State Pension Conundrum

The UK has something called the Triple lock when it comes to State Pensions which means that each year it is raised by whichever is the highest, average earnings growth, inflation or 2.5% and at the last Budget in November the highest was inflation so the State Pension increased by 4.8% which means the full State Pension is now £240.25 a week or £12,493 per year.   
The Triple Lock is one of those rare moments where all parties have a cross party agreement to keep so regardless of which party is in charge, they go with it but as there is a gap of approximately £5bn between what is received by the Treasury in National Insurance Contributions and what the treasury pay out, the wisdom of the Triple Lock is being questioned especially as it is dangerously close to the tax free Personal Allowance figure of £12,570 at which point, even if the State Pension is your only income, you will be receiving a letter from HM Revenue & Customs with a tax demand.  
Out of the 44 European countries, the UK has the 11th most generous pension with Luxembourg the best and Armenia the worst and YouGov have a very confusing survey conducted across the nations of Europe with regards to their own State Pension.
The survey found that most Europeans believe their country’s state pension system is not generous enough and although most are concerned that state pensions will become unaffordable, do not support the given options for overhauling it.

Reduce the amount all pensioners receive in state pension payments? No.
Tax state pensions? No
Increase immigration levels to generate tax revenue? No
Raise the minimum age for state pension? No
Increase tax levels on working-age people? No

Probably not surprisingly, when pensioners were asked if their pension amount was too low they agreed it was but when asked what measures they would support to make state pension schemes more affordable, the reply was a firm 'No' to everything so not sure what the answer is but whatever they do, don't ask the opinion of Pensioners first!

Woohoo...Free Onions

It is amazing what you can find walking along the beach such as shells, pebbles and bags of onions.
A few weeks ago 16 containers fell off a ship round by the Isle of Wight and after bobbing around in the English Channel for a few weeks, they are starting to wash up alongside the Southern coast, and for Brighton we got the container full of onions.
Last week in West Sussex hundreds of thousands of bananas washed up and thousands of bags of chips had washed up near Eastbourne and with our thousands of bags of Onions, that's a decent meal although after what our Water Companies have been dumping into the Sea, it might be prudent to leave them for the Seagulls and the Local Council have been urging people not to take the Onions home as they 'may not be fit for human consumption'.   
Apparently, items washed up from ships must, by law, be reported to the Receiver of the Wreck within 28 days, or it may be considered theft.
Here's the legalese bit: 'Any item washed ashore from a ship, whether wrecked or not, constitutes ‘wreck’ under the law. Such goods belong to whoever had title to them before they fell into the sea. Where the goods are washed up as the result of a shipwreck, they must be declared to the receiver of the wreck, by the person finding them, within 28 days. The receiver may subsequently pass them back to the finder (if the owner cannot be found). Otherwise, a payment for the salvage of the goods may be payable by the receiver to the finder.
Failure to report items of wreck found is a criminal offence and the retention of goods ‘unofficially salvaged’ could lead to a prosecution for theft.'
So reading that, just finding thousands of bags of Onions on the beach must be reported else it is considered theft and face a possible fine so to everyone i spoke to today on the beach, Onions? What Onions? We didn't see any Onions? 

The Board Of Peace

As the Peace Process in Gaza has seen Israel continuing to bomb Gazan's and almost 500 have been killed since the agreement, the Board of Peace which is being set up will have their work cut out on many fronts.
As if disarming Hamas isn't going to be a job in itself, it also has Israel moving it's Yellow Lines to claim even more of Gaza for itself as well as the less then inept aid delivery Israel delivers and the continued slaughter of Palestinians in the territory so good luck with it.   
On the confusingly multi layered board, sits Tony Blair who it is being said 'gets the region' after his time as the Middle East Envoy and due to his 'achievements in pushing through the Good Friday Agreement'.
Leading the UK into five major conflicts within his first six years, Iraq (1998), Kosovo (1999), Sierra Leone (2000) Afghanistan (2001) and the infamous 2003 invasion of Iraq so it's fair to say he does get the region, he was part of the disastrous Chuckle Brother duo who bought so much death and destruction to it and as for his achievements in Northern Ireland, John Major and Mo Mowlam did all the years of negotiating and hard yards to be removed from power and the newly elected Tony Blair swoop in to sign the agreement, stand there smiling at for the photographers in Stormont and taking all the plaudits for ending the troubles.
What Gazan's think of having such people as the ever more fascist and Israel loving Donald Trump, and warmongery Tony Blair deciding their future is no surprise but Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has also been asked to join the Board and as he is pretty much the only one who has spoken out about the Israeli genocide and it is no surprise that the Israeli's are objecting to his inclusion because he is 'contrary to its policy' which is obvious includes packing off the Palestinians from their land and claiming it for their own.
The Board of Peace are tasked with not only running the administration of Gaza, but also its reconstruction as most of the strip was destroyed by Israeli bombs and bulldozers which killed more than 71,000 Palestinians and includes, at some point, an international security force but the biggest problem they will face is stopping Israel from continuing to murder, ethnically cleanse, grab the land and continue the genocide which they have been conducting against Palestinians for over 7 decades.

