After Artemis II, What Next?

They have flown at 17,000 miles per hour, travelled 685,000 miles and spent 10 days in space, a trip that took Nasa’s Artemis II crew the furthest humanity has ever been from the Earth but now that the astronauts are back on Earth, what's next?
For Nasa and for all of humanity in whose name the astronauts said they were travelling, the question is where will this achievement lead?
There is a space race with China to get the first feet on the Moon for 50 years and Nasa hopes to do that with Artemis IV by 2028 but the whole Artemis project has been facing delays are are 5 years behind their original timescale, Artemis III was pencilled in for 2023.
If III succeeds, then comes Artemis IV, which aims to finally put astronauts onto the moon but China is working to a similar schedule, with the hope of getting to the moon by 2030. And it is working fast and has already put landers on the moon, and is due to test the spacecraft later this year, and experts suggest that its timelines could be a little more realistic than the ones offered by Nasa.
Although i refuse to buy into the Nationalism which comes with Space Exploration, inevitably the winner to leave fresh footprints on the Lunar surface will get the glory but various political demands from inside the US and China will require that both get to the moon as quickly as it can.
There have been people who do not share my enthusiasm for Space Travel, asking what's the point of it all but that's to not notice the Earth's faces growing challenges from climate change and resource scarcity to geopolitical instability from which we may well need to escape one day.
Then there are the considerations of asteroid impacts, supervolcanic eruptions or nuclear war, Stephen Hawking warned, 'I don’t think the human race will survive the next thousand years, unless we spread into space' and he was a proper brainiac.
Then there are the technological advancements it generates right here on Earth, satellite communications, GPS, weather forecasting, advanced materials, medical imaging, miniaturised electronics in smartphones and laptops.
Finally, the cost is often mentioned but consider this, the projected estimate for the whole Artemis project is $93 billion, the war in Iran costs America $2 billion dollars each day, the 40 day war therefore cost 86% of what it cost to fund the entire Artemis project which should shut up the people who are saying to me the money would be better spent here on Earth because when the money is here, we just spaff it away on missiles and bombs to kill each other with.

Special Guest Blogger: Irving Berlin

Ladies and gentlemen, may I have the honor of your attention as I regale you with the tale of my illustrious career, my untimely demise and why I’m still not over the time I accidentally invented Christmas.
I was born Israel Beilin which is a name as cumbersome as a Brussel sprout soufflé. My parents, humble German-Jewish immigrants, arrived in the United States with precisely two things, a trunk full of secondhand coats and a deep, abiding distrust of sausages made by anyone else.
We settled in New York, where I quickly learned that if you want to make it in America, you must first shed your accent, your last name, and any hope of pronouncing your own surname without a yawn. Thus, Israel became Irving and Beilin became Berlin. Classy.
The golden days of Tin Pan Alley! A time when composing a hit song was as simple as scribbling a melody on a napkin, tripping over a piano bench, and accidentally creating the next standard.
My early years were a whirlwind of renting a room in Yonkers for $2.50 a week and scribbling lyrics by gaslight. Or kerosene. Or whatever passed for light before electricity decided to show up.
Then came Alexander’s Ragtime Band, and suddenly I wasn’t just a man with a questionable moustache, I was a man with a musical career. And let me tell you, nothing solidifies your place in society like a song that makes every person in America tap their feet while pretending they’ve never heard it.
White Christmas. Yes, that one. The song that has made me eternally wealthy, I was making money off a song about snow for the rest of my life.
The truth? I wrote it on a dare. I was in Hollywood, visiting my son, and the weather was so disgustingly sunny it hurt my soul. I muttered something about missing the snow and the cold, and lo! Bing Crosby turned to me and said, 'Write a song about it.' And so I did. But here’s the kicker: I had never seen a white Christmas in my life. I was winging it.
By the time I shuffled off this mortal coil at 101, I’d written over 900 songs and outlived Cole Porter, George Gershwin, and about five of my own nieces.
My death? Quiet, dignified, and mercifully free of dramatic last words. I was napping, as one does when you’re 101 and your joints and other body parts have given up the fight.

