Omicron On It's Way To UK

I have always given the Government the benefit of the doubt with the Coronavirus when they said that their main target was to stop the NHS being overwhelmed, to me the main target should be to stop people dying but if we stretch their comment then if the NHS is overwhelmed then people will die as they cannot be treated so i cut them some slack on that one.
Now with the new Omicron Variant worrying enough scientists that it will be able to evade the vaccines we were banking on to return to some sort of normality, it feels like we have taken an almighty step backwards and there was one scientist on TV this morning saying  that the mutations are so numerous that it could be considered a new virus altogether, COVID-21.
It's still early days and the scientists are still gathering the data so it would be irresponsible to jump to any conclusions until we have all the details but many nations have already decided that it is worrying enough to bring down some of the shutters they had tentatively been lifting recently.
Here in the UK the Government, hopefully learning a lesson from their previous awful decisions and horrific death-toll, have rolled back on some of the restrictions they recklessly threw out completely in July with face masks being mandated again in certain situations and booster jabs considered being offered earlier than the six months gap although the advice from their own science advisors is that they need to go much further.
We have a new Health Secretary, Sajid Javid, after the last one was photographed breaking his own Covid rules with a female 'friend' who wasn't his wife, and Sajid was on TV over the weekend saying that: 'The reason we've set out these measures is to protect the progress we've made so we can all continue to enjoy Christmas with our families'.
Hmmm...with around 150 people a day still dying from Coronavirus in the UK, and with 26 days until Christmas that’s approximately 4,000 people whose families will be sadly having an extra seat at the Christmas Dinner this year, the Government obviously are happy enough to accept that devastating figure and maintain the status quo to avoid bringing in tougher restrictions which would affect the progress we have made.
We know by that they mean the economy, it was the reason they threw the restrictions out in July, they even made the case a few weeks ago that we won't be affected so badly by another wave which was building in mainland Europe because our figures are already so high and when your argument against stopping something awful happening is because things here are already so awful, you will always find it hard to argue with the absurd mentality behind it.
Hopefully the Omicron variant will not be as game changing as feared but if it isn't it will be despite Boris and his gang rather than because of them and we can look forward to Christmas and staying with the appalling 55,000 Covid deaths a year the Government are willing to tolerate.

Special Guest Blogger: Greek God Dionysus

I was the God of Sex, Wine and getting off your face drunk and not necessarily in that order but i blame my parents because things were compicated even before i was born.
My mum Semele had a one night thing with Zeus (who didn't) but he was married to Hera who made him appear before my mum in all his robes of radiant glory and as mortals cannot look upon the gods without incinerating, she was consumed in a lightning-ignited flame which frazzled her to a cinder, leaving an unborn baby, me, which Zeus, full of remorse and guilt, popped it into his thigh for safe keeping.
When i was finally born from the top of his leg i was called Dionysus, Hera called me something else altogether and sent some babysitting Titans to tear me apart and eat me.
Rhea, bless her, managed to save me by disguising me as a girl and whisked me away to be brought up in secrecy but Hera discovered the plot, turned me into a ram and gave me as a plaything to a band of nymphs.
So yeah, being born twice, the second time from my fathers thigh and then finding you have four legs, horns and a woolly coat can mess a kid up a bit but i did later get given a more befitting body and while being raised by a bunch of ever-attendant nymphomaniac Nymphs, i discovered i could do two very important things, make wine and make orgasms which could drive you to the brink of madness.
My lover Ariadne was especially thrilled but we drifted apart when she turned into a constellation and the next few years were spent hard drinking, and driving excited females into a frenzy. The orgy-making was as popular as ever but it did get me into a lot of trouble with the authorities and jealous husbands and i headed for Rome and laid low until i emerged as Bacchus.
As Bacchus we held the Bacchanalia festivals which were basically just massive drunken orgies but some of my other responsibilities was for orchards and fruit and vegetation and i was the man who could grow anything big and strong so i am firmly the number one God for vegetables

