God 'N' Guns

 After the Supreme Court passed their Abortion ruling the other week, the question being asked is could such a ruling be made here and the simple answer is no it couldn't and for one very sound reason, we do not have a religious cult here.
I have long pointed out that the difference between America and here is God 'N' Guns, two things which very much hold sway over there but have no traction whatsoever in the UK.
A few years ago, after yet another awful mass shooting, the two came together in a brilliant moment of American madness when i heard some dungaree clad rednecks mention that any restriction in gun laws would deny people like him his 'God-given rights to carry handguns or assault weapons in public' and after some digging discovered that far from being a chapter in the Bible that only Americans seem to have, it stems from the American Constitution which gives the 'right to self-defence' which is a natural right which is bestowed upon everyone by God, therefore the right can be said to be God Given as they have chosen automatic weapons to defend themselves.
Just one example of religion making the loopy even loopier but even worse for American schoolchildren, it is making the loopy even more loopier and arming them with powerful assault weapons so that is the Gun part, what about the God bit?
Now i have no view on abortion, it is up to the people involved under the guidance of a professional armed with all the facts and options but from what i have seen and heard around the Supreme Court decision, it came down to abortion being 'against God'.
Removing the ability to have a safe abortion doesn't magically reduce the amounts of pregnancies but it will increase the number of maternal deaths and unwanted children who will find out the hard way that, due to the lackluster response to gun crime, once out of the womb many of their countrymen will lose interest in protecting them if they have to go to school facing the risk of being shot or injured, the perfect storm of God 'N' guns coming together.
We moan about much which is wrong in this country but we should be thankful that the Guns 'N' God crowd are over there making awful laws and not here which is why, as long as it stays that way, it won't ever be an issue here.

Why Is Nobody Mentioning Brexit?

It has been blamed on the Covid pandemic and Russia's invasion of Ukraine but as they are global economic shocks, the question must be why is Britain's economy doing so much worse than every else's?
The Bank of England governor, Andrew Bailey, has warned inflation is set to be higher for longer here in the UK, and growth in the economy weaker too which agreed with the International Monetary Fund and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development who said that the UK economy is probably weakening rather earlier and somewhat more than others.
Economists are predicting that Britain is heading towards a deeper and longer lasting recession than other European countries due to Sterling falling markedly and UK trade reaching its worst levels in record in the first quarter and interest rates and inflation at an eye watering level.
Undoubtedly the Pandemic and Ukraine does have an impact but the elephant in the room which i don't seem to be hearing mentioned is Brexit, that act of economic suicide which was forecast to hit Britain's GDP by 4% on it's own without any of the other factors.
The British Chambers of Commerce have issued a warning that due to Brexit related trade reduction, supply chain and labour shortages, the Government must review its shortage occupation list to allow more Foreign worker in to work here amid damaging staff shortages.
The Labour Party opposition seem afraid to mention Brexit, the division between Leavers and Remainers is still raw, but someone needs to shout loud that due to the madness of the 2016 vote for Brexit, we are inflicting upon ourselves real economic harm and will continue to do so until someone has the guts to stand up to the little Englander's, point out exactly what damage we are doing for very little reward and go back to the EU and apologise very, very hard and ask if we can return to their market, pretty please .

