Go For It Keir, Or Just Go

To say that since they gained power the Labour Party has been a disappointment is an under statement and to see a YouGov poll today showing that 37% of the country think there should be a change at the top of Government should focus a few minds at the Party Headquarters.    
I put the problem squarely at the door of Keir Starmer who seems more intent in trying to keep everyone happy rather than enact Labour policies which promised 'Change'.
I get that after 14 years of ideological right wing nonsense from the Conservatives there is a lot to fix, the economy they inherited was dreadful and the services so hollowed out by cuts and austerity that it was never going to be a quick fix but as the first two Labour cost cutting policies were to remove payments to Pensioners and then the disabled and then ramp up the defence budget, us Labour supporters are left wondering what is so different to the last lot?
If Starmer is not going to be bold and give us real change, he should step aside and let someone who will take over, someone like Angela Raynor or West Streeting who are much more in the 'Labour' mould and would shake things up.
If Starmer wants us to rejoin the EU as he hinted at or bring in a wealth tax or hammer the Non Doms or ramp up Capital Gains and Inheritance Tax to raise the funds to pay for things then do it, you have a huge majority in Parliament and can do literally anything you want to do because at the moment he is doing nothing, just annoying people with his inaction and giving us nothing different to what the Conservatives gave us.
No point in playing safe because you have already wasted a year in a five year term and you are losing the chance very few get to actually hold the power and ability to do something.
We have had right wing policies under the Conservatives and they were terrible for the country but they had the conviction to enforce them so pull your head out of your arse and remember you are the Labour Party, founded on Socialism and the party of the downtrodden and working person and act accordingly because the worst that can happen is you are removed from power in four years, which is going to happen anyway the way you are going and then you will only be remembered as that guy who led the Labour Party into power after 14 years and then piddled it all away doing nothing worthwhile when he finally got in.

Calling For More Deaths Just Wrong

I have no problem with musicians spouting off their political beliefs and i had no problem with the Rap act, Bob Vylian, performing in front of a screen supporting Palestine but when they began chanting 'Death to the IDF', that went too far and they are now quite rightly being investigated by Police for any criminal offence committed .
Unfortunately, when they began chanting many from the 30,000 crowd joined in which saddens me because regardless of our beliefs, we shouldn't be calling for the death of anyone because this is exactly why we find ourselves in the situation we do now.
Yes the IDF has been committing genocide against the Palestinians for decades and that is abhorrent and the Israeli Government should be tried for War crimes but what Hamas did in October 2023 was also a War Crime and just as abhorrent.
It is killing, or trying to kill, the other side which keeps the pot bubbling and fosters the hatred so we need new leaders in Palestine and Israel, leaders who want to live in peace with each other and not annihilate one another.
I am not a friend of the Israeli or Palestinian Governments, the leaders can get into a big field and lob bombs at each other all they want for all i care but my concern is always the poor, innocent buggers stuck in the Middle, the Palestinians and Israeli's who suffer and die under their awful Governments.
Calling for more death won't solve anything, it just keeps the embers burning. 

Special Guest Blogger: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Child prodigy, Musical genius, supernatural composer, my likeness won’t come around any time soon.
I began banging away on the keys at age three, composed a concerto at four, a symphony at eight, and mastered the violin soon thereafter.
My sister Maria Anna was also a prodigy on piano and my Father knew a cash cow when he sired them and said Salzburg was too small for us, and that the world should hear us play so took us both on a concert tour through the courts of Munich, Paris, and London, visiting two hundred cities in the next ten years.
We played all over Europe, and kings and queens came to see us! We were like an early version of the Kardashian Family, except a lot more talented.
By age sixteen, I had picked up musical ideas the world over and had written twenty-five symphonies, I was a melody machine, spinning off operas, string quartets, and sonatas far ahead of their time.
I married Constanze Weber who was from a musical family and she sang like a bird and I wrote several solos for her over the years but some courts and patrons wouldn’t touch me with a fifty-foot cello bow as they considered me arrogant and lazy.
Six hundred works, twenty-one stage and opera compositions, fifteen masses, forty-one symphonies, twelve violin concertos, seventeen piano sonatas, twenty-seven piano concertos, twenty-six string quartets. I'd rather be a lazy genius than talentless dolts like them.
To supplement my income I began teaching, as well as performing in my concertos as conductor and soloist but i did have an expensive lifestyle but luckily I had a fiscally sound wife and Constanze was quite smart when it came to money. Heck, she probably kept us from starving by moving us into a smaller house, got some loans, and negotiated a royalty deal for publications. Loved that woman!
Antonio Salieri, the court composer to the Holy Roman Emperor didn't help as he was jealous of my effortless talents and on several occasions tried to ruin me, he alone made the public despise my opera Le nozze di Figaro.
My last years were spent in Vienna, crafting some of my most brilliant masterpieces and worrying nonstop about our finances as I was spending more than I brought in and my health was rapidly declining and my last piece was a composition called Requiem. Some mysterious Count Chocula type wanted it for his wife’s funeral, and I needed the commission.
Then I got sick with Kidney disease and realised I was basically writing my own requiem but I hear that there is a thing now called 'the Mozart Effect' where parents plays my music to newborn children and think it will make the child smarter which is a great idea, especially if I get a royalty cheque out of the deal. 