Even Erdogan Thinks You Suck Benji

Shortly after the United States and Iran agreed to a ceasefire earlier this week, Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan Erdogan, warned Donald Trump in a telephone conversation of possible Israel provocations and sabotage to undermine the agreement to which the Warmongering Israeli Prime Minister responded that: 'Israel under my leadership will continue to fight Iran’s terror regime and its proxies, unlike Erdogan who accommodates them and massacred his own Kurdish citizens'.  
Not one to take criticism, Erdogan took off his gloves, told his Government to hold his beer and called Netanyahu the 'Hitler of our time' and pointed out the proceedings at international courts and an arrest warrant issued against him by the International Criminal Court at The Hague for genocide and how he faces being tried in his own country and is likely to be sentenced to imprisonment.
The rest of the Turkish Government joined in and said they stood by innocent civilians and would make added efforts to see Netanyahu held accountable for the war crimes he has committed and called Netanyahu the ringleader terrorist of the 21st century's massacre and terror network.
'The brazen remarks by Netanyahu directed at our esteemed President, are a clear manifestation of a guilt complex' wrote the Turkish Foreign Minister on X. 'The audacity of someone whose hands are stained with children's blood, someone pursued by international law, to presume to lecture Turkey on morality is merely an indicator of his efforts to cover up his own crimes against humanity, and it holds no validity whatsoever' and then went on to threaten to invade Israel: 'Just as we entered Karabakh, just as we entered Libya, we will do the same to them. There is nothing to prevent us from doing it'.
Not a nation to take too kindly for having their war crimes and ongoing genocide repeatedly mentioned, Israeli Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu said that Erdogan doesn't impress anyone with this circus and described the Turkish president as a megalomaniacal dictator who sees himself as an Ottoman Sultan while being no more than a pathetic tyrant of a country with a collapsing economy and a dead democracy and Minister of National Security, Ben-Gvir, posted: 'Erdogan, do you understand English? F*ck you.'
When you are being accused of being a tosspot by Erdogan of all people, you know you are on the wrong side of history.

EU's Problem Child Could Be Problem Solved

When your closest political allies are Vladimir Putin, Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump, then you really should be worried when the elections come around and quite rightly Viktor Orban is facing a very real threat to his 16-year leadership of Hungary.
Polling leading up to today's election has seen Orban far behind Peter Magyar's centre-right Tisza party leading 57%/43% and the arrival of American Vice President JD Vance recently in support of Orban probably didn't help in a nation which has faced protests for a change and against his support for Israel committing War Crimes in Gaza.
Orban has been described as the leader of a mafia state and running an autocracy and according to Transparency International, Hungary is the most corrupt country in the European Union and have dropped 69 places in the Press Freedom Index, between Benin and Malaysia and the European Parliament stated that Hungary can no longer be considered a full democracy and that the country has become an electoral autocracy.
When asked by a BBC reporter if he was worried he could lose, he replied that: 'We always win. We always win' but if the polls are correct, Orban is on his way out and the EU's  problem child may soon be a problem solved.

No Peace Deal Yet

After 21 hours of negotiations, the Americans and the Iranians swept back home with nothing to show for it and each blaming each other for the failure.
Iran said that they never heard anything to make them think that America would stick to any deal made and the Americans said that Iran refused to budge on accepting the American terms on the Nuclear issue so now we wait to see what happens next, hopefully more negotiations and not a return to war but already the Mango Moron in the White House has escalated things by saying that the US Navy will blockade the Strait of Hormuz immediately with the help of NATO who he stated are willing to help although nobody in NATO has said this and were against joining in the Trump folly and which the British Prime Minister wasted no time to announce that they will be doing it on their own as the UK will not be involved in it.
Obviously, as is usually the case with the man known for saying something and then chickening out and who was saying he would destroy a civilisation only a few weeks ago, he is already watering down his proposal saying that any blockade might take some time to implement rather than immediately and which Iran said the only way to open the Strait would be through negotiations and if America escalate, they will respond.
It may be worth remembering that before Trump launched the war, negotiations were ongoing and when America and Israel started the war, Iran were offering to blend down their stockpiles of highly enriched uranium, allow full verification by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and repeated that they had no desire to build a nuclear weapon and the facilitator at the talks, Oman's Foreign Minister said that the agreement could be reached within days, and then Trump and Netanyahu blundered in amidst a war cry of eliminating Iran's nuclear threat.
The talk is that War Criminal Netanyahu, who has been trying to persuade American Presidents to go to war with Iran for 40 odd years, finally found one simple enough to go along with it although now he is desperate to end it as his poll numbers sink and even his own side are questioning the wisdom of what he has done.
The Peace Agreement was for 10 days so we still have time to bring the negotiators back and try again because the alternative is a return to war and if America and Israel could not reach their war aims, whatever they were, in the past 40 days, it is highly unlikely another 40 days will but the already tragic death toll will certainly increase.  

