Bye Bye Keir

I had such high hopes for Keir Starmer and the Labour Government but it seems that they have done all they can to make sure they only one serve on term and the Peter Mandelson scandal has pretty much rubber stamped that Starmer will be lucky to see May out with the keys to Number 10 jingling in his pocket.
Bringing someone who had already been sacked twice was a strange choice but the feeling was that as Mandelson and Trump moved in the same Epstein circles, he would be a good choice as our diplomat to deal with the capricious  American Leader even if it meant, as Starmer admitted, he knew about the links with the now dead pedophile when he appointed him.
Now that it has all blown up in his face, it is hard to see how Starmer can carry on as the Prime Minister but even more worrying for Labour is, there is no natural choice to step into his Hush Puppies.
I was backing Angela Raynor before her tax scandal was exposed so I have cooled on her and Andy Burnham has been blocked  from becoming an MP so he can't do it and the only other alternative is Wes Streeting and he is as popular as a fart in a lift with the other Labour members so successors are thin on the ground.
My suspicison is that he will hobble on until the May 7th Local Elections and then be toppled because nobody will want to take over before then, especially as Labour is expected to be giving a right royal walloping by the general public so heads will be kept low until then so he can be blamed for the poor results.    
The Cabinet seem to be pinning the blame on Morgan McSweeny who was the man who persuaded Starmer that Mandelson would be a good choice and it is he that they are hoping will be the sacrificial lamb but ultimately it was Starmer who had the final say and his excuse that he asked Mandelson about his links with Epstein, and Mandleson lied to him, seem at best extremely weak but in all honesty i wouldn't mind seeing him go, i'm just worried who we will get in his place.  
Unless someone rises unexpectedly out of the pack, i would have to hold my nose and say Raynor but being the least worst option is not a ringing endorsement. 

Winter Olympic Penisgate

The 2026 Winter Olympics are upon us and for the next 16 days we will be watching people slip and slide their way onto the podium and Britain, the land of on average 13 days of snow per year, are confident that we can beat our best medal haul from a Winter Games of five this time around and are optimistic that they will be loading 7 or even 8 onto the flight back home from Italy.
The  Skeleton, Figure Skating, Freestyle Skiing, Snowboarding, Bobsleigh and Curling are the disciplines which UK Sport have put circles around to finish in the top 3 but our grand total of 34 medals is not great compared to Norway who top the all time medal table with 405 but then they do have the advantage of lots of snow which is a bit of an advantage.
What we do seem to hear of at every Olympics are drug cheats and this year there has already been claims that some ski jumpers are trying to gain an advantage by injecting illicit substances and as the potential scandal is being called 'Penisgate', have a guess where the injections are going.  
Last year two of Norway’s Olympic medallists, were given three-month suspensions after the team was found to have secretly adjusted the seams of their suits in the crotch area at the 2025 World Ski Championships which made the jumpers suits larger and therefore reduced their descent rate due to the increased wingspan but now that gig is up, apparently some ski-jumpers have been reportedly injecting their penises with paraffin or hyaluronic acid in order to enlarge their penis's and fly further.
I have no idea what it does or how it works but the World Anti Doping Agency President, Witold ­Banka, has said he will take a look at it which shouldn't be too hard because those suits are pretty tight so it shouldn't be that difficult to see a skier who has injected his penis, the tears in his eyes should be a tell tale sign even if the first thing to cross the line isn't the tip of the ski's.

