Trump V The BBC

The BBC is finding itself in the middle of the News cycle rather than merely reporting on it and all the usual suspects who would benefit from the BBC no longer being here are wetting their pants in all the excitement.  
The fact is the Panorama edit where they spliced together two comments to make it seem like one long comment was bad and the highest-level scalps have fallen and a producer and editor will be promptly joining them while the US president is threatening to sue it for $1bn.
So why, we must wonder,  has the editing of a clip in a documentary that aired in another country, which no one noticed at the time and shortly before he won a Presidential election victory, vexed Trump quite so much?
Throw into the mix that targetting any media that challenges his nonsense utterings to try and silence them is his modus operandi, the BBC reaches more than 25% of Americans (85 million people) and 118 million web visits a month so that is a lot of voters who have access to whatever either the weak US media outlets or the right wings one, are not saying which he would rather they not hear at all.
The best part is the letter he sent to the BBC basing part of his claim on 'reputational damage', which we must asked how much of a reputation has a renown liar who has a recent criminal conviction on 34 counts of falsifying business records in a case where he paid hush money to a porn star and a civil case where he was found to have sexually abused a woman and been ordered to pay her $83m while admitting he 'grabbed women by the pussy' so not a lot of reputation left i would assume.
His reputation as the most corrupt, dishonest, and dishonourable man to ever occupy the White House, yes that reputation i can believe.
That reputation while his press office spews out lies on an industrial scale on a daily basis. He has an intent to undermine news organisations in the US and he is tryign to silence any criticism of him here now also.
If he wants a fight, by God, we should give him one and the next Panorama episode should concentrate on all his outrageous lies, extra marital sexual shenanigans and a deep dive into the Epstein Files, let's see if he is so keen to go to court to defend them shall we.

Budget Looming

It's the budget on the 26th November but thankfully i am not going to be here because from the 19th November until the 4th December I will be bobbing around in the East Atlantic Ocean on a huge cruise ship while the industrial strength cleaner is employed to clean the fan of whatever Rachel Reeves has hit it with.
I do have some sympathy with the Labour predicament because the previous Conservative administration left her an awful legacy of huge Government debt, a massive blackhole of £20bn-£40bn worth of 'promises' they made and stuck in an envelope for them to pick up and services so ideologically run down over 14 years that it would be almost impossible to just get it back to where it was with one budget and one 5 year administration.
At the last budget, the Chancellor delivered an estimated £40bn of tax rises and financial experts seem to think that this time she is likely to need to raise a further £26bn to get the UK's public finances in order, and that is the crunch, it is not to raise tax to drastically improve the public finances, but just to bring them up to a standard where we have enough public and Civil Servants to ensure the country runs correctly and to fund the NHS correctly.    
Obviously she and Labour are going to get the blame for whatever she does, the Conservatives are already harping that they were correct when they said during the election campaign that Labour would put taxes up and they are right, but right because they are going to have to in order to pick up the dreadful slack that the Tories left them.
Unfortunately, Labour didn't do themselves any favours by immediately cutting the winter fuel allowance which opened them up to accusation so going after the pensioners and they were quite rightly forced to backtrack on that idea as well as climbing down on reducing benefits to avoid a revolt from their own back-benchers.   
Following a pre-Budget press conference last week where the Chancellor never really told us anything but refused to rule out breaking their manifesto pledge to not increase Income Tax, National Insurance or VAT which would realy pout her under the4 cosh if she did so i would like to think was just kite flying to see what the reaction would be if she did do it,  the wise money seems tro be on things such as a Wealth Tax, Mansion Tax, Exit Tax and even the merging of National Insurance and Income Tax which someone with a better calculator than me would raise approximately £33bn so i'm guessing that is where she will be looking.
Anyway, i will not be here and will be avidly avoiding it and will have no phone access until i am back on the 4th December, hopefully with a sun tan, a Cruise belly and a photo reel on my phone to bore people with into the New Year. Enjoy.

So You Are Going To Trump's America...