NATO Making China Bad Guy To Justify It's Existence

I have always seen NATO as an Organisation which should have been disbanded years ago when the Cold War ended but it is still around although for a defensive unit, it sure has done a lot of attacking these recent years, Serbia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and Libya have all felt the firepower of the 30 countries that make up NATO who have a mission statement that they are: 'Committed to the peaceful resolution of disputes'.
To justify their own existence, they need enemies to protect us from and they currently have Russia to point to but they have also been moving China into the cross-hairs saying the Asia powerhouse is building up its military forces, including nuclear weapons, bullying its neighbours, threatening Taiwan and siding with Russia against the West.
China, who has not attacked anybody since 1978, was quick to issue it's own statement asking who exactly is it challenging global security and undermining world peace, pointing out the West's recent wars and asking 'Are there any wars or conflicts over the years where Nato is not involved?'
Unless it has slipped under the radar of all the West's media, China is not backing Israel in it's horrific genocide of the Palestinians, or arming Saudi Arabia as it bombs Yemini back to the stone age, or arming ISIS, or meddling in other nations elections, or marauding around starting illegal wars without UN backing to remove leaders from power, so quite how China can be the scary bogeyman is baffling.  
While the citizens of far too many countries have been burying their dead courtesy of NATO bombs and bullets, China has been busy showing soft power and building up their reputation abroad with trade and exporting expertise globally in infrastructure, especially in building roads, bridges, airports, railways, 5G internet and power stations.
China's economy is second only to the US and is expected to overtake that imminently which brings us to the real reason why the West, through NATO, is desperately attempting to curtail it.
China, to it's credit, is not allowing itself to be bullied by the West and is keen to point out that it has not backed Russia, rather it has kept it's own council over it but when it comes to backing some very dodgy regimes doing some very dodgy things, the real threat building up its military forces, including nuclear weapons and bullying and threatening nations, they can't hold a candle to the warmongering West and it's NATO friends.

The Cesspool Which Is The Tory Run Westminster

The day must have a Y in it because we woke up to yet another Conservative resigning due to 'embarrassing himself' or as everyone else calls it 'sexually assaulting two young men'.  
This time it's the Chief Whip, Chris Pincher, but he is an old hand at this sexual misconduct lark, he was previously accused of 'touching up' another MP and accused of luring a former Olympic rower back to his home before undressing and saying: 'You’ll go far in the Conservative party' for which he said at the time: 'If anyone has felt offended, then I can only apologise'.
Despite all this, Boris Johnson still promoted him to Chief Whip, the actual person who investigates any allegations of sexual misconduct, but third time unlucky for Pincher because 'embarrassing himself' again has proved a sexual assault too far for the Tamworth MP and he has handed in his resignation.
As is the way in a Government led by Boris Johnson, their concern is not for the men sexually assaulted by the MP but for their colleague with the Government telling their MP's to 'think about how he feels today' and waving away any investigation or suspension because: 'The PM thinks he’s done
the decent thing by resigning' therefore showing all the compassion of a house brick for the victims.
When it is someone so immoral and devoid of values as Boris Johnson setting the benchmark of what is to be considered 'the decent thing' then we know we have really fallen down the rabbit-hole but it's just the latest in a long line of Tory scandals under the current blob of human kindness which includes..deep breath...defending Dominic Cummings lock-down busting trips, Charlie Elphicke imprisoned for three sexual assaults, Rob Roberts suspended for repeated unwanted sexual advances towards member's of staff, wallpapergate, the Health Secretary resigning due to breaking his own Covid Rules with his mistress, the PM accepting free holidays from donors, Owen Paterson breaking lobbying rules, Andrew Griffiths raping his wife, multiple lock-down parties, the PM failing to disclose Whatsapp messages to his own (first) ethics advisor regarding seeking £112,000 for a Downing Street refurbishment, David Warburton suspended for sexual harassment and cocaine use, Imran Ahmad Khan, sexually assaulting a 15-year-old boy, Neil Parish twice seen watching pornography in the House of Commons and an unnamed Tory MP arrested on suspicion of rape and other sexual offences.
After one of the above scandals, i can't remember which one, the Government spokesman wheeled out the 'one bad apple' line and how the public can still trust Tory MPs and i have no doubt that in the future there will be more scandals, including Labour and Lib Dem MP's also, but when the top guy is a vacuum of acceptable standards, morals and respectability and is keen to overlook appalling behaviour because it may implement him in many cases, Westminster will remain a cesspool of the worst of us.

