Nah, You're Ok Pal

I am sure someone in the Trump Administration must have said to him if he decides to start a war with Iran, the Strait of Hormuz would be shut off and that would effect the global economy.
Being a bit of a thicko they probably used simple words and maybe even drew some cartoons but the few remaining braincells rattling around in his dementia addled brain just went 'Gotta deflect from the Trumpstein files' and donning a baseball cap, went ahead and did it anyway.    
As his only companion on this misadventure was a nation run by war criminal who was committing a genocide in Gaza,  everyone else just refused to get involved and most even told the moron that they couldn't use their bases to bomb girls schools and medical facilities and after Iran attacked Cyprus and the Prime Minister said he could use the base their to defend themselves, he was told that he didn't need countries that: 'Join wars after we've already won'.
Not one to tell the truth when a perfectly good lie will do, unless 'Won' looks like Iran still firing missiles around the Gulf and electing an even more hard-line younger Ayatollah then the man mentioned in the Trumpstien files tens of thousands of times is not watching the same news that we are although  he has given the nations he has spent the last 12 months deriding to join him.
As the Strait of Hormuz is as expected, bunged up, the Mango Mussolini is asking for  UK, China, France, Japan, South Korea and other countries to send ships to the waterway to help clear the way and unsurprisingly the response has been...Nah, your alright mate.
The UK, China and Japan said they will give it some thought but have refused to make any commitments, South Korea have said only that they have noted Trump’s comments while France have already made its position clear saying: 'There is no question of sending any vessels to the strait of Hormuz'.
Germany gave a 'Nein' reply and China response was that they are in talks with the Iranian regime about allowing Chinese oil tankers to pass through from the Gulf so you are on your own Trump, the World spoke and its a global: 'UP YOUR'S FATSO'.

Trump Pick N Mix Reasons For War

When the United States launched Operation Epstein Diversion, the Trump administration had a major communications question to figure out which was how to explain why it had just started a war with Iran.
Days before the War started US and Iranian negotiators met in Geneva and Oman’s attending foreign minister, Badr Albusaidi, spoke publicly of 'unprecedented openness' signalling that both sides were exploring creative formulations and declared that an agreement on the Iranian Nuclear facilities could be signed within days.
Trump said the U.S. sought to make a deal with Iran after bombing three of its nuclear sites in June 2025, but Iran 'rejected every opportunity to renounce their nuclear ambitions' and even said that: 'We haven’t heard those secret words, 'We will never have a nuclear weapon' which came literally hours after the Iranian Foreign Minister, Abbas Araghchi, said that: 'Iran would under no circumstances ever develop a nuclear weapon'.  
Then while negotiations were ongoing, the bombs started dropping and the Mango Moron said that he wanted the Iranian people to rise up and overthrow the Iranian Ayatollahs, so Regime Change and Iran were: 'Developing long range missiles that can now threaten our very good friends and allies in Europe, our troops stationed overseas and could soon reach the American homeland' which contradicts a federal government assessment that said Iran was years away from the ability to produce long-range missiles. Even lackey Marco Rubio distanced himself from the claim by saying that he wouldn't speculate how far away Iran is from having missiles that could reach the U.S. and the Defense Intelligence Agency released a missile threat assessment that said Iran could develop a long-range missile by 2035 if it chooses to pursue it.
Then it was due to stopping Iran getting a Nuclear Missile calling it 'a campaign to eliminate the imminent nuclear threat', Trump envoy Steve Witkoff said Iran was: 'Probably a week away from having industrial grade bomb making material' a claim which the IAEA said they were sceptical about.
Then it was because Iran was planning to strike American interests in the area which was quickly edited to Israel was about to strike Iran and they would then retaliate against American interests. Pentagon briefers acknowledged to congressional staff on 1 March that Iran was not planning to strike US forces or bases unless Israel attacked Iran first.
Then secretary of state Marco Rubio offered an entirely different explanation for the timing of the war, and not that Iran was an imminent nuclear threat,  Iran itself was about to attack or Iran would have retaliated against a coming Israeli strike but that 'Iran tried to kill President Trump, and President Trump got the last laugh' although no evidence was provided to support it.
So take your pick, it was stopping Iran from obtaining a nuclear missile or it's about Regime Change or freedom for the Iranian People or it's about destroying their ballistic missile capability or it's because Iran posed an imminent threat or because Israel made them do it.
As for the length of the war we have been told it would end in 2 or 3 days with a deal, 4 to 5 weeks of fighting or 100 days and now maybe even through to September so take your pick but we can all agree that there is nothing like a well planned military operation with clear goal and this was nothing like a well planned military operation with clear goals.
And we are still talking about the Trumpstien files which has Trump named 38,000 times and is only mentioned in it less than only Epstein himself and Ghislaine Maxwell.