Where America once said 'Bring me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to break free', it has added...'oh and the passwords to all of your electronic devices so we can lock your sorry arses up' because stories abound about travellers to the USA having their devices searched.
Even white people turning up at Trump's American borders have been detained, one French Scientist was denied entry to the US recently after immigration officers at an airport searched his phone and found messages in which he had expressed criticism of the Trump administration's research policy and was accused of writings: 'That reflect hatred toward Trump and can be described as terrorism' and he was promptly sent back to France on the next plane.
The US Customs and Border Protection, blubbed in a statement: 'As part of their critical national security mission, CBP officers routinely determine admissibility of foreign nationals using longstanding US immigration law. If an individual has material discovered on their electronic media that raises flags during an inspection, it can result in further analysis' so if you want to go to the USA, a Security expert has given me details on how to prepare your machines first.

1 - Do not go to the USA, simply stay home and leave your phone the way it is, nice and easy and you won't risk ending up being bundled into the back of an ICE van.
2 - Decide before you go if you are going to refuse to hand over passwords to your devices (might look suspicious) or of you will let them look at your devices (which could be possibly worse).
3 - Whatever you decide encrypt your data then turn off face ID and fingerprint unlocking
4 - Delete all anti Trump social media and blog sites like this one
5 - Set up face social media accounts where you just share cat videos
6 - Get a burner phone instead

As a rule, if you are reading this or know me personally then you are probably pretty dubious in their eyes anyway, what with all us lefties being woke, vegan, Israel hating, tree hugging climate complainers so it's best to assume you will get taken aside and questioned anyway.
Obviously the drawback of just not taking your phone is that you can't then be added to any top-secret group chat about bombing middle eastern countries but if it keeps you out of an  El Salvadorian prison then that's a decent trade off.

Why Do We Love Christmas So Much?

The Christmas TV Adverts are starting to fill our screens and already i think i have found my favourite for the year and it comes from Supermarket Lidl who have come up with an absolute corker which pretty much sums up everything i love about Christmas.
We see a young girl who questions what makes Christmas special as she watches people sharing moments of kindness, rather than focusing on traditional Christmas indulgence or materialism and has an absolute killer of a pay off line.
She asks the question, 'Why do we love Christmas so much?' and wonders if it's because maybe everyone's a bit less grumpy and how it is not about 'me, me, me' but more about 'us' and when time isn't about money anymore, its just time and instead of thinking what we want, we wonder what someone else might like and decides that: 'I think we all love Christmas so much because we all want to make each other feel more loved'.
And then the line with which i wholeheartedly agree with....'I think everyday has a lot to learn from Christmas.'
Just brilliant and i hope whichever advertising bod came up with it has been given a few days off as reward to go Christmas shopping and a massive hamper, from Lidl of course. 

Welcome To Arsenal Mamdani

Zohran Mamdani is having a great November because not only has he just added 'Mayor of New York' to his CV, but his Football team also sit top of the Premier League.
Social Media posts from 2011 celebrating Robin Van Persie and having a moan about Granit Xhaka starting in the team have resurfaced with Mamdani spouting forth on all things Gunners so he isn't a Johnny come lately to the red side of North London and another Political Arsenal fan, Jeremy Corbyn, was pictured posing with a 'North London 4 Zohran' Arsenal football shirt.
Keir Starmer is also a fan of the mighty Gunners but before you start thinking supporting Arsenal is a left wing thing, Conservative Party members Priti Patel and James Cleverly are also declared supporters and they are as left wing as William Saliba.
Arsenal do have some very famous fans such as Mick Jagger, Lewis Hamilton, Rihanna, Jay-Z, and actors like Colin Firth, Idris Elba, and Danny DeVito as well as Roger Daltry, Kevin Costner, Robert Pattinson, David Schwimmer and it was rumoured that Queen Elizabeth and the Queen Mother were both big fans.
On the 'You sure you wouldn't prefer Tottenham?' list is Piers Morgan and Osama Bin Laden who was a regular at Highbury before he took his talents for hiding in caves to Afghanistan but that is the best thing about the Arsenal, we accept anyone as the transfer of Willian and Francis Jeffers showed.
As for Mamdani's politics, i keep hearing he is a Socialist so we can fully expect him to be sat with Starmer at the Emirates and helpfully passing on tips on how Socialism should work, and maybe some to Gabriel Martinelli, our very own exceptional left winger.

Remember Remember....