Special Guest Blogger: Arthur John Priest

I was a common, down to earth salt of the earth worker and my language could get a bit fruity so Lucy has turned on the swearing filter which is bullshirt but what the fork, it's her blog.
I always said that death comes for us all but that doesn't mean you have to go out like a chump, just do what i did and look death in the face, give it the two finger salute and say 'Not today you son of a bench, try again later'.
I was a stoker and a forking good one, i would tend the furnace, the backbone of steam-powered ocean travel and i was in high demand and got assigned to the new fangled Titanic and let me tell you something about the Titanic, people forget that on the maiden voyage there were over 1000 miles of uneventful, very pleasurable cruising before it hit that forking great iceberg.
By the time i made it out of the boiler room, they were fresh out of rafts and life vests and i was hauled out the Atlantic by a life boat before i was turned into a human ice cube like most of the other poor barstools. My cigarettes were wet which really forked me off but i survived with only a bout of hypothermia and i completely lost my sense of taste and began listening to a lot of Jazz.
I went back to work on the merchant vessel Alcantara and, what do you know, it happened again after it had been commandeered into military service during WWI until it was sunk by the ash-hole Germans.
My next assignment was on the HMHS Asturias which sunk after being hit by another forking German torpedo, and then i was next on the HMHS Britannic which was kitted out to be a Hospital Ship and down that went after the shirt for brains captain steered us into a German mine.
The next ship i was moved onto was the SS Donegal which someone upstairs must have been watching over and then decided to fork with me by sinking it with another German torpedo.
After wringing out yet another pair of trousers i did begin to ponder if i had chosen the right career path so after some other further close calls and collisions, i decided almost five times was enough and finally quit while i was still alive which came as a great relief to every other sailor wishing to avoid sharing a boat with me.
I lived out the rest of my life on land and died of pneumonia but as my story got told i was often asked when i do finally die did i want my body to be donated for research but i'd say fork that, i want it to go to a scientist who is working on bringing dead bodies back to life.

Special Guest Blogger: Saint Catherine of Alexandria

I was born into nobility in Alexandria, Egypt which at the time was one of the finest cities in the world, and a center of learning and culture as well as faith, mostly faith to be fair, but because of my privileged birth, i naturally received the best and most exclusive education available at the time and the newest religion, Christianity, which was the new thing around town and one day i was instructed by my teacher to pray to Christ, fast and keep vigil for the entire night and to tell the class about it the next day.
Being a good girl, i did and during the night experienced a vision of Mary, the Mother of the Lord and the Christ-child who gave me a golden ring and told me to spread the word of God.
Not too long after this, i came across a public event held at a pagan temple and the Emperor Maxentius was directing the killing of animals as sacrifices so i went up to him and gave him an awful earful about killing God's creatures.  
Now Maxentius was not known for his ability to take an earful without removing something from the earful giver but rather than send my head skittering across the temple floor, he ordered fifty of his foremost philosophers to debate their truth against mine.
Back and forth we went, my Bible teachings against whatever toilet roll book they had until the Emperor grew bored and ordered all fifty of his philosophers be beheaded.
As they knelt awaiting the executioner, i made the sign of the cross on their heads with oil and they looked up at me and asked if they converted to my faith, would my God protect them from their fate, i said 'nah' and to prove my point 50 heads with oily marks on them went rolling away.
The Emperor had another fate for me and devised a wheel of spikes which he planned to torture me on until i changed my mind on the whole God thing by spinning me around on it but the moment i touched the device, it fell apart.
My lack of slow and painful death only further maddened the emperor who rather confusingly tried to win me over by proposing marriage but i refused so he reverted to a good old fashioned head chopping but the spiked wheel is a popular symbol often associated with me.
The pyrotechnic Catherine wheel, which rotates with sparks flying off in all directions, took its name from the wheel they tried to kill me on which on reflection seems a tad inappropriate.

