Special Guest Blogger: Norman Tebbit

Surprised i got asked to write this to be honest looking at the other hippy, tree hugging crap that is usually on these pages but here i am, a formerly bright young thing with a tie so thin you could floss your teeth with it.
People often asked me about my story. They want to begin with the war, or with my dear wife Margaret. But I always begin with the bicycle.
Oh yes, that poor, maligned bicycle. The media, in its infinite stupidity, painted me as a monster for telling the unemployed to ‘get on their bike’ and look for work. They saw cruelty. I saw common sense. If the pit closes and there are no jobs for a hundred miles, you have two choices. Sit there and moulder, or find out what’s at the end of the road. My father, a fireman, taught me that. He didn’t have particular transferable skills. He had a job to do and a family to feed. So, yes. Get on your bike. Or walk. Or crawl. Just stop expecting the state to be your wet nurse.
That common sense was, I suppose, what brought me to the attention of Margaret Thatcher. You won’t find a bigger tribute from me, because nothing bigger exists. She looked at this country in the late seventies, this sick man of Europe, this graveyard of ambition, this strike-ridden, over-taxed, whinging mess, and she didn’t prescribe a soothing balm. She performed open-heart surgery with a rusty spoon. It was brutal. It was necessary. And it worked.
I was there, in the thick of it. Chairman of the Party. Secretary of State for Employment. I was the bad cop to her, well, to her slightly less bad cop. We battled the unions, we battled inflation, we battled the insidious, creeping rot of socialism that told people they had a right to something for nothing.
It was a glorious, exhausting, and profoundly worthwhile time. We didn’t do focus groups to see what people wanted to hear. We told them what they needed to know. There was a spine to the government then. You could have hung a coat on it. Now? You’d struggle to hang a teatowel.
And then, of course, came the bomb. Brighton, 1984. The Grand Hotel. People often speak of it with hushed tones, as if it were my heroic finale. It wasn’t. It was a bloody inconvenience. I’d just got to bed, and some Irish rabble decided to redecorate the room with shrapnel and broken glass. Margaret was trapped. I was trapped. Others were not so lucky. I remember the dust, the darkness, and a rather pressing need to get out.
They say my resilience was an inspiration. I saw it as a lack of alternatives. Lying there with a broken back, what was the other option? Weeping? Asking for a trauma counsellor to come and talk about my feelings? Nonsense. You grit your teeth, you bear the pain, and you get on with the job of living. It’s what this country used to do.
Now, a pigeon sneezes on a tube platform and they send in a team of therapists and issue a public helpline number. We are a nation of emotional hypochondriacs.
So what did i leave behind? A set of principles that, for a time, made a difference. It’s the belief that you should work for what you get, that you should be proud of your country, that you should obey the law, and that you should, for goodness sake, stop complaining but they’ve undone it all. Sold off the gold, flooded the country with more regulations than a Soviet commissar could dream of, and elevated 'feelings above facts. They tear down statues of people who built the Empire and put up wobbly metal modern art sculptures. They are, to put it mildly, a shower.
Which brings me, inevitably, to the end. How did I go? You’ll be expecting an epic struggle, a final defiant speech on the floor of the Commons. Not a bit of it. It was far more mundane, and therefore, far more irritating, natural causes.
So, there you have it. I have no regrets. I did what I thought was right. I served my country and a leader I believed in. The world went a different way but i'm not in it so that’s not my problem anymore.

