Israel At Eurovision

The Eurovision is keen to keep its non-political stature but while Israel is performing after rewriting its song to stay in the competition, it is not going to be easy to stop nations slipping in their protest against what horrors the nation are inflicting on the Palestinians in the Middle East.
The main protests from the participants, and i am sure there will be some, will come in the Live Final when it can't be edited out and already we have seen some small signs of what's to come when the Irish singer, Bambie Thug, wrote anti-war slogans all over her body and was only allowed to go on stage once she changed it.
The opening singer wore a Palestinian Keffiyeh patterned cloth around his wrist which organisers said 'compromised the non-political nature of the event' and out out a statement which said that while the
Organisers understood the concerns and deeply held views around the war in the Middle East but the song contest is a music event and is not a competition between nations or governments.
Security around the Israeli singer, Eden Golan, has been trebled and there was a small protest outside the Malmo arena on Tuesday but a larger one is being promised for Thursday's second semi-final and Saturday's Final which has the potential to be a flashpoint.
I am conflicted as while i fully support the protests against the genocide in Gaza, and wonder about the moral compass of anyone who isn't, i feel for Golan who is just there to sing her song in a competition but i would like to see some protest by the performers, just small ones, to mark that we can't just pretend it isn't happening and on the Worlds largest music competition in front of hundreds of millions is the perfect place for us Europeans to show Israel that we know what you are doing, and do not support you. 
At today's rehearsal Golan was booed by the crowd as she performed her song Hurricane which was hastily rewritten after the original, 'October Rain' was deemed too controversial.
The Israeli Broadcasting Corporation has made an official complaint to the Eurovision Organisers about the booing and asked it to prevent a repeat of the incident but i can't see how it can be stopped in a live event.
Extra police have been drafted in from Denmark and Norway as protesters have been gathering outside the Arena with Palestinian flags, placards against Israeli participation and smoke canisters but with feelings running high amongst Golan's fellow musicians, the protests will probably also be coming from the stage and tonight's second semi-final will have Organisers nervous.

Stepping From Tory To Labour

In the last ten days, two Conservative MP's have defected to the Labour Party which raises a couple of questions around where our political parties now stand.
The Labour Party are much more centre left these days under Keir Starmer while The Conservatives have moved so far to the right that they are within touching distance of the parties they had dismissed as ideologically extreme right wing not that long ago so do the more moderate Tories see themselves as closer to the Labour Party than they do the headbangers which seemed to have taken over their own party?
That would be a concern for me that Labour have shifted so far away from their left-wing roots that Conservatives feel they fit in but i think the answer is much more mundane, they see the Conservatives as a sinking ship destined for the rocks of the upcoming General Election and any now switching sides are doing it out of preservation for their jobs.    
In a statement, the former Conservative MP Natalie Elphicke who made the short walk across the floor of the Commons today to the Labour benches said that she sees the modern Labour Party as the one looking to the future although it wasn't that long ago that she was at loggerheads with Labour's shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves over free school meals, campaigned for Liz Truss to become prime minister in 2022,  and defended the Rwanda deportation scheme so although a magnificent coup for Labour, is she really at home with the Socialists of the Labour Party?
She has said that she won't be standing at the next election so it can't be that she is hoping a change of party will save her seat and from her previous comments she hasn't become a  Karl Marx reading lefty so maybe we shouldn't look at it too deeply and just enjoy the obvious uncomfortable stomach punch to Rishi Sunak which maybe is just what it really is.

Eurovision 2024

37 Nations are called but only 1 is chosen and the reward is to host the following years Eurovision Song Contest because it's that brilliant time of the year again when the good, bad and the awful of Europe is asked to pop along and bring a tune with them and let us decide if we think it's much cop.
Sweden, as last years winners not only get to host it this year but get an automatic bye to the Final along with France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK which is handy for Germany, Italy and the Swedes because none of their songs are going to lead to their representatives pulling any muscles lifting the glass microphone trophy.
The rest navigate a semi-final appearance so many will drop by the wayside and my scoresheet has Australia, Azerabijan, Geiorgia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Moldova, Norway and Ukraine putting on a brave face as they are told their services will no longer be required in Saturdays Final.
Of the rest Albania, Belgium, France, Portugal, Denmark, Latvia, Slovenia and Israel have shown up with ballads, Serbia's is so ploddingly slow it is in danger of going backwards but of the slow songs, Belgium's stands out but heart wrenching lyrics seem so last year because this year it is the turn of the electro-pop acts including Spain, Netherlands and the UK which has a very Frankie Goes To Hollywood Relax video performance about it with much semi-naked men in posing pouches doing things which will have the Director screaming go to the Long Shot at the cameramen.
Eurovision wouldn't be Eurovision without some nations being completely barmy and Finland has really upped it's billiantly loopy game this year with a man hatching from an Egg and singing while prancing around in his flesh coloured underpants which is as magnificent as it sounds and we really must hope it makes it out of the semi finals as a reward for being barking mad.
Ireland have taken a different path and have something called Ouija Pop complete with a screechy chorus and demons and devils cavorting onstage while Estonia have gone with a Zombie Folk band with a  song which sounds like a 3 minute football chant.
The Czech Republic singer lives in Brighton and her song is one of the ones i have placed an asterix next to as one i expect to end in the top 4 along with Croatia which is one hell of an earworm of a song called Rim Tim Tagi Dim about a young man selling his cow, saying goodbye to his cat and leaving for the big city which i guarantee will have you humming long after the next few acts.
As for the UK, i predict a left hand side of the board finish with Croatia, Netherlands, Czech Republic, Estonia and Poland fighting it out at the business end of the league table but as this is Eurovision (and i barely ever pick the winner) it could be any one of the novelty numbers, gothic witchcraft or rave throwbacks that take it and that's why i love Eurovision.

Hey Tories, Leave That Rishi There

I don't blame the Conservatives for refusing to call a General Election although after the Local Elections this week, they have been left in little doubt that when they do get around to it, a vast majority of them will be looking for new employment so Turkeys not voting for Christmas seems an apt metaphor.
The party, which brought the UK austerity, Brexit and an almost weekly scandal has been consistently trailing Labour by around 20 points in opinion polls and results from local elections held across England on Thursday where the Conservatives lost 453 councils appear to confirm that they are on their way out of power after 14 years.
The feeling of overwhelming incompetence surrounding the Tories was summed up when Boris Johnson turned up to vote in his South Oxfordshire district without a valid ID which was a rule he personally introduced in 2022.
With an election having to be called before January 2025 due to the five year Fixed-Term Parliament Act, the whispers are that the election will be November 14th and we know Keir Starmer will be in the red corner but it is unclear if Rishi Sunak will be cowering in the opposite one as gossip of his own side removing him continue to swirl.
As a Labour Party member i was obviously hoping that the Conservatives would get a good shellacking but i was hoping for a moderate walloping and i am now thinking maybe the trouncing was a bit too good and the hapless, unpopular Rishi will be replaced by somebody a lot more competent which could hinder Labours plans.
Labour lost the 2019 election by so much that they are going to have to undertake an almost unprecedented swing to take power, their starting position is so far back that in normal times it would take a minimum of two or possibly three general elections to overhaul and if the Conservatives kick out Rishi for someone the public could warm to such as the moderate Penny Mordant rather than an instant dislikable right wing nutjob such as Suella Braverman then the Labour lead could narrow considerably.
Hopefully Rishi is deluded enough to believe he could turn things around but the one thing the Conservatives are great at is stabbing their leader in the back, front and both sides if they think it is going to cost them power but i say leave Rishi alone, he is doing a great job, a great job of making sure the Tories will be a bad memory by 2025.    