Is Netanyahu Dead?

 
My Social Media feeds have been full over the last few days of the death of Benjamin Netanyahu, I have even had friends and family asking me if we have heard anything about it as they are not hearing anything about it on Main Stream News and they know there are certain things we are asked (ordered?) not to say so it seems a bit pointless me saying no because even if we did, we couldn't say anyway.
What i will say is that if he is dead, and I have no idea whether he is or not, i would treat it the same as the death of any war criminal who was sat 45th in the list of Histories greatest killers as collated by the Orwell Foundation and National Science Foundation who listed the people who have deaths attributed to them through the conditions within the country due to national or international policy or by active killings by force.
The 45th position was before the genocide in Gaza which has resulted in at least 75,000 deaths and the thousands more in Libya and now Iran which now lifts him to 33rd, one ahead of Vlad the Impaler and one below the Grand Inquisitor of the Spanish Inquisition, Tomás de Torquemada.
While no death should be celebrated, I imagine when Vlad and Tomás both died, the 15th Century citizens were not too upset about it and i feel much the same away about the 21st Centuries equivalents which is that the World is better off without certain people in it be they murderous Iranian Ayatollahs, genocidal warmongering Israeli's or American Presidents who start wars to deflect attention from their probable pedophilia.
As i said at the start, whether Netanyahu is dead or not, i won't be shedding any tears for him if he is (which I don't know if he is or not) but if he is, thankfully he won't be around to move above Tomás de Torquemada anymore and that has to be a good thing.

Special Guest Blogger: Ricky Hatton

Alright then, come on, settle down, grab a brew. I’ve been asked to pen one of these thingamajigs, a little look back at the life and times of yours truly. A right honour, that is. But I had a read of the brief, and I’m not gonna lie, I’m a little bit flummoxed.
 I'm Ricky.  I’ve got a mug that only a mother could love and I wasn't exactly what you'd call "delicate." I’m built more like a beer barrel than a bottle of perfume. All them pies and pints have given me a physique that’s less ‘hourglass’ and more ‘long-standing national monument’.
So, life, then. What a belting old ride it was.
When I think back, it’s all a bit of a blur of sweat, stitches, and the most incredible noise you’ve ever heard. They tell me to consider my legacy. You what? My legacy? I’m just Ricky from Hyde. I’m the bloke who used to beg his mam for 50p for a bag of chips and ended up fighting in front of millions. It’s a bit mad, when you think about it.
They call me famous, which is a weird word, isn’t it? To me, being famous was getting your name read out in the pub for winning a raffle. Suddenly, I was on the telly, fighting legends, and having a right good go of it. The achievement everyone remembers, of course, is that night against Kostya Tszyu. Don’t get me wrong, winning that was the peak. The absolute pinnacle. But for me? One of the biggest achievements was making the weight the day before without eating the head off the poor lad who brought me a chicken salad.
My legacy, if I have one, isn’t in the fancy belts or the shiny trophies (though they did look canny on the mantelpiece). It was in the MEN Arena. It was in that roar. It wasn't fifty thousand people watching a famous boxer; it was fifty thousand Mancs, willing me on. They saw a bit of themselves in me. A bloke who wasn't afraid to have a go, to get stuck in, and who knew that the best thing after a good scrap was a pint and a curry with your mates. That’s the real legacy, isn’t it? Being a proper, grafting, pie-eating, pint-drinking legend of the working class.
I wasn’t perfect, not by a long shot. My fights outside the ring were often tougher than the ones inside it. The weight yoyo's were a nightmare. I’ve hit more buffets than I’ve hit opponents, I’ll tell you that for nowt. One minute you’re a finely-tuned athlete, the next you look like a bin bag full of water. That’s the game, though. The highs are heavenly, and the lows… well, you learn. You pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and find the nearest chippy.
But the biggest question, the one the email really hammered home, is the end. The finale. The curtain call.
How did I die?Suicide.
Whether it was getting punched in the head for a living but i suffered from severe mental health struggles but you know what, depsite that I wouldn’t change a single second. Well, maybe I’d have had one less pint before the Mayweather fight, but we’ll let that lie.

