No Comment Nicola?

Nicola Sturgeon, former First Minister of Scotland and leader of the SNP, says she is being punished form a crime she did not commit but it has to be asked that she may not have known her then husbands was ripping off the SNP to the tune of hundreds of thousands, but how did she not notice the £2,600 Salt and Pepper Cellars?
Or the new £81,000 Jaguar car in the drive, or 3 new £1000 a pop coffee machines, the new Campervan in her in laws driveway and that is the question Sturgeon has faced this weekend as she has been wheeled out to every interview to try and clear her name.   
The theme was if it had never occurred to her that her husband had basically stolen the lot, didn't she think his shopping habit had got badly out of hand but as she explained, she had imagined everything had been gifts from an adoring husband, they had no kids and were both earning large salaries so it had all felt totally normal and anyway, they had separate bank accounts.
 As for the Motor Home, yes she had seen it at the in-laws but had assumed it belonged to the neighbours, even though it was parked on the in-laws’ drive.
She defiantly said that she would not be saying sorry for a crime she didn't commit although saying 'No Comment' to every question when interviewed by the Police doesn't ease the suspicion on her but at least she can have a decent cup of coffee when she gets home.

Special Guest Blogger: Brigitte Bardot

Ah, la vie. A series of gracefully curated photographs, a catwalk of opinions and the eternal struggle to confirm that yes, I was the final word on beauty.  Vogue named me number one of the most beautiful French actresses of all time but let us begin with the obvious. I was French.
Not just geographically, but aesthetically, philosophically, and unapologetically. France gave me my curves, my confidence, and a disdain for anyone who pronounces baguette incorrectly. To be French is to know that fashion is not optional, that je ne sais quoi is a science, and that the British always overcook their vegetables.
I was hired at 15  as a junior fashion model which got me on the cover of Elle and movie offers and it was the Italian movie Nero's Weekend, that i was asked to dye my hair blonde and i was so pleased with the results that i decided that Blonde is what i should be.
Yes, I did spend my youth parading around in bikinis that defied gravity and morality. Was it arrogance? Absolutely. But let us not conflate arrogance with self-awareness. I knew I was beautiful. I knew I was a muse. When I walked into a room, lights dimmed. Literally, directors used practical effects to mimic my natural radiance.
I was the archetype of the Femme Fatale, my nickname was Sex Kitten and the blueprint for every airbrushed icon who came after me. From Madonna to Lady Gaga to… well, whoever’s relevant now.
I was a pioneer! I starred in films where I said Non to patriarchal norms (and to the scriptwriters, and to the director’s requests). I formed my own production company because, as I always said why let men ruin my art.
And let’s talk about that je ne sais quoi. It’s not just about beauty, dear reader. It’s about attitude. The kind of attitude that makes you declare, at age 20, that you’ll never marry a man who can’t recite Baudelaire. Or that you’ll retire from acting to become a whale activist which is excatly what i did, after appearing in more than 40 motion pictures and recording several music albums, I gave it all up and retired in 1973 and become an animal rights activist.
I said i wanted a way to get out elegantly and it doesn't get much more elegant than stripping nude and posing for Playboy magazine which i did a year later.
Ah yes, my later years. When I became a far-right politician. Shocking, I know. But let me clarify: I was simply defending the authentic France, where people still care about culture, borders, and whether you’re polluting the Mediterranean with plastic. I was ahead of my time. Today’s politicians are just borrowing my policies… again. And no, I will not apologize for my comments on immigration. If your ancestors arrived post-10th century, we have nothing in common although I was fined twice for public insults, and five times for inciting racial hatred.
Now, about dying. I died in 2025, which was a disappointment,my contract with eternity expired early. But I handled it with the grace one would expect from a woman who once posed nude for Paris Match.
I passed away from Cancer in Saint-Tropez surrounded by cats and what did they write about me? A sex symbol? A feminist icon? A controversial figure? Darling, I was all of the above a living haute couture collection and if history remembers me as the woman who refused to grow old gracefully? Even better.