If You Support Israel You Are On Wrong Side Of History

Israel’s pre-emptive attack on Iran and the American assistance in blowing some holes in the side of a mountain overshadowed the ongoing carnage in Palestine where during the 12 day battle, over 550 Palestinians were killed by the IDF, manywhile attempting to secure food and water from the sites set up by the Israeli's in a combat zone.  
It defies belief that the Unicef spokesperson, James Elder, should have needed to spell that out this week that: 'We cannot be asking civilians to go into a combat zone so that then they can be killed with the justification that they are in a combat zone' and yet each day Palestinians continue to be killed en-mass while attempting to collect aid for their families from food hubs in Gaza.
Unfortunately, mid the Israeli genocide, Palestinians are being forced to make a choice between risking being shot and letting their families starve to death in what Médecins Sans Frontières has described as: 'Slaughter masquerading as humanitarian aid'.
Overall, the grim death toll of the Israeli version of their own Final Solution, stands at 56,331 people who have died in Israeli attacks since war began but many consider this an undercount with bodies still buried under the mass graves of building rubble and think the total will exceed 80,000 and that is before they even begin counting the the toll of those dying from hunger and dehydration.
One day thankfully this will all be over but the vision of Netanyahu and the Israeli Government is one which includes the disappearance of Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank where 3 Palestinians where shot by the IDF yesterday for resisting settlers who were burning down houses and attacking Palestinians.
When future generations read about Gaza with horror at the true scale of the slaughter and wonder how we allowed it to happen and how a country was allowed to bomb homes, aid centres and hospitals and shoot dead civilians who were bought to the point of starvation and enticed to distribution hubs to then shoot at them.
The people with real power, the politicians who supplied the weapons and gave cover to the genocide, minimized the Israeli war crimes and atrocities by allowing Israel carte blanche to do whatever it liked, history will judge all these people and those who supported it and by supporting it, if you believe this all began in 2023, then you deserve to be castigated if you answer the question asked by future generations of what did you do in the Gaza genocide, you answer that you supported it.

Alanis Is Back

 It is great to see Alanis Morissette back in the news again, when they come to write the playlist of my life her Jagged Little Pill album will feature because her 1995 offering was huge, in the UK the album spent a total of 221 weeks on the charts and is 13th in the list of best selling albums ever at 33 million Worldwide so that is a lot of people who warbled along to: 'It's like raiiiiiiiiiiin..on your wedding day' and from the Album, Ironic was probably the one people know best although for me, the best song was always 'Forgiven' which starts off a slow ballad type raging against her Catholic upbringing and ramps up during the next 5 minutes to a brilliant crescendo which shows just what an amazing voice she had. It's also an amazing song to play along to on the guitar
The whole Jagged Little Pill album was an angry sounding bitchfest and it turned out to be the high-point in the Alanis career trajectory because she never hit those heights again, her subsequent Albums being much more contented affairs but i guess when you hit such peaks early on, you are never going to climb to the top of that mountain again.
Brilliant to see her back though and being appreciated by a younger generation because her album and the songs from that album really were that good.  

Most Popular Songs Per Year

The Official Chart Company have identified the biggest streaming hit for every year since the chart's inception in 1952 and have compiled the UK's most-streamed songs from the calendar year in which they were released up until 2022.
Not sure what service they used or it was a hotch pot of all of them but Music streaming began around 1999 but didn't really hit its stride until 2010 so it is actually a list of the most streamed songs from the last 15 of those years but it has thrown up a real mix of some decent tunes, some what the hell tunes and some i have never heard of.
Amazingly one of my favourite songs ever, Johnny B. Goode by Chuck Berry, was never actually released as a single in the UK and was never a hit here but it is the most streamed song from 1958 but looking through the list i was a bit non plussed by the rest of the selection.
I would really need to find all the songs from each year to judge but did 1971 really have such poor pickings that John Denver's 'Take Me Home Country Roads' is the top offering from that year and how can 1988's most streamed song be 'Everywhere' by Fleetwood Mac when you have Guns N Roses magnificent 'Sweet Child O'Mine' just standing there.  
Something i did pick up on was that i obviously stopped paying attention around 2005 because apart from the odd song, 2011's Someone Like You by Adele and 2015's Cheap Thrills by Sia, i knew hardly of them which only clarifies the science that we tend to stop listening to new music around our mid 30's. 
Obviously musical tastes differ and that is a good thing but my personal list would look very different and i will have a look through each year later but for now the top songs by year of release are:

1952 - Singin' In The Rain by Gene Kelly
1953 - That's Amore by Dean Martin
1954 - I've Got A Woman by Ray Charles
1955 - Tutti Frutti by Little Richard
1956 - I Walk The Line by Johnny Cash
1957 - Jailhouse Rock by Elvis Presley
1958 - Johnny B. Goode by Chuck Berry
1959 - Put Your Head On My Shoulder by Paul Anka
1960 - At Last by Etta James
1961 - Stand By Me by Ben E King
1962 - Cry To Me by Solomon Burke
1963 - Be My Baby by Ronettes
1964 - My Girl by The Temptations
1965 - I Can't Help Myself by Four Tops
1966 - Paint It Black by Rolling Stones
1967 - Ain't No Mountain High Enough by Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell
1968 - (Sittin' On The) Dock Of The Bay by Otis Redding
1969 - Here Comes The Sun by Beatles
1970 - Your Song by Elton John
1971 - Take Me Home Country Roads by John Denver
1972 - Tiny Dancer by Elton John
1973 - Jolene by Dolly Parton
1974 - Sweet Home Alabama by Lynyrd Skynyrd
1975 - Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen
1976 - Go Your Own Way by Fleetwood Mac
1977 - Dreams by Fleetwood Mac
1978 - September by Earth Wind & Fire
1979 - Don't Stop Me Now by Queen
1980 - Another One Bites The Dust by Queen
1981 - Don't Stop Believin' by Journey
1982 - Africa by Toto
1983 - Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This) by Eurythmics
1984 - Wake Me Up Before You Go Go by Wham
1985 - Summer Of '69 by Bryan Adams
1986 - Livin' On A Prayer by Bon Jovi
1987 - I Wanna Dance With Somebody by Whitney Houston
1988 - Everywhere by Fleetwood Mac
1989 - We Didn't Start The Fire by Billy Joel
1990 - Thunderstruck by AC/DC
1991 - Smells Like Teen Spirit by Nirvana
1992 - Creep by Radiohead
1993 - What Is Love? by Haddaway
1994 - Juicy by The Notorious B.I.G
1995 - Wonderwall by Oasis
1996 - No Diggity by Blackstreet Ft. Dr Dre
1997 - Bitter Sweet Symphony by The Verve
1998 - Iris by Goo Goo Dolls
1999 - No Scrubs by TLC
2000 - Dancing In The Moonlight by Toploader
2001 - How You Remind Me by Nickelback
2002 - Lose Yourself by Eminem
2003 - Mr Brightside by The Killers
2004 - Let Me Love You by Mario
2005 - I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor by Arctic Monkeys
2006 - Naïve by The Kooks
2007 - Fluorescent Adolescent by Arctic Monkeys
2008 - I'm Yours by Jason Mraz
2009 - Party In The USA by Miley Cyrus
2010 - Love The Way You Lie by Eminem Ft. Rihanna
2011 - Someone Like You by Adele
2012 - Let Her Go by Passenger
2013 - Riptide by Vance Joy
2014 - Thinking Out Loud by Ed Sheeran
2015 - Cheap Thrills by Sia
2016 - Say You Won't Let Go by James Arthur
2017 - Shape Of You by Ed Sheeran
2018 - Someone You Loved by Lewis Capaldi
2019 - Dance Monkey by Tones & I
2020 - Head & Heart by Joel Corry Ft. MNEK
2021 - Bad Habits by Ed Sheeran
2022 - As It Was by Harry Styles

Potentially Life Saving Idea..But

The NHS have announced that by 2030, every baby born in the UK could have their entire genome sequenced under a new initiative to 'predict and prevent illness' which checks for hundreds of genetic conditions and at first i thought what a great potentially life saving idea, but then i thought some more on it and saw some potential problems with it.
The genetic result will suggest a child has a higher probability of developing a certain disease later in life but us Humans have a tendency to suffer the psychological problem of hearing 'you might get sick' and hearing 'you will get sick' and acting accordingly which could have huge implications of how children are raised, how they’re treated and how they could see themselves as they age, almost like a patient in waiting.
There could even be treatment for diseases they never develop and real stress and psychological damage around an anticipated future of illness, we still bear the scars from Covid when we all thought we were going to catch it and the be a statistic read out in the Prime Ministers Daily Briefings
I still think it is a good idea but i struggle to see how the emphasis can be put on how being higher risk does not mean it is a certainty because you cannot change the way we think, and unfortunately we always think the worst.