Special Guest Blogger: James Earl Jones

Yes, I died. It happened. My voice, once described as a thunderstorm whispering sweet nothings into your soul, finally took a permanent break.
But let’s be honest, folks, I didn’t die so much as fade out dramatically with a voiceover. I mean, if you’re going to exit this mortal coil, do it with gravitas. Do it like the final scene of a Shakespearean tragedy, except you’re not, your Darth Vader.
Let’s take a stroll down memory lane and its a funny thing about being the voice of God, Mufasa, and the soul of every public service announcement about deforestation, I didn’t talk until I was five. That’s right. My voice took a leisurely detour through selective mutism and my parents just said i would speak when i was ready, and boy was I ready but I never meant to become the voice of evil space emperors although I didn’t get royalties on the voice for decades because I signed away the rights for $7,500. Seven thousand. Five hundred. For the voice of Darth Vader.
But hey, I’ve got a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, a couple of Tonys, an Oscar (lifetime achievement, but still no small feat when your face isn’t usually visible). And let’s not forget The Lion King. I played Mufasa. A lion. A majestic, noble lion.
I lent my voice to everything, commercials for cereal, car insurance, mobile phones. I once narrated a commercial for toilet paper but you got to earn a dollar, even if it does smells faintly of aloe vera and lavender.
I finally lost my battle with diabetes aged 93 but don’t want to be remembered only for the voice, I want people to remember that I was an actor but your voice matters,even if you don’t use it for decades. Even if it sounds like a mountain clearing its throat. Speak up. Tell your story. Recite Shakespeare. Narrate your grocery list and order a chicken sandwich in Gregg's as if you are about to start a World War.

Epstein’s Little Helpers

While the horrors of the Epstein files continue to reverberate, Britain can at least be proud that anyone associated with him has been vanquished with Peter Mandelson losing his Labour membership and out of the House of Lords and will probably end up in a Prison Interview Room for all manner of wrongs  while Prince Andrew lost everything including his name and his wife Sarah Ferguson has been removed from her own Charity and what was left of her reputation after being photographed sucking on the toes of someone not her husband, is in ribbons.  
Maybe the Police interviews will come along later but as yet nobody named in the files has had a knock on the door and while being in the file does not mean you are guilty, it does mean that you obviously knew what was going on and said nothing.
Epstein’s little helpers have included Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Richard Branson, Noam Chomsky, Ehud Barak, Steve Bannon as well as Mandelson and the former Prince and Ghislaine Maxwell has claimed in recent court filings that 29 men and associates of Epstein were 'shielded by the US government through secret settlements' which could explain why the files that have been released have been so heavily redacted and why the remaining 3 million files are staying locked in a filing cabinet.
This shows that there really was a network of incredibly famous and powerful men willfully looking the other way at 'their friends' underage sex crimes and many carried on looking the other way even after he was convicted.
Strangely the go to excuse seems to be that they were unaware at the time that Epstein and friends were trafficking females and sexually assaulting minors which seems extremely unlikely but some even carried on being best pals even after his conviction for abuse of minors in 2008.
As for Donald Trump, his name runs through the files like a stick of rock and he has been accused of many awful and depraved things and they are probably true, he has been found guilty of sexual assault, his own wife said he raped her while he was forced to shovel $130,000 to a porn star to buy her quiet and then there was the tape where he actually admitted he grabbed women's genitals so it isn't a stretch to believe that he was in on the game with Epstein all the way through their decades of friendship.
What all the releases show is that all these figures knew what Epstein went to prison for and overlooked it as evidenced by their continued association with him
Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor famously said he cut him off in 2008 but email exchanges from after 2008 showed him to be a liar, Sarah Ferguson was emailing him in 2011, Musk in 2012 and 2013, Branson in 2013, Barak in 2017 and Bannon in 2019  
Twenty of the Epstein survivors recently released a statement saying that information about them was included in the latest file release:, 'While the men who abused us remain hidden and protected' and that is the problem at the heart of it, the lack of consideration for the abused and trafficked women and girls by so many of the richest and most powerful men alive.

