Most Beautiful Countries

With 193 countries in the United Nations, Earth has something for anyone and everyone but some nations are a bit better than others and the World Population Review has ranked the Globe's most beautiful countries in 2026 and of the top 100, i have been to only 25 of them although 7 of them are in the top 10 so that's not bad.
Top and most beautiful is Greece, then it is New Zealand, Italy, Switzerland, Spain, Thailand, Norway, Iceland, Australia and Austria.
Ireland is 11th, Canada 18th, France 20th, Japan 23rd, UK 45th,  China 46th, Germany 50th, USA 51st and Russia 66th.
I know beauty is in the eye of the beholder and i don't know what criteria the World Population Review used to choose the most beautiful but for me Austria was breathtaking but then we was there in December with the snow and halfway up a mountain and every morning we looked out of our window at a scene from a Christmas Card so it may be very different in August although i do enjoy a mountain scenery so all of the Alpine nations would do it for me.  
The UK has the green rolling hills and history going for it and France, especially Paris, is spoilt for famous monuments and statues, it must be a nightmare trying to cram it all in for a tourist guide because everywhere you look is something famous and the Scandinavian Countries have the fjords which are so beautiful that people get up in the early hours just to take a photograph.
I guess all countries have something which makes them stand out, just some of them are very well hidden.

Ready, Steady....Go!!!

 
At the moment West Streeting has done the first part of sparking a leadership contest against Keir Starmer and resigned but as if yet, he hasn't yet triggered the leadership bid but you can be sure that once he does, the rest of the runners and riders will pile in and Sky TV had been polling the Labour membership and as that famous Michael Heseltine saying goes: 'He who wields the knife never wears the crown' implying that the person who ruthlessly orchestrates the downfall of a leader rarely becomes the leader themselves.
Amid the leadership manoeuvring of the last few days, Sky News has been polling Labour members to ask who they would back in a potential contest and its grim reading for the former Health Secretary because if Wes Streeting were to go up against Sir Keir Starmer directly, he would lose hands down with 53% for Starmer and only 23% for Streeting.
Of the list of who is expected to run for Prime Minister, Starmer would beat the Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood 64% to 15%, Lucy Powell the Deputy Labour Leader 51% to 27%, Bridget Phillipson the Education Secretary 46% to 25%, Al Carns the Armed Forces Minister 45% to 17% and the  Chief Secretary to the PM, Darren Jones, 40% to 25%.
The people the Labour Members state they will vote for to beat Starmer are Andy Burnham, who is currently not an MP but is working hard to become one in time would win easily 61% to 28%,  Energy Secretary Ed Miliband 46% to 39% and Angela Rayner with a much tighter 45% to 41%.
Each challenger will need 20% of the party's MPs to back them and there are 403 Labour MPs, so the support of 81 would be needed which means there are only enough for 4 challengers (Starmer is on the ballot anyway so doesn't need the 81) so some won't even make it to the ballot paper stage where members vote for their preference and the bottom candidate gets eliminated and their votes goes to the second choice until someone receives more than 50% of first preferences then they will be declared the winner.
Andy Burnham does seem the clear favourite but his problem is he is not an MP so someone will need to step aside for him to run a by-election and hopefully get elected so he can join the potential candidates but whoever the eventual victor is, it's hard not to see the removal van outside 10 Downing Street carting away Keir Starmer's furniture before the end of Summer.

Special Guest Blogger: Liam Payne

They say life begins at 16, or as I like to call it, The Age I Realized My Voice Cracked More Than a Demolition Crew. Back when I was a scrawny lad with a comb-over thicker than my savings account, I auditioned for The X Factor because I thought fame meant free pizza and a personal trainer named Vogue.
Little did I know after being unsuccessful the first two times that my third attempt would see me end up in a band with four other blokes who’d collectively make me look like the most put-together member of The Muppets.
We went from shoving each other into swimming pools on MTV’s Made to selling out stadiums. The pinnacle? Our first world tour, where I discovered that being a pop star meant eating chicken nuggets in a van and pretending to know how to play guitar but we sold over 70 million records between the scrappy days of 'All Together Now' to the global phenomenon of Story of My Life, so we did something right.
I dated influencers and models and had a child with X-Factor judge Cheryl Tweedy but through it all I remained the cheeky little lad from Wolverhampton who thought fame would cure his social anxiety although it didn't even scratch the surface, drugs and drink on the other hand....
One Direction was a massive, mind-blowing, chart-topping, hair-gel-fueled rollercoaster that turned us from normal lads into a global franchise. When the band officially went on hiatus back in 2016, I thought I’d finally have the freedom to sleep past 9 a.m.
I went solo and had hits and my own clothing line with Hugo Boss but let’s get morbid for a tick. How did I kick the proverbial bucket? Well, the rumors say 'drug overdose' and i was very open about my struggles with drugs and drink  since the peak of One Direction's success.
In early October 2024, me and my girlfriend travelled to Argentina to renew my United States visa at the US embassy in Buenos Aires and after she returned to her home in Florida, i stayed in Argentina.
If you have ever been to Buenos Aires you will know it is a city that will steal your heart, your soul, and if you’re not careful your balance but the next bit is hazy because i was off my face on drugs and drink but i was later made acutely aware that however much stuff you have coursing though your body,  physics and gravity still apply and I fell about fourteen feet to my death from the apartment balcony.