Which Films Got It Right On Aliens?

 
Our Milky Way galaxy is estimated to contain between 100 billion and 400 billion stars and is just one of 2 trillion estimated Galaxies in the Universe which with the help of Google means that there are about 200 billion trillion, or 200,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars in the Universe.
Our Star has 8 Planets swirling around but ESA exoplanet data estimates that there is an average of 2 planets per Star which gives us a best guess at there being 400 billion trillion Planets on which life could have evolved and which makes it absurd that it is just us and there are 199,000,000,000,000,000,000,999 other balls of rock and gas just going around empty.
So on the premise that life HAS to have started somewhere else as well as here, i asked a scientist what do they think life would be like there and i presented a list of sci-fi films to see which they thought may have got closest.
Instantly dismissed as least likely was Humanoid such as the ones in Avatar or Star Wars because it is extremely unlikely that Evolution elsewhere would end up with the exact same intelligent bipedal primates (or us) at the top.
So if not humans how about bugs and insects like Alien or Children of Time? Again not likely due to the evolution process means that they evolved here due to the conditions on Earth which are unlikely to be the same elsewhere so they would not Evolve the same way.
Poo Pooing any evolved life form as the different conditions would mean they would not be anything like we have here, we moved onto Robots and AIs and this was a bit more likely as so we could be looking out for Transformer robots, Cylons from Battlestar Galactica?
Due to the sheer amount of time it would take, Aliens would probably leave their bodies at home and send robotic substitutes or even cyborg replicants made of flesh and machine such as the Cyber Men or Daleks in Dr Who so the first contact would be with one of these types.
Just as i was picturing a Spaceship full of large dustbins screaming Exterminate my camp fire was well and truly watered on by the final and most plausible type of Alien being one which we may not even recognise.
It may be made of rock, gas, metals, minerals, water or anything non carbon and for all we know, they may already be here but we just dismissed them so that leads us to the film, The Abyss, which was about nice watery aliens who saved humans so they are welcome here although if they do turn up and asked to be taken to our leader, we may need to turn down the heating in Downing Street. 