Trump's Latest Toddler Tantrum Backfires

The Orange faced best friend of various pedophiles in the White House must have been very angry when he found the remote control in his stomach folds and turned to the News on to see that European countries had sent some of their military to Greenland after his latest attempt to bully the Arctic Island into becoming American failed spectacularly, so angry with us Europeans in fact that he is going to make Americans pay more for things to show that he is not to be messed with.
The Marmalade Mussolini wannabe has announced that from February 1st he will impose 10% tariffs on Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Finland and these will rise to 25% from June 1st and will be: 'due and payable until such time as a Deal is reached for the Complete and Total purchase of Greenland'.
Seems a bit like holding a gun to your own head and threatening to blow your own brains out unless you get your own way and Europe responded by saying, 'Want us to hold your coat?' because Epstein's sex pest mate might not be the brightest, and his multiple bankruptcies prove that when it comes to economics he is not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but even he must realise that it's a massive act of self harm.
I called one Economist to explain it and taking out the swearing and insults, the bits I can use are: 'What the....EU...Single...Market....idiot....pedophile protector....Lee Harvey Oswald....the fat Dickhead'.
Luckily less sweary Economist's were lining up to explain that you can’t impose tariffs on individual EU countries because of the European single market so imposing tariffs on one is imposing tariffs on all 27 of them because tariffs are the same across all EU countries.
A report i read said that Trumps tariffs have cost each American 16% more than they would otherwise be paying so go ahead Fat Boy, make us give you Greenland by punishing your own people.
What a moron, tried to bully little Denmark but it's 450.4 million friends in the EU stood up and said 'Something you want to say you little handed sex offender?'  

Americans Rise Up Finally

I have often wondered why Americans are not protesting and demonstrating in the street as Trump goes more and more Fascist and it seems that finally they are with news of clashes between the hired thugs of ICE and protesters in Minneapolis.
On the back of one of Trumps blackshirt goons shooting a woman in the face three times last week, and the lies the Government then said to try and discredit her, protesters have been clashing with the brave federal agents who hide their faces who fired tear gas into the crowd.
The Tangerine Tyrant went onto Social Media to spout nonsense about professional agitators and insurrectionists attacking the Patriots of I.C.E., who are only trying to do their job which unfortunately seems to include murdering and kidnapping American citizens and the Mango Moron is now threatening to invoke the Insurrection Act, which would allow him to deploy troops to Minnesota.
Maybe it will all die down or maybe it will snowball to other cities and states but as Trump tired to persuade troops to shoot protesters when they protested outside the White House in 2020, he won't be giving the orders to speak nicely to then so to the protesters, keep going and maybe take over institutions and take names as he suggested the Iranian protesters do.

Greenland Saying Naamik

Greenlander's have said in a very loud voice that they want to be Danish and not American, and to be fair who could blame them, one look at the madness going on over there and nobody in their right mind would think: 'You know what, I fancy some of that'.
Being American they would get a better flag, the Greenland Flag is pretty rubbish but  that's about it, oh they they get an increasingly Fascist Government run by a sex pest and pedophile protector but despite the orange moron banging his teeny tiny fists on the table and demanding Green;land become the 51st State, it ain't happening.  
The Danish and Greenland Foreign Ministers who turned up at the meeting today with JD Vance and Marco Rubio saying that said that it would be a very short meeting if America didn't back down and as it was barely 50 minutes between the photographs of them going in and then the photographs of them coming out, it wasn't a success.
Apparently Marco Rubio was tasked with: 'Crafting a proposal to purchase the semi-autonomous Danish territory' but that comes with a £700bn cost estimate but it’s not entirely clear how it was calculated because most of Greenland is Ice and snow with a few Polar Bears mingling around but Greenland’s prime minister, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, said that the island would not be owned or governed by Washington and 'If we have to choose between the US and Denmark here and now, we choose Denmark, Nato and the EU'.    
The European parliament leaders issued a statement declaring their 'firm support for Denmark and Greenland' and they 'unequivocally condemn the US ambition to control the semi-autonomous territory' so the tangerine tyrant will just have to make do with Jeffrey Epstein Island instead, i hear that's available and he know where that is.

