Cut Defence Spending: The Rest Of The Post

I wrote a post a few days ago regarding the £15bn increase in defence spending and it was a very short post rubbishing spending more of weapons as i dashed it off while on a vape break outside work on my phone so here is part 2 to put some meat on the bones of why increasing defence and cutting back on other projects to pay for it is just plain wrong.   
For months now all we have heard from some in parliament and military people on the TV is that Britain should spend more on defence and even now after a £15 billion increase to 2.7% of GDP, some are still saying that we should spend far more but funnily enough none are suggesting what should be cut to pay for it.
Keir Starmer said that the increase would come from cutting 'infrastructure projects' which includes roads and energy projects as well as trimming other Parliamentary budgets and as always, the finger is pointed at Russia who are currently embroiled in a war with Ukraine.
Army chiefs claim Russia is intending to march to war across Europe but that absurdity is just a ruse to get taxpayers to consider less being spent elsewhere as a good deal but that has been going on since i can remember with the bogey man just biding their time until they come for us in our beds changing at regular intervals.
After the Cold War ended, Mikhail Gorbachev said to the West: 'I’m very sorry, you’ll have to find a new enemy now' and we have wheeled through many, and even went to war with some, before landing back on Russia again.
The truth is nobody is threatening to annihilate us, we have an impractical £133 billion nuclear capacity which is just sat there never to be used and if it was, would mean the end of us anyway and the billions we currently spend buys a lot of drones and other machinery to attack another nation we find ourselves disagreeing with.  
Why we should have to put up with less being spent on the infrastructure we use every day just so the military can buy more things to kill people with is ludicrous but this Government can never say that they lack the money for anything, but they will.
We must ask do we feel any safer with bigger and better military weapons or would we all be much better off if that money was being spent improving the lot of their citizens, i think if you asked the 20% of the UK population lives in relative poverty, equating to 13.4 million people, including 4 million children, you might get a different answer.
If the Government decide they can afford to spend an extra £15 billion more on rockets, drones and tanks and spend less on building schools, equipping hospitals, hiring police officers, improving roads, improving energy projects or building houses then they should be deciding which is more important and to me, it should never, ever be the damned war equipment. 

Special Guest Blogger: Jason

Listen, everyone talks about the Hero’s Journey like it’s this soul-enriching, transformative experience. They make it sound like a gap year in Bali, but with more bronze swords and fewer sourdough starters.
Let me set the record straight, being a Greek hero is 10% divine favor and 90% trying not to get incinerated while your crew of legendary ego-maniacs argues about who gets the most legroom on a boat.
I’m Jason. You might know me from such hits as the Quest for the Golden Fleece and that all started because my Uncle Pelias was a jerk. I showed up in Iolcus wearing one sandal (long story, involved a disguised Hera and a very muddy riverbank)and instead of saying, Welcome home, nephew, Pelias said, You look like a guy who wants to go to the edge of the known world to steal a magical sheepskin from a king who hates everyone.
So, I did what any rational youth would do and pulled together the Argonauts. We’re talking Heracles,  Orpheus and the Boreads twins and after dodging harpies and Clashing Rocks that tried to turn the Argo into a giant toothpick, we finally arrived in Colchis. The King, Aeetes, was... let’s call him difficult.
I told him I wanted the Golden Fleece to reclaim my kingdom. He told me I could have it, provided I completed a few light chores.
These chores were not mow the lawn or take out the bins but included plowing a field with two metallic Fire-Breathing Bulls which are just like regular bulls but these could turn your face into a charcoal briquette but thankfully Aeetes daughter, Medea, gave me some magic ointment that would stop me from melting.
Then sowing Dragon’s Teeth which almost immediately grew into a crop of fully-armored, extremely grumpy warriors, the Spartoi, who were so damned grumpy they fought amongst themselves and completely eliminated each other and after the bulls and the harvest of warriors, i had to defeat a dragon that never slept who was guarding the fleece.
I drew my sword, ready to do something brave and probably fatal but  Medea, bless her, pulled out some magical herbs and sang a little song. The dragon’s eyes started to droop. Ten seconds later, the Eternal Guardian was snoring so loud it was shaking the pine trees.
I grabbed the Fleece and ran for the Argo and rowed like our lives depended on it. Which they did.
So, Was It Worth It? The thing about being a hero is that it doesn't really have a happily ever after button because when we got back i hooked up with a princess called Creusa which my ex girlfriend Medea never took very well and presented to Creusa a cursed dress as a wedding gift that stuck to her body and burned her to death as soon as she put it on and killed her father and our two sons and I died when the rotting hull of the Argo fell on me when I was sleeping so if a woman helps you defeat fire-breathing bulls and a dragon, maybe don't try to leave her for a younger woman, that doesn't end well for anyone.