Answering Fermi

We are currently up to around 850 of the Special Guest Blogger Post's with an aim to reach 1,000 and the next 50 are already loaded into Blogger and post-dated including one for May/July for Scientist Enrico Fermi.
If you don't know him, he is best known for the Fermi Paradox which is the contradiction between the high probability of extraterrestrial life given the hundreds of billions of stars, planets and the vast age of the Milky Way and the total lack of evidence for it.
As always, i did take some liberties with him to make the Post interesting and inject a bit of humour so it doesn't read like a dry Encyclopedia entry but the Fermi Paradox is something that has always intrigued me and i have written a few posts about it on here and other places.
Cheekily answering for Fermi in the post, i put it down to either they have seen us and want to avoid us, the sheer distances involved (Our nearest star is 25 trillion miles away and would take our fastest spacecraft about 78,000 years to get there) or as i put it, our technology could be so outdated that by their advanced standards we could be doing the equivalent of sending smoke signals to an email account but we must throw in the unlikely scenario that as the Universe is 13.8 billion years old and humans have only been around for 300,000 of the Earth's 4 billion years (it faffed about with Dinosaurs for 180 million years and they didn't do anything except eat each other) then maybe other older Civilisations have been and gone.
How and why the older Civilisations have expired we will never know but i have a theory that once a Civilisation develops a way to end all life on the Planet, it inevitably end up doing exactly that.
Humans have discovered plenty of ways to do that with such things as Nuclear Weapons (Experts say it would take 300 to end all life and we have 12,500 knocking about), Biological weapons (the Soviet Union, United States and other nations developed Botulinum weapons, the deadliest substance known to man where just 2 kgs would kill every human on earth and the USA and USSR created tonnes of the stuff) and Chemical weapons  (VX Nerve Agent is so deadly it would take 8,000 litres to kill all life on earth and the Soviets produced 40,000 tonnes, the US 30,000 tonnes and Syria 50 tonnes while North Korea currently possess 5,000 tonnes).
Before we get chance to kill our stupid selves, Mother Nature may do it for us with the World Health Organisation stating that Climate Change is responsible for an additional 250,000 deaths per year around the World so we may not have to do it ourselves, our bizarre inaction and greed may do it for us anyway.
Fermi died in 1954 aged only 53 due to Cancer which he contracted by working on the Nuclear material for the Manhattan Project but 72 years on we still wait for Aliens to announce themselves or maybe they heard the news of the many ways the crazy bipeds who ruled the Planet could end all life and decided it wasn't worth the 78,000 year trip to get here because by the time they got here, our Planet would be just another empty rock going around a Star.

Keir Has Public Support Finally

The first 20 months of Keir Starmer's Prime Ministership have been anything but smooth but for probably the first time since 5 July 2024, he finds himself firmly on the side of public opinion.
The latest poll puts over three quarters of Brits (78%) agree with Starmer's stance on the Iran War and agree that it was right for Starmer to not join America and Israel in bombing Iran and refusing permission for American planes to use British military bases in their attack.
Following yet another sulky temper tantrum from the Orange Toddler in Washington, the Labour are hoping they continue because Trump was always toxic but now is even more so as he instigated the latest American misadventure in the Middle East, and this time we are not alongside the invaders.
The Conservatives attacked the PM for failing to do more to support the US and Israel, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage was photographed in Mar-a-Lago alongside Trump this weekend and even the hated Tony Blair, the joint architect of the disastrous Iraq War debacle, has stuck his head above the parapet to say that we should be alongside America.
For many who remember the Iraq War, Blair is the very last person who should be giving advice on following American presidents into wars in the Middle East but Trump and Blair piling in on Starmer is something of a godsend as it highlights the contrast between his own cautious approach to War and the recklessness of yet another not so bright American Leader starting wars in the Area.
Foreign Secretary, Yvette Cooper, was on TV this morning repeating that the Government is: 'Acting in the UK's national interest' and showing that they have: 'Learnt  lessons of went wrong in Iraq'.
The PM has made it known that his own view was that the war was illegal and he opposed 'regime change from the skies' and there has been an uptick in his own popularity since the start of the war while Reform and the Conservatives bizarrely refuse to read the room and make it known that we should be Americas' poodle again which is very much against public opinion and will sure to be used against them in the upcoming by-elections.
Trump can bang his teeny tiny little fists against all the tables he wants but every time he does, the Government cheer and watch their support go up because the one thing we have learnt is not to be on the side of America when they start illegal wars.

Religious Nuts Praying For War

Marco Rubio said: 'Iran is run by lunatics, religious fanatic lunatics' while in the White House a group of Christian Evangelical Christians put hands on the American President and said that they pray for God's  'continued blessing' and asked for 'divine guidance as the administration navigates the ongoing crisis'.
Both sides have religious lunatics running them then but it all leads nicely to Mark Twain and his brilliant War Prayer which he wrote in 1904 and should be nailed to the door of every Church, Chapel, Mosque, Temple, Synagogue, Gurdwara and Monastry of any religion who go to war and pray for success. Twain puts forward two prayers, one uttered, one not, when a patriotic preacher prays for victory over a foe, praying that God watch over their noble young soldiers, bringing aid, comfort, and encouragement in their patriotic work.