Remember, remember, the 5th of November, Gunpowder, treason and plot and in the UK we do remember because tonight is not a night to have a peaceful kip because it is going to be non stop fireworks whizzing around and old sofa's and cupboards set on fire in fields.  
The story of Guy Fawkes is a strange one, firstly he wasn't even called Guy but Guido and everybody hated the Catholics at that time because they seemed to think that they were always plotting something which in this case they were because Fawkes was caught red handed under the Houses of Parliament with 36 barrels of gunpowder ready to blow up King James I and it would have worked if one of his co-conspirators hadn't written to his Catholic MP to tell him to avoid the Commons that day and who told everyone and got Fawkes caught.  
Fawkes was arrested and sentenced to death but as he was being taken to the gallows, he made the worst escape attempt ever and fell off and broke his neck, killing himself in the process.
17th Century justice being what it was, the Government thought he isn't getting away with that and had his genitals removed and burnt before quartering him between four horses and gutted anyway.
Ever since then, November 5th was decreed the day where we celebrate the Kings safe escape from being launched through the roof of the Houses of Parliament but due to Health and Safety gone mad, we can no longer burn real Catholics and have to make do with burning effigies instead while going 'ooh', 'aah' and 'whee' at a few overpriced fireworks and watch a teddy bear in a Donald Trump mask make the ultimate sacrifice.

Dick, Bush And Colon

There wasn't much amusing about the Iraq War but the fact that it was bought to us courtesy of a Dick, a Bush and a Colon (Colin actually but for some reason Americans pronounce it like the part connected to the poop chute) was usually enough to bring a wry smile to the fact that all three lied their way to a massive war in the Middle East.
Colin Powell died a few years ago and while Donald Rumsfeld (who disappointingly didn't have a rude sounding name) has also turned up his toes and now the 84 year old Dicky Cheney has joined him because the last man you would want to go quail shooting with has confirmed the Billy Joel lyrics that only the good die young.
One of the main architects of the War on Iraq and Afghanistan, the last remaining of the quartet, George W Bush, said that: 'The death of Richard B. Cheney is a loss to the nation and a sorrow to his friends. Laura and I will remember Dick Cheney for the decent, honorable man that he was. History will remember him as among the finest' which makes me wonder if there was another Dick Cheney because the one i remember  wasn’t just a driving force in the wars as well as championing torture, but pushed both the Iraq WMD lie and the Saddam is mates with-Al-Qaeda falsehood which resulted in millions of Iraqis and thousands of American soldiers dying.
So with Dick and Colon gone as well as the miserably unfunnily named Donald Rumsfeld, at least Bush had the decency to keep his war mongering head down and not go swanning around like Tony Blair who, to be fair, had to avoid a few shoes and eggs thrown at him when he was last seen in public but there you have it, another completely horror of a person thankfully off the face of the Planet but while we can only hope that the war criminals of today (Netanyahu, Putin, Al Assad etc) don’t get to live quite so comfortably as Cheney did, his friend who's face he mistook for a quail and blasted him with a shotgun, might be relieved.

Follow The Money

Just as Labour pushes on with it's policies of reaching net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, the UK’s two main rightwing opposition parties are openly questioning was is long-settled climate science with Nigel Farages' Reform party saying they will cancel it if they are elected and the Conservative Party policy is now to suspend it until later.
As 71% of of the British Public support Net Zero and are concerned about the climate crisis, they do seem to be battling their own voters but with extreme weather really ramping up globally, how did we get here?
It was actually the Conservatives under David Cameron, Theresa May and Boris Johnson who did most to bring about Net Zero and Labour are just continuing the policies they put in place and as for Reform, deputy Richard Tice was absolutely taken to the cleaners by everyone when he said that there was no evidence that humans putting carbon dioxide in the atmosphere changes the climate so he is obviously on top of things and really shouldn't be listened to.
So why are the two right wing parties swimming against the tide to try and dismiss something we can literally see happening with our own eyes?
It might be noting that both are doing very well financially out of playing down Climate Change with both Reform and the Conservatives backed by prominent donors and supporters with a climate-denying outlook.
Kemi Badenoch and her family recently spent a week as guests of the donor Neil Record, who chairs Net Zero Watch, an offshoot of the UK’s main climate sceptic thinktank, the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) and handed Badenoch £10,000 for her campaign to become Tory leader and the Conservative Party has received millions of pounds in donations from individuals and entities such as the GWPF linked to high-pollution industries such as fossil fuels, aviation, and construction.
One of the biggest donors to Reform is the shipping magnate Terence Mordaunt, a trustee of the GWPF and now head of First Corporate Shipping who has given hundreds of thousands of pounds to Reform but analysis of donors listed in the Parliament donor book show that 92% of Reform's funding came from individuals or companies with polluting interests or those who question climate change.    
Follow the money and it is obvious why both parties are bizarrely ranting against Climate Change policies but as the majority worry about Climate Change, both parties are on a collision course with not just the British public but the laws of physics because Mother Nature won't care as she bakes, floods and throws more and more extreme weather at us.
Still, the growing Conservative and Reform bank balances will soften the blow for them i'm sure.