Special Guest Blogger: Grigoriy Nelyubov

Since time immemorial there have been stars that have flown so high only to come crashing down to earth with all the grace of an American at a free buffet and i was literally an ace away from being one of the first few men who flew the highest because i was a Russian Cosmonaut at the time of when the Soviets were spanking the American's in the Space Race.
We had sent the first animal into orbit and the first human's in space in Vostok 1 and Vostok 2 and i was all set to pilot Vostok 3 until i had a problem with a drink, or rather the dozen of them i had drunk when returning from a weekend pass when i got into an altercation with an army patrol at a train station checkpoint and punched one of the guards.
I was a captain and pilot in the Soviet Air Force and while the Americans sought mature test pilots for their first spaceflights, the Soviets recruited young pilots with the intent of training them for a career as spacemen and out of 3,000 applicants, i was picked as one of the original 20 Cosmonauts for the Soviet Space missions and after all the tests and exams, it was Yuri Gagarin, Gherman Titov and me who were chosen to ride the first manned missions in that order.
Now the Soviet missions were very much seat of the pants stuff, the best most of us guys hoped for was a merciful, quick death and on the launch of Vostok 1 three press releases were prepared, one for success, two for failures but when Yuri circled the Earth in 1961, global housewives stopped a-cleanin’, dogs sat up in their basket, birds stopped a-twitterin’ and cow-milkin’-device-type-things stopped…cow milking and he came back safely to be a hero not just in the USSR but Worldwide.  
A few months later Titov went up and came down again a day later with the first photograph's of Earth from space and then it was to be my turn and a planned 3 day mission circling our Planet...until that train station incident and i was arrested for drunk and disorderly conduct.
The duty officer agreed to ignore the whole incident and not send the report if i apologised, but i got all 'Do You Know Who I Am?' which couldn't really be taken as an apology but i thought they won't kick me out, i'm off to the stars soon and even when they reported me to the authorities i was confident they would dismiss it but the only thing dismissed was me from the Cosmonaut corps.
I went back to flying planes while my former comrades blasted toward the stars and my own nation airbrushed me out of ever being part of Soviet Space history but missing out on global fame led me to drink heavily which is how i ended up wandering around drunk one morning and straight into the path of a speeding train, wiping me from history permanently.

Special Guest Blogger: Greek God Hades

The son of Cronus and Rhea, when the family fortune was divvied up, my brothers Zeus got the Sky and Poseidon the sea and i got handed the Underworld which wasn't a bad gig, although a dingy and dull place it was a very popular joint because since the dawn of man, there has always been evil or 'the absence of good'.
In the start there was always some hero nipping down to rescue someone or other so i told them that Tartarus or the Land of the Dead is supposed to be for the dead only you guys so i got my enormous guard dog Cerberus to keep watch on the entrance to the Underworld and nobody argues with him, less of a dog and more of a three-headed monster hound with slavering jaws really.
There are certain living people i did welcome though, including my wife Persephone who does cheer things up down here a little, if only for three months of the year but that is the deal we arranged with her mother Demeter and her father Zeus because i did sort of kidnap her while she was out picking flowers and her mum cast a curse on the land that it would stay barren and nothing would grow until i released her.
Being the nice chap i did exactly that, i even gave her a pomegranate to eat on the way back although i clean forgot about the rule that if you taste the food of dead you must return to our land for part of the year, that bit i forgot to mention which is why when Persephone is down in the underworld with me from December to February, when you living types then have winter as per her Mother's instructions that nothing would grow until she is topside again.
For someone who was reluctant to marry me, she had a jealous streak about my ex-girlfriends, she not only ripped Minthe to pieces but then trampled the pieces into garden mint.
The Roman's took a shine to me and although they changed my name to Pluto, they kept me as their own god of the dead and gave me the job of the master of ores and precious stones and all was good until the Christians took over and seemed to make Hades into some sort of torture chamber for wrong doers but worst of all was they replaced me with Satan who was just the furry little half man half goat Pan who was way down the league of minor Gods until they showed up. The cheek, replaced by a pervy old goat shagger.