Reform Just Tories 2.0

Is there no former Conservative MP that Nigel Farage wouldn’t accept as a member of Reform. OK, he might draw the line at Liz Truss on the grounds she is deranged and Boris Johnson might be a problem but those two aside, it seems that anyone is welcome from the Party that was unceremoniously booted out in record numbers 18 months ago.
Today, making it a round 20 sloppy seconds is Nadhim Zahawi who has made the step across from right wing Conservative to even further right wing Reform and as he was unveiled at the Reform Conference and immediately journalists gave a  run through some of his career highlights so far.
A successful businessman turned Tory politician who thought it was just fine to claim the heating for his stables on parliamentary expenses and then being appointed chancellor by Boris after the resignation of Rishi Sunak, only to stab him in the back and call on him to step down less than 48 hours later, a loud backer of both the economic disaster that was Truss and then the Covid Partying Boris and then the infamous sacked as chair of the Tory party for having forgotten to mention he was being investigated over a £5m unpaid tax bill when he was in charge of the Treasury, a fact he and failed to mention this to any of the three prime ministers he worked for!.
As Reform becomes a convalescent home for former Conservatives whose political careers had reached a dead end, mention was made of previous comments that Zahawi had made about Farage, mainly that he only offered division and that he could never live in a country run by Farage as well as the observation that under Reform’s immigration proposals, Zahawi’s family would have been deported on arrival into the country.
Nadhim only shook his head sadly, Nige said all was forgiven and the notoriously thin-skinned Nadhim began to get a bit tetchy and obviously wondering why did these damn journalists people keep bringing up the past?
Reform voters must be wondering if by the time of the next election, the whole party will consist of the previous Government which they grunted about so angrily.

Iran Next For Regime Change?

It is being reported that over 2,000 protesters have been killed in Iran as the demonstrations which started out as Economic protests ave evolved into political ones, reaches its 15th day and the Iranian Government crackdown on any dissent.
Now that Donald Trump has a taste of regime change in oil rich nations, he is threatening to send his military to Tehran and posted last night that 'Help is on the way' and told the protesters to keep going and we may have seen a sign of what to expect with troops begin evacuated from key US military bases in the region.
When the Pentagon launched strikes against Iran’s nuclear site last June, it hastily removed troops from it's bases which did receive retaliatory strikes by Iran and Tehran are saying they will again target US military bases in the region in retaliation for any strikes from Washington.
The last thing we want to see is another war in the Middle East, the last one America started in neighbouring Iraq only ended recently after decades but  if America do attack, and if Iran respond and if Israel take time out from their ongoing Genocide in Palestine to join in, then all bets are off as the potential for escalation grows.
Defence experts are not expecting a rerun of Venezuela with an American patsy put in charge, the Iranian Government is not expected to fall easily and cleanly, but a limited strike to encourage the protesters and threaten the Regime that there may be worse to come although if even a limited strike is responded to, then off we go into the unknown again.
Unfortunately, it does seem that by moving their military out of harms way, things may be happening soon. 

Turning Off The Internet?

More and more I am hearing older people say with all the problems the Internet is causing, especially Social Media, why don’t we just turn the whole thing off and go back to a previous world of landlines, letters, engaging with the real world and face to-face-contact which was fine before it all came along.
As a famous Supercomputer once said (which admittedly did go mad and try and kill everyone but let's gloss over that): 'I can’t let you do that Dave' because the problem isn’t the internet, it’s the people.
I imagine questions about television, radio, newspapers, the printing press off and books were raised after their inventions also.
Today I have read a newspaper from around the world, looked up within seconds what a Fungible token is, emailed people on a whole other continent, looked up the Lyrics to 'Ant Rap', booked an MOT  and i will later do some grocery shopping online and  without Google Maps I would probably still be driving in circles in the middle of Cardiff although in some regards, it was  thanks to Google maps that I was driving around in circles in the middle of Cardiff in the first place.
It is hard to argue that the internet has done a lot of harm with Social Media and allowing dingbats with a keyboard to post misinformation and nonsense conspiracy theories but it is a magnificent technological achievement which allows access to knowledge, connected people and transformed learning so rather than ban the internet, we should civilise it by just banning the social media companies that spread hatred on it.
The internet is a communication medium, it is not the communication itself. Blaming “the internet” is like blaming the post office if you get a nasty letter and anyway, it’s far too late to put the genie back in the lamp so should make social media responsible for the accuracy of what they publish, in the same way that the media (in the UK anyway) is responsible because yes  it can be a bit of  a cesspool at times but we can't throw the baby out with the bath water.

Not Defending Your Right To Free Speech

Every now and then the idea of protecting Free Speech crops up and I admit that I have never really understood the freedom of speech thing or the demands to defend to the death the right for someone to say it because to me, if you are about to say something ridiculous, insulting or just plain ignorant i would prefer it that you kept your big fat gobs shut and said nothing at all.
Speaking to other people (freely), it seems that I am not the only one confused on what it actually is as everyone claims to support it, yet few agree on what it actually allows what you can and can't say and where and when can you say it.
Legal experts point to Article 19 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights which states that: 'Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers' which seems to be saying you can say what you want where you want but hang on, the UK's Article 10 of the Human Rights Act 1998, guaranteeing free expression but has restrictions for public safety, preventing crime like hate speech, incitement, harassment, defamation, or national security, with recent laws like the Online Safety Act 2023 and rules for universities balancing expression with preventing harm and ensuring campus safety.
So we can't say what we want because there are limitations unless you are in a University which are protected by a specific act, the  Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023) so a good rule of thumb is if you are about to say something ridiculous, insulting or ignorant make sure you are in a University first although us British do have our own way of dealing with it, say something absurd and we won't defend the right for you to say it, we will take the piss out of you mercilessly, which also seems to work.