The Financial Cost Of War

Dwight Eisenhower: 'Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter with a half-million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. . . . This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron'.

In a congressional hearing, appearing alongside US defence secretary Pete Hegseth, Jules Hurst, under secretary of war and chief financial officer, said the total cost of the Iran War is currently $29bn. So Google states that:

Average cost of elementary and middle school construction - $25-$30m
Average cost of electric power plant in USA -$2 billion
Average cost of fully equipped hospital in USA - $200m
Average cost of concrete poavement in USA - $352 per mile
Average cost of a bushel of Wheat in USA - $6
Average cost of building a new home in USA - $450,000

So to put it another way, the Iran War so far has cost Americans 1,160 new schools, 14 electric power plants, 145 new fully equipped hospitals, 89,230,769 miles of concrete pavement, 4,833,333,333 bushels of wheat or 64,444 new homes and from what I can see, all you have to show for missing out on all this is...paying more for your petrol. 

LucyP For Prime Minister

With Keir Starmer barely holding on to power with his fingertips, someone stamping on his fingers and sending him off the cliff is inevitably coming so as we have had a few duffers over the last few years, I am throwing my hat in the ring to be the next Prime Minister of the UK so i am polishing off my previous manifesto and present it here for your perusal and so you know that if you vote for me, you can't say you wasn't warned.

First up is scrap the Nuclear Weapons: We don't need them, they are ridiculously expensive and if we did use them it would be because someone else did so the world would be ended anyway.
Next is reverse the madness that was Brexit and rejoin the Single Market and Customs Union by posting a letter to the EU pleading temporary insanity and we are very, very sorry.
A Windfall tax on banks and utilities making obscene profits.
The Royals are worth hundreds of millions so why are we still shoveling cash towards them? Sorry your Highness but pay for your own bloody upkeep and do you really need all those palaces and Castles?
With the money from above now sloshing about in the Government coffers i would actually build the 40 new hospitals we were promised but never arrived.
I would tell the Middle East to poke their oil and gas where the Sun doesn't shine which is mostly the UK which may be a drawback for our Solar Plants but with currently 43% of our power coming from renewable sources, I would double the solar, wind and tidal resources and we would never have to
worry about the next time America decides it needs a war to hide some files which show the President to be a nonce.   
Then there is the 'Enjoy the rest of your Day' thing which seems to have become prevalent amongst shop assistants . While it is perfectly polite, it's just so fake and anyway if I wanted to have a crap day, a woman in Boots isn't going to stop me.  
If you were in one of those jobs who got a mention when we were all outside clapping you during the Covid Pandemic (Nurse, Police, Bus and Train drivers etc) then you get a 10% payrise. If you were in a job which was furloughed and it had no effect whatsoever on the nation (Estate Agent, Insurance Salesman, Double Glazing Cold Caller) then suck it up.
A new tax system will be introduced, if you are a global conglomerate and do not pay your fair share in Corporation Tax then pack up your stuff and sod off elsewhere because you aren't welcome here, there will be plenty of coffee houses and search engines who will take your place.
There will also be a new Tax Return where you tick what you don't want your taxes to go towards such as the Royals.
I would tell America to come and pack up their military bases and missiles on British land and while your at it take back home all those Yanks who complain about the weather, our taps and our food. If you can't work out how two taps and a basin works then you shouldn't be allowed to leave your own country.  
The BBC can keep the licence fee but you MUST make a programme with that delightful Brian Cox in it every 3 months to replace all those dreadful cooking and antique shows, put The Sky A Night on at a decent time and promise to never, ever, EVER employ Piers Morgan in anything. 
Finally, a £100 fine sentence for anyone who leaves the teabag in the cup in shops which you don't discover until you have almost drank it 

That's my manifesto United Kingdom so vote for me and never be told to enjoy the rest of your day ever again. You know it makes sense.

Disclaimer: LucyP bears no responsibility if you vote her into office and her math's turns out to be a bit iffy.