Better Hold On Tight

 
Since 1973, Hurricanes have been measured by a five-category rating system with Category 1 for winds up to 95mph up to Category 5 with winds of 157 mph or more.
Due to Global Warming and warmer seas meaning Hurricanes becoming more intense meteorologists are arguing for a Category 6 to be introduced for storms with sustained winds of 192 mph or more.
Since 2013, there have been five global storms that would have made it to Category 6, when Hurricane Patricia headed towards Mexico in 2015 it had sustained winds over the Pacific Ocean of 215 mph and 2024 could add to that list as for the past year global ocean temperatures have been consistently breaking records and given that ocean heat is what fuels the biggest, most destructive hurricanes, scientists are worried.
Researchers at the University of Arizona have predicted an extremely active North Atlantic season with an estimated 11 hurricanes, five of them being Category 3 or higher and worryingly for anyone in their path, the hurricanes are intensifying quicker due to the warmer seas fueling them and therefore becoming much more dangerous as a city preparing for a 95mph hurricane could suddenly be hit by a 150mph one due to it intensifying just before it hits land.  
To add to the scenario, La Niña conditions in the Pacific could help form and intensify hurricanes this summer so batten down the hatches because it could get bumpy as man-made Climate change is here to remind us what happens when we foolishly mess with our environment.

Israel Lied About UNRWA

Following the bombing of the Al-Ahli hospital in northern Gaza, killing hundreds of people, Israel said they had bombed it to hit a terrorist base inside the hospital, then changed it to an Islamic Jihad rocket had fallen short and then when it was pointed out that they did not possess rockets of such power to do that much damage and hospital bosses explained that Israel already bombed two days previously and claimed Israel had pre-warned them it would attack it, Israel announced they would investigate but that seems to be what they do when they have caused the deaths of innocent civilians.
The usual manoeuvre is that Israel commits a massacre, Israel denies massacre, Israel announce an investigation of the massacre and then the news cycle moves on and the last massacre is replaced by another massacre and the cycle starts again and it is exactly what we have seen for decades with school bombings, UN building destroyed, aid worker and journalist deaths, death of children in the West Bank, mowing down of starving civilians at food trucks and exactly what we saw with the claim that the UN Agency, UNRWA, had been infiltrated by Hamas.
The Israeli government did not provide any further detail or evidence for their claim that 12 of UNRWA's 13,000 employees in Gaza had participated in the October 7 attacks and that hundreds of UNRWA's employees are members of Hamas or Islamic Jihad.
An independent review, ordered by the UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, found no evidence to support Israel’s claim that the agency has been infiltrated by Hamas and pointed out that UNRWA had been providing Israel with its staff lists since 2011 with no previous concerns raised.
Countries were warned that by withholding funding to the largest relief organization in Gaza, would risk a famine and cost lives.
After three months of the review which has cleared UNRWA and pointedly mentioned that Israel could not provide any supporting evidence, as Palestinian children literally starve to death, many countries are now resuming including Norway, Sweden, Australia, Japan, Ideland, Canada, Finland and Germany who who are the second largest donor to UNRWA.
In the UK MPs have written to foreign minister David Cameron, demanding that funding is restored without delay.
America, the largest donor, has yet to re-establish their aid despite the US’s own National Intelligence Council saying during the review that it had 'low confidence' in the Israeli claims.
So it was a lie but why would Israel lie when that lie would lead to a man-made famine threatening lives across the Gaza Strip?
Consider that Israel have killed over 34,000 Palestinians, have destroyed 80% of Gaza including the infrastructure and Health facilities and made plans to 'evacuate the whole of the Gaza Strip' and told the people of Gaza that they should 'evacuate and go to the vast expanses on the other side of Rafah at the Sinai border in Egypt', then it seems obvious they are trying to force the Palestinians off their land so they can move their own people in, a practise they have been been doing in the West Bank.
More evidence for the Genocide Claim against Israel currently before the The International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court and they won't be able to pretend to make an investigation to get out of that one.  