Special Guest Blogger: Steve Marriott

Alright, settle down, settle down. Turns out, the afterlife isn’t all harps and halos. It’s more like a celestial waiting room with slightly dodgy wallpaper and a right poncy bloke in a robe who looks a bit like a roadie I once knew.
I never really thought about things when i was in Small Faces, I was too busy trying to remember the words to 'All or Nothing', avoiding getting my head kicked in by jealous boyfriends and figuring out how to spend the three quid I had in my pocket.
I was always a titchy Mod. The pint-sized geezer with the voice like a foghorn and a haircut that could take your eye out. Blimey, we looked a sight. All those brilliant, ridiculous clothes. Italian suits, tailor-made, but still looking like I’d been dressed by a blind man in a rush. I was five-foot-four, but on stage? On stage, I was ten-foot-tall and built of pure, unadulterated noise. Me, Ronnie, Mac and Kenney… four cheeky bastards from London, crammed into a van, causing chaos wherever we went.
We had a laugh, didn't we? We’d write a song like 'Lazy Sunday' in ten minutes, a bit of a daft piss-take, and it would shoot to number one while the serious-minded muso types were chewing their beards in confusion. That was the joy of it. We weren't trying to be Beethoven. We were trying to get out of our council flats and have a good time.
Of course, a good time costs money. And we were seeing about tuppence of it. I still wake up in a cold sweat thinking about Don Arden. The ‘Al Capone of Pop’. A lovely man, I’m sure. If your idea of lovely is being rooked blind while he’s calling you a genius and pocketing your entire publishing. That was a lesson in never, ever sign anything without your mum reading it first.
Then came the Pie. Humble Pie. What a racket. We decided to get ‘heavy’, we did. Grew our hair, put on the denims, and turned the amps up to eleven. People called us a ‘supergroup’. A supergroup? It felt more like a super-headache most days. Me, Peter Frampton, Greg Ridley and poor old Jerry Shirley, who had the monumental task of keeping us all in time and out of jail.
We went to America. Oh, they loved us over there. All that noise and sweat. They didn't care that I looked like a garden gnome who’d swallowed a trumpet. They just wanted to be hit over the head with a wall of sound. So we hit them. And it was a blast. A proper, messy, glorious, rock and roll blast. I bought a 16th-century pub in the country, filled it with dogs and kids, and pretended I was a sensible country gent. What does a rock star do with his first big cheque? Buy a Rolls Royce? Snort Colombian? Nah. Buy a pub. Logical, innit?
I like to think a few of those tunes hold up. If you can put on 'Tin Soldier' or 'Itychoo Park' and not want to wiggle a bit, then you’re probably dead.
They say I influenced a whole generation of punk rockers. The punk rockers! All that spitting and safety pins. A bunch of surly oiks telling me I was alright. Well, I’ll be. At least they had the decency to nick good chords.
I wasn't a saint. Far from it. I was a nightmare to work with and had a temper like a firecracker and an ego the size of a small planet. I loved a drink, a smoke, and a proper row. I made mistakes. Bankrupted myself more times than I can count. Lost friends. Let people down. I was a human being, not a bleeding monument.
Cor blimey, what a way to go. There I am, back at the old gaff, having a smoke and listening to a tape. Next thing I know, I’m waking up with a stinking headache and St. Peter is giving me a right telling-off for smoking indoors. The papers called it tragic but the only tragic thing about it, apart from the obvious, is that it was started by a cigarette. How bloody typical! All that effort, all that noise, all that life… snuffed out by a bleedin’ Woodbine. You couldn't write it.

Melania Getting Ahead Of The Story?

That Melania Trump address was a bit strange yesterday, especially as her husbands disastrous war in the Middle East has knocked the Trumpstien files off the front pages for a while so the question is why say anything and why now?
In her statement, Melania said she never had a relationship' with the late pedophile or with his associate Ghislaine Maxwell, saying they only had a casual correspondence and criticised what she called the lies which were defaming her reputation.
There was that 2002 email she sent to Maxwell where she wrote: 'Dear G! How are you? Nice story about JE in NY mag. You look great on the picture. I know you are very busy flying all over the world. How was Palm Beach? I cannot wait to go down. Give me a call when you are back in NY. Have a great time! Love, Melania' which seems a bit more than a casual correspondence.
The first lady also said Epstein did not introduce her to her husband, President Donald Trump, and that she is not one of Epstein's victims, nor had she flown on his plane or visited his island and she she have any knowledge of his actions.
Some are saying that she is trying to distance herself from her husband who was the pedophiles best bud for decades as well as a growing pile of evidence that he was involved in sex assaults and pedophilia himself and is named at least 38,000 times in the files that we have seen so far and with more releases imminent, could be trying to get ahead of whatever is coming down the track in the next few weeks.
I assume also that she knows what is coming down the track and is desperate to get her 'Wasn't me' in first but I know a couple of ex-Daily Mail journalists who will be paying all this very close attention.

Special Guest Blogger: Greek Demigod Arcas

Ah, the sweet serenity of eternity. What a delightful way to spend forever. If you’re reading this, I assume you’ve heard of me, Arcas, the slightly confused mortal who accidentally tried to club his mother (who in my defence happened to be a very large bear at the time). Yes, that story. The one where Zeus, in his infinite wisdom, yanked us both into the sky to become constellations.
Let me tell you as charming as the afterlife is, it’s a bit cold. And static. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Allow me to regale you with the most hilariously awkward chapter of my life, before I became a permanent fixture in Ursa Major, forever frozen mid-swing with a stick.
I was born in ancient Arcadia, which, let me tell you, is a place of breathtaking beauty if you don’t mind the shepherding, the goats and the fact that your mother is a hunting goddess named Callisto.
Mum had the misfortune of catching Zeus’s eye but Hera did not appreciate the situation so, in a fit of divine pique, Hera transformed my mother into a bear and here’s where things got awkward.
One day, while out on a hunt I came face-to-paw with my own mother. She didn’t recognize me, obviously, because 1. She was a bear, and 2. Hera’s curse made her forget her mortal life.
But still! I was just about to swing my club and end her existence when Zeus froze us both in place and mumbling that we had potential as constellations, here am i forever mid-lunge, my stick forever mid-swing, while my mother, now Ursa Minor, glowers at me from the tip of my club.
So, here’s the thing about becoming a constellation. It’s not all poetry, sailors using you for navigation or romantic stargazers whispering your name because where most people know Orion, Perseus, or even that twinkling twerp, Sagittarius but Arcas? I’m a mythological footnote but being a constellation my main role is to forever point people in the direction of Polaris.
So always check if your mother’s been turned into a bear. And if you ever find yourself immortalised in the stars, pack a flask because its chilly up here.

Who Is Dictating The Ceasefire?

Donald Trump described the ceasefire deal as 'total and complete victory' while Iran called it 'an enduring defeat for Washington' and they had 'Forced the US to accept its 10-point plan' but whoever claims the spoils, there is a two week ceasefire although the details are a movable feast.
We do know that America handed Iran a 15 point plan to end the war last week and Iran replied with a 10 point plan of their own and it is that 10 point plan which Trump said was 'a workable basis on which to negotiate'.
The list of 10 points, published by Iranian state media, include a number of conditions the US has rejected in the past and include the lifting of all primary and secondary sanctions on Iran, continued Iranian control over the strait of Hormuz, US military withdrawal from the Middle East, an end to attacks on Iran and its allies, full compensation for damages suffered by Iran during the war, the release of frozen Iranian assets and a UN security council resolution making any deal binding.
Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said Israel supports the US decision to suspend strikes against Iran for two weeks, but that the ceasefire does not include Lebanon but Pakistan’s prime minister, who brokered the ceasefire, said that the agreed ceasefire covered everywhere 'including Lebanon' and has accused Israel of violating it already but that is what Israel does, as shown in Gaza.
For decades Israel will agree a ceasefire and then go out of it's way to move the goalposts and violate it, since the ceasefire with Gaza in October 2025, Israeli planes have bombed and killed over 800 Palestinians and daily violations by the Israeli army as part of the ongoing ethnic cleansing and genocide in the region.
US Secretary of Defense and complete bell-end, Pete Hegseth, has warned that the US stands ready in the background to ensure that Iran upholds the terms of the ceasefire agreement but although Iran may need to be watched closely, it was America who has now twice attacked it while in negotiations and Israel who will be keen to see it fail and return to the slaughter.

Special Guest Blogger: Clodagh Rodgers

So, there I was, peacefully minding my own business in my sitting room, doing what I do best which was watching re-runs of Come Dancing from the 1970s and wondering why no one wears hats like that anymore, when i just suddenly stopped being alive.
Rather boringly, my life didn't flash before my eyes but if it did, the highlight would have been 1971 when sideburns  were wide and trouser bottoms were even wider, and when i sang for the United Kingdom at the Eurovision song contest.
I sang Jack in the Box, which, for those of you who missed it, or were born after 1975, was a proper pop triumph about a clown. I came fourth but not that the Irish Republican Army were celebrating because as a Roman Catholic female from Northern Ireland, they issued death threats towards me and called me a traitor.
It’s not like they erected me a statue or developed me a perfume afterwards but for three minutes I had an entire continent watching me perform in a costume with more polyester than is medically safe,  and then forgetting my name by breakfast.
Over the years, I had the pleasure of being semi-forgotten in the most charming ways. I did some acting and cabaret but i never became the household name like a Karen Carpenter or a Cher but I do have the knowledge that at least once, in 1971, I wore more sequins than a drag queen at a disco convention and nobody said a word.