Golden Ages

A golden age is a period considered the peak in the history of whatever it is we are considering and we have been around for many years and have seen many peaks
The first Golden Age according to historians was in Philosophy in 5bc to 4bc and was followed by Peace in peace from 27bc to 180ad which says much about us that the most peaceful time was 2,000 years ago.
Christianity had its hey day from 313–590 ad and then we truly were in the dark ages as the next Golden Age was in Art which ran from      1492 to 1681 and overlapped by all those salty seadogs as Piracy had its golden age from 1650 to 1730.
England peaked in 1558–1603 along with literature which peaked in the same year we stopped peaking  although confusingly Great Britain waited until 1837–1901. War had its best period between 1600 and 1650.
Cinema Golden Age was 1920 - 1960 and then there was a glut of Gold Ages as from the 1940's we have Politics  (1945 to 1973), Capitalism (1945 to 1974), Christmas (1942 - 1967) and Theatre (1945–1955).
The most prosperous time was 1950-1973, UK Football peaked in 1966 and Music was best between 1960 and 1995.
The golden age of TV was 1999 until 2023 but what will historians look back at for today's Golden Age?
Apparently, we are in the midst of a Golden Age of artificial intelligence and eating plant-based cuisine.

Special Guest Blogger: Lolo Ferrari

When you spend your life as a living, breathing Guinness World Record, people tend to have opinions. They look at the numbers, the volume and the sheer, industrial-strength engineering required to keep me upright. But looking back at the 37 years I spent on Earth, I realise my life wasn’t just a medical marvel but a performance of pneumatic proportions.
Every girl dreams of her Prince Charming but mine just happened to come with a criminal record and a few years of state-sponsored orange jumpsuits.
In 1988, I met Éric Vigne. He was fifteen years my senior, fresh out of prison, and possessed the kind of bad boy energy that makes a girl think, He seems like the perfect person to manage my career.
People asked me why I married a former drug dealer. Honestly? I liked that he wasn’t intimidated by a challenge. If a man can navigate the French penal system, he can certainly navigate the logistics of finding a bra that requires the same structural integrity as the Golden Gate Bridge. We were a match made in well, perhaps not heaven, but certainly in a very interesting niche of the witness protection program.
I had 22 breast enlargements. Twenty-two! Most people go to the dentist 22 times in a decade I went to the surgeon like I was trying to earn loyalty points and by the end, the Guinness Book of Records (the 2003 edition, if you’re keeping track) noted that each of my girls weighed roughly 2.8 kilograms.
That's nearly six pounds of saline on each side. Three liters total. For perspective, that’s like carrying around two large bottles of cola strapped to your chest at all times.
My bra size was a 58F. If I leaned forward too quickly, I didn’t just lose my balance, I threatened the tectonic stability of the European continent. I was essentially a human airbag.
Of course, the world didn’t just want to measure me, they wanted to see the spectacle in motion so enter the TV Show, Eurotrash.
Oh, the fun I had on Channel 4, Working with Antoine de Caunes and Jean-Paul Gaultier was the highlight of my career. I became a regular on the show because, let’s be honest, nothing says European Culture quite like a French woman who looks like she was drawn by a cartoon artist with an unlimited budget for ink.
I did a few adult films, too, though honestly, calling them films feels a bit generous, It was a job and a way to fund the dream.
There’s a funny thing about being famous for being big. People forget that there’s a spine involved. My back was doing the work of a Roman column for over a decade. I walked with a certain Lolo sway, which people thought was a sexy strut, but in reality, it was just me trying to prevent my center of gravity from betraying me and launching me headfirst into a display of apples at the Supermarket.
I’d like to think I was the original pioneer long before everyone was getting Brazilian Butt Lifts and lip fillers I was there, pushing the boundaries of what the human skin could technically hold together.
I left the party at 37. A bit early, perhaps, but Suicide is a heavy word, but from where I am now, it feels less like an end and more like a very dramatic exit through the gift shop.
My body was a temple, sure, but it was a temple designed by someone who really, really liked balloons. I lived life at maximum volume. I broke records, I broke chairs, and I probably broke a few surgeons spirits.

And The 2026 Peace Prize Goes To...

