Invoking The 25th

The 25th Amendment of the US Constitution has been spoken of for quite some time but this is the first time it's gotten any real press as far as I can tell and it is plain to see that  he is clearly unhinged, the unhingediest man to ever sit his fat arse in the seat of the Oval Office.
We all know Trump has been doing loads of terrible things this entire time but it seems that threatening to destroy Iranian civilisation was a step to far for some people unlike backing a Genocide, ICE abductions, Trade Wars, ending US Aid, bombing schools, being shown to be a (probable) pedophile in the Epstein Files and arguing with the Pope and depicting himself as Jesus.
Could it be that Trumps implied threat of going nuclear was enough to awaken people to finally do something about the remarkable Orange politician with a record of sexual assault and fraud and is obviously in cognitive decline seems obvious although he has always been a very stupid man with the moral compass and attention span of a brain-damaged whelk who acts like a petulant child when he doesn't get his own way?
The 25th Amendment states that if the Vice President and a majority of the cabinet reckon the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, they can boot him out however they need a two thirds majority vote of the house and the senate and the Republicans will never go for that nor the incompetent, sycophantic useful idiot's in his cabinet who do nothing to restrain his madness.
The whole ball rolling has to start then with JD Vance to save everyone by declaring Trump unfit and replacing him with...checks notes...JD Vance?
Can't see it myself but then i couldn't see the current chaotic, disastrous, exceptionally poor debacle we see today happening either so don't waste good money on betting on the 25th happening, the man is so morbidly obese that a bet on Cholesterol finally doing it's thing instead seems much safer. 

Special Guest Blogger: King of Sparta Tyndareus

I’ve been sitting here for eons, listening to Achilles prattle on about his one tiny heel, while Socrates keeps asking rhetorical questions no one wants answered.
I was born in Sparta, a place where the average citizen is sculpted like a Greek god and my claim to the throne was pure nepotism. Father was Zeus and I inherited the crown not because of any great deeds or divine right, but because Sparta’s version of a royal dynasty was Zeus did it.
My most notable achievement before ascending the throne? Mastering the art of avoiding the plague of infant exposure (yes, Sparta’s famous for leaving unhealthy babies on the side of a hill. Harsh, but effective if you’re into attrition).
I once married a woman named Leda. In my defence, she was a queen, a goddess, and possibly a swan in disguise. It was a match made in Olympus but result was a family tree so convoluted it would make a Game of Thrones fan weep. There was my step-daughter Helen, the face that launched a thousand ships, then Pollux, Castor, and a few other demigods.
My bad luck that the Trojan War happened. Entirely. My fault. You see, I had this little rule: if a suitor wanted to marry Helen, they had to swear an oath to defend her honour forever. A great idea, until 100 men showed up, swore oaths, and then spent three decades sulking in a tent when she got abducted and sparking the Trojan War. My brilliance knew no bounds.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that nobody remembers you for your leadership skills, especially if you die in a classic way.
My daughter Clytemnestra’s husband decided to kill me in a fit of poetic justice. I’d raised the lad like a son, only for him to return the favour by stabbing me. I assume he thought it was a Greek tragedy moment, but honestly, I died while reaching out for the cheese board.
The History books mention me as  the man  murdered by his son-in-law but I wasn’t built for the brutal discipline of Leonidas or the tactical genius of Lysander.
No, I was built for drama and my life was full of irony, murder, and the occasional swan with a lifetime of dodging daggers and died thinking, Maybe I should have just left the kid on the hill.

Not Learning From Last Energy Crisis

Ever since Benjamin Netanyahu discovered he had a simpleton in the White House and they joined forced to start the Iran War which blocked upo the Strait of Hormuz, we have heard much about the energy crisis in the 1970's but i was more into watching Scooby Doo back then so it passed me by so what did happen back then?
In October 1973, in response to Western support for Israel during the Yom Kippur War, Arab members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) imposed an oil embargo on all nations aiding Israel which led to severe oil shortages and a significant spike in global oil prices, profoundly impacting economies worldwide.
The crisis triggered stagflation, impacting growth, high inflation and rising unemployment.
The shortage left many homes and schools without heat and some institutions closed during winter months and cities were plunged into darkness during blackouts.
You would have thought that all this would have concentrated minds and ushered in a new age of renewable sources so nations were not so countries were not so dependent on fossil fuels but what Trump's and Netanyahu's foolishness is proving, we never so we can only hope that this time around, we do and ramp up the Solar, tidal and wind power and then we can tell the Middle East to stick their oil where the sun doesn't shine because our power will be coming from where it does.