Special Guest Blogger: Egyptian God Ra

When i heard Lucy was going around all the other ancient Gods i knew that there would be lots of explanations put forward to how the Earth and everything got here and i am fine with that, would be boring if there was only one god and there have been thousands of religions and each has a way of explaining things but we all know the truth and i am here to explain it and you can thank me later by burning a few virgins or whatever, that's up to you, i won't turn them down.    
In the beginning there was nothing except a great, chaotic ocean and a huge pyramidal mound with a Lotus flower which blossomed and out i dropped bringing light with me.
Now being the first being is all very nice but pretty lonely so i created Shu, the god of the air and Tefnut the goddess of rain and sent them off to have a bit of a nosey around but they were gone for ages and i was getting a bit concerned so when they came back i was so happy i cried and human beings were born from my tears.
Now with lots of humans milling around i had to find somewhere to stash them all so we created Geb, the god of the Earth, and Nut, the goddess of the sky and thus the sky and the earth were created but the Earth needed a source of heat to grow their crops so as the top God i decided it was up to me to create the Sun which i did by throwing my eye up into the sky to create it but schooloboy error, i had to keep it moving across the sky so i made myself two barges to drag the Sun across the sky and also to drag it through the Duat or underworld back to the East so it could rise again in the morning.
Now the Duat was full of nasties such as the massive snake Apophis who would try and eat the Sun because he was an idiot like that and one time he did, causing an eclipse but he literally couldn't stomach it and spat it back up again, doesn't stop him trying though.
By now the kids were having kids and i was feeling my age so left them to it while i semi-retired and just concentrated on sailing across the sky in my boats and winding through the Underworld's twelve gates without getting zapped by malevolent hideous monsters and generally lazing around sunbathing and recounting my night time adventures with whichever of the Grandkids joined me that day.
As the new religions came along many Gods tried to get in on the act by adding my name to theirs for the glory but we know the truth and you only have to look up at the Sun, that’s my eye there, it's called the Eye of Ra so that's a clue and the damn things moves across the sky and i am sure human scientists have tried to explain it with science which always gives me a chuckle.
Now, about those deep fried virgins you promised...

Special Guest Blogger: Anna Maria Helena

The best medical facilities in my day meant getting a splinter was enough of a reason to go scurrying around booking your own plot at the cemetery, ordering some tasteful wreaths from the florist and chiselling your own epitaph on a headstone before climbing into your own coffin, getting comfortable and sliding the lid shut which is why i came up with my own medical techniques.
My family were headed by Henry Baring of the bank fame and i married into the French aristocracy so we were astoundingly wealthy, owning houses in several countries including the South of France where we would spend our Winters because the English weather was awful and all those leaves just laying about were not healthy and i knew all about health matters.
Around that time vaccines were becoming popular and held up as the saviour against all manner of diseases but i told my doctor that was stuff and nonsense and i had heard some rubbish in my time, every time you open your mouth as a matter of fact, but sticking tiny needle in one's arm will stop them catching polio? Madness! I will stick to my tried and tested method of breathing in cows farts thank you very much.
Although you would never find it written in any medical journals, inhaling large doses of methane fresh from a cow's bum was the route to a long and healthy life so to that end, i kept a herd of cows outside of our bedroom so i could be sure to get the full benefits of their gas.
As well as bovine flatulence, dead squirrels tied around the head of a night prevented me getting wrinkles and used onions on doorknobs guarded against infection and nothing greets you in the morning like the smell of cow trumps, rotting squirrels and onions, thats the aroma of healthy living my friend.
Our only child died young, not enough cow pumps was not the diagnosis, but i knew different but one Autumn i saw a painting of a beautiful young peasant girl in a Paris salon and did the rational thing of purchasing the seven-year-old child for two bags of gold and the promise that she would receive an education and a standard of living that were superior to what her parents could have provided.
The child grew up into a beautiful and successful woman, thanks to only being allowed to drink milk from cows personally selected by me and her faintly smelling of cow butt never hurt.
I died in my 82nd year which is about 150 in today's years but on my death i left a large portion of my money to an orphanage for the daughters of clergymen because no matter how rich you are it sucks to fork over a large percentage of your estates finances to politicians who might use it to build roads, but also probably use it to buy whipped cream to cover prostitutes in it but it did come with some conditions obviously.
The girl's must drinking plenty of milk, study phrenology to ensure a firm spirit and conscientiousness and no girl under 10 should be taught Maths because unless they planned on sewing leather patches onto their cardigans and becoming Maths teachers, they will never actually use Pi, Calculus or Pythagoras and could be learning something more useful instead, such as how to turn a squirrel into a headband.