Journalism Under Fire

In a World where fake news, disinformation and conspiracy theories are rife, the freedom of journalists to report is under attack from the people who would really rather not have the spotlight shone into the murky corners they inhabit and that is not just in authoritarian states but is happening right under the noses of people in nations which are considered democratic.  
The UK Government have a draft legislation which would criminalise journalists if they reported or handled information that could be deemed likely to assist a foreign power and it was only the intervention by the European Court of Human Rights which called a halt plans to make MI5 and other agencies able to access journalists communications.
According to the annual World Press Freedom Index published by Reporters Without Borders (RSF), attacks on press freedom around the world are intensifying with political attacks on journalists including detention, suppression of independent media outlets and widespread dissemination of misinformation.
The Middle East regions performed the worst in terms of restrictions and controls on journalists by government forces through violence, arrests and draconian laws, compounded by violence against journalists.
Since October 2023, over 100 Palestinian reporters have been killed by Israel in Gaza and journalists have been killed in Sudan, Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon while four of the world’s biggest jailers of journalists are Israel, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Iran.
Latin America has increased political repression of journalism, Argentina's new president, Javier Milei, has boasted about his assault on the free press and has shut down the country’s biggest new agency and the US has performed badly due to increasing attacks on journalists from political officials, including public calls to imprison reporters.
There has been 20 journalists killed in Nigeria and reporters were targeted in Madagascar while covering anti-Government protests and Burkino Faso has suspended dozens of foreign news organisations after reporting on the alleged massacre of hundreds of civilians by the military.
In Russia, over 1500 journalists have fled abroad since 2022 and Belarus has banned all independent media under the pretext of combating extremism while China has detained more journalists than any other country in the world and reporting in Afghanistan and North Korea is banned and Vietnam and Myanmar have been undertaking mass imprisonment of journalists.
Journalists gather, assess, create and present news and information to the public, ensuring citizens are informed while acting as a check on power, holding the government and other institutions accountable and stand as a bulwark against a tide of misinformation which is exactly why government and other institutions are trying to undermine and lessen the freedom for us to do our jobs effectively.

Your Medical Sex But Societal Gender

When the NHS announced that they will be working towards same sex hospital wards, the inevitable question was always going to be what about the transgender patients and they shot back with the perfect answer, they will base it on their biological sex.
There does seem to be much confusion around a persons sex and their gender which are two very different things, your sex is determined by what set of Chromosomes nature gave you but your gender can be whatever you decide you want it to be and no medical procedure can change your chromosomes so when i was growing up what we called a 'sex change' was actually a gender change, you can chop things off or have things added but your sex is going to be the same because you have an X or a Y.
It was explained to me a long time ago that Medical science has a pretty clear definition because as well as the most common pairings, you also get XXY, XXX, X and XYY but simply if there is no Y Chromosome present, its female, if there is one then it's male so you could have as many X's as you liked, XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXY if it was possible but that one Y would mean male and because the female is XX and 50% of the chromosomes comes from the mother, one of them has to be X which is why it is impossible for humans to get a Y or a YY.
Gender on the other hand means you may look, sound, act or even have the genitals of the opposite sex, the World Health Organisation defines your gender as 'the socially constructed characteristics of men, women, boys, and girls that relate to biological sex' which is a bit woolly but kinda means your gender is whatever you decide your gender is and not what society says it should be based on socially agreed-upon characteristics and that is when we get into the whole thorny world of public bathrooms and pronouns.
I am therefore fine with medical bodies basing a persons 'sex' on their biological make-up, i could turn into a man tomorrow and start wearing mans clothes and even have genital surgery but i would still have the internal workings of a woman which could need to be dealt with medically and i wouldn't be getting a prostate anytime soon.    
The bottom line is that the boundary between a persons sex and their gender gets confused and you may get someone on a hospital wards who considers themselves a woman but is biologically 'male' and would prefer to be on a female only ward but that is a question for society to answer around same gender wards because it is rightly up to each individual to determine their gender and their choice should be respected but when it comes to the NHS and medical issues, your sex is decided in the womb and medically you would treated as male or female depending on the internal workings of your body.