Gonna Need A Bigger Coat Europeans

 
With everyone looking at the Strait of Hormuz, it is the one in the Bering Sea between Russia and Alaska which scientists are looking at because that's where the  Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) resides and it's possibly weakening and set to collapse which will have nasty effects if you are reading this in Northern Europe and you thought this Winter was a bit chilly.
The AMOC is a key Atlantic current which moves warm, salty water from the tropics northward, where it cools and sinks, and shifts cold water south which in turn regulates the climate across Europe which gives us the relatively mild climate we enjoy but turn that off and...brrrrr.
Numerous studies have suggested that the AMOC is weakening and may collapse or slow down and may be closer to collapse than previously thought  according to researchers at the Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research at Utrecht University in the Netherlands who blame our good old friend Climate Change.
The Dutch point out that global warming could stop the AMOC by the warmer North Atlantic waters preventing the warm, salty water it is carrying from cooling and sinking or the melting ice sheets in the North could add more fresh water to the mix, thereby diluting the saltiness of the arriving water and stopping it from sinking but either way ends with us North Europeans needing our big coats as temperatures dip by as much as 15°C.
As the World is run by dingbats, actually doing something about the devastating Climate Change is too much for them but it has been suggested that as the AMOC was stronger in the mid-Pliocene, some 3 million years ago, when there was a land bridge closing off the 51 mile Bering Strait so if we could build a giant dam between Russia and Alaska, it might might save us from running up a heating bill the length of a telephone number although they do temper that by saying that it might do nothing at all and they will have to do more research to see if it would actually work.
'It isn't a straightforward solution' poo poohed the U.K. Met Office who explained that Bering Strait is one of the world's most dangerous and turbulent bodies of water, known for extreme storms, rapid weather shifts, and shallow, steep waves that often exceed 40 feet so good luck building anything there but the Dutch are not put off so easily by 40 foot waves threatening to carry them off to Sea and they deem it technically feasible to build two 25 mile dams.
The longer parts wouldn't be much longer than the Afsluitdijk dam in the Netherlands, which covers 20 miles long and a Bering Strait dam would have a maximum depth of 194 feet which isn't much deeper than the deepest part of the Saemangeum Seawall, which goes down to 177 feet but they werent built in storm force winds while the Sea tries it best to drown you so maybe the best solution is to cut greenhouse gas emissions , we just need to clear the Government decks of the moronic climate change deniers first. 

Special Guest Blogger: Miss Major Griffin-Gracy

A life so crammed full of chaos, charity, and the odd cup of over-steeped Earl Grey that it's not easy to know where to begin.
I came into this world with the punch of a protest and the grace of a catwalk but, alas, not the wardrobe to match. Growing up, I quickly learned that life’s greatest thrill is not in the what but the how. How do you make a stand when society’s handing out parking tickets for existing? Why, with a wink, a wig, and a willingness to laugh in the face of absurdity, of course.
My early years were a masterclass in self-deprecation. I once tried to pass as a man by borrowing my brother’s socks, and let’s just say, fashion was not my strong suit. But here’s the kicker: even when life handed me lemons I squeezed them into something tangy and extraordinary. That, my darlings, is the heart of the trans rights fight, turning lemons into lemonade, then into a bloody big posh wedding cake.
When i came out as Trans in my teens, my parents enrolled me in for psychiatric treatment and took me to church because this was the 1950's and being anything other than white and male was the work of the devil.
The art of turning I told you I’m a woman into a rallying cry loud enough to shake the foundations of power means if you’re not being misgendered at least three times a day, you’re not living your truth.
I was expelled from college for wearing feminine clothes and my parents refused to let me live with them but one of my proudest moments was founding the Transgender Gender Variant Intersex Justice Project and we were a band of misfits and marvels, fighting for dignity with the tenacity of a terrier with a bone and twice the drool. It’s not all glitter and glamour, but hey, where’s the fun in that?
Whether it was demanding equal rights or perfecting my eyeliner I always went full drama queen. And really, what’s life without a bit of drama?
There was the time I got arrested while protesting outside City Hall but underneath the bling and bravado is the simple truth that we’re fighting for the right to live authentically. To walk down the street without fear, to love who we want, and to finally stop explaining our existence to bemused strangers.  
I lived a grand life and when the curtain fell, sepsis and a blood clot,  I'd like to think that I carved a space where future trans folks won’t have to fight quite so hard.