Special Guest Blogger: Buddhist God Pigsy

Originally holding the title of Marshall of the Jade Emperor's Heavenly armies and commander-in-chief of 80,000 Celestial sailors, i did have an eye for the angels and a face for stuffing food into at every opportunity but being a great General meant my many indiscretions were generally overlooked until one day i guzzled too much peach wine and misbehaved with Chang’e, Goddess of the Moon. Oops.
She raised such a fuss that armed guards hauled me off to the Jade Emperor who decided my punishment was to be cast out of Heaven and sent to be reincarnated on Earth, where i fell into a pigs sty on a farm and was reborn as a man-eating pig-monster.
I saved the farmers daughter from being kidnapped and such was my reward that the grateful Farmer  offered her to me in marriage and to become part of their family but my animal nature soon took over and though i managed to do quite a lot of work in the fields, I also manages to eat so much that the farm was losing money.  
The farmer sent a servant to the nearby village to offer gold to anyone who could rid them of me and the pilgrim Tripitaka was passing with his guardian, the Monkey King, who offered me a way back to heaven if I help them in a quest. I reluctantly agreed and they named me Pigsy.
We travelled to India, carrying Tripitaka’s baggage and fighting demons along the way until finally our quest was fulfilled and i achieved enlightenment.
I was made Cleaner of the Holy Altar in Buddhist Heaven which may sound like a very menial job for an ex-Marshall of the Heavenly Hosts, but thousands of worshipers send offerings to that altar every day and I get all the leftovers I can eat so win-win as far as i'm concerned.

Welfare or Warfare?

Announcing you are increasing defence spending in the same week that the Government face a vote on cuts to Welfare probably wasn't the brightest move but since they came to power the Labour Party haven't been that hot.  
On Monday the Prime Minister announced that the UK was set to increase spending on defence to 5% of GDP in the next decade adding a further £30bn to take spending to £75bn but today, faces a possible Parliamentary defeat in his attempt to cut £5bn from Welfare payments due to 'the welfare bill is unsustainable and must be dealt with'.
A third of his own side have signed an amendment to next week's welfare vote that could see his welfare reforms killed off although it would take more than that as he currently has a working majority of 165 votes and is confident that they can face down any rebellion rather than watering down the bill and especially in light of the embarrassing U-turn on the Winter Fuel payments.
Keir Starmer then has a big argument with his party in the coming days and an even bigger one with the public if his Chancellor has to announce cuts to services and tax hikes in the future in order to fund buying tanks, bullets and drones.
If i had my way i would cut defence spending to the bone and use that money to improve peoples lives, £75bn would build a lot of schools and hospitals and fix a lot of roads because it is our money he is spending and he has made the political decision spend it on the machines of war, the moron.  

Stretching Meaning Of Obliterated Somewhat

Whether it was obliterated, destroyed or damaged, the potty mouthed tyrant Trump is saying that the attacks by the American B2 bombers have set back Iran's nuclear program 'decades' although the American intelligence people are not quite so certain.
Admittedly it is the same intelligence agency that Trump dismissed as wrong when they tried to explain to him that Iran had no Nukes and were not planning to make any but six 13.5 tonne bombs and 35 cruise missiles later, a report from the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency estimated that the attacks set Iran’s nuclear program back 'only a few months' which is stretching obliterated a bit far.
Iran said they moved all the good stuff out before anyway so Trump's  'spectacular military success' would be applicable if the aim was to make some really big holes in a mountain for which the warmongering Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, or 'fucking liar' as Joe Biden called him, has expressed his gratitude to US President Donald Trump for his actions, saying they will 'help lead the Middle East and beyond to a future of prosperity and peace' which comes with oodles of irony considering that in the past year he has helped lead his nation to war on Palestine, Lebanon, Syria and Iran so peace while he is in charge seems a forlorn hope and as it will bring forward the charges of fraud, breach of trust and bribery for which he could face 10 years in prison, not going to happen soon.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) boss Rafael Grossi says that Iran maintains the industrial capacity and technical knowledge for its nuclear program so all that was achieved was that at $500m a pop, America dropped £3bn worth of bombs to alter the Iranian skyline and prove to Iran that if they didn't think they needed a Nuclear Bomb to ensure it wasn't attacked, aka the North Korea defence, it bloody does now.