Greek Princess Andromeda

You’ve probably heard my name. Maybe you’ve looked up on a clear night and seen a lovely, glittery smudge they call the Andromeda Galaxy. You might have even sat through a particularly dramatic lecture on Greek Mythology. You think you know my story, right? Pretty girl, annoying mom, sea monster, dashing hero, happily ever after. The end.
You’ve been fed the PR-friendly version. The edited-for-television version. The version that makes everyone else look good.
Well, I’ve had a few thousand years to stew about it, and frankly it’s time someone set the record straight. Someone who was actually there, chained to the rock, feeling the sea spray and wondering if her mother’s vanity was going to be the literal death of her so let me tell you what really happened.
First, let’s talk about my mother, Queen Cassiopeia. Oh, you’ve heard of her. The one in the chair, looking fabulous. Well, let me tell you, she hasn’t changed a bit. Up here in the stars, she spends most of her time preening but down on Earth, she was a nightmare.
Declaring she was more beautiful than the Nereids who were Poseidon’s personal posse of sea-nymphs is like walking into a biker bar, announcing you have a better motorcycle than the club president, and then being surprised when things get messy.
My dad, King Cepheus, was… well, he was there. A sweet man who spent most of his time nodding along to whatever my mother said. His big solution to the problem of an enraged sea god was sacrifice the daughter so that’s how I found myself on a very windswept, very uncomfortable rock by the sea with chains chaffing my wrists.
Then came the monster, Cetus. Sure, he was large, and he had way too many teeth, and his breath smelled like a fish market but he had a brain the size of a walnut.
Just as I was resigning myself to becoming dinner, there was Perseus showing up on this winged horse all fresh from beheading Medusa. He had the Gorgon’s head in a special bag, a shiny reflective shield, and a look that said, 'Yeah, I know. I’m awesome'.
There was no grand declaration of love. No poetic sonnet. He looked at me, looked at the monster, and did the math. A damsel in distress is a great look for a hero. He basically pulled out Medusa’s head, waved it at Cetus and poof. Monster statue. Problem solved.
He flew down, unchained me, and my father, who suddenly remembered he had a daughter, was all, 'Oh, thank you, mighty hero! Please, marry her! Take her! Just don’t let the sea god flood the place again!'
So, I married him. He slayed a monster, I got a husband and a ticket out of my parents’ kingdom. Seemed like a fair trade at the time. He was a decent guy, for a right show-off with a history of turning people to stone. Our wedding was… eventful. We had to fight off my ex-fiancé and his whole army, which was a whole other level of family drama I won't get into.
And now, here I am. A constellation for being the eternal damsel in distress. The girl who needed saving but being a constellation has its perks. I’ve seen empires rise and fall. I’ve watched you invent the wheel, the printing press, and then the internet, which is basically just a digital version of Mount Olympus, full of gods, monsters, and endless, petty arguments. It’s all terribly familiar.

US Economy Forcing Trump To Back Out Of War He Started

One of the many questions regarding the ongoing war between the religious lunatics in America and Israel and the ones in Iran is why did they choose Iran in the first place and there are many answers which include Israel found a low IQ dope in the White House who would agree to what they have been asking American Presidents to do for decades or they thought Iran would buckle immediately and it would be another easy win and Iran would now be run by a compliant lackey of the invaders.
 Obviously it hasn't turned out like that and the sneaking suspicion is that both Netanyahu and Trump are both facing trouble times and badly need a deflection so will keep on finding wars they have to attend to, just to defer the day they get booted out of office and the Israeli has to face trial for his corrupt actions and Trump has to answer why his name appears with quite such frequency alongside that of his pedophile buddy in the Trumpstein files.
We are hearing that with his own economic bin-fire in the US with petrol and everything else becoming much more expensive, Trump is looking for a way out to back out while shouting WE WIN while Netanyahu is keen to keep it going like he has with Gaza.   
Watching on is with interest is Beijing, Moscow and anyone else who Trump decides to deflect to next as they now has a good gauge of Donald Trump's tolerance for economic pain.
As he is not the brightest bulb, Trump obviously didn't take notice of the warning of what would happen if he attacked Iran so the Ayatollahs attacked just about everybody in the region, choked off the  Strait of Hormuz by attacking tankers sending the price of oil soaring and the Global economy will suffer so tick, tick, tick and tick to all of the above.
Something else we have learnt from the tariffs is that once the American economy starts to show signs that making his own people pay much more for stuff is not a great plan for his ratings, Trump Always Chickens Out which is all the Iranian leadership needs to hear as now all they need to do is hang in there and they can then declare victory as the war for Regime Change would have been a complete failure.
Iran may have lost every warplane and naval ship in their inventory as well as losing their Nuclear program but they will remain in power and can rebuild like some sort of Persian phoenix from the flames of the missiles.
Meanwhile in Russia and Beijing especially as they look to seize Taiwan at some point, Iran has shown that rather than take on America militarily, all they need to do is horse around with the economy and once they have found Trumps very low tolerance level for economic pain, he will back away from it quicker than a low fat salad.
Obviously there are two partners in this war and Netanyahu won't be so keen to end it with any haste as if his people are looking at the fireworks in Tehran and Beirut, they are not looking at the court case awaiting him for the charges of fraud, breach of trust, and bribery that awaits his much looked forward to removal from power.