Congratulations to Navanethem 'Navi' Pillay, a South African jurist and former UN for human rights commissioner who once represented Nelson Mandela and now has a Nobel Peace Prize upon her mantelpiece.
The Norwegian committee said she was: 'A source of hope and inspiration to all those who seek to bring about a more peaceful world' and 'Instrumental in ensuring war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide are prosecuted' which annoyed a certain Orange toddler in the White House who showed his magnanimous side by dismissing Ms Pillay as an unknown liberal person who hates Israel and claimed he should have won for settling eight wars.
Obviously he must have expected it because he said said before the announcement that: 'They don't give it to people like me' by which i assume he meant sex offenders who are almost certainly pedophiles who start wars and is backing Israel's genocide which admittedly all would have gone against him i suppose.
He did say that: 'I’ve done stuff that nobody else has ever done. I’m not bragging, I’m just telling you the facts' which is true, shame some of those things were with children, porn stars or a woman in the changing rooms of a certain Manhattan department store  or even Moscow Hotel Rooms which again doesn't scream Peace Prize winner.
Last years victorious recipient, Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, gifted her Nobel Peace Prize medal to the big sulking cry baby and Navi Pillay took taken a swipe at Trump by joking that she would offer to share it with him if people kept clapping but still, there is always next year Don although from the way you are looking these days, it would have to be posthumous.

Burnham Going All The Way With EU

Andy Burnham has said that he was prepared 'to go all the way' in terms of the UK’s relationship with the EU  which most of us took as a commitment to rejoin the EU in the next Labour manifesto.
Another non committal kite flying exercise, the idea of reversing Brexit seems to have wide public support and the EU seem to be taking the idea seriously, with the French president, Emmanuel Macron, promising to welcome the UK back.
It's not difficult to see why the idea of rejoining is tempting, the UK economy is languishing thanks to to the estimated 6% cost of Brexit to GDP and even Brexit enthusiasts struggle to find any benefits to being outside of the largest single market on the planet which just happens to be literally on our doorstep and even non European countries, notably Canada, Australia and New Zealand, appear to be moving closer to the EU so how stupid would you have to be to not want to rejoin the Party?
Burnham's predecessor Keir Starmer, did make noises about moving closer to the EU and he did make some headway but Burnham seems to have come in with a speedy determination to change things and has been impressive so far and a TMG Poll last week found that  rejoining is supported by almost half of all voters and would boost Labour’s vote share by as much as seven points.
We may need another referendum but Labour are thinking if they make it part of their Manifesto that would serve as a mandate and we have non-European nations negotiating membership of the single market via the European Economic Area which is a template we could attach ourselves to rather than go the whole hog.
The biggest thing in Burnham's favour is that he can point to what a complete nightmare it has been economically and politically for Britain since we left and i'm sure creeps like Nigel Farage will fight to try to keep us out but again Labour have the trump card of pointing to look how wrong he was about everything last time and the consequences for our country, so would you honestly trust him again?

Special Guest Blogger: Louis Braille

Childhood is a minefield of bad decisions. Some kids stick coins up their nose, others try to fly off the garage roof with a bedsheet parachute, and then there was me.
At the age of three, I decided that the most logical use for a sharpened leather-working awl was to aggressively poke holes in a piece of scrap leather and one slip and suddenly i was the poster boy for not playing with pointy objects.
By the time I was five, the infection had finished its work, and my world went from vivid colors to no colours at all.
When I arrived at the Royal Institute for Blind Youth, I was ready to learn everything. The problem was that the library was basically a decorative collection of heavy, embossed wood blocks. Trying to read those was like trying to decipher a secret message carved into a piece of furniture, it took forever. I wanted to read books, write letters, and most importantly, get through my music scores without having to memorise every note through sheer, exhausting repetition.
Look, my eyesight would have been nice to have for, say, checking out the architecture of Paris or maybe finding my socks in the morning but living in the dark forced me to look at the world through my skin. It forced me to listen carefully, to think structurally, and to realize that if the world wasn’t built with you in mind, you have two choices of complaining about it or building a better system.
Then, Captain Charles Barbier showed up with his writing system which was designed for soldiers to read messages in the dark without lighting a lantern because, you know, being spotted by the enemy while reading your map is a bad career move. His system used a grid of twelve dots. Twelve!
Imagine trying to read a tactile character that’s the size of a postage stamp. By the time your finger traversed the whole thing, you’d forgotten what the first word was.
I looked at that clunky, oversized grid and thought, I appreciate the effort, but at fifteen, I did what any grumpy, overachieving teenager would do and tore it all apart. I simplified it and shrunk it down to a six-dot cell that perfectly fitted under a single fingertip.
I presented my system to the Institute in 1824. Keep in mind, I was fifteen, and I was basically telling the established faculty, Hey, your reading methods sucked so I fixed it and they patted me on the head, said, Nice try, kid, and went right back to their bulky, inefficient wood blocks.
I spent the next several years refining the system, including music notation but it wasn't until long after I was gone, tuberculosis,  that people realised, Oh, wait. This blind kid ws actually on to something . You're welcome, by the way.
I went from being a kid who couldn’t handle a simple leather-punching project to creating something that started in a teenager’s bedroom because he was too stubborn to accept that reading had to be difficult.

