Ever since Jimmy Carter in the 1970's, every American President has had a war and Donald Trump is not going to be an exception but the question is who will the President decide is the unlucky recipient of American death and destruction.
Despite Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen all going spectacularly awfully, the next war seems to be yet another sandy, middle eastern country and Iran are the current favourites to be on the end of another violent act of American aggression.
Following Trumps all caps tweet in which he threatened Iran will: 'suffer consequences the likes of which few throughout history have ever suffered before', the eyes seem to be swivelling towards dealing with Iran although it is a problem of Americas making.
Despite everyone else saying it was working, it was Donald Trump who pulled the US out of the Iranian nuclear accord and imposed sanctions and on the Trump team now is Iraq War architect and all round warmonger John Bolton.
The militarily aggressive Israel is also in the mix have been itching to take out Iran as a rival in the region for decades and it doesn't take much to see the groundwork for war is being laid right before our very eyes.
Iran is being vilified as the bad guy Iran despite currently not bombing, oppressing or invading anyone and is actively fighting terror groups such as ISIS but is being painted as an aggressive, terrorist supporting nation which actively needs confronting.
They fooled many into supporting them in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya and so they will try again with Iran buts let's be a little bit less gullible this time, this is America's tried and trusted route to yet another war and resulting regime change.
Tuesday, 31 July 2018
Working Out What's Fake News
The British Government is setting up an anti-fake news unit because we’re told that fake news is everywhere these days, especially by people who you suspect are partial to a little fake news themselves.
So what exactly is fake news?
It's news that's made up or not quite real or twists the facts, think Boris Johnson and that message on the side of that big red bus or Damian Green and his 'it was my assistant' when porn was found on his computer.
A good rule of thumb is if a politician calls a story 'fake new' they are generally covering something up, Donald Trump and his mad fake news ramblings about him not affairs with porn stars while paying them $130,000 and playboy models behind his wife's back is an excellent example.
What is now labelled 'Fake News' is just what we once called bullshit and most humans have a working brain which they can use to think for themselves and it comes with a pre-installed bullshit detector so while we can easily dismiss the Royals being lizards, sometimes the term fake news is simply used by people in power to dismiss opinions that will embarrass them or they simply don’t agree with.
It won't stop some people some believing mad stuff like climate change denial or that the Earth is flat but it's a worry that we are going to be told what is and isn't fake news by politicians.
It's not that difficult to make up your own mind about a story, just look at the evidence and the source and then engage that bit of the brain that filters out the made up bits and either dismiss it as bullshit or accept that someone has been caught out doing something they don't want you to know about and are trying to cover it up by loudly shouting 'fake news' at it.
So what exactly is fake news?
It's news that's made up or not quite real or twists the facts, think Boris Johnson and that message on the side of that big red bus or Damian Green and his 'it was my assistant' when porn was found on his computer.
A good rule of thumb is if a politician calls a story 'fake new' they are generally covering something up, Donald Trump and his mad fake news ramblings about him not affairs with porn stars while paying them $130,000 and playboy models behind his wife's back is an excellent example.
What is now labelled 'Fake News' is just what we once called bullshit and most humans have a working brain which they can use to think for themselves and it comes with a pre-installed bullshit detector so while we can easily dismiss the Royals being lizards, sometimes the term fake news is simply used by people in power to dismiss opinions that will embarrass them or they simply don’t agree with.
It won't stop some people some believing mad stuff like climate change denial or that the Earth is flat but it's a worry that we are going to be told what is and isn't fake news by politicians.
It's not that difficult to make up your own mind about a story, just look at the evidence and the source and then engage that bit of the brain that filters out the made up bits and either dismiss it as bullshit or accept that someone has been caught out doing something they don't want you to know about and are trying to cover it up by loudly shouting 'fake news' at it.
Monday, 30 July 2018
Rock 'n' Roll Hall Of Shame
Music history is littered with rebellious figures who courted controversy and while some of the more troubled of these souls succumbed to their respective demons and left us with just the tales of their badassery, others got slammed into prison for a while and then carried on regardless.
Nick Carter of the Backstreet Boys may not look like your common or garden drunken thug but after punching a bouncer, he went to jail for a few hours until he could be released on bail.
Pearl Jam front man Eddie Vedder spent the night in jail for public drunkenness and disturbing the peace while Bobby Brown was sat in cell for nine hours for the same offence but Justin Bieber served
24 hours in jail after being charged with drink driving, resisting arrest, driving with an expired license, and underage drinking and probably a few extra hours for that 'Baby' song.
Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong served eight days in jail for a drink driving conviction and Glen Campbell served 10 days in jail for drink driving and leaving the scene of an accident.
Paul McCartney had a close up view of a Japanese prison for nine days for drug possession and Vince Neil of Motley Crue spent 15 days in jail for vehicular manslaughter and drink driving.
George Michaels served four weeks in prison for drink driving and Mark Wahlberg spent 45 days in jail for beating a man with a stick.
Ozzy Osbourne spent six weeks in jail for shoplifting and several hours in jail later for urinating on the monument to The Alamo while dressed in his wife's clothes, nothing weird about that then.
John Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas served one month for faking drug prescriptions and Lauryn Hill spent three months in prison for tax evasion which was a month shorter than Boy George of Culture Club fame who served four months in jail for false imprisonment of an escort and Barry White who stole $30,000 of Cadillac tyres and spent 4 months in the slammer.
50 Cent got 6 months for selling drugs, Billie Holiday served 10 months for drug possession as did David Crosby and Tupac Shakaur got 11 months for sexual assault.
Ike Turner served 17 months in prison for drug offences which is almost as long as Chuck Berry who was sentenced to 18 months in prison for transporting a 14 year old girl for immoral purposes but he must have liked it because he was later back in for another 120 days for tax evasion.
Gary Glitter was arrested for possession of child pornography and spent 2 months in prison and on his release moved to Vietnam and served three years in prison there for sex with underage girls.
James Brown spent six years in prison for aggravated assault and evading police while Phil Spector is currently serving a 19 year sentence for murder.
The moral of the story is if you need some drugs look for a musician as they seem to have stashes of them and if an old lady with a deep Brummie accent and a pretty dress asks you for directions to the toilet, point them towards the nearest statue as its probably Ozzie dying for a pee.
Nick Carter of the Backstreet Boys may not look like your common or garden drunken thug but after punching a bouncer, he went to jail for a few hours until he could be released on bail.
Pearl Jam front man Eddie Vedder spent the night in jail for public drunkenness and disturbing the peace while Bobby Brown was sat in cell for nine hours for the same offence but Justin Bieber served
24 hours in jail after being charged with drink driving, resisting arrest, driving with an expired license, and underage drinking and probably a few extra hours for that 'Baby' song.
Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong served eight days in jail for a drink driving conviction and Glen Campbell served 10 days in jail for drink driving and leaving the scene of an accident.
Paul McCartney had a close up view of a Japanese prison for nine days for drug possession and Vince Neil of Motley Crue spent 15 days in jail for vehicular manslaughter and drink driving.
George Michaels served four weeks in prison for drink driving and Mark Wahlberg spent 45 days in jail for beating a man with a stick.
Ozzy Osbourne spent six weeks in jail for shoplifting and several hours in jail later for urinating on the monument to The Alamo while dressed in his wife's clothes, nothing weird about that then.
John Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas served one month for faking drug prescriptions and Lauryn Hill spent three months in prison for tax evasion which was a month shorter than Boy George of Culture Club fame who served four months in jail for false imprisonment of an escort and Barry White who stole $30,000 of Cadillac tyres and spent 4 months in the slammer.
50 Cent got 6 months for selling drugs, Billie Holiday served 10 months for drug possession as did David Crosby and Tupac Shakaur got 11 months for sexual assault.
Ike Turner served 17 months in prison for drug offences which is almost as long as Chuck Berry who was sentenced to 18 months in prison for transporting a 14 year old girl for immoral purposes but he must have liked it because he was later back in for another 120 days for tax evasion.
Gary Glitter was arrested for possession of child pornography and spent 2 months in prison and on his release moved to Vietnam and served three years in prison there for sex with underage girls.
James Brown spent six years in prison for aggravated assault and evading police while Phil Spector is currently serving a 19 year sentence for murder.
The moral of the story is if you need some drugs look for a musician as they seem to have stashes of them and if an old lady with a deep Brummie accent and a pretty dress asks you for directions to the toilet, point them towards the nearest statue as its probably Ozzie dying for a pee.