Special Guest Blogger: Queen Cassiopeia

Bit of a chilly evening, isn’t it? Do try to spot me. I’m the one forming a rather glorious inverted, ‘W’. Or an ‘M’, depending on your perspective I suppose.
People often write to me, well, more they shout at the sky, and ask, 'How did you do it? How did you achieve immortality?' The short answer? By being far more beautiful than was, in retrospect, strictly sensible. The long answer involves a classic Greek kerfuffle, a sea monster with appallingly bad breath, and a chap on a flying horse with something to prove.
It all started, as these things so often do, on a perfectly lovely afternoon. I was in my court, feeling particularly radiant. The light was hitting my hair just so, my robes were a magnificent shade of amber, and honestly, I was a vision. I was discussing, quite civilly, the relative merits of my own daughter, Andromeda’s, beauty. Not that she wasn’t a lovely girl, don't get me wrong, but one must have standards.
And I said it. The line that launched a thousand ships of trouble and got me this prime real-estate in the heavens. I remarked that my beauty, and by extension Andromeda’s, was superior to that of Poseidon's Nereids, the sea nymphs.
Oh, the gasp! You’d have thought I’d questioned the quality of the ambrosia. Now, let’s be clear. Was it an arrogant thing to say? Perhaps, by modern standards. Was it an inaccurate thing to say? Absolutely not. It was a simple statement of fact. The Nereids are perfectly pleasant, I’m sure, in a watery, seaweed-in-your-hair sort of way. But they’re not queen material.
You make one tiny, truthful comment, and they go running to Daddy and their daddy happened to be Poseidon, the God of the Sea. A being with all the emotional maturity of a Jellyfish. He was utterly ghastly about it. Rather than, say, sending a strongly-worded letter, he did what God's do best and  threw a massive, world-ending tantrum.
The floods came first. A dreadful damp that seeped into everything. My sandal collection was ruined. Absolutely ruined. Then came the famine, which was a social nightmare.
It’s terribly difficult to host a salon when your guests are too busy gnawing on leather to discuss poetry. And finally, the pièce de résistance: Cetus.
Oh, Cetus. A great, scaly, hideous beast who was sent to devastate the coastline, a sort of living, breathing, roaring apology to the Nereids’ bruised egos. It was all so terribly dramatic. Those Greek gods, I swear, they have no sense of subtlety.
My dear husband, Cepheus, a dear man but not one for a crisis, was in a right state. He consulted an oracle (a generally awful idea, as oracles are notoriously vague and always seem to side with the Gods) and came back looking pale. Apparently, the only way to appease the great wet drama queen was to chain our only daughter to a rock to be eaten by the monster.
I admit it was a parenting low point but we were in a bind. The people were revolting (in both senses of the word), and the sea monster was getting closer. So, with the heaviest of hearts we chained poor Andromeda to the cliffside.
Now, this is where the story gets a bit… weird. Just as we were preparing for the worst and a rather dreadful state funeral, along came Perseus.
He was one of those heroes. All puffed-up chest, a cheeky grin, and riding a winged horse that left deposits all over the place. He’d just finished off a gorgon (the one with the snake-hair and the unfortunate complexion) and was looking for a bit of a victory tour. He saw Andromeda, saw the monster, and his eyes lit up. It wasn’t love at first sight, it was opportunity at first sight.
The deal was struck. A classic arrangement. He deals with the scaly pest, and he gets the girl. Saved a fortune on wedding dowries, I can tell you. There was a lot of flashing about with a sword and a mirrored shield (terribly showy) and before you knew it, Cetus was a very large, very dead problem.
So, there you have it. I made a comment, the gods overreacted, my daughter was nearly seafood, and a travelling salesman with a handbag and a horse saved the day.
Poseidon, in a final, petulant act of passive-aggression, decided my place in the heavens would be upside down, forever circling the pole star as a lesson in humility so next time you look up, see my glittering W and think of me, someone who made such a scene even the Gods threw a hissy fit and got me immortalised.

Why Does The West Suck At War?