Special Guest Blogger: Cleo Laine

Let’s start at the beginning. I was born Clementine Dinah Hitching from South Ruislip. Not exactly the stuff of dramatic movie openings, is it? No lightning storm, no jazz band playing in the background. Just a midwife saying, 'Ooh, she’s got a set of lungs on her!' and me immediately replying in full scat, Doo-wop bap, za-za-ding! Probably.
I didn’t choose jazz. Jazz chose me. Or possibly just followed me home like a stray cat after I belted out 'Summertime' at a village hall fundraiser. I was supposed to sing Danny Boy, but halfway through, I jazzed it up so much the vicar crossed himself and the tea urn exploded. That’s when I knew I was dangerous. And fabulous.
Now, let’s talk about fame. Oh, that lovely, fickle beast. One minute you’re performing at the Royal Albert Hall, the next you’re on a three-day tussle with autocue at This Is Your Life, trying not to look shocked that anyone remembered your name. Mind you, I did look shocked. I was mid-singing 'You Go to My Head' and suddenly there’s Eamonn Andrews waving a big red book like it’s the Gospel According to Showbiz.
And the titles? Don’t get me started. First Lady of Jazz. Dame Commander of the British Empire. That woman who vibrates when she sings. All accurate. I particularly love the DBE, though I did keep forgetting I was supposed to be Dame Cleo.
I like to think I’ve left behind three things: jazz, joy, and a very confused set of grandchildren.
You see, my little darlings, yes, to me you’re all little, even if you’re 60 and balding, music wasn’t about being perfect. It was about being alive. If you’re not slightly out of breath by the end of a song, you didn’t mean it. If you haven’t scared a parrot into silence, you haven’t belted it out. And if you haven’t been told to tone it down because , the candelabra’s shaking, then frankly, what’s the point?
I’ve sung with legends. Oscar Peterson, Dizzy Gillespie, even a very confused Elton John but my greatest collaboration? John Dankworth. My husband. My love. My personal sound engineer, therapist, and human earplug.
John was the yin to my yowl. Where I’d be screeching like a pterodactyl in heat, he’d be there with a baton and a raised eyebrow, conducting with the calm of a man who knew I’d eat all the cheese at the interval. We were the odd couple of jazz, me, the Welsh whirlwind and him, the posh saxophonist who once corrected my grammar during a performance. Honestly, John, I was improvising! You don’t fact-check scat!
But in all seriousness my greatest achievement wasn’t the awards, the performances, or the time I sang for the Queen and she actually nodded along. It was making people feel something. Joy, awe, confusion, mild hearing loss but it doesn’t matter. As long as they felt it.
And if they’re still humming a tune of mine while doing the washing-up in 100 years’ time, then mission accomplished. Even better if they’re belting it out off-key. That’s when you know you’ve made it, when ordinary people butcher your songs in kitchens across the land.

Kurds Not Going To Be Fooled Again

America's record of Regime Change in the Middle East is not great, Iraq, Libya and  Syria are all basketcases while Afghanistan was an even bigger mess. After years of US and civilian deaths, the US accomplished nothing besides death and destruction since the Taliban is back in charge and even more with even more power than when the US invaded and Iran will be no different.
Britain and everyone else is right in staying well away from the latest invasion because once Trump realises that bombing a regime will not change it and the American economy is tanking even more , he will falsely shout WINNER and run away to leave the smoking remains of Iran to whoever is stupid enough to join Team Trump.
With no American ground forces, the US have been encouraging the Kurds to attack Iran and held talks with Iraqi Kurdish leaders but they were rightly wary after three times becomign the 'boots on the ground' for America, only to be left high and dry by Washington once they have finished.
In 1975 they were abandoned  to their fate against the Iraqi government and again in 1991 when both times they encouraged Iraqi Kurds to rise up against Saddam Hussein and saw Iraqi helicopter gunships slaughter them in their thousands.
In 2017 the US dismissed a Kurdish independence referendum for the region telling the Kurds to remain integrated within Iraq and in 2019,  Washington asked  Iranian Kurds to take up arms in Syria against ISIS only to see once they vanquished the armed group after years of fighting and helped overthrow Bashar al-Assad, the Trump administration backed Syria’s new central government in Damascus and ended support for the Kurds and killed their call for Kurdish autonomy.
Turkey have been fighting the Kurds for years and balked at an armed Kurdistan army and said they would aid Iran in fighting them so the Kurds said they would do America's fighting yet again if Washington guaranteed arms, air cover and backing in their fight for autonomy else it would be a suicide mission against a fierce Iranian, and Turkish,  military response and suddenly Trump was not so keen and went from saying: 'I think it's wonderful that they want to do that, I'd be all for it' to “I don’t want the Kurds to go into Iran, I’ve told them I don’t want them to go in'.
With no plan except to bomb Iran and no thought of what comes after and with the Iranian Regime just needing to remain in power to claim their own win, you can see the end being Trump reliving the 'Mission Accomplished' debacle of George W Bush and running away with nothing but dead American Coffins, his economy sinking and an Iran who now more than ever deciding that a Nuclear Weapon is very much on their to do list.

