'.
It could all be a fake and a case of Putin being the wolf preying on Trump who is by far the weakest, and dumbest, sheep but it is hilarious that the man who will become President in eight days is such a laughing stock around the Globe and is dragging not only himself but his country through the urine soaked mud.       
How anyone could even take him seriously before this came out was hard to fathom but now we can add piss-stained pervert to the impressive list of insults stacked up against the nasty little racist.
If nothing else, the next four years (if he lasts that long) are going to be a boon time for comedians on comedy shows for which they can thank the American voters who thought he was a better choice than Hillary Clinton.

Section 40 Not The Complete Answer

Much furore over Section 40 which is the Governments plan to shackle the press after the Leveson enquiry highlighted years of prolonged harassment and gross invasions of privacy by the press.
The tippign point proved to be the actions of the tabloids over the missing schoolgirl Milly Dowler whose phone they hacked and even deleted messages on the girls phone to make room for more messages to listen to from distraught friends and family.
That it gave the family and police hope that Milly was still alive and deleting her messages, when she was later found dead, and the News of The World and Sun newspaper were found responsible, the cry went up that something had to be done to stop the press from continuing to act in such an abhorrent way.  
At the time the press was self-regulating which was obviously not working so the Government have now come up with Section 40 which will see state regulation of newspapers.
Those newspapers who refuse to sign up to the regulator will be subject to face paying all the legal costs of all sides even in cases they win where they have been found not guilty of impinging on peoples privacy.
Malpractice by the press needs to be stopped but it is a fine balancing act between a press that is free to investigate and criticize and one that takes advantage of this freedom to harass and perform gross invasions of privacy.
I don't know the answer but self-regulation has not worked but the Government deciding what newspaper can and can't print is not a direction we want to be heading so maybe it should be a case of only certain newspapers, those with a record of illegal practises, being brought under state regulation with a threat of others to follow if they take the dark road travelled by the likes of the Murdoch Press who were by far the main cause of the need to act in the first place.

Why Isn't Hollwood Pointing At Obama Also?

As much as i like to see Hollywood actors and actresses use their platform to berate leaders they don't agree with, Bush was a regular recipient as Trump has been even before he takes the reins, but i can't recall anyone clutching a Golden Globe or an Oscar and having a go at Obama.
Nobody seems to have made an acceptance speech and wagged a finger at Obama for not closing Guantanamo or the disgraceful behaviour towards Chelsea Manning or Edward Snowden as part of the record number of whistle blowers prosecuted by the current President.
I can't recall anybody with a film credit to their name berating him over helping Saudi Arabia to flatten Yemen and take out a crowds at funerals and weddings nor the disaster which was Libya when Obama used the US Air Force as cover for Al Queada.   
Maybe we missed the time when someone in Hollywood took him to task for conducting ten times more drone attacks than George W Bush as during his tenure he dropped bombs on seven different countries, all Muslim nations.
Meryl Streep was strangely quiet on the Obama plans to aid and arm the Syrian rebels against the Syrian leadership even though everyone was shouting that they were morphing from Al Queada into ISIS and turning the American weapons on civilians just as she seemed to be looking elsewhere when he stirred up problems in Ukraine which led to war and worsening relations with Russia.
Most disappointingly, Hollywood looked the other way when the troops under his direct command dropped 26,171 bombs during 2016, 71 a day, and resulted in massive civilian casualties and several 'accidental' hospital hits.
Everyone has the right to air their grievances about Trump and they should continue to do so but the moral outrage has to be evenly spread and dished out to all who deserve it lets not forget that Obama came to the floor as a good guy but has been just as keen as his much derided predecessor in bombing and blowing people up, so it would be nice for someone with a platform to remind the World that while Trump may be a potential global disaster, Obama has been one.

Thanks Canada

Avril Lavinge, Michael Buble, Bryan Adams, Nelly Furtado, Alanis Morisette, Shania Twain, Ryan Reynolds, William Shatner, Michael J Fox, John Candy and Leslie Nielsen, just some of the things Canada has sent our way and now we can add another to the list as it hurls an Arctic Blast our way.
Thundersnow and blizzards are set to hit the UK this week sending the MET Office diving for the yellow warning alert button as temperatures are set to plunge to -10C.
Temperatures in mainland Europe have already plunged with Polish thermometers diving to a chilly -30C and the Serbian ones -28C while beaches in Greece and Cyprus were blanketed in snow.
Eight people have died in Italy from the polar blast and lumps of ice have formed in the Adriatic Sea and planes were grounded in Turkey's largest city, Istanbul, as 65cm (25.6 inches) of snow fell on the city.
The Pope has asked God to 'warm our hearts to help' but i think a blanket and a hot water bottle would be more beneficial or failing that a sled.

No Songs Sung Blue

The long running saga of who is refusing to sing for Donald Trump at his inauguration is continuing and today Charlotte Church has told the serial groper to go do one as she turned down his invitation to perform.   
Charlotte had been approached by members of the President-elect's team but replied that: 'Your staff have asked me to sing at your inauguration, a simple internet search would show I think you're a tyrant'.
That would be a no then and fast on the heels of X Factor runner-up Rebecca Ferguson who gave him equally short thrift although she did say she would give it a go if she could sing an anti-racism song which obviously went down like a Trump haircut at a hairdressers convention.
DJ Moby also revealed he had been asked to perform and answered and answered with: 'Hahahahaha, wait, Hahahaha, really? I guess I'd DJ at an inaugural ball if as payment Trump released his tax returns' although he was kind enough to suggest a set list which included Rage Against the Machine’s 'Killing in the Name', Radiohead’s 'Idioteque', Billie Holiday’s 'Strange Fruit' and Green Days 'American Idiot'.
I don't expect Meryl Streep to turn up either so as it stands, half of the Rockettes dance group, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir under threat of expulsion if they don't turn up and a 16-year-old 'America's Got Talent' singer are all confirmed to play at Trump's inauguration in 10 days time.

Man-Baby v The Actress

Defending himself on Twitter, Donald Trump said he 'would never mock a disabled reporter' not long after he mocked a disabled reporter in response to Meryl Streep criticising the orange faced Presidential elect impression of a disabled reporter during her Golden Globes acceptance speech last night. 
With a paper thin skin, Trump said Streep was 'one of the most over-rated actresses in Hollywood' and blamed the media for being dishonest over there reporting of him mocking a disabled reporter, which of course, he would never do.
If you put aside that he is an absolute liability about to sail America down the swanee, Trump is going to be golden for reporters and journalists in a way that Obama never was with his child-like temper tantrums every time someone calls him out for being an abusive, bullying idiot.
Sadly, i fear that worse will come and mocking disabled people will be well down the list when historians come to write up the Trump President years.