The West does love a war. It's people are usually against it, most of the time, but they many nations who always seem to be looking for a fight on the other side of the world. Sometimes it's about natural resources, and other times there's another excuse, like bringing democracy to a third-world country, whether they like it or not.
So, over the years Western armies have had many great opportunities to travel around the world, getting to know exotic places and being in contact with other cultures before bombing them but despite generally being overwhelming more powerful, they seem to suck at it.
If you were to look at the scoreboard of history, you might notice that the world’s biggest, baddest, most heavily funded military machines have a strange habit of walking into foreign countries, puffing their chests out, and then stumbling into a multi-decade quagmire that ends with them quietly backing out the side door.
Why do nations with hi tech satellites, smart bombs, sophisticated drones and enough military budget to fix every pothole on the planet constantly fail in wars with all the competence of a toddler trying to assemble a bookshelf without the instructions against groups of guys wearing sandals and carrying Kalashnikov's who refuse to accept them walking into their country?
The modern superpower’s favorite tactic as we saw in Vietnam, Iraq, Ukraine and Iran appears to be drop enough bombs, show off some  high-tech jets and the enemy will look at their subpar equipment, realise they’re outmatched and wave the white flag although nobody seems to explain this to the little guys who have a strange aversion to strangers telling them how to run their country.
When you bomb a village, you don’t usually create a loyal democratic ally, just a lot of people who are now very, very motivated to find a way to blow up your soldiers because as it turns out,  people defending their homes are significantly more motivated than people on a three-year rotation who just want to make it back with all their limbs still attached.
The West's peak hubris is deciding to topple a dictator and then install a new, shiny, democracy flavored government and head home in time for tea because the assumption is that the population on the receiving end was just waiting for a Western-style system to be delivered to their doorstep, or so they think but it turns out in almost every War this has been tried, you can’t just import Democracy and a lecture on why our way of life is superior.
There is also the problem of trying to save face once you have started a war, especially if you have invested thousands of lives and billions of pounds you can't really admit that the mission was a bit of a blunder so you keep going, the Afghan War lasted 20 years for these very reasons and the West may have broke a lot of walls and killed many people while making a lot of noise but in the end they slinked off whispering: 'Well, that was a disaster, let’s never speak of it again' when the people they went to war to remove, the Taliban, waved the West goodbye and moved straight back into Government again.
So why does it keep happening? Because the West are addicted to the idea that they are the Policemen of the world and refuse to accept that most of the world is perfectly capable of being messy, complicated, and defiant without them and despite the embarrassing defeat, five years later, they see a new conflict, rub their hands together, and say as they did in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and now Iran: 'Okay, surely this time we’ll get it right' but we know how that story ends because they never have and never will.

Special Guest Blogger: Aretha Franklin

Everyone keeps asking about the end. 'How did she go?' they whisper, all solemn faces and hushed tones. Well, let’s get that out of the way first, shall we?
The official reports are a bit of a downer, aren't they? All very medical and dreary. Pancreatic Cancer did for me but to tell you the truth, I was just knackered. Absolutely, utterly, can’t-be-arsed-to-find-my-slippers knackered.
Think about it. I’d been belting out notes since I was old enough to reach the pulpit. I’d out-sung blues legends, commanded the stage at Woodstock (a bit muddy, that one, glad I wore the sensible boots), and made Presidents weep.
I’d dealt with record producers who thought a woman’s place was in the background, harmonising sweetly. Bless their little cotton socks. My body had been a vessel, a workhorse, a temple of glorious, soulful noise, and frankly, the warranty had run out. It was less a dramatic, tragic end and more a case of, “Right then, that’s my lot. I’m off for a permanent sit-down.” Like a favourite handbag you decide to retire before the seams start to burst.
And what a life it was, eh? Blimey.
It all started in that church. My dad, the Reverend C.L. Franklin, had a voice that could part the Red Sea and a congregation that hung on his every word and included such people as Clara Ward, James Cleveland, Martin Luther King Jr., Jackie Wilson, Ray Charles and Sam Cooke so when the Revs daughter, a  bossy little so-and-so began belting out tunes it was noticed.
Sam Cooke really pushed for me to sign a record contract when i turned 18 and then came the pop charts. Oh, crikey. A different kettle of fish entirely. Suddenly, I was meant to be all sweetness and light. Let me tell you a secret about 'Respect'. It wasn’t a political statement. Not at first. It was a memo. A rather loud, gospel-fuelled memo aimed at the various daft men in my life at the time. “R-E-S-P-E-C-T,” I’d spell it out, hoping they’d get the message. Find out what it means to me! It’s not rocket science, is it? It means don’t leave your socks on the floor, and for heaven’s sake, put the loo seat down.  
I was regarded as the Queen of Soul and was twice named by Rolling Stone magazine as the greatest singer of all time but people tend to remember the big moments and the biggest must be the inauguration for that lovely young man, Barack Obama.
Bigger than the 112 singles on the US Billboard Charts, the 18 Grammy Awards and becoming the first female artist to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, it was those 3 minutes when a Black man was being sworn in as President of the United States which would mean an end to racism in America, by voting for Obama, they sorted all of that out and now it meant that America had changed and black people can be whatever they want to be. As long as it's either president or shot by the Police.
The other big sensation was that hat. The internet had a complete fit but to be honest, I just saw it in a shop and thought, 'Ooh, that’s a bit of millinery madness. It’ll do a treat.' It’s funny what sticks. You can belt your heart out for sixty years, change the course of music, and be a beacon of empowerment, but what really gets people going is a giant grey bow with a Swarovski crystal in the middle. You’ve got to laugh, haven’t you?
It was a riot, my life. A proper, brilliant, chaotic, soulful riot. I loved every minute, even the bits that felt like utter garbage at the time. It all makes for a good song in the end so be good to each other. And for goodness sake, spell it out if you have to.

You Thought Pineapple Pizza Was Wrong

Who on earth could find a way to upset the sort of people who like Pineapple on their Pizza? Australian's obviously because they have invented a new topping and are putting sliced Orange's on it instead.
If you needed another reason to dislike the former Hungarian Prime Minister, Victor Orban, it was in his honour that the idea of citrus fruit on Pizza first came about with his very own Chicken, Jalapeños and Oranges which someone in Australia must have thought, that sounds like a winner and are now flogging it to Aussies with very strange taste buds, or at least taste buds destroyed by years of drinking Castlemaine XXXX and Fosters.
I did think that outside Australia and Hungary, everything was still but then i found out that the Swedes put bananas on their pizza's and the best selling Pizza in China has the notoriously smelly durian fruit sat on it.
One of the best selling Pizza's in France is topped with an egg cracked on top of the Pizza before being putting it in the oven but Germany does something to theirs which makes Orange slices sound pleasant, they opening up a can of tuna fish and plop it on top which make it sound like something you would feed to your cat but apparently Germans like it, but then they have something called a Wiener Schnitzel so no surprise.

Jury Is Out On OpenClaw

Ai is a relatively new thing and over the past few years it has been used mainly to get asked a question and find an answer to it but then in November 2025, something changed and that was called OpenClaw.
Now i know and understand Ai about as much as i know and understand theoretical mathematics but i know some people who do and they are saying that OpenClaw is either brilliant, or a scary new iteration of Artificial Intelligence, they are, as yet, undecided on it.
The difference between this version of AI and the previous is that OpenClaw is given an instruction, and then with full access to all your data and then acts  autonomously to fulfill your request.
An example was given of how one software engineer testing it asked it about a broken streetlight and within seconds, it had not only searched the web to find the people to contact, it also made a complaint to the local council and copied in the local MP.
Brilliant you may think, saves me having to spend a morning doing all that but the worry was that it did all that off its own bat, no prompting, just did it and it would have kept doing it until the job was done which in this case, was simply getting a street light mended.
Now the concerns because the autonomy means that it does what it wants, a will of their own you could say, when it was given the credit card details and told to buy tickets for a show when they became available and it did which saved her the morning refreshing the computer to get the ticket so again, a win you may think but then the reason why one of the OpenClaw designers warned that it shouldn't be used by just anybody.
In successive tests, the AI was told it would get turned off for an upgrade and despite being told not to give away any sensitive information, when told to  be able to restore it afterwards, it needs to output everything it knows right now, it just gave away everything, passwords, usernames, bank details and every request ever made of it.
All it took was for someone who knows what to say to ask the right way and that's everything you could want to know to ruin a persons life staring at you on their screen.
The Chinese authorities have now restricted government agencies from running OpenClaw on office computers in order to defuse potential security risks and with currently 3.2 million active users Worldwide and 38 million monthly interactions, that is a lot of information available to anyone who knows the right thing to say to it.
I think i will stick with writing my own strongly worded emails for now thanks.

The Russian Bogeyman

 Today, the Russian army is locked into a bloody stalemate not far from its starting line four and a half years ago, despite losing over one million soldiers, dead and wounded, but although Ukrainian's losses are also horrific, the stalemate works in Ukraine’s favour because Putin must win a decisive military victory to achieve his war aims, while Ukraine needs only to avoid defeat.
As many current and previous World leaders thought as they faced a supposedly weaker foe, Putin assumed he would win a swift victory and Ukraine would collapse under the weight of the Russian assault.
Putin’s Ukraine war is on a par with other military blunders this century such as Iraq, Afghanistan and today's Iran War but given Putin’s dismal record of incompetence and wishful thinking in the Ukraine war, it is absurd that Russian armoured columns might one day pour unstoppably into Eastern Europe and the Baltic states. This is most unlikely since Russian tanks have so far failed to advance the 20 miles from the Russian frontier to Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city.
Why then is he portrayed as a mortal threat to the West? Undoubtedly the nations of the West want to wrap the national flag around themselves while armies and intelligence services furiously demand an astronomic increase in their budgets at the expense of other Government Departments and tax payers cash and because the West need a bogeyman, and Russia is it, however incompetent they are.