Post Trump USA

Donald Trump is becoming increasingly unpopular which seems a bit strange after all his successes so how is this possible?
The Orange Fatbergs administrations approval ratings are plumetting and a cynic may point towards voters having had enough of the racism, tantrums, extra judicial killings by ICE, support for the Israeli genocide, the corruption, lying, creepy weirdness, climate denial and refusing the release of the Epstein files he's in and the incoherent babbling and disregard for anyone that refuses to bow down to him.
That is unlikely as his MAGA crowd love all that or rather they did but the problem seems to be runaway inflation, the high cost of petrol and the whole Iran war thing but many people who voted for the Tangerine Toddler are most upset because they thought he was just going to do all the horrible stuff to other folk, not them.
It's got so bad that even some Republicans are even turning against the Grapefruit Gaddafi and as his power continues to wane, Humpty Trumpty will lash out even more, banning more news outlets from the White House, destroying all the Kennedy centres and reflective pools he can get his hands on.
Despite everything, millions will keep voting for Baron von Shitzinpantz anyway as many of his voters are filled with hatred and fear and will pick a sex offending criminal who is almost certainly a pedophile over just about anyone from any other Party but if the Mid Terms go as everyone expects, Americans can start looking at a Post Donald Trump USA but there is a problem with that.
With his penchant of being a utter jerk, he has wounded the USA past the point of return where he somehow managed to make the Iranian regime look sane, with most of the world rooting against America (and enjoying Iran's mocking videos of the orange cheeto) which sucks for the American people and although history will not be kind to him and deservedly so, the rest of us know that if the USA collapsed and had to stop interfering in the rest of the planets business, the world would be a much nicer and better place so win win for the rest of us, oh dear for the US of A.

Special Guest Blogger: Brazilian Goddess Pomba Gira

Sit down, darling. No, not there dolt, you’re sitting on my silk skirt, and this shade of crimson is far too expensive for your fat backside to rumple.
Honestly, the youth of today. You walk into my crossroads with your store-bought roses and menthol cigarettes and you expect the Queen to just drop everything?
My path is paved with the bones of men who thought no was a suggestion, but it has a certain charm because a woman has three choices of being a wife (boring), being a servant (tiring), or being a problem. I chose to be a catastrophic problem. I had hips that swung like a pendulum and a laugh that
could shatter a stained-glass window from three streets away. I lived in the taverns, the cabarets, and the places where the respectable people went when they wanted to feel alive and then spent the next morning praying for forgiveness.
Being a Pomba Gira isn’t just about wearing red and looking fabulous, it’s about the Crossroads. Every time you’re stuck, between a bad job and a worse one or between a boring husband and a thrilling mistake or even between life and death, that’s my office.
I’m the Queen of the Seven Crossroads. I’m the one who stands at the gate of the cemetery, laughing at the people who thought they could take their money with them. You can’t.
When you call on me, you’re not calling a fairy godmother. I’m not going to turn a pumpkin into a carriage, i’m more likely to set the pumpkin on fire and tell you to walk.
You come to me with your little red candles, crying about some boy named Kevin who hasn't liked your photo on the internet. Seriously? You want the Queen of the Night, the Lady of the Labyrinth, the Woman of Seven Marriages, to intervene in a digital spat?
I remember when people asked for real things like protecting your house from the police or making sure your husband’s mistress loses her hair but now, I spend half my time looking at your tweets and blog posts and think I’m not a feckin' delivery service, I’m a spirit. If you want a miracle, go talk to
a saint, they’re much more patient, though their parties are terrible. No smoking, no drinking, and everyone wears white. Dreadful.
People find my laugh, the gargalhada, quite scary as they think it’s the sound of evil. Idiots, It’s the sound of a woman who has seen the beginning and the end and realized that most of what you worry about is utter horseshit.
I'm the perfume you smell in an empty room and the red rose that blooms in the middle of a graveyard, I’ve seen empires fall because someone wanted a kiss they weren't supposed to have and seen men ruin their lives for a glimpse of a red pair of knickers and I sit at my crossroads, sipping my cider, and I laugh.
But don’t get it twisted. I’m not your bestie, I’m a Queen. If you bring me cheap wine, I’ll make sure your next haircut is a disaster. If you lie to me, I’ll make sure you trip every time you try to look cool. I demand respect so take your roses, leave the cigarette pack (the full one, don't be cheap) and remember, life is too short to drink bad wine or smoke those French ciggies which smell like burnt tyres.