Special Guest Blogger: Saint Columbanus

I was never much of a people person, i was much more at home communicating with animals and the more dangerous the better but in Ireland the most dangerous thing we had was a badger after Saint Patrick had driven all the snakes out so i bopped around Ireland for a few decades and decided to try my hand in Europe so got permission to travel to the continent.
I made a home in the forests of Gaul and my Irish version of Catholicism was pretty well received and the community expanded and drew more pilgrims, so i would often disappear for weeks on to avoid the crowds to a cave miles away with a messenger who would run between me and the commnunity.
Just me, an out of puff messenger and the lovely cute animals but over time my influence grew and the Frankish bishops didn't like that my version of Catholicism was ever-so slightly different to theirs, mostly the dates of Easter as they used a different calendar to us Irish folk and they also objected to my haircut. Seriously, they complained about my hair style which was shaved at the top and a thin ring of hair going around the head.
The King sent soldiers to drive me back to Ireland but i managed to escape and went on a Europe wide tour across France, Austria and into Lombard, Italy where i was given a secluded tract of land in the Mountain forests and set about converting the people of Northern Italy and spending time with the animals.
I would roam the forests with birds flying around my head and landing on my shoulders while squirrels would run up and down my robes and nest in my cowl but i wasn't some sort of hippie because my control over animals didn't stop with the adorable ones.
While walking through the forest one day, i was confronted by a dozen hungry wolves, probably attracted by all the tasty birds and squirrels that followed me around everywhere to be fair, but they laid down and allowed me and my menagerie to pass unharmed.
Another time i went to a cave for a bit of a lay down but it already had a resident, a whacking great hibernating bear but it was a very nice cave so i woke it up and ordered it to leave the cave which it did. After seeing what it had left in the corner i wish i had also told it from now, do your business in the woods buster.
I later came across another bear, might have been the same one, they all look the same to me, which was feasting on the carcass of a deer so deciding that i had got enough picking pine needles out of my feet, nicely asked the bear not to harm the skin of the deer so that i could use it to make a new pair of shoes.
My final bear interaction was to tie a plow to one and get it to plow the monasteries fields so you would assume that when i died later i would be the Saint of bears or animals or even embarrassing haircuts (the mullet, come on, your telling me that's not worth asking for help to sort out) but they put me in charge of hearing the prayers made by motorcyclists due to my traveling although i am depicted in most stained glass windows as palling around with a bear and not some leather clad greaser on a Harley Davidson.

Special Guest Blogger: Saint Marina the Monk

As the child of wealthy parents, i didn't want for anything but after my mother died my very devout Christian father raised me and as i approached marriageable age, my father intended to find me a husband and then retire to the Monastery of Qannoubine in the Kadisha Valley of Lebanon.
When i learned of his plan i asked why can't i live as a monk with him and he explained as monks are men it literally took balls to become a monk and i didn't own a pair of them so i hatched a plan and shaved my head, changed into men's clothes and called myself Marinos and he was like all whatever, Monks wear baggy robes and aren't in the habit of poking about at each other's genitals so took me with him to the monastery.
The other monks never suspected i wasn't male and attributed my soft voice to long periods of prayer so i got away with it pretty easily for a while and all was sweet up until my father died and i was given more responsibility by the Abbot such as attending business with other monasteries in the area.
One day, the Abbot sent me to attend to some business in another region but as the journey was long, i was to spend the night at an inn.
That night, the only other lodger was a soldier of the eastern Roman front who disappeared into the room of the inn keeper's daughter, seduced her several times from what i could hear through the thin walls, and as neither of them used protection because it hadn't been invented yet, instructing her to say that if she got pregnant, then to blame the cute young smooth-faced monk monk down the hall.
As it turns out she was and she did blame me and the Abbot banished me from the Monastery and i could have explained that anatomically it couldn't have been me but my mouth, unlike the innkeepers daughters legs, stayed firmly shut and i decided to take responsibility for the baby and the monastery expelled me for getting a woman pregnant and i lived outside the gates as a beggar taking care of the kid.
The other monks convinced the Abbot to allow me to return as long as i did all the cooking, cleaning and carrying water in addition to regular monastic duties and caring for the child which i did until i became ill and died.  
The Abbot ordered that my body be cleaned, my clothes changed and that i be transferred to the church for prayers and it was while they were undressing me for burial they made a discovery which made them feel like dicks, or rather not feeling one, which alerted them that i was a woman, so no penis and therefore no pregnancy
I have not yet been assigned anything to be patron saint of but there is talk of me becoming the saint of something called the LBGT community which as far as i am aware is women who like a Bacon, Lettuce and Tomato sandwich only they have a little extra gherkin.