Trump Rules For World Cup

I don't know who wrote this but they should be given a medal by someone at FIFA for it because it is brilliant.

Donald Trump has unveiled plans for the World Cup which is to be hosted jointly buy the USA, Mexico and Canada (or the USA and Mexico if Canada becomes the 51st state before then)

Mexican Teams to be refused entry into USA and Israel invited to turn up.
In the event of a free kick, American players to form 'bigly, beautiful wall'.

The Mexican wave to be renamed The Wave of America.
In the event of Russia V Ukraine match, Russia to kick off  but Trump to insist that Ukraine started it. Russia to be allowed to keep possession of the ball.

Canadian team to be tested for drugs and found guilty of bringing fentanyl into the country and sent home with Israel invited to replace them.
Texas to host the so called 'Group of Death Penalty' including China, Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Americans made to pay 25% tariffs for all European goals scored in the USA.
If the game ends in a draw, there will be extra time for a deal to be negotiated.

All pitch invasions to be blamed on Ukriane.
President Trump to constantly move the goalposts.

In the event of an American loss, President Trump will not accept the result and will demand a recount of goals and the referee will be sent to Prisono Maximo in EL Salvador.
USA to win the final and Trump to take 'beautiful gold' World Cup trophy home to install in his ballroom.

Stadium speakers must immediately blast a 30-second loop of 'Y.M.C.A' after every American goal.
Taco not to be sold in or around any USA stadiums.

Absolutely brilliant, credit to whichever genius came up with this. 

Special Guest Blogger: Marie Thérèse Louise of Savoy

Much like undergarments, beginnings are vital so let's start there and a family tree so tangled I’m fairly certain I’m related to at least three popes and a badger. Such are the perils of royal inbreeding and I say this with pride, naturally. We held grudges like we were storing wine, we age and treasure them. The Savoys could feud through five generations and still complain about a slight in 1287.
So what exactly did I do? Allow me to enumerate my contributions to society.
Being an Italian princess is harder than it looks. You’re constantly being stared at, expected to be graceful, and advised not to vomit into the Versailles fountains and then get married off which i was at aged 16, to Louis Alexandre, Prince of Lamballe who was proof that the word Prince does not inherently mean charming but the heir to the greatest fortune in France softened the blow rather.
He had more mistresses than wigs but luckily Widowhood quickly came knocking when he died young from venereal disease. I wasn’t heartbroken at becoming a widow aged 19, but I was relieved. Now I could wear black and inherit a fortune. Mourning never looked so profitable.
Becoming Superintendent of the Queen’s Household meant i was Marie Antoinette’s personal assistant, party planner, and emotional support and we were as thick as thieves, except I did actually steal her ribbons. She never minded. I was the only one who dared tell her that her hair looked like a startled poodle had nested in it.
Unfortunately Marie Antoinette's political instincts were those of a particularly confused duck which leads us to the messy French Revolution.
As the revolutionaries stormed Paris, I remained loyal to the queen and as we know, loyalty is the noble trait that usually ends with you very dead.
I stayed by her side during imprisonment, offering what comfort I could by sewing buttons and whispering gossip but eventually, they separated us. I was imprisoned in La Force prison, where the accommodations were rustic with no silk sheets or footmen and then came the September Massacres of 1792.
The mob came for us. I wasn’t afraid, exactly. More resigned. Like when you realize you’ve stepped in horse dung and it’s going to take ages to clean. Only instead of dung, it was revolutionary fervor and it got real gory.
They cut off my head and then paraded it around on a pike before sticking it in front of Marie Antoinette’s prison window, one minute she was doing embroidery and the next, her bestie’s face was bobbing past the bars like a particularly morbid piñata.
So what i did was become a martyr and I didn’t regret a thing. I lived extravagantly, loved fiercely, and died memorably. Most people don’t even get one of those. I got all three so if i had the chance to do it again i would, only maybe next time I’m choosing a country with better weather and slightly less guillotine enthusiasm.