Sunday, 29 July 2018
NASA 60th Birthday
Driven by the Cold war, the Soviet Union and the USA competed to go bigger and better and although the USSR achieved many firsts, it
was NASA who landed a human on the Moon to take the ultimate space race prize.
The Apollo 11 Mission will forever stay the highpoint for NASA, or at least until a successful manned Mars mission, and the Earthrise photograph taken by Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders is amazing but there is a more poignant, thought provoking and beautiful photograph snapped in 1990 by Voyager 1 as it made it's way out of the Solar System.
At a distance of 40 Astronomical units or 3,757,059,000 miles, the space probe turned its camera back towards Earth and took a picture which became known as the Pale Blue Dot.
Astronomer Carl Sagan made one of the greatest speeches ever which puts it into perspective brilliantly:
'That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. Every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot.
Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.'
Elegant and powerful words but yet we still we go on vandalising the only place that we have to live on.
What the image and Sagan's bewitching words drive home as we look at that tiny pinprick of light in the vast blackness of space is how our place, for all our arrogance, is just a tiny, infinitesimal part of a colossal universe.
Friday, 27 July 2018
90 Days Of Summer: Day 57
Donald Trump isn't the only one who likes a good storm, so do i although the storm i prefer leaves more of a damp spot.
All day yesterday my weather apps said the South Coast of the UK was going to get thunderstorms arriving from France in the afternoon to give respite from the heat and sun being pushed our way from continental Europe.
Then the thunderstorms got pushed back to the evening then to the night and then cancelled altogether so sign me up to Brexit, we need to take control of our weather and stop the EU weather coming over here, making it hot. We should threaten to stop our rain going over there because they need our rain more than we need their sun.
My weather apps (BBC, Apple and METCheck) are all predicting thunderstorms again for today and things are starting to get desperate here, yesterday i almost spilt my bottle of Becks in the park when i reached for the suncream. The NHS are warning we need to drink 2.3 to 3 litres a day to stay hydrated and as they never specified what we need to drink, i'm going with beer.
Hopefully the thunderstorms will turn up today so sorry Galileo, thunder bolts and lightning may be very very frightening but i'm hot, tired and cranky and me and Scaramouch will only do the Fandango if we are ankle deep in puddles and the sky is lighting up like a dangerously overloaded Christmas Tree.
All day yesterday my weather apps said the South Coast of the UK was going to get thunderstorms arriving from France in the afternoon to give respite from the heat and sun being pushed our way from continental Europe.
Then the thunderstorms got pushed back to the evening then to the night and then cancelled altogether so sign me up to Brexit, we need to take control of our weather and stop the EU weather coming over here, making it hot. We should threaten to stop our rain going over there because they need our rain more than we need their sun.
My weather apps (BBC, Apple and METCheck) are all predicting thunderstorms again for today and things are starting to get desperate here, yesterday i almost spilt my bottle of Becks in the park when i reached for the suncream. The NHS are warning we need to drink 2.3 to 3 litres a day to stay hydrated and as they never specified what we need to drink, i'm going with beer.
Hopefully the thunderstorms will turn up today so sorry Galileo, thunder bolts and lightning may be very very frightening but i'm hot, tired and cranky and me and Scaramouch will only do the Fandango if we are ankle deep in puddles and the sky is lighting up like a dangerously overloaded Christmas Tree.
Thursday, 26 July 2018
Jesus: The Early Years
I'm not sure who had the responsibility of picking the stories about Jesus to put into the Bible but whoever it was decided to go from born in a manger straight to adulthood and missed out all the teenage angst bits of a teenage Jesus in Nazareth.
The rejected bits that didn't make it in went into another book, the New Testament Apocrypha, a series of tales deemed unfit for inclusion due to being a bit mad.
For example, the first dropped onto the cutting room floor came from the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, Chapter 18 which tells of how a two year old Jesus stopped a horde of scaly, fire-breathing, winged lizard-dragons from eating his friends and family.
The Infancy Gospel of Thomas 3:2-3 tells how whilst five-year-old Jesus was playing beside a small brook with some other children, he got splashed by one of the other kid and in a fit of pique, told him that: 'thou shalt be withered like a tree' and the boy started ageing rapidly and withered away.
Later that day, in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas 4:1 another boy bumped into him on the street and Jesus said: 'Thou shalt not finish thy course' and immediately he fell down dead which some may say seems a bit excessive.
In chapter 18:13-16 of the same book, Jesus comes across a child who had been bitten by a snake and so he stormed after the snake, told it to suck all the poison out of the child and once he had confirmed he had done so, blew the snake up.
The Infancy Gospel of Thomas 5:1 explains how the good people of Nazareth were getting concerned that Jesus was blowing up animals, turning their kids into trees and generally killing them for scuffing his sandals so they went to see his parents, Mary and Joseph, (spoiler: not his real dad) and Jesus reacted in the way only the son of someone who killed everyone on the planet in a massive flood would, he made blind everyone who grassed on him.
Joseph decided that blinding half the townspeople wasn't great for neighbourly relations and 'grabbed his ear and wrung it til it was sore' and told him to uncurse everybody and he was probably grounded for a week and no whatever passed for TV back then.
Compared to his youth, his adult miracles of bread splitting or wine making might seem a bit dull, but that's just because the church decided that the part where Jesus became a person blinding, dragon taming tree creating bad boy was a little unbelievable so just went with the talking snakes and unicorns instead.
The rejected bits that didn't make it in went into another book, the New Testament Apocrypha, a series of tales deemed unfit for inclusion due to being a bit mad.
For example, the first dropped onto the cutting room floor came from the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, Chapter 18 which tells of how a two year old Jesus stopped a horde of scaly, fire-breathing, winged lizard-dragons from eating his friends and family.
The Infancy Gospel of Thomas 3:2-3 tells how whilst five-year-old Jesus was playing beside a small brook with some other children, he got splashed by one of the other kid and in a fit of pique, told him that: 'thou shalt be withered like a tree' and the boy started ageing rapidly and withered away.
Later that day, in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas 4:1 another boy bumped into him on the street and Jesus said: 'Thou shalt not finish thy course' and immediately he fell down dead which some may say seems a bit excessive.
In chapter 18:13-16 of the same book, Jesus comes across a child who had been bitten by a snake and so he stormed after the snake, told it to suck all the poison out of the child and once he had confirmed he had done so, blew the snake up.
The Infancy Gospel of Thomas 5:1 explains how the good people of Nazareth were getting concerned that Jesus was blowing up animals, turning their kids into trees and generally killing them for scuffing his sandals so they went to see his parents, Mary and Joseph, (spoiler: not his real dad) and Jesus reacted in the way only the son of someone who killed everyone on the planet in a massive flood would, he made blind everyone who grassed on him.
Joseph decided that blinding half the townspeople wasn't great for neighbourly relations and 'grabbed his ear and wrung it til it was sore' and told him to uncurse everybody and he was probably grounded for a week and no whatever passed for TV back then.
Compared to his youth, his adult miracles of bread splitting or wine making might seem a bit dull, but that's just because the church decided that the part where Jesus became a person blinding, dragon taming tree creating bad boy was a little unbelievable so just went with the talking snakes and unicorns instead.
Leave Frasier In The 90's
Rebooting 90's shows seems to be becoming a thing with news that plans are afoot to not only bring bring back Buffy but now the brilliant Frasier as well.
I have three concerns for this, the first being the same as Buffy in that Frasier was near on perfect the first time around and so high was the bar that it could never live up to that standard.
Secondly, John Mahoney, who played Frasier's father Martin, died in February and he was a vital cog in the show, the counterfoil to his high-brow, pompous children and without him an integral part will be sadly missing.
Thirdly, the problem is Kelsey Grammer himself who only has to look at Roseanne Barr to see where any possible reboot is heading.
Frasier came off the air 14 years ago, before Twitter and Facebook became the downfall of so many celebrities and Grammer is a die hard Republican and Trump advocate and in an age when old Tweets resurface to destroy reputations, Grammer is going to be moving into a very uncomfortable spotlight.
In 2015 Grammer Instagrammed a photo of himself wearing a T-shirt that likened abortion to gun violence which should be enough to give any executive cold feet about the whole idea and avoid the potential cost and hassle of another Roseanne.
That said i would love to see the excellent David Hyde Pierce back on our screens, a very under-estimated comic actor, but while my heart hopes they do go ahead with it, my brain says leave it in the past because it just can't be anywhere near as good as it was the first time around.
I have three concerns for this, the first being the same as Buffy in that Frasier was near on perfect the first time around and so high was the bar that it could never live up to that standard.
Secondly, John Mahoney, who played Frasier's father Martin, died in February and he was a vital cog in the show, the counterfoil to his high-brow, pompous children and without him an integral part will be sadly missing.
Thirdly, the problem is Kelsey Grammer himself who only has to look at Roseanne Barr to see where any possible reboot is heading.
Frasier came off the air 14 years ago, before Twitter and Facebook became the downfall of so many celebrities and Grammer is a die hard Republican and Trump advocate and in an age when old Tweets resurface to destroy reputations, Grammer is going to be moving into a very uncomfortable spotlight.
In 2015 Grammer Instagrammed a photo of himself wearing a T-shirt that likened abortion to gun violence which should be enough to give any executive cold feet about the whole idea and avoid the potential cost and hassle of another Roseanne.
That said i would love to see the excellent David Hyde Pierce back on our screens, a very under-estimated comic actor, but while my heart hopes they do go ahead with it, my brain says leave it in the past because it just can't be anywhere near as good as it was the first time around.
Wednesday, 25 July 2018
Outdated Song Lyrics
When Communism fell in 1991 it not only bought about wide scale changes on the international stage but it consigned anyone under 30 to wonder what the hell was the USSR that the Beatles were singing about.
Also consigned to the historical dustbin by the flourish of Mikhail Gorbachev's pen was Billy Joel's song 'Leningrad' as they changed the name and replaced the road sign at the entrance of the city with ones which read 'Welcome To St Petersburg'.
A third victim of the changing of the socioeconomic order in Eastern Europe was The Sex Pistols and their song 'Holiday In The Sun' with it's references to the Berlin Wall which judging by the amount of people who own a 'real piece' must have stretched to the moon and back.
I still hear songs from the 90s which mention pagers which mostly belonged to medical staff and for typing the numbers 8008, 5318008, 55378008, 315537 and then turning the pager upside down which never got old to male pager owners it seems.
Even further back Bow Wow Wow sang about 'C30 C60 C90' which were cassette tapes and the number after the C was the length of the tape which determined how many songs that you nicked off the radio for your mix-tape.
The Woolworth's in the X-Ray Spex song 'Warrior in Woolworth's' was a shop back in the day which you could walk in one end and back out the other with a pocketful of nicked pick 'n' mix.
Blondie sang about something called a 'phone booth', which when you explain to teenagers was somewhere where you would insert money into them in order to call somebody, they laugh at the absurdity of the suggestion as they also do at the Beastie Boys '(You Gotta) Fight For Your Right To Party' song and the line about 'your mom threw away your best porno mag' because now rather than
a suspiciously crumpled magazine being passed around the whole school, now it's all at the click of a suspiciously sticky mobile phone button.
Also consigned to the historical dustbin by the flourish of Mikhail Gorbachev's pen was Billy Joel's song 'Leningrad' as they changed the name and replaced the road sign at the entrance of the city with ones which read 'Welcome To St Petersburg'.
A third victim of the changing of the socioeconomic order in Eastern Europe was The Sex Pistols and their song 'Holiday In The Sun' with it's references to the Berlin Wall which judging by the amount of people who own a 'real piece' must have stretched to the moon and back.
I still hear songs from the 90s which mention pagers which mostly belonged to medical staff and for typing the numbers 8008, 5318008, 55378008, 315537 and then turning the pager upside down which never got old to male pager owners it seems.
Even further back Bow Wow Wow sang about 'C30 C60 C90' which were cassette tapes and the number after the C was the length of the tape which determined how many songs that you nicked off the radio for your mix-tape.
The Woolworth's in the X-Ray Spex song 'Warrior in Woolworth's' was a shop back in the day which you could walk in one end and back out the other with a pocketful of nicked pick 'n' mix.
Blondie sang about something called a 'phone booth', which when you explain to teenagers was somewhere where you would insert money into them in order to call somebody, they laugh at the absurdity of the suggestion as they also do at the Beastie Boys '(You Gotta) Fight For Your Right To Party' song and the line about 'your mom threw away your best porno mag' because now rather than
a suspiciously crumpled magazine being passed around the whole school, now it's all at the click of a suspiciously sticky mobile phone button.