State Pension Age Conundrum

The state pension age is currently set at 67 and there are plans to rise it to 68 and even 69 but the Government are pondering aloud on at some point maybe thinking about possibly lowering it instead.
Very much a kite flying exercise where they mention something in passing and see how it lands with the public and if it gets a bad reaction, they can just say it wasn't actually a thing and forget about it but the idea of putting your feet up a few years earlier than thought seems to be quite popular so they may ponder on it a bit harder.
I have never been able to sort out in my head if the pension age should go up or down, up means less pensions to pay out because in all honestly there are fewer 67 year olds than there are 65 year olds and being dead is a handicap when it comes to claiming your old age pension which saves the Government money but by people staying in employment longer it creates a bottleneck with less jobs for the new generation as the oldies roll on.
Of course by retiring people earlier opening up more jobs, the Government will save on Unemployment Benefit so i guess it comes down to will it cost them more to pay out Pensions earlier than they will save by not paying out Unemployment Benefit and if not, would seem a bit of a economically backwards move. 
There are some ways that I can think of which might work as you presently need 35 qualifying years of National Insurance (NI) contributions or credits to get the full UK State Pension so one option could be you are entitled to retire once you have reached the threshold because working beyond that isn't going to earn you anymore and I can see how that would be popular, even putting it up to 45 years would mean if you began work at 16 you would be clear and eating Wurthers Originals by 61.
As it is only at the 'Hmm....maybe we could' stage there are no plans for what they are thinking or the age they want to lower it to but i'm still unsure if it is a good thing or not, but by making it you can take it earlier if you have the qualifying years if you want to, it seems a happy halfway between what we have now and what most people seem to want.

Eurovision Withdrawals

Canada is joining Australia as being temporarily European for a week in May 2027 when they both compete at the Eurovision Song Contest but Ireland and the Netherlands won't be there in Bulgaria because they have confirmed that they won't share a stage with Israel again due to their continued Genocide in Palestine.
Ireland was one of five countries, along with Iceland, the Netherlands, Spain and Slovenia, that refused to take part in the competition this year in protest against Israel’s participation.
Eurovision's director, Martin Green, said he regretted the withdrawals but: 'They remain a valued part of our family and will be missed' although he won't miss them enough to keep them in and kick out the murdering Israelis instead like they did with Russia.
The European Broadcasting Union has tried to address broadcasters concerns over the participation of Israel by announcing that nations involved in armed conflict or sensitive geopolitical situations will no longer be eligible to host the Eurovision song contest but stopping Israel from hosting it if they win was not enough and off they popped in protest.
I imagine as we get closer more nations will withdraw and I hope they do and would fully support the United Kingdom withdrawing in protest and allow our children, Australia and Canada, to represent us instead because Israel need to be ostracised and to be fair, they would have a better chance of not finishing towards the bottom of the leader board as we tend to do recently.

Cheating Football Teams

 Much joy from Football fans at seeing Manchester City finally getting their cumuppance for their decade of cheating but while many fans of other clubs are reveling in the Citizens demise, a few need reminding that their own teams have had points docked or fines for their own cheating.
With 43 teams on the list for reasons ranging from breaking Financial Fair Play rules to administration, it would almost be quicker to name the League teams which haven't been caught out trying to gain an unfair advantage but where's the fun in that so here is an alphabetical  list of every team that has been docked points over the last 30 years.   

AFC Bournemouth        −10 and another of -17
AFC Wimbledon            −3     
Aldershot Town             −10     
Birmingham City           −9     
Bolton Wanderers         −12     
Boston United             −4 and another of -10    
Brentford                     −3     
Bury                            −12     
Cambridge United      −10     
Chesterfield                 −9     
Coventry City             −10 and another of -10    
Crystal Palace             −10     
Darlington                  −10     
Derby County             −21     
Everton                       −8       
Hereford United         −3     
Hartlepool United     −3     
Leeds United             -15 and another of -10 and another of -10
Leicester City             −6
Leyton Orient             −3
Luton Town                −30 and another of -10  
Manchester City         - pending
Macclesfield Town     −17     
Middlesbrough             −3     
Morecambe                 −3     
Nottingham Forest     −4     
Portsmouth                 −10  and another -9
Plymouth Argyle         −10
Port Vale                      −10     
Rotherham United       -17 then others of -10, -10 and -3
Reading                      −6 and then -6 and another -6    
Sheffield Wednesday  −18 and another of -6
Sheffield United         -10  
Southampton              −4 and then another of -10
Stockport County         −10
Torquay United             −1
West Bromwich Albion −2     
Wigan Athletic             −8 then another of -3 and then -12    
Wrexham                      −10     

That sure is a lot of teams which ended the season with an asterisk next to their name.