End Of The World As We Know It

All the madness from politicians over the past few decades could cause a snowball effect and people start voting for honest caring politicians, corporate capital is restrained, war is ended and humanity lives in peace until the sun dies in billions of years but that doesn't seem very likely because as i wrote here, that once a Civilisation develops a way to end all life on the Planet, it inevitably end up doing exactly that.
Scientists split the demise of the whole damn lot of us into two categories, human-caused (anthropogenic) risks in the near future and inevitable natural events billions of years from now so first the things we can do nothing about and are inevitable.
The Sun will slowly increase in luminosity, making Earth too hot for liquid water which will boil away and the Sun will expand into a red giant, likely consuming the Earth entirely which isn't great but that is up to 5 billion years away.
In the short-term and things we can do something about but stupidly don't is Climate Change and rapid global warming making the planet uninhabitable for humans and most species or a Nuclear War, pandemics  through natural or bio-engineered viruses or my personal favourite, a super-intelligent AI going rouge and deciding that all the humans problems are best dealt with by whacking us all.
There are also the threats from outer space which could involve an Asteroid Impact which could eliminate all life and making us the new Dinosaurs or a Gamma-Ray Burst from a Supernova striping the ozone layer and exposing all life on Earth to lethal radiation.
Based on models from the Global Challenges Foundation, researchers at the Future of Humanity Institute and the World Economic Forum the rankings of perceived risks for are pegged at 16% none of us will be around to welcome the next Century but they put the risks for how life will end are 100% for the Sun thing, 30% of pandemic either we made or a natural one, 10% for Ai running amok,Nuclear War 1% and Asteroid Impact 0.0001%.
Hopefully we will make it until the Sun decides to go Supernova but looking at some of the idiotic people making decisions, i wouldn't bet on it.

Social Media Backlash Begins

Leaded petrol, Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), Plastic, Asbestos and Thalidomide were all things which started out as brilliant inventions which later became so dangerous that they had to be removed and Social Media could soon be added to the list as more and more countries deem it too hazardous for children.
Conceived initially to connect people and foster communities, social media’s influence has grown to shape politics, mental health and the spread of misinformation while enabling cyberbullying and social division. Platforms like Facebook and X have become central to political discourse, influencing elections and public opinion while disseminating misinformation has led to public health challenges, as seen during the COVID-19 pandemic, where false information actually hindered effective responses.
I have seen first hand the effect on mental health from cyberbullying and it has got worse since i left the education arena with plenty of studies showing the link between social media use and increased rates of depression and anxiety and not just in adolescents.
Only recently a Californian Court found Meta and YouTube responsible for injuries incurred by a 20-year-old woman over the course of her childhood including injuries, including body dysmorphia and thoughts of self-harm, that it attributed to these platforms and ruked they must pay the woman $6m in damages.
The Court found that it was clear that these companies knew of the addictive qualities of their sites and the potential damage to young people but  apparently chose to ignore what was evident to them and their users have paid the price but it is reported that a further eight cases are due to go to trial.
Many countries have recognised these dangers and acted decisively by barring under 16's from using social media platforms and we can only hope that like those other things mentioned, Social Media Platforms will be forced to change and become liable for their actions to make it safer or be consigned to history.

Amen To Churches

Over the last decade, apparently 3,500 Churches have closed their doors for good due to poor attendant congregations and the decreasing prevalence of Christianity in this country and speaking to members of the clergy, they say that people are not attending church with the same frequency or devotion that they did in previous generations.
As an Atheist, i couldn't give a hoot  if I am being honest and have long considered religion as a whole to be thankfully on a downward trajectory but as my fellow Blog Owner regularly pulls on the dog collar and the black smock i should show some sympathy that he may soon be out of work and there isn't much call for someone who can recite Numbers 6:24-26 while tipping water over a babies head, it's a very niche role.
More pressing is the fact that there are 3,500 large empty buildings knocking around and I have seen some turned into Restaurants which admittedly looks very nice while you are having the Full English Breakfast or Vegetable Lasagna but otherwise, not sure what else you can do with them.
Some are very old, the oldest goes back to 600AD which is even before there was an England and the Angles and Saxons were carving up the land so historical importance and admittedly some are very impressive buildings indeed but it doesn't mean we can't keep the shell and do something else which doesn't include passing around a plate to collect money to fix the permanently leaky roof.
The Faith Survey found that UK Church membership has declined from 10.6 million in 1930 to 630,000 today with the biggest falls coming within the Catholic, Anglican, Baptist and Methodist flavours of Christianity and a separate Pew Survey of 65 countries revealed the UK to be one of the world's most irreligious countries, with only 30% of those surveyed identifying as 'religious'.
The consolation for the clergy is that there are still approximately 40,300 church buildings in the UK so at a rate of 350 a year, that's 115 years until the last one closes it's doors for the last time which gives them plenty of time to look for new work where you can dress in black and tell people how to live their lives.