Stick To Football Casillas
Footballers are known for their ability to kick a ball into a net or in the case of goalkeeper Iker Casillas, stop the ball from going into the net and all the time they are on the pitch then they are in their comfort zone and applauded.
It is when they come off the pitch and actually try to use their brains that they seem to falter as the Spanish goalkeeper is now discovering after throwing doubt at the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969.
Casillas tweeted 'Next year it will be (supposedly) 50 years after a man stepped on the moon. I'm at a dinner with friends ... arguing about it. I raise the question to the public! Do you think he stepped on [the moon]? I do not!'
We could show him the vast weight of evidence supporting the fact that humans really did land on the Moon multiple times between 1969 and 1972 but it's far easier to just smile politely and wait for further tweets where he explains how Elvis is still alive, JFK was killed by the CIA and how Governments are using Chemtrails to control us.
It is when they come off the pitch and actually try to use their brains that they seem to falter as the Spanish goalkeeper is now discovering after throwing doubt at the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969.
Casillas tweeted 'Next year it will be (supposedly) 50 years after a man stepped on the moon. I'm at a dinner with friends ... arguing about it. I raise the question to the public! Do you think he stepped on [the moon]? I do not!'
We could show him the vast weight of evidence supporting the fact that humans really did land on the Moon multiple times between 1969 and 1972 but it's far easier to just smile politely and wait for further tweets where he explains how Elvis is still alive, JFK was killed by the CIA and how Governments are using Chemtrails to control us.
Tuesday, 24 July 2018
Government Burying The Bad News On Last Day
Governments have two opportunities each Parliament to bury bad news, the first is on the day of a great occasion when the journalists are looking elsewhere and on the last day of Parliament where the Government push out so much info and bury the bad bits inbetween with no time for MPs to summon ministers to explain any highly controversial decisions.
It didn't start well when the Prime Minister tried to bring forward the last day but was voted down by her own members who could see how bad that would sit with the constituents but finally they have gone and let's see what was revealed in those final 21 statements as they made a dash for the door.
There was one called 'machinery of government' which revealed that the Brexit secretary, Dominic Raab, had been stripped of his negotiating role which nobody much cared about with the exception of Dominic Raab but amongst the other announcements was RAF Linton-on-Ouse and RAF Scampton were to be closed, the Transport Secretary announced that the train situation is worsening with
some carriages carrying two-and-a-half times more people than designed for.
Seven more law courts are to shut they announced and the Minister for Defence announced a stop to the contract for five Type 31e frigates risking hundreds of jobs.
Somewhere in the middle was the announcement that fracking got the green light, with shale company Cuadrilla permitted to drill in Lancashire, despite local protests but at the end was what they hoped would be what everyone would concentrate on, the good news story that Public Servants would get a 3.5% pay rise.
By the time everyone had read the fine print that it was only a very few select public servants and the majority would still be given 1.5% and that the money is to come from departmental budgets who would have to further cut backs to pay for it, the Ministers were long gone and by the time they come back in October, the news cycle would have fortunately moved on.
It didn't start well when the Prime Minister tried to bring forward the last day but was voted down by her own members who could see how bad that would sit with the constituents but finally they have gone and let's see what was revealed in those final 21 statements as they made a dash for the door.
There was one called 'machinery of government' which revealed that the Brexit secretary, Dominic Raab, had been stripped of his negotiating role which nobody much cared about with the exception of Dominic Raab but amongst the other announcements was RAF Linton-on-Ouse and RAF Scampton were to be closed, the Transport Secretary announced that the train situation is worsening with
some carriages carrying two-and-a-half times more people than designed for.
Seven more law courts are to shut they announced and the Minister for Defence announced a stop to the contract for five Type 31e frigates risking hundreds of jobs.
Somewhere in the middle was the announcement that fracking got the green light, with shale company Cuadrilla permitted to drill in Lancashire, despite local protests but at the end was what they hoped would be what everyone would concentrate on, the good news story that Public Servants would get a 3.5% pay rise.
By the time everyone had read the fine print that it was only a very few select public servants and the majority would still be given 1.5% and that the money is to come from departmental budgets who would have to further cut backs to pay for it, the Ministers were long gone and by the time they come back in October, the news cycle would have fortunately moved on.
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