Questions Being Asked Over Ukraine Support

As things stand, currently most people are behind the Ukrainians in their fight against Russian aggression but as prices increase and the credit crunch really starts to bite, already the question being asked is how much longer will people be willing to pay such exorbitant prices for things like petrol and heating before they start shouting enough?
Recent polling by the European Council on Foreign Relations suggests the increasing cost of living crisis is causing more concern than achieving justice for Ukraine with: 'a growing gap between the positions of many governments and the public mood in their respective countries'.
It doesn't help the cause in the UK as it is widely perceived that Boris Johnson is strutting around pretending to be a world statesman in order to distract us from the mess of his making in the UK and it is becoming a bit of a joke how he always mentions Ukraine whenever another of his never ending discrepancies are uncovered.
It has already been mentioned to me that that Moscow will not back down and supplying Ukraine with defensive weapons only enables them to hold the Russians off temporarily while they have very little chance of actually winning the war so people are already wondering what are we making sacrifices for?   
Support for the Ukrainian conflict is still high but at some point, probably in October when the new round of fuel price increases come along or even before when inflation continues upwards and the pay rises don't materialise, the few voices may well swell and it will become a chorus of sorry Ukraine but we just can't be squeezed anymore and the politicians will have a decision to make.

Special Guest Blogger: Hannibal Barca of Carthage

There are not many Tunisian military commanders in the history books but i'm in them and i an known as the one of the greatest military commanders in history with one of the greatest treks to fight a war.
My father started it, marching his army across Northern Africa and across the strait of Gibraltar to take on the tribes of the Iberian Peninsula and when he died in battle, my brother-in-law took over and made a deal with the Romans that we would not expand North into their domain if they did not expand south into ours.
We were merrily dicing and slicing Spaniards and Portuguese until he also died which left me in charge and i upped our conquest game which spooked the Romans who began claiming lands in our patch so i sent a delegation which said either get out or face war.
They chose the latter but i had a plan, turned out it was a massively stupid plan which ended up killing most of my army, but my plan was to sneakily attack the Romans from the Alps which was considered damn near impossible.
With 38,000 infantry, 8,000 cavalry and 38 elephants, we started the march from Iberia over the Pyrenees and the Alps into Northern Italy but we got stuck at a narrow, snowy pass and my men were concerned that the elephants would trigger an avalanche and kill them all so i tried to demonstrate to them that it was perfectly safe to pass along.
I chose to do this by ramming my cane into the snow, which in turn triggered an avalanche, which wiped out almost half my infantry, a quarter of my cavalry and most of the elephants but the rest made it across okay and we went to Italy and even with my depleted resources, fought Rome in their own backyard for 15 years.
The use of elephants was a masterstroke, the Romans had never seen them before and sending one of those rampaging through a town and into the Romans ranks caused mayhem until one of them worked out that blowing a horn at the elephants would cause them to turn tail and run straight back at us.  
The Romans invaded North Africa and i had to return to defend my homeland but by time i got there the Roman's had taken over so i made peace with them but they heard i was plotting with the Greeks to kick them out so i ran off to Greece to act as a general in their own war against Rome but died from an infection after i cut my finger on my own sword whilst mounting my horse.
You may ask how someone who ended up killing more of his men than the Romans ever did and ended up being killed by an accident with his own sword can be considered one of the greatest strategists ever but i took on Rome with only half of my fighting force so if i had not accidentally killed them i would have taken Rome and history would be very different, the art, literature, laws and architecture would be a lot more Tunisian for a start.

Special Guest Blogger: Greek Goddess Aphrodite

Coming into existence from the foam of your fathers discarded penis could really screw up a young girl but i did manage to snag a Greek God as a husband, shame it was Hephaestus who didn't get hit with the ugly stick, he got hit by the whole damned tree.
As the goddess of beauty, passion and love, i was so gorgeous that there was a six month waiting list for birds to suddenly appear every time i was near so obviously having a husband who whenever he looked in a shiny surface, his reflection would look back and shake it's head wasn't ideal but there was no lack of hunky Gods ready to lend a hand and other more intimate body parts to me, Dionysus, Hermes, Poseidon, Zeus but especially Ares who would visit while hubby was toiling away in his workshop.
Everything was going well until Helios saw us and told Hephaestus who trapped us together in a net and dragged us to the God's on Olympus who demanded we never see each other again although considering that we had seven children together, that didn't happen although i did spread the love around including with mortals.
One of my children was Priapus who the Queen of the God's, Hera, cursed as she was jealous of my superior beauty. Her curse was for him to be born hideously ugly and with an oversized penis. Basically, what any man would accept and the sight of Priapus offended the small-dicked Greek God's who cast him out of Mount Olympus and lived on Earth and became adopted by the Roman's who had small statues built of him in their gardens which became the Gnome's still in existence in modern gardens today.
As for me, i created Pandora, yes that one, who released evil into the world but as the goddess of all things love, i did have a mean streak such as cursing all the women on the island of Lemnos to stink after they refused to sacrifice to me.
It started off well, all the men refused to procreate with them and started having sex with their female slaves but then the women murdered the entire male population of the island and well...my bad.
Just as my son was taken on by the Roman's, so was i and after a name change to Venus, i was also immortalized in stone in the Venus de Milo although for some reason i don't appear to have any arms which were broken off at some point but as i am considered the ultimate vision of beauty and i'm topless so i think most men wouldn't notice if my arms were missing, 7 foot long or bright purple with polka-dots.