Internet Connected What??

I gave our son my old coffee machine a while ago but it started to make strange noises whilst doing its coffee thing so we went to the coffee machine shop to inquire about buying a new one and they all looked a bit flimsier and had a lot more buttons and some included WiFi and Bluetooth.
I asked the nice shop salesman why it would need WiFi and Bluetooth and he said it was so it could be updated over the internet which seemed a bit mad so we went for one which didn't come with an app but i later heard of something which was even madder, so much i thought it was a spoof at first, an internet connected smart mattress.
There was a Cybersecurity expert and he was talking about security concerns about the firmware in the mattress which allowed backdoor access and full arbitrary code execution capabilities making the mattress a disastrously unsafe device to keep on a home network...or something like that because i was stuck on...there's an internet connected mattress??? WTF???
Nope it was not a wind up, there really are people who pay £2,000 for the mattress and a subscription of £17 per month for  'bed control and bed monitoring and sleep-enhancing features' which include heat control, automatic firmness adjustments and other settings to optimize your sleep surface through the use of sleep tracking sensors.
Brilliantly, during the major Amazon Web Services (AWS) outage last week the people who actually shelled out for a internet connected mattress found that the lack of internet caused chaos in bedrooms across the UK because the mattress designers didn't think to include an off switch and were stuck at high temperatures and odd positions in the night because something they do if you don't pay the subscription fee, (or disconnect it from the internet) is turn to such an angle to be unusable.
So many questions but mostly, what genius pays £2000 for a mattress that monitors everything that you do in it and then holds you hostage and turns completely useless if you don't pay the subscription fee, or the internet blinks off?

Why This Post Isn't Written by AI

Have you ever read something online and wondered if a robot typed it? In a world full of chatbots, those doubt creeps in fast. People worry about fake stories flooding the web, making it hard to spot real voices. But here's the truth, this piece comes straight from my own human hands.
People everywhere buzz about spotting Ai these days. They poke at every word online, hunting for robot clues. But here I am, a flesh-and-blood writer, ready to lay out my case. This piece lists the wild ways I prove my humanity. It's all absurd, yet it hits close to home.
Unfortunately, Ai has got that good now. It can fool you into thinking it's human and I have been accused of being many things, one of which is an Ai Chatbot which bless my circuits, is so far from the truth but then i would say that if i was an Ai chatbot so i asked Ai how could i prove that i was an actual human and not an Artificial Intelligence?
It said that i should show you why, through quirks and choices only a person would make and readers will see why my posts feels alive whereas Ai sounds flat, like a textbook. That's because real creativity comes from inside, not code.
I use metaphors and subtext, choosing words that nod to shared struggles, feeling it because we have been there and while machines output facts, i weave tales that echo their own experiences.
For example, last week, i fought a form online. It timed out three times. I yelled at the screen but that is a shared scene played out by many people every day and as we Humans rant together over such nonsense, it builds a trust between us, an AI wouldn't understand the emotion of any of this.
You'll sense my human hand pushing down on the keyboard, words are not repeated in odd ways, the text dances freer, with personal flair and blending ideas smoother, veering naturally with a flow and not in a formulaic way as if using words picked from a word cloud.
I know that Ai can delibrelty include sneaky flaws and personal touches to help it blend in but I don't write flawless stuff. I slip up, pause, ramble, mix up long and short sentences which whispers 'real writer at work' and dashed out by a human brain but i guess an Ai aiming to convince you it's human would toss in those same rough edges on purpose to convince you it's human through tiny, forgivable slips.
Humans are opinionated and have a bias, Ai plays it safe and does'nt show a real opinion and keep it bland, people like me not so much which are a nod towards convincing the reader that i am a human. I adore punk music. It's all energy and shouted angry lyrics and I crank it up loud. That mess proves I'm real, no smart code picks music like that for enjoyment.
Irony and Sarcasm are very much human traits and i make them my stock in trade, so you may be thinking 'Oh joