Can't Fat Shame A Fat Shamer

I have long been a supporter of Donald Trump's efforts to rise from the Third Fattest President ever to the second and i have to admit that his efforts are going well because in recent pictures, lets just say that Melania has certainly been busy letting out the seams on his already XXXL suits.
With his Medical record putting his weight at 239 lbs (17 stone or 108kg), if we suspend belief and go with that, he is still medically obese which is a good starting point to get to the required 280 lbs (20 stone or 127kg) to replace Grover Cleveland in the silver place but some people may think this is fat shaming the President but that is a weak argument because there are plenty of other things to shame him about, such as him being almost certainly a pedophile, a convicted sex pest, liar, fraudster, fascist and having the intelligence and business acumen of a role of sellotape so his morbidly obese weight is way down the list of things to throw at him.  
That said, i don't want to be accused of fat shaming so i just use some of the words the massively rotund fatso said about other people in what Psychologists call narcissistic projection.
That goes that Trump is a crook so he calls other people crooks, he’s a liar so he calls other people liars, he’s a complete ignoramus so he calls other people stupid, you get the idea so his obsession with other people’s weight is another manifestation because he's a very overweight man who calls other people overweight.
So he has 'got a bit large' (aimed at Kim Kardashian) and has a 'fat, ugly face' (said about Rosie McDonnell) due to his overeating and lack of exercise he has got 'bloated, fat, disgusting' (this was his description of the Americans Federal workforce) and resembles 'Miss Piggy' that would be former Miss Universe Alicia Machado' and has a 'fat arse' (Jennifer Lopez) and as he told one of his own supporters  
at a rally, 'That guy’s got a serious weight problem. Go home, start exercising!'
There you have it then, you can't fat shame a  fat shamer so keep going Donald because as the recent photographs show, having those family dinners for four even when  there aren't three other people with you is certainly working.

Here Comes The Ai

Artificial intelligence systems can now convince you they are human apparently as two large language models have passed the Turing test, which determines if a machine can 'show the same intelligence as a human being'.
According to men with pens in their top pockets this is a significant and troubling development in AI as they can now raise their own questions of what’s real and what isn’t.
Researchers tested four Ai Systems to see if they could distinguish if the answerer at the other end was human or a machine and if the individual cannot tell them apart, the machine is considered to have passed the test and all four passed and were able to effectively imitate people in short interactions.
The AI exhibited the same tone, directness, humor and fallibility as humans and displayed convincing social behavioral traits, which has major implications for how we think of AI' stated the researchers.
AI models passing for humans is a concerning development because the models seem to be really good at it which raises the risk of counterfeit people and we need to be more alert and i know that that in 2007 Google launched the Learning Unit Correspondence Program (LUCP) to see if Ai could create Blog posts which could be trained to read newspaper articles, pay attention to how those words relate to one another and then predict what words it thinks will come next and build that into a Blog post but I never heard anymore about that so not sure what happened to it.

Special Guest Blogger: Sven-Goran Eriksson

If you’ve ever asked yourself the existential question, What if I were a football manager who was also highly sexed and a bit pervy? then congratulations, you’ve just invented my alter-ego.
I’m a man whose résumé reads like a mixtape of triumphs and embarrassments. I’ve managed clubs whose fans chant my name louder than a 3-minute pop chorus, I’ve coached a national side whose hopes were as fragile as a fresh-made crumpet, and I’ve flirted with the press in a way that would make a Bond villain blush.
I grew up in the tiny town of Torsby, where the most exciting thing on a Saturday night was watching the local band Lärkarna rehearse. My footballing education began in the back garden, where I spent more time perfecting my header than my homework.
I got my first professional contract with IFK Göteborg in 1975. I remember stepping onto the grass and thinking this is it, I’m finally moving from the backyard to the big league but I was more of a bench-warmer than a bench-sweeper, but hey, you’ve got to start somewhere.
My debut was a spectacularly timed sprain that left me limping off the field like a toddler trying to avoid a puddle.
As a player I was no great shakes but fast forward a decade, and I find myself in the sun-drenched stadiums of Italy, first as an assistant at S.P.A.L., then as head coach of Lazio. This is where my reputation for being a bit pervy really began to bloom, in the purely tactical sense.
I won the Serie A title in 1999-2000 with Lazio playing attractive football, we were disciplined, and I managed to keep my beard tidy while shouting tactical instructions in both Swedish and Italian and from that to the England Experiment when the English FA, desperate for a fresh voice, hired me as their national team manager.
The press loved it: 'Sven the Swede, the man who could bring order to our football chaos' however, I was about to discover the true meaning of order in a country that treats tea and weather as religious rites.
Euro 2004 and we reached the quarter-finals, beating the likes of France and Portugal and I still get goosebumps remembering the stadium roar after the final penalty. It was the first time in nearly three decades that England had truly competed on a European stage.
I’d switch formations mid-game like a DJ changing tracks at a rave. 4-4-2? Nah, let’s go 3-5-2. Oh look, a set-piece! Let’s do a short-corner!” The players loved it, the commentators loved it, the pundits loved it… calling me 'the Swedish Sir Alex'.
Then came the infamous Sex Scandal. Yes, the affair with Ulrika Johnson, a Swedish model and former weathergirl. It started innocently enough with a coffee in Stockholm, a whispered joke about sweating more than the players after 90-minutes and then… well, you know how the story goes.
The tabloids dubbed me the most highly sexed manager since… well, ever.
I’ll admit, the press loved it. The headlines read: 'Eriksson’s Off-side Affair.' I was on the front pages of The Sun, The Daily Mail, L’Équipe (in French), Bild (in German) and every interview becomes a potential episode of Debbie Does Dallas meets Match of the Day.
After being let go by the Football Association I tried my hand at a few other ventures which never involved a national anthem and became a football ambassador and returned to Lazio as a technical director.
Finally, I settled into my favourite post-career pastime of regaling audiences with tales of that one time we almost beat Argentina but if I had to sum up my contribution to football in a single sentence, it would be  play the ball well, keep your tactics fluid and never underestimate the power of a well-timed wink at a blonde weathergirl.

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 on 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 again 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 living 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.