Special Guest Blogger: David Lynch

Look, I didn’t plan to die. I mean, sure, I’ve seen the script, everyone’s got one, and mine had “Fade to black. Roll credits. David Lynch dies. Fade out.” Classic third act. But the whole thing came rather abruptly. And frankly, I wasn’t dressed for it.
When I died, one minute I’m in my cabin in Montana, sipping black coffee so strong it could revive a fossil, and the next I’m floating above my body like a confused helium balloon at a children’s birthday party.
Dying has given time to reflect on my legacy. What did I leave behind apart from movies and TV that made people say: 'What did I just watch?
I started out as a painter. Yes, believe it or not, before I was terrifying suburban moms with Eraserhead, I was just a quiet guy in Philadelphia trying to express myself through oil on canvas.
Then I made Eraserhead. A little movie about fatherhood, industrial decay, and a deformed baby that took five years to shoot and Critics called it unwatchable and audiences called it a mistake and yet, somehow, it launched my career. Such is life.
Then came The Elephant Man. A beautiful, tender film about humanity and compassion and after that, I did Blue Velvet. I wanted to show the rot beneath the picket fences. I succeeded.
And  then, a town with more secrets than a therapist’s notebook and people loved it.
But enough about my filmography, I’m proud of what i made. Sure, I confused people but I never tried to make sense and I did it all while wearing the same outfit every day since 1985, black suit, white shirt, pencil tucked behind the ear like a brain antenna. I didn’t dress for fashion. I dressed for focus. Also, dry cleaning is expensive.
So what would I consider my greatest achievement? The Palme d’Or? The Oscar nominations? I would say awakening inside people the realisation that life is short and very, very strange

America's Gunboat Diplomacy

 
Gunboat Diplomacy was a popular tactic by the British with the mosr famous example being the Opium Wars where the British parked their warships off the coast of China to force them to relegalise the drug opium which was very lucrative to the British Empire and we really didn't like it when the Chinese Empire, our best customer, began to see the unfavorable side of massive, widespread heroin addiction and banned it. We aLeo said you can hand over Hong Kong as a place to land our Opium cargo as you are at it.
It wasn't just the Brits, most nations where at it to intimidate other, less powerful entities into concessions but it kinda fell out of favour until recently when America has picked it up and brushed it off as they park warships off the coast of Iran although the reasons are constantly changing and the current ones are no Nuclear Weapons, stop killing protesters and stop funding militia around the Middle East.
Now i am no fan of Iran or any of the Middle East theocracies and if they could all just dump the Religion thing the World would be a much more tolerant place and neither do i want any nations to have nuclear weapons or any of them to kill protesters regardless of where they are, Iran, America or China but we have to be consistent.
If you go left at Tehran and continue through Iraq and Jordan you will find Israel who have, and continue to commit a Genocide, killing over 70,000 Palestinians since October 2023, mostly women and children including guiding them to 'safe places' before then bombing them.
Just this weekend another 31 were killed and since the Peace Deal they agreed to in October 2025, 509 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli military and it is America who have been giving political and military backing for the Genocide to continue.
Yes, Iran is run by an awful, murderous Administration who need to be dealt with diplomatically but far worse is Israel who is run by a Genocidal Administration who have been conducting it for over 75 years and backed by a warmongering nation who are currently under the control of a narcissistic idiot who was recently threatening to invade another NATO country.
America, Iran, Israel....a pox on all their houses.  

Just Handed Back What We Stole

The Chagos Islands had been in the news recently as the UK plans to hand them over to Mauritius which makes it sound as if we are doing it out of the kindness of our hearts but handing them back would be more appropriate because it wasn't given to us, we took it.
As most people woulds struggle to find it on a map, look for the Indian Ocean and work your way down from India and there it is south of the Maldives in the British Indian Ocean Territory and that gives you and idea of how we ended up with it.
Originally part of France, we took it off them in the early 19th Century and in the early 1970's, Britain forcibly expelled the natives at the request of the United States as they wanted to build a military base  there and forcibly transported 2,000 people to Mauritius and the Seychelles and prevented them from re-entering the islands   
Mauritius claimed the Chagos Archipelago as part of Mauritius and in 2019 The International Court of Justice agreed and stated that the UK had an obligation to return the islands to Mauritius hence where we are today with the transfer of sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius agreement expected ratified some time this year.
Under the terms of the deal, the Chagos Islands are immediately leased back to the UK for the next 99 years and Mauritius will receive an annual rent of £165 million from the UK for the first three years, followed by £120 million annually for the subsequent ten years. Thereafter, the £120 million annual payment.
There you have it then, we are giving back which was there's anyway but as for the people forcibly removed...they remain forcibly removed, another consequence of the awful British Empire and the awful American militirisation of the Planet.