An aged stranger appears and announces that he is God's messenger and explains to them that he is there to speak aloud the second part of their prayer for victory, the part which they have implicitly wished for but have not spoken aloud themselves.
'O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle — be Thou near them! With them — in spirit — we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe.
O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it — for our sakes, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet!
We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen'.

I therefore refuse to cheer or will the horrific deaths of young men, women and children, regardless of what side they are on and if you think your Peace loving God of whatever flavour is going to, then you really are just as much a religious lunatic as the murderous morons in Tel Aviv, Washington and Tehran.

Special Guest Blogger: Ozzy Osbourne

Right. So I’m dead now. Honestly, it’s about bleedin’ time. I mean, I’ve been dying to die for, well, pretty much my entire life. Quite literally, how many times have I nearly kicked the bucket? I’ve lost count. Drugs, booze, falling off quads, falling on quads, near-fatal encounters with garden equipment. Christ, it’s a miracle I made it as far as i did.
First off fame. Blimey. Who the hell saw that coming? Certainly not me. I was a working-class lad from Aston with a stutter, a bad attitude, and a wardrobe that screamed second-hand shop after a fire and then i’m famous enough that people actually know who I am even when I’m wearing sunglasses indoors and mumbling.
I became famous for singing about war, the devil, and the end of the world which are all things I knew absolutely bugger all about. I mean, War Pigs? I barely knew who the Prime Minister was, let alone geopolitics. Paranoid? Mate, that song was written in 20 minutes because we needed a B-side and now it’s used in workout playlists and football stadiums. Effin brilliant.
People say I’m the Prince of Darkness. I mean, fair enough if by Prince you mean that bloke who once bit the head off a bat, then yes, I wear the crown. Though I’m pretty sure the actual Prince of Darkness spent less time arguing with his wife about the TV remote.
And don’t get me started on the bat incident. There I was, performing in Des Moines because apparently Iowa is on the global map of rock ‘n’ roll, when some poor idiot in the crowd chucks a bat on stage. Not a baseball bat. A live bat. A furry, squeaky little bloke!
Now, I didn’t know it was a bat. I thought it was a stuffed toy or something so like any reasonable, bat-savvy rock star, I bit its head off.
Cue worldwide headlines. 'OZZY OSBOURNE BITES HEAD OFF BAT'. Suddenly, I wasn’t just the bloke with the squeaky voice and the songs about war pigs, I was Dracula on speed. You can’t make this shite up.
And sure, I got rabies. And yes, I had to have treatments that involved needles the size of cricket bats but hey, a legend was born. All because some tosser in Iowa couldn’t respect the sanctity of live animals.
I didn’t set out to be a legend. I set out to not work in a factory. And boy, did I succeed. I dodged slag heaps by becoming a global icon. Take that, management!
Speaking of Sharon, my rock, my anchor, the woman who saved my life more times than I can count (and probably binned more syringes than a NHS hospital). If she wasn’t around, I’d have been dead by 1982, buried under a pile of empty Jack Daniel’s bottles and unpaid medical bills. Instead, I was still there, annoying the kids, forgetting the lyrics to my own songs, and somehow still selling out arenas.
I sold millions of records. I won Grammys. I had a reality TV show where people actually watched me pick out garden gnomes and yell at the dog but here’s the funny thing about life, no matter how many times you scream IRON MAN into a mic, eventually, the universe taps you on the shoulder and says, Alright, Oz, time to simmer down.
Weirdly I didn’t go out in a blaze of rock ‘n’ roll glory. No overdose. No explosion on stage. No tragic fall from a helicopter,  I died because my heart just stopped but honestly? I’ll take it. After all the drugs, the drama, the arrests (shoutout to the Alamo), the time I got banned from six U.S. states just for existing and I go out doing how any sensible 76 year-old man should do, peacefully at home, surrounded by family.
So what’s the takeaway from my legendary, bat-biting, compost-splattered life?
Life’s short. Probably shorter if you’re me. But it’s also hilarious. Don’t take it too seriously. Bite the bat if you have to. Sing off-key. Wear the weird trousers but most importantly marry the woman who shouts at you the most because chances are, she’ll keep you alive.