Special Guest Blogger: Liberace

Ah, darling. You’ve caught me mid-practise. I was just rehearsing a delicate rendition of Fly Me to the Moon on a spectral grand piano I conjured from moonbeams and vintage sequins, but I saw your curious little mouse hovering over my entry and thought, oh, bless their hearts. They clearly need a bit of sparkle in their life. So here I am, Liberace, still fabulous and still flamboyant.
I passed away on January 31st, 1987 from an AIDS related complication. It was a Tuesday, if memory serves and i was mourned in tasteful black (boring, darling), but mostly they argued over who should inherit my rhinestone-studded candelabra.
In the mid 80's AIDS was a misunderstood disease, on my demise my staff burnt all my bathrobes like they were cursed because then saying you had AIDS was like telling people you’d personally spat in Mother Teresa's face so we called it an 'immune deficiency' which was much more dignified.
Now, don’t get me wrong, dying was not my best performance. No curtain call, no encore, no standing ovation but at least I did it with panache. I left behind 22 Rolls-Royce's, 69 candelabras, and a foundation to teach children piano.
I played the Piano with passion and drama and enough wrist flourishes to qualify as interpretive dance. Critics said I was over-the-top and too flamboyant and likened to a walking disco ball and why not?
I had a piano custom-made with a mirror top. Why? Because even in the middle of Rhapsody in Blue, I wanted to check my hair. Vanity? Perhaps. Practical? Absolutely.
And the fans, oh, the fans! Women threw their girdles at me. Girdles! Not flowers, not chocolates, foundation garments. I had a closet full of them backstage but I knew exactly what  I was doing. While other pianists wore tuxedos and stared wistfully at the ceiling like they’d lost their train of thought, I wore capes lined with actual peacock feathers and descended from the ceiling on a golden elevator.
After i died i heard they turned my house into a Liberace museum, wonder if they left my rhinestone toilet seat?
I proved you could be a classically trained musician, a showman, a fashion disaster (in the best way), and still sell out Madison Square Garden doing a medley of pop tunes and Flight of the Bumblebee all while wearing gloves made of actual mink.
Now some say I wasn’t taken seriously. That I was all show and no substance but I've cultivated a certain image and I don’t regret it one sequin of it because I lived loud, I loved fiercely (with a backup dancer named Tony) and I never let fear of judgment or poorly matched cufflinks silence me.

Hinting At A Super El Niño

 
The Met Office are not ones to send out scare stories and generally coach their language carefully which is why they are saying that: 'Whilst most climate prediction models favour the development of El Niño later this year, there remains a lot of uncertainty about how strong it might be and hence how much the world's climate and weather patterns could be affected but there are hints that this upcoming El Niño could become a strong event'.
Obviously some of the media have picked the phrase 'hints of a strong El Niño' and dubbed it as a 'Super El Niño' which is coming to the UK soon.
An El Niño is a natural climate pattern which occurs every 5-7 years where sea surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific Ocean become unusually warm, weakening trade winds and which allows the warm water to flow back toward South America and messes with global weather.
In South America this can bring increased storms, flooding, and rain, particularly in the southern US, Peru, and Ecuador and severe droughts in Asia and Australasia but these have a further knock on effect for the rest of the Globe, including the UK.
The Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BoM, the US Climate Prediction Center and the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) have also said their models are suggesting a strong El Niño which could effect global weather patterns with the UK weather facing an increased chance of a colder spell during the winter months.
The effects of El Niño in the UK are expected to start in late summer and last around until Spring 2027 so might be a good time to buy a new, thick winter coat although the last major El Niño event in 2009-10 was one of the coldest for generations, the one in 2015-16 gave us lots of rain but an unusually mild winter rather than extreme cold so get some water-proof shoes also, just in case.

Clearing Up Any Iran War Misunderstandings

Day 54th of the Iran War which we were told would last a few weeks so just in case you missed it, here's what's been happening so far.   

America and Israel bombed Ian while in the midst of negotiations to prevent a war and to distract attention from the Epstein files which were a hoax and did not exist but were on the desk of the District Attorney who was slowly releasing them.
The First act of the war which isn't a war was to change the regime by replacing the old regime with a younger more hardline version of the same regime and then take out the Iranian navy which has now been destroyed eight times and who have closed the Strait of Hormuz which was open before the outbreak of the not war and while Trump was declaring that they had won the war which isnt a war seven times.
Trump moaned about Keir Starmer and told Britain to not send their ships which Britain never offered anyway because they could easily get the uranium that was completely obliterated previously during negotiations so that the Iranians can't build the nuclear weapon that they weren't building before the not war that the US and Israel started so Iran could not have a nuclear missile, which they never.
Then as the price of oil went up as the Iranian military which was beaten and had lost the war were launching missiles which America had already been wiped out at several other Middle Eastern nations so the US, which has nuclear weapons, threatened to end Iranian Civilisation by using nuclear weapons to prevent Iran from having nuclear weapons because having nuclear weapons is dangerous which made the Pope question the war and led the US to question just how religious the Pope actually was that he didn't support the mass murder of millions of people .
Now a second round of negotiations are being prepared which Iran did not turn up to to end the not a war and America have blockaded the Strait to show Iran that blocking a Strait is wrong and breaking International Law.
So that's where we are today, I hope this has cleared up a few things

Special Guest Blogger: Ian Dury

Right, pull up a chair, clutch your cuppa, and let’s have a proper chin-wag about the bits of my life that actually mattered. I’m not gonna stand on a soapbox and wax lyrical like some pretentious pop-poet, nah, I’ll give it to you straight, with the kind of language a true Londoner would use when he’s had a few pints and a proper rant. So, strap in you lot, and let’s go.
I was born in the East End of London right in the middle of a blitz, where the only thing falling faster than the bombs were the chances of any decent music on the radio.
School was a hard grind  but the real lesson I learned was how to survive on a diet of battered fish and chips, and the occasional jam sandwich when the canteen ran out of anything decent. That’s the sort of culinary inspiration that later fed into the lyric about a dog-eating-a-dog in Reasons to be Cheerful, Part 3.
At 17 I signed up for the Royal Air Force. Not because I wanted to fly a Spitfire, nah, I was looking for a free meal and a roof over me head. And, let’s be honest, the uniforms made you look proper sharp even though i came with a you can sod-off attitude, the RAF also nicknamed me Sparky. Not because I was bright, but because I kept sparking off arguments with the Sergeants, but I did learn to play the clarinet in the band.
When I finally got my discharge papers, I walked back to London, after a stint as a handyman and a teacher, I found myself in Kilburn, hanging out with a bunch of blokes and we formed Kilburn & the High-Roads, a band that was part punk, part rock-'n-roll and all-out chaos.
Our first gig was at the Rock Garden where I  stepped up to the mic, looked at the crowd, and thought Right, let’s give ‘em something they’ll never forget and came up with a tune that I’d later call 'Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick'.
Sadly, the band split up after a few years and i went solo and my first solo record, New Boots and Panties!!, was me saying I’ve got a voice that can sound like a thunderstorm mixed with a tinny radio, and I’ll use it to say whatever the hell I want.
The track that got the world and the tabloids to notice was when i was with Ian Dury and the Blockheads called Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll and i followed that with Spasticus Autisticus about my disability after contracting Polio when I was seven, and The BBC banned them both, which only made them more appealing.
I didn’t set out to be some iconic figure. I just wanted a good gig, a decent pint, and the chance to say whatever I felt like when the moment struck. Yet, somewhere between those blokes and lasses in the clubs and the radio stations that finally caught my drift, something happened where people started to listen but I was just  being myself, a bit of a nut.
I tossed rock, funk, reggae, and a dash of cabaret into the same pot and served it with a side of sarcasm, the Pop World needs a bit of chaos now and then just to keep the boring bits at bay such as the diagnoses of bowel cancer which forced me to write one more album and do a farewell tour but i was always proud that i was a man who walked to the beat of his own drum and it appear that this particular drummer learnt his drumming skills on a trumpet.