Quantum Computing Next Big Thing Apparently

Boris Johnson has announced that the UK is going to 'go big' on quantum computing which apparently is the next big leap forward in computing so as with anything with computers, i contacted a Tech expert and asked him 'So Quantum Computing...WTF'?
As usual there was a lot of sighing from him and lots of me saying things like 'What???' but i think i got the jist of it, or more than likely i never, but here's how i took it.
So normal computing uses a string of binary, represented as a 0 or a 1, that are transmitted to the processor which encodes them in sequential order but a quantum computer encodes the combinations of 1s and 0s at the same time therefore performing the tasks much quicker.
The previous most powerful quantum computer achieved 66 simultaneous combinations but IBM have recently achieved a new record with 127 combinations encoded simultaneously with the goal of reaching 1,000 by 2023.
German carmaker Daimler have used a quantum computer to model new lithium batteries and my guy agrees that as computers pretty much do everything now, being able to do it 1,000 times faster will have massive implications for us which is nice but i will just be happy if i can get one that doesn't hang
if you try to run Microsoft Word and an Excel Spreadsheet at the same time.

What Am I Missing In The Rittenhouse Case?

I can only assume that i am missing something important about the Kyle Rittenhouse not-guilty verdict in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
His defence was that he was acting in self defence when he shot 3 people, killing two of them, at a Black Lives Matter protest in in August 2020.
Rittenhouse travelled 20 miles to Kenosha to the protests and took his AR-15-style semi-automatic rifle with him and walked the streets amidst the protests carrying his weapon.
Video shown in the court shows Rittenhouse pointed his weapon at the first victim, Joseph Rosenbaum, who threw a plastic bag at him and then ran at him before Rittenhouse shot him four times.
The second victim was Anthony Huber who hit Rittenhouse with his skateboard and tried to grab the gun off him after he pointed it at him and his girlfriend, Rittenhouse emptied a round of his weapon into Huber.
Now i know America has some bat-shit crazy gun laws but if you take a semi-automatic weapon to a protest, then point that weapon at people, how are you acting in self-defence if you are responsible for creating and putting yourself in that position in the first place?
If he felt his life was in danger because two unarmed men confronted him, one with a skateboard and one with a plastic bag after he pointed his weapon at them, where is their right of self defence? Surely they felt their lives where in even more danger when someone aimed a semi-automatic weapon at them?
As i said maybe i am missing something here but it seems to be a common theme now in America that as it was black men that were killed by a white man, it's not a crime.
Obviously the ridiculous gun lobby backed Rittenhouse, Guns of America have offered to give Rittenhouse a free AR-15 rifle, similar to the one used to murder the two people that night but more frighteningly for black Americans, it sets a precedent for white guys who have watched too many Rambo films to not only provoke a dangerous situation but they then have the justification to murder the person they provoked.  
I don't get it but then i have never understood American gun logic, the deplorable pure racism over there sure, but the mad and screwy gun-nut logic, i never got my head around that.