Rainy Days And Tuesdays

On my stupidly long drive home on a Thursday i sometimes stop off in Exeter to visit my friend at the MET Office and we go for a coffee and chat about things Meteorological and last time i saw her, as we sat underneath a canopy outside a Costa and watched the rain, i asked if there is a particular day of the week when statistically it rains the most.
Bless her little expensive cotton socks she trawled through all sorts of data and came up with the answer, in the UK the most likely day for rain is Tuesday, followed by Sunday and that is down to build up of pollution from traffic and industry which acts as seeds for the water droplets and peaks on a Tuesday for some reason.  
Being the sort of person that knows me well enough that she anticipated a follow up question, she also discovered that the 24th October is the day of the year which is it most likely to rain on.
December 19th is statistically the worst day of the year for weather as it is the day for the less than perfect combination of cold, wet and wind.
'What about...' i began and another slip of paper was brandished with 21st July statistically the driest day so if you have to plan anything avoid a Tuesday and definitely steer clear of 24th October and if your wedding day is booked in for Tuesday October 24th in 2028 than you had better have a word with the Vicar about moving it to 21st July.
Obviously being the UK it could still chuck it down that day but at least the rain will be a little bit warmer.

America On Its Own

It is generally considered a good rule of thumb that if a sex offending warmonger is hating on you then you are doing something very much right so that's why we have the Pumpkin (probable) Pedophile in the White House blustering about Spain, Britain and France.  
When Jeffrey Epstein's best pal teamed up with the Genocidal Israel to begin their war against Iran for whichever reason they come up with on the day, i imagine he expected other nations to join them but instead, most of the World went 'Not for us' and banned America from flying their planes to bomb Iran from their bases as well as questioning why they were attacking the Middle Eastern country in the first place.     
In the House of Commons the British Prime Minister said that the war was not only illegal but Trump attacked with no viable plan and the Spanish PM, Pedro Sanchez, told the Americans not to use their air bases and French President, Macron, said he backed Spain that the attacks were outside of international law and did not approve of what they were doing which all got under the extremely thin orange skin of the Mango Moron who began blustering about Starmer not being Churchill and how he would stop trading with Spain.
In reply, the Spanish shrugged and the German Chancellor told Trump he couldn't do that as Spain was part of the EU and Pedro doubled down on the refusal to partake in yet another dodgy American war in the Middle East by explaining that: 'Twenty-three years ago, another US administration dragged us into a war with the Middle East and It triggered the largest wave of insecurity our continent has experienced since the fall of the Berlin Wall' and went on the say that: 'Governments were meant to improve people's lives and provide solutions to problems, not make them worse. It is unacceptable that leaders who are incapable of fulfilling their duties try to cover up their failure with the smoke of war'. Ouchie.
Obviously the recent disagreement with Denmark and Greenland didn't endear Trump to Europeans but if he is looking for a fig leaf to cover his latest bout of Trumpstein File misdirection, then apart from the mass killer Netanyahu who must be wetting his pants that he finally has someone so dumb in the White House, he is on his own.

Special Guest Blogger: Linda Nolan

So i have been sat here stroking my chin thoughtfully and looking out of a window onto a windswept moor while i look back at my life but to be fair i was always more of a looking out the window at the neighbour trying to parallel park again kind of woman.
I do have memories of my sisters in sequins and a flash of a sold-out arenas, the seven UK top-20 hits, the telly shows, the first band with my sister Coleen as part of the Young & Moody Band which also featured Lemmy from Motörhead and Cozy Powell. What Rolf Harris did when i was 16 and he came into my dressing room when we were supporting him...but let's not go there.
Will they remember the tight harmonies and the high kicks? Maybe. But I bet they’ll remember the wardrobe malfunction in Blackpool where a sequinned boob-tube made a run for freedom during a particularly vigorous arm movement but i was always known as the Naughty Nolan as i did enjoy posing in risqué publicity photos.
I left the group and turned to acting and then in 2014, i agreed to participate in Celebrity Big Brother, mainly because my sister Coleen had participated in and achieved second place and i was always the competitive sort, only she never head Jim Davidson in her series.
Jim and I had history, rooted in an incident from where Davidson threatened to punch my husband and manager, Brian Hudson, almost 20 years before for stealing from comic Frank Carson.
Back then anything written in a newspaper mercifully and quite rightly disappeared within a day of it being published, ideally ending up wrapped round your fish and chips but  Davidson couldn't resist reminding me of my husband's antics, prompting a huge argument. To make matters worse I was the next one evicted and he won the damn thing. 
My death was almost accidental, i fell and bumped my hip and while in hospital being treated for that, doctors discovered a form of incurable secondary breast cancer