Nice One Humza

You do have to wonder what was going on in the Scottish First Ministers mind when he sacked the Greens from his Government.
With the SNP's holding a majority of 1 in the Scottish Parliament, by sacking the two Greens for being too left wing, he went from a minority Government to one with less seats than the opposition who must as thought it was Christmas, Birthday and Hogmanay all rolled into one and immediately put in for a vote of no confidence in the SNP leader Humza Yousaf,  and the Greens, still stinging from their ousting said they would vote with the opposition against Yousaf.
With parliamentary arithmetic now against him he tried to talk around the only ALBA member to join him but she must have remembered that when she left the SNP, he said she was 'no loss' and told him to do one so Yousaf was left with little choice but to jump before he was pushed and resigned.
Immediately the SNP went looking for a candidate to replace him and the early favourite is Kate Forbes, the same woman who was forced to back down in her leadership campaign last time due to being too religious and getting herself in a heap of trouble by espousing views which included being against abortions, premarital sex, same sex marriage and trans rights which she disagreed with due to her deep seated faith.
With a general election looming,they are now looking towards John Swinney who only retired a year ago to spend more time with his family to come back as an interim leader but whatever happens, it really is in tune with the madness that has been happening with politics south of the border. 

What's So Great About Britain Then?

Britain was a rainy, windswept island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the coast of continental Europe but today in 1707 the Scots joined up with Wales and England and we became known as Great Britain but still remained a rainy, windswept island in the North Atlantic.
Before any Scots make jokes about how it was them who made us Great, it referred to the increased size of Britain rather than how magnificent it was now we had bagpipes and haggis in the mix but over time the 'Great' in our name has become more of the how distinguished and illustrious us Brits are rather than the additional 30,078 square miles tagged onto the top end of England but other nations may wonder just what is so Great about us Brits, well let me explain.

The seaside. All countries that have a coastline have a seaside and most have piers but it was us Brits who came up with the idea of the Pleasure pier, some of which were built while Napoleon was still stomping around Europe and Beethoven was just finishing his 6th Symphony and was starting work on his 7th.

Sport. We gave the World football, rugby, cricket, field hockey, squash, tennis, badminton, darts, snooker, golf, rowing, boxing, curling, horse racing and something called Bandy whatever the hell that is. Sure the rest of the World are now better than us at all of them without us Brits, they wouldn't have the sports to be better than us at.

Comedy. If there is one thing us Brits excel at, it's having a strange sense of humour and the sarcastic, self-deprecating sense of humour can be an acquired taste i agree but we laugh at things which are funny, unfunny, tragic or just downright stupid which is why we have shows such as Blackadder, Red Dwarf, Fawlty Towers, Only Fools and Horses, The Young Ones, Allo' Allo', Monty Python and Father Ted to mock pretty much everything from religion to War to Interstellar Space.

The BBC. The oldest national broadcasting organisation in the world and easily the best thing you could spend 46p a day on for no annoying ad breaks.  

Music. Yes we have not only come up with bands such as The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Queen, Sex Pistols, Muse, Black Sabbath and ELO but we do have a knack of coming up with some amazing guitar players also so pluck your g-string proudly Slash, Eric Clapton, Brian May, Jimmy Page, David Gilmour, Ritchie Blackmore, Mark Knopfler, Matt Bellamy, Johnny Marr and Tony Iommi to name a few.  

Chocolate. I don't know what everyone else does to their chocolate but wow you are bad at it.  

Inventions. We can turn on the light bulb in the living room and watch the television while drinking some cool beer from the refrigerator or go on a computer on the World Wide Web to watch trains or discover the theory of evolution or Gravity and explain it on the telephone in the English language thanks to British inventors.

Punk. Without British bands like the Sex Pistols, The Damned, The Clash, Buzzcocks and The Stranglers to inspire later generations, today's music would be...well...even worse.

Rhyming Slang. Only the Brits could take a perfectly normal thing, find something that rhymes with it and then shorten it even more so we could ask about your plates and not mean your kitchenware, your boat and not mean the ones with oars, your Gregory and not mean your relative and mention Bristol's and Hampton's and not mean in any geographical way whatsover.

So Britain has many faults, the food, our politicians, the right wing numpties and our not so pleasant history of slavery and empire but there are a few things we can point at and say, yeah, maybe we are not so bad after all .