Special Guest Blogger: Norman Tebbit

Surprised i got asked to write this to be honest looking at the other hippy, tree hugging crap that is usually on these pages but here i am, a formerly bright young thing with a tie so thin you could floss your teeth with it.
People often asked me about my story. They want to begin with the war, or with my dear wife Margaret. But I always begin with the bicycle.
Oh yes, that poor, maligned bicycle. The media, in its infinite stupidity, painted me as a monster for telling the unemployed to ‘get on their bike’ and look for work. They saw cruelty. I saw common sense. If the pit closes and there are no jobs for a hundred miles, you have two choices. Sit there and moulder, or find out what’s at the end of the road. My father, a fireman, taught me that. He didn’t have particular transferable skills. He had a job to do and a family to feed. So, yes. Get on your bike. Or walk. Or crawl. Just stop expecting the state to be your wet nurse.
That common sense was, I suppose, what brought me to the attention of Margaret Thatcher. You won’t find a bigger tribute from me, because nothing bigger exists. She looked at this country in the late seventies, this sick man of Europe, this graveyard of ambition, this strike-ridden, over-taxed, whinging mess, and she didn’t prescribe a soothing balm. She performed open-heart surgery with a rusty spoon. It was brutal. It was necessary. And it worked.
I was there, in the thick of it. Chairman of the Party. Secretary of State for Employment. I was the bad cop to her, well, to her slightly less bad cop. We battled the unions, we battled inflation, we battled the insidious, creeping rot of socialism that told people they had a right to something for nothing.
It was a glorious, exhausting, and profoundly worthwhile time. We didn’t do focus groups to see what people wanted to hear. We told them what they needed to know. There was a spine to the government then. You could have hung a coat on it. Now? You’d struggle to hang a teatowel.
And then, of course, came the bomb. Brighton, 1984. The Grand Hotel. People often speak of it with hushed tones, as if it were my heroic finale. It wasn’t. It was a bloody inconvenience. I’d just got to bed, and some Irish rabble decided to redecorate the room with shrapnel and broken glass. Margaret was trapped. I was trapped. Others were not so lucky. I remember the dust, the darkness, and a rather pressing need to get out.
They say my resilience was an inspiration. I saw it as a lack of alternatives. Lying there with a broken back, what was the other option? Weeping? Asking for a trauma counsellor to come and talk about my feelings? Nonsense. You grit your teeth, you bear the pain, and you get on with the job of living. It’s what this country used to do.
Now, a pigeon sneezes on a tube platform and they send in a team of therapists and issue a public helpline number. We are a nation of emotional hypochondriacs.
So what did i leave behind? A set of principles that, for a time, made a difference. It’s the belief that you should work for what you get, that you should be proud of your country, that you should obey the law, and that you should, for goodness sake, stop complaining but they’ve undone it all. Sold off the gold, flooded the country with more regulations than a Soviet commissar could dream of, and elevated 'feelings above facts. They tear down statues of people who built the Empire and put up wobbly metal modern art sculptures. They are, to put it mildly, a shower.
Which brings me, inevitably, to the end. How did I go? You’ll be expecting an epic struggle, a final defiant speech on the floor of the Commons. Not a bit of it. It was far more mundane, and therefore, far more irritating, natural causes.
So, there you have it. I have no regrets. I did what I thought was right. I served my country and a leader I believed in. The world went a different way but i'm not in it so that’s not my problem anymore.