Well Said Keir

Keir Starmer was asked the question: Have we learnt from the Iraq War? and his answer was of course we have and the main lesson was not to be involved in America's illegal wars anymore.  
In a rare slap across Donald Trumps chubby Orange cheeks, he told the House of Commons that for Britain to become involved it would need to be on a firm legal basis with a viable, thought-through plan with an objective that can be achieved or has a viable prospect of being achieved and said that he didn't believe in regime change from the skies and then with a dramatic pause...ended with the stinger "That is the principles that I applied to the decision not to get involved in the offensive strikes of the US and Israel' Ouch.
So the UK Government deemed it illegal with no viable plan other than to inflict damage and regime change. No one is crying for Ayatollah Khamenei, but with him dead there are no obvious successors. Regime change took a hit when Trump has admitted he has also accidentally killed his second and third choices to take over. Oops.
The reasons for attacking Iran while in negotiations for their Nuclear Project was spelt out by Trump sycophant Marco Rubio last night who decided that they HAD to attack Iran because Israel was about to attack them first and Iran would then retaliate against American bases so a pre-emptive strike to get ahead of Israel's pre-emptive strike to stop Iran pre-emptive strike on American interests. Confused? You will be.
Following an Iranian attack on a Cyprus airbase, Starmer has now announced that he would be allowing the draft-dodging President (how's those bone spurs now Donny?)  to use British bases for defensive actions, taking out Iranian missile bases to which the Tangerine Tyrant moaned that he was very disappointed that the UK had taken far too long to allow US forces to use its airbases to attack Iran and Starmer was worried 'about the legality'.
You think? Hard to see why a Labour Prime Minister would be nervous about a non UN sanctioned Middle Eastern regime-change operation run by a not very bright US president without a plan.

Special Guest Blogger: Beelzebub

Hey there, Humans. It’s your neighborhood not-Devil, Beelzebub. Yes, that guy. The one who was the very first victim of Religious Cancel Culture. Ugh. I could kick myself for that or preferably I will kick you if you keep calling me the Devil. Again.
Let me be clear: I’m not the Devil so please stop conflating me with him.
Let’s rewind to the beginning where I was first mentioned in the Hebrew Bible where I was not a red-horned ball of chaos but actually the name of a much loved Deity.
The Christian theologians who did like to make anyone that was not their own Christian God look bad, saw my fancy title Ba’al Zebul (Lord of the High Place) and went full creative by subtly changing my name to Ba'al Zebub (Lord of the Flies).
Suddenly, I went from a peaceful Deity to a demon, rebranded as the Prince of Demons, one of the seven deadly demons or seven princes of Hell and the middle one in the Triumvirate alongside Lucifer and Leviathan, then the chief demon. Then the Devil’s cousin. then the Devil’s alias just because their Jesus needed a villain.
My life’s work was rebranded by guys with quills and vendettas by the newest religion in town and by the Middle Ages, I’d been fully absorbed into the Satan mythos. Medieval artists, bless their charcoal-dusted hearts, gave me cloven hooves, a pitchfork, and a general attitude of enjoying torturing you.
Newsflash: I’m not the one tempting people with forbidden knowledge. That’s the other guy. The one with the cool snake aesthetic. Me? I prefer flies. Flies are underrated.
They’re like, 'Here’s a plague of diarrhea, have a nice day'.
I was the second in command in Hell but the New Testament made a complete pigs ear of everything and made me and the Devil the same guy and then I disappeared for thousands of years while Satan’s got the big tour.
You might be thinking, why does this even matter? which is a fair question. Shouldn’t the Lord of the Flies be above worrying about human confusion?” And you’d be right, if I weren’t so over people misquoting me.
For instance, when you recite the Lord’s Prayer and say: 'And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil,' you’re technically asking to be saved from… me? No! You’re asking to be saved from the other guy! I'm assigned specifically to the sin of Gluttony, that would be me making you eat the entire 14" pizza and the entire tub of Quality Streets in one sitting.
Look, I’m not asking for forgiveness. I’m not even asking for recognition. Just… accuracy. Next time you’re writing a horror movie, choosing a Halloween costume or scribbling in a curse jar, double-check your sources.
Hell, you could even apologize by saying 'Dear Beelzebub, we are so sorry for mistaking you for the Devil for the last 2,500 years' which would be nice, us Demons have feelings too y'know!