Iran War Backfires For Trump

Two months into the war in Iran and with the awful Trump administration claiming victory after the first few days, the reasons the US gave for launching this conflict (Regime change and no Iranian nuclear weapon amongst some others) can be looked at and, oh dear, it doesn't make good reading for the  invaders.
What the final ceasefire deal looks like we can pore over when we find out what it is but it is safe to assume it wont be better than what they had under the JCPOA or what the Iranians were offering during meetings at the start of the war but we will see, but it is highly unlikely.  
It is hard to think of a more damning indictment that the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, told reporters last week that the main goal now was to get the Strait of Hormuz 'Back to the way it was so anyone can use it and there are no mines in the water and nobody paying tolls' which is ignoring that this was only necessary because of the very war he was simultaneously presenting as already won.
As with anything Donald Trump touches, Operation Project Freedom turned into a disaster almost straight away when Saudi Arabia refused America the rights to fly over its land and use its bases so the announcement came that they were suspending his plan for the US Navy to escort tankers out of the strait, after just one day and cited 'great progress toward an agreement with Iran' which is to say that the Iranians were merely considering a 14-point proposal for 30 days of negotiations aimed at finding an end to the war, so slightly oversold but it hid the embarrassment of his almighty cock-up not even his allies supported.
As for the regime change, admittedly there are different people in charge, just that is is exactly the same regime, just a younger and more hardcore version of it so you could argue it has changed, but in the way that the UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson was replaced by Liz Truss so the same Party in charge, just now there is an even worse version of it now in control.
As for the Nuclear Bomb justification, Iran said continually they were not seeking a nuclear missile and the now dead Ayatollah even passed a Fatwa in 2003 on nuclear weapons which prohibited the production and use of them as religiously forbidden but that Fatwa died with the former guy running the country and if Iran has learnt one thing, it is that nations with nuclear weapons don't get invaded although they probably don't need one, they also learnt that they can shut the Strait of Hormuz on their doorstop to bring the West to its knees.
The shifting aims for the war and desperate scramble for an exit underscore that this entire enterprise has been a colossal strategic failure and shattered confidence and alienated US allies who were blamed for failing to solve a problem they neither created.
So in short, Trump have further entrenched a new but more brutal regime and given it a reason to develop nuclear weapons in the future although it may have given it a much easier option so why get backs up developing nuclear weapons when it can hold the World to ransom with some underwater mines and cheap drones.   
Now back to the details of his (probable) pedophile behaviour in the Trumpstein Files which haven't gone away, no wonder he can't sleep at night and falls asleep during meetings. 

Don't Beam Me Up Scotty

There was a piece in one of the newspaper recently about teleportation being possible and a story of a guy somewhere who teleported to a Waffle House and a restaurant before stating that he had been taking heavy medication for at the time which sort of derails his story somewhat.
Thinking that one day soon i could give up my weekly 600 mile round trip for work i asked a scientist with an alphabet after his name if teleportation is going to be available soon like Captain Kirk beaming down to strange new worlds on the Enterprise and to be fair, even after telling me, i'm still not sure but i think it is a no.
From what i could grasp, what science CAN do is teleport one subatomic particle to another in a different location, in essence making copies of that particle elsewhere and they have managed to do this over a distance of 60 feet which kinda puts the skids under my plan, although it may be handy when the lift is not working in our block and i cant be arsed to walk down a few flights of stairs.
So as the Science geeks are on it, could it be a thing future generations can look forward to?
That's still a no he reckons as reproducing a single particle is a far cry from reproducing an entire human who is made up of billions and billions of  atoms and even if that was possible, which it isn't, the other you would be a copy and not the actual you which would be a replica walking around in your  place.
Instantaneous travel then it appears, is not something we can look forward to anytime soon unfortunately.

WHO Say's Dont Panic!

When i first heard about the Hantavirus outbreak on a cruise ship i wasn't that concerned but when the World Health Organisation got involved and told everyone not to panic, i thought nobody was until you spoke up.
Hantavirus, so the Health Organisation went to pains to explain, is a rare occurrence and although it has emerged aboard the MV Hondius cruise ship, resulting in three deaths and seven confirmed cases amongst the 147 passengers, strict quarantine procedures will prevent it spreading and this is not another outbreak like the Covid 19 which swept around the World.
It's usually transmitted by coming into contact with infected rodent feces, saliva, or urine and an investigation is still ongoing with regards to if the affected did come into contact with the same source or it was transmitted human to human which would much more concerning as that is extremely rare.
In a news conference, WHO director of epidemic and pandemic preparedness and prevention, Maria Van Kerkhove, said: 'We do believe that there may be some human-to-human transmission that's happening among the really close contacts, the husband and wife, people who've shared cabins' although she did then go on to state that it was possible that spouses may well have been in contact with the same source and therefore did not pass it to each other rather than contract it at the same time.
The ship is now in Tenerife and the unlucky victims are well quarantined away from people so it seems it is being contained but the last word must go to the WHO who assure us that the Hantavirus is NOT: 'A pandemic kind of virus' but as the Covid began by someone eating an affected bat, it might be safer to lay off the Rat Stew for a few months.