Let's End The World Cup Now

With the extra teams shoehorned in, we can all agree the World Cup has gone on far too long, so let's end it now because it monopolises our time, sleeping habits, eating and drinking patterns and generally leaves everyone tired for work the next day.
No one wants to stay up for a 2am BST kick-off or even attempt to watch a couple of games a day so can't we just say congratulations France and get back to enjoying baking in our houses for the rest of this Summer.
Us Englanders can try to lie to ourselves that it is worthwhile watching Harry Kane and Jude Bellingham do their bit, but it is all completely forlorn because we may just about struggle past Ghana, Paraguay and DR Congo but we all know that the first halfway decent team we play (and it is Mexico in Mexico next), we will be on the plane back to Blighty so ending the World Cup now will save a lot of needless heartache for us and every other team and the players will get some much-needed rest before the business of the Premier League starts up again in August.
To make it fair, just share the silver medals between those teams still in it and lets avoid Mbappé, Dembélé and Olise prising open the opposing defences like a cheap tin of Corned Beef so let's choose the Worlds best team now and let us get some sleep.

Special Guest Blogger: Jimmy Carter

When a man in a small town in Georgia says he is going to run for president most people assume he’s either a bold optimist or a prankster. When I announced my candidacy back in 1976, the peanut growers in Plains could barely contain their excitement because a lot of us thought that campaign trail might finally involve a good stretch of blacktop for hauling our harvests to market. Little did I know that the trail I would eventually walk would be a bit messier than any dirt road.
If you ask any kid in the 1970s what a president does, they probably picture a man in a suit, a stovepipe hat, and a silver tongue but in January 1977, while the nation was still wrestling with the aftershocks of Vietnam and the energy crisis, I was sneaking a few bags of peanuts into the West Wing. I’d packed them in a briefcase, hidden beneath a stack of Energy Policy memos, and whispered to the Secret Service that if the world blows up, at least we’ll have a snack.
The Iran hostage crisis left a sour taste in my mouth that no amount of roasted peanuts could remedy. Sixteen Americans held captive for 444 days but in 2002 the Nobel Committee decided that a former president who had never started a war deserved recognition.
When I left office, one of the ideas I carried home was simple, a nation’s power isn’t measured by the size of its military arsenal and I  spent my post-presidential years traveling to places that most presidents would consider off-limits, North Korea, Cuba, the Middle East but I have to mention the elephant, or the orange, in the room.
I’ve never been one for naming and shaming I prefer gentle persuasion, soft-spoken reason, and a steady hand on the plow but when a president turns the presidency into a nation’s version of The Jerry Springer Show, I can't stay quiet.
When I first saw Trump’s campaign rally (a sea of red hats and a man with a hairdo that seemed to have been designed by a wind tunnel), I thought this is a man who sales himself as a sack of peanuts that’s golden, buttery, hand-roasted only to discover that they’re actually raw, unsalted, and have been sitting in a warehouse for three years.
You might think that life after presiding over the free world would be a perpetual carnival of speeches, memoirs, and endless applause but in truth the fact that I never added Bomb Maker to Peanut Farmer on my resume is my highlight and the way i treated my Presidency like a Peanut Harvert, I sowed ideas, watered them with dialogue and weeded out the misinformation, and eventually reaped the results whether they’re sweet or a little salty.

Cut Defence Spending, Not Increase It

He may be on the way out but Keir Starmer today announced a £15bn defence plan but said some infrastructure projects will 'no longer go ahead as planned'.
Maybe it is a good idea that I am not in charge because Defence spending would be way down my list of priorities, to me spending £80bn a year on things to kill people, while scrapping some road and energy projects to fund it is obscene.
In a World where we are spending 2.7% of GDP on weapons to destroy and kill while only 0.5% on Aid to save lives makes me think something has gone very, very wrong with our priorities.

10 Years Of Brexit

The 10 year Anniversary of that toxic Brexit vote has just passed where the country, or rather 52% of us, swallowed the lie that we would be better off outside the European Union rather than it in and learnt the hard way, that we aren't.
The Labour Government, worried that the wounds are still too fresh to open a debate of rejoining the EU, has been slowly realigning ourselves with Brussels with agreements to ease trade frictions, closer regulatory cooperation, security partnerships, selective participation in EU programmes and a gradual unwinding of bureaucratic barriers but know that whatever we agree on, it will always be inferior to full participation in the European Union.
For the United Kingdom, the costs are hard to ignore with persistently weaker growth, lower levels of investment and a diminished capacity to shape the very rules that continue to affect it.
The EU recently made an offer that we could rejoin on the same basis as that when we left but rather than snap their hands off, Labour  saw a still politically sensitive issue and politely turned it down.
At some point we will have to rejoin, the other option is persisting with the current arrangement and the economic stagnation and polls are showing that the rejoiners is outweighing the leavers and the longer we refuse to accept our future is with our nearest neighbours, then the poorer we will be for longer.

Special Guest Blogger: Wayne Osmond

If you’ve ever heard a teenage boy in the 1970s belt out One Bad Apple while wearing a jumpsuit that could double as a parachute, you probably already know me.
If you’ve never heard a teenage boy in the 1970s belt out One Bad Apple while wearing a jumpsuit that could double as a parachute, you’re about to get an exclusive, behind-the-curtain look at the wild ride that was my life.
I was a singer, a brother and the unofficial family spokesman of a family who grew up in Ogden, Utah, the fourth-oldest of nine kids. Our house sounded like a choir rehearsal that had been left on repeat for 24/7.
The bathroom was our first studio. The tiles reflected my voice back at me with the enthusiasm of a supportive audience (or a cheap echo chamber, depending on how you look at it). I remember my first performance which was  a rendition of He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands that left my mother clutching the sink for dear life. She later told me that if a baby had been born that day with that voice, it would have been put up for adoption. I take that as a compliment.
Fast forward to eighth grade and I had discovered the power of a good hair flip and in 1970, I was 15, still figuring out how to tie a tie and me and three of my brothers (Alan, Merrill, and Jay) began singing as a barbershop quartet when our family signed with MGM Records as a white version of the Jackson 5. Suddenly, we were the answer to every parent’s prayer for wholesome entertainment. We were on TV, on tour, and on every family’s ‘70s mixtape.
It’s hard to separate family from business when you’re the Osmonds. We’re basically the musical equivalent of a Swiss Army knife where there’s a tool for everything, but you sometimes end up cutting yourself on the fork.
After the family’s massive commercial in the early 1970s performing a variety of pop genres as teen idols, we transitioned into rock music for several albums and then we split and while some of my brothers went into putting out country music but I decided it was time to step out of the shadow of the Osmond brand and into my own. I recorded Wayne Osmond in 2002, a collection of songs that ranged from heartfelt ballads to a surprisingly catchy disco-rock number called Disco Inferno.
The album didn’t top the Billboard charts but it gave me a chance to sing my own songs, and not have to coordinate choreography with eight other family members but in  1997 it all came to a screeching halt when I was diagnosed with a brain tumor which was successfully treated at the expense of my hearing, leaving me deaf.
I may not have been able to hear it properly but I still played the guitar until 2012 when stroke took away that away and then another fatal one in 2025 which took away everything.

Brilliant Anti-Trump World Cup Chants

It is being said that Dementia Donny is staying away from the World Cup Games, and especially those involving English speaking countries, because of the chants being sung about him.  
White House officials are claimed to be attempting to shield Trump from the hostility on the terraces, particularly from fans of English-speaking nations and he is famously touchy about basically everything from his many, many appearances alongside the other pedophiles in the Trumpstein Files to his obesity and silly hair, so American TV Companies are muting the crowd noise on TV transmissions but that doesn't stop some sneaking through in mobile phone videos, and there have been some crackers in the group stages.
In recent months, he has had to contend with widespread booing whenever he attends major sporting events in America, but this is another level entirely and the English went with the rather crude 'He's Fat, He's got piles and he's in the Epstein Files, Trump's a C*nt, Trump's a C*nt' as well as: 'Trumps just a big fat pedo, Trump's just a big fat pedo' to the chorus of White Stripes Seven Nations Army and the basic to the point 'Orange Pedo Bastard'.
The Australians were a bit more tuneful with their: 'Aussie boys we're on a bender, Donald Trump is a sex offender' but so far the best has to be Scotland.
They began with: 'He’s orange, he’s bald, He likes them 12 years old, Donald Trump, Donald Trump' but they really peaked with the inspired 'Donald's shit his trousers' to the tune of 'Donald where your troosers'.
With a few weeks left i am looking forward to what Football fans came dream up to further insult the almost certain orange pedophile in the White House and find myself really hoping England or Australia make it to the Final to hear them for himself where he is sure to show his bloated face.

Special Guest Blogger: Phrixus

I was born in the kingdom of Boeotia, son of King Athamas and his lovely wife, the cloud-shaped goddess Nephele who was the dream-girl who could summon clouds on demand while Athamas was a solid, if somewhat gullible, ruler who believed anything that glittered.
Enter Ino, the second wife, who entered my life with all the subtlety of a thunderbolt. She was a firebrand, a political operant and apparently had a very specific talent for turning family gatherings into dramas. When she decided that I (and my sister Helle) were a threat to her own children’s inheritance, she promptly commissioned a wicked scheme involving a cursed grain seed. The idea? Starve us to death, then blame it on a divine punishment.
My mother, who could have turned the whole scene into a fluffy white cloud of denial, was forced to flee the kingdom while Ino was setting up the first recorded instance of step-mother sabotage. From a mother who could conjure clouds to a step-mother who wanted to starve you, Greek families were the original drama queens.
When the kingdom’s wheat fields turned into a landscape of wilted ghosts, I found myself in a very precarious situation. The only way out? A ram that could literally fly and this was a golden ram, not a regular one. The fleece was shimmering and the horns were pure gold.
The ram appeared out of thin air (or maybe the gods—see below) and offered us the ultimate upgrade 'Hop on, folks, I’m headed to Colchis' and Helle, my sweet yet clumsy sister, leapt aboard first, full of excitement but i was more cautious.
The ride, however, was not the usual and a gust of wind threw Helle off the back. She fell into the sea, which was later named the Hellespont in her honor, a kind of ancient dedicated to the memory of.
I, on the other hand, clung to the ram’s fleece like a hamster to a plastic ball. The creature swooped over the Aegean, performed a few unasked for barrel rolls, and eventually dropped me on the shores of Colchis.
Colchis, as you may know, is modern-day Georgia and in my day, it was the hottest destination for heroic tourists with sun, sea, and a king who made sure no one left without a souvenir.
King Aeëtes, ruler of Colchis, greeted me with the same hospitality you’d expect from a host who just learned that a golden fleece has been gift-wrapped by a foreigner.
He was a man of refined tastes, he liked fine robes, solid gold thrones, and most importantly a golden ram as a tribute to his ancestral line. When I showed him the fleece left by the animal, Aeëtes accepted.
Now, I’m told that the Golden Fleece later became the centerpiece of the famous Argonautic Expedition with Jason and his merry band of misfits spending years hunting down the fleece, battling Harpies, and solving riddles that would make even modern escape rooms look like child’s play.
But let’s focus on me. My role in the whole saga? The first Golden Fleece supplier and then i settled down ro work as a Shepherd, Wine Merchant but settled on sitting on a hilltop, sipping fermented grape juice, and offering unsolicited life advice to passing travelers and became a footnote in Jason’s epic later quest.

Fridge Socks

The surface of the Sun is 5500°C and i had the misfortune to spend the day in Central London today where the temperature was just a tad under that.
Thankfully the heatwave is due to break this weekend but we still have to make it through the sweaty armpits and sleepless nights to get there but the Red Cross have offered some helpful hints to stay cool, and one of them is wear socks.
People tend to put socks on to keep them warm but the Red Cross say that to keep cool at night during very hot weather, put a pair of socks in the fridge during the day and slip them on your feet before getting into bed.
There is some science behind it apparently because research has shown that putting your feet in cold water is a way of reducing your core temperature so cooling your feet is a good way of cooling your whole body.
I normally put my pillow case in the fridge for an hour before going to bed which gives you a 15 minute window to drop off before it warms up but after a yoghurt related incident i am very careful about it.  
Apart from the new twist of footwear, the Red Cross does have other tips for how to keep cool at night in a heatwave such as sleep on the lowest level of your home due to the heat rising, wear as few clothes as possible and also turn off electrical devices, which can generate heat.
They also say to avoid alcohol and caffeine in the evening, drink plenty of water to stay hydrated and take a lukewarm or cool shower to bring down your body temperature before going to bed although they don't explain if you should wear your socks in the shower cubicle.
Anyway, might be worth a try and you never know, if you are not careful then your feet may smell of Blueberry Yoghurt by the morning.