Economics And The Prince Of Aldovia

Things had taken a downward turn and the country was entering recession and there i was in the canteen trying to decide whether to enter 80p for the last Snickers Bar or just give the machine a good shake when the big, big, BIG boss walked in and said 'Ah, i'm glad i bumped into you'.
Immediately my mind went to 'Bugger, what have i done' and as my mind raced back over any recent indiscretions he said that due to the economic turmoil we were going to go big on Economics and as i was once the financial advisor to Prince Richard of Aldovia could i give a quick 30 min update on some of the terms and what they mean to the younger staff members.
Obviously my mouth said 'Of Course, no problem' but my mind went 'Crap. I knew that putting that fake entry using people from a Christmas Movie on my CV would come back to bite me on the arse' so i set about thinking how could i blag my way out of this because knowing anything about economics to me is like a diet sheet to Boris Johnson, never the twain shall meet.
I turned up to see about 40 fresh young faces waiting with notepads and pens poised, ready to jot down whatever pearls of wisdom i imparted so i shuffled my papers, looked at the clock and took a deep breath and began.
I started by saying that the most important thing was to pitch your efforts at the lowest of the potential audience, so think PE Teacher or Estate Agent, and avoid using long words like Stagflation, Deflation and Hyperinflation because it would only confuse them.
Happy that i had craftily avoided having to explain what they were as i had no idea, i looked again at the clock and saw i still had 29 minutes to fill so then went on to give some long, winding explanation of how the prices at the petrol pumps was a great example of how a shortage of a commodity means that the producer can charge more for that thing and because the demand is high, they can charge more for it.
A few hands went up but i managed to deflect by saying could they keep any questions to the end as we are pressed for time and i had a lot to get through and the hands, thankfully, went down again.
The clock said 15 minutes to go so i shuffled my papers while i desperately tried to remember the recent chat i had with a Financial Expert at the start of the year but all i could remember about that was her lovely, stylish red kitten heel shoes and coming out of the interview with the word 'Coat' scribbled down, damn my lack of attention and the ease which my mind wanders to a tropical island where David Boreanaz is serving me a Sea Breeze while dressed in only a pair of tight speedos and a glint in his eye whenever mind numbingly boring topics are mentioned.
With ten minutes to go i went for the good old fashioned blag, throwing in as many economic terms that i could drag forth from my brain so i said some people advocate Keynesian Economics that focuses on changes in the economy over the short run and as we all know short term planning can play havoc with everything, a good example is Leeds United. Under David O' Leary they paid top price for players and stretched the clubs finances too far and while they made it to the European Cup and recouped what they lost, when they missed out they were forced to sell those players to keep the club afloat and...10 minutes of talking Football and throwing about some random economic sounding words such as capital, deficit, fiscal and consumer goods, i saw it was half ten and announced the meeting over.
Eager hands shot up again and i explained that unfortunately the meeting had over-run and the boss would have my guts for garters if i kept them any longer but if they did have any questions, to email them to me and i would answer them.
Breathing a huge sigh of relief i shuffled them out the door and making a mental note to delete all emails i received today, went back to the canteen and the snack machine to see that the last Snickers had gone.
Oh how i wish i was back in Aldovia sometimes!