Special Guest Blogger: David Soul

Hi, its me, yes, that Guy from Starsky & Hutch and the “Don’t Give Up on Us” guy. And, apparently now the dead guy also.
Let me get one thing straight: I did not plan on dying. I mean, sure, I knew it would happen eventually, smoking 60  day for decades helped with that, but I assumed I’d at least be consulted first. One minute I’m contemplating whether oat milk is a scam (it is), the next I’m checking my own pulse and finding there isn't one.
Now, don’t get me wrong, death isn’t all bad. The peace and quiet is nice, no more autograph seekers asking, “Weren’t you in that cop show? and 'which one was you, Starsky or Hutch?” while I’m just trying to enjoy a coffee in Hampstead Park.
I may have been born American but i died a Brit, obtaining citizenship in 2004 because i loved Britain apart from the weather which is lousy. I actually sort of knew the woman who runs this blog, our seats at Highbury were quite close by and we would nod at each other occasionally, both Arsenal fans see, i even frequently appeared in Arsenal matchday programmes and club magazines over the years.
Obviously i am most well known for the Cop show but when i started having hit songs i know some people wondered why this guy who was all about driving fast cars and flinging himself at bad guys could suddenly think he was a pop star. They didn’t realize that I was a singer and musician long before I made any mark as an actor.
In England I carried on my acting career and would pop up in several shows but mainly did theatre even after the Internet announced i had died in 2009.
'Wait, you’re still alive?' people would say followed by the request for a selfie and one woman in an elevator said I looked like that actor from the old TV show and when i said 'That’s because I am him', she replied, 'Nope, he’s dead.'
Whether it was for my singing or my acting, I was described as a legend which is sweet but i did suffer with back pain from decades of bell-bottoms and legends don’t spend forty years being introduced as 'David Soul, you know, the guy from Starsky & Hutch'.
Still, I suppose I can’t complain. I had a good run. I chased bad guys in a red Ford Gran Torino. I made women swoon with my sideburns. I topped charts. I made cameos on Hawaii Five-0 and Casualty and there is even a remastered Starsky and Hutch on streaming platforms in high definition although nobody really needed to see that close-up of my 1976 haircut in 4K.

May 8th Going To Be Interesting For PM

It seems it is only a matter of time before Keir Starmer is removed either by his own Party or by taking himself out of Downing Street and it was blatantly obvious what the Mayor of Manchester, Andy Burnham, was thinking.  
Popular amongst his Labour peers, the problem was that he was not a Member of Parliament so he would have to solve that little problem first and so when Greater Manchester MP Andrew Gwynne said he was stepping down due to 'significant ill health', this paved the way for Andy Burnham to potentially run in a by-election in his constituency.
Starmer's allies emphatically tried to shut that down while supporters of Burnham egged him on the second problem to overcome was that all potential Labour MP's have to be vetted by the nine man panel of the Labour Parties National Executive Committee who voted 8-1 to block the Manchester mayor's bid, citing the concerns of cost the having to hold not only a Bye Election but one for the Manchester Mayor when they have upcoming local English, Welsh and Scottish elections to pay for.
Not sure how much sway Starmer had in the NEC decision but having someone so obviously just waiting to step into his shoes would have been a problem for him especially if the Local elections is the royal tonking that the Labour Party are fearing where it would be difficult for Starmer to continue and that was always the Catch 22 for him.
Allow Burnham to run and amplify the drumbeat of a leadership challenge that is already growing or block him and face the fury of his supporters and the accusation that he is running scared of a leadership challenge and harden opposition against him.
All this is very useful for Wes Streeting who is the other name commonly cited to replace Starmer and he has made no secret he would someday like to lead the Party although at the moment he is saying all the right things but he must be smiling that the kickback for Burnham will land on Starmer, therefore losing him even more support.
The morning of the 8th May may be very interesting.

Historians Say Trump Isn't Hitler

Time around the World is strange. In Britain at the moment it is 23:15 and in France it is 22:15 meanwhile it in America it is the mid 1930's Germany as the Trump Administration turn up the full fascist, or so i thought because scholars and historians i spoke to have it closer to the mid 1920's, mid 1920' Italy to be precise.
Benito Mussolini is considered the creator and founder of Fascism, developing the ultra right wing ideology and where most people would associate the present Trump Administration with early Hitler, historians argue that the comparison is stronger with Il Duce than any with Adolf Hitler who took what Mussolini had, and made it his own.
The similarity, according to people who study these things, are like Mussolini, Trump uses simplified, repetitive, and emotionally charged language to bypass traditional media and connect directly with a mass movement rather than just a political party and both tried to cultivate an image of hyper masculinity and alpha-male dominance.
Mussolini’s promised to restore the glory of the Roman Empire parallels the 'Make America Great Again' (MAGA) slogan and both centered their platforms on the idea that the nation had been weakened by corrupt elites and 'internal enemies' and only they could restore its past greatness.
Both tried to dismantle democratic norms such as the judiciary and the press as well as trying to manipulate media outlets and both relied heavily on nepotism in their inner circle, Mussolini’s appointment family members to his ministry and so has Trump with Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump in official advisory roles.
Both have Paramilitaries doing their dirty work. Il Duce had the Blackshirts causing systematic street violence while Trump has ICE currently doing the same while both utilised the technology of their time to bypass traditional gatekeepers such as Mussolini who created LUCE, a government agency that produced propganda newsreels shown in every cinema while Trump created Truth Social which enabled him to speak direct to his followers without censure and cause a constant barrage of misinformation designed to make the public question reality.
Experts have linked Trump’s use of alternative facts to Mussolini’s methods, where the leader's declarations are promoted as the only truth, dismissing established facts as lies.
Like Mussolini, he cast established journalists as 'enemies' and attempted to replace them with a direct, unmediated 'truth' so Mussolini and Trump both positioned themselves as truth-tellers in a landscape they characterised as dominated by a corrupt and dishonest press and positioned themselves as the only ones to believe despite what the evidence showed.
Both tried to centralise power, attacked and attempted to prosecute opposition and targetted minority groups and while Trump often wears hats that says 'Trump was Right about everything', this is almost the same as Mussolini’s slogan 'Mussolini is always right'.
Mussolini’s face was plastered on posters, buildings, and textbooks across Italy to create a sense of omnipresence while the U.S. context is different but Trump is keen to have his name associated with everything and have his name on everything.
While Mussolini scapegoated Bolsheviks, plutocrats and ethnic minorities, Trumps administration targets the Deep State, radical leftists and illegal immigrants.
The slogan, One of Ours, All of yours' which the Trump administration used when defending the ICE agents after they killed a US citizen, is not directly attributed to Mussolini himself but was used within the context of Nazism in  general,particularly in relation to the tactics used by Benito Mussolini’s Italian Fascist regime to eliminate opposition and demand total obedience to the state.
Finally Fascism was inherently expansionist and Trump has wanted to add Greenland as well as mentioning adding Panama and even Canada to the United States so make of that what you will but as we all know Mussolini was overthrown by his own side and hung upside from a lamppost and as the American people stir to protest what is happening there, we can only wait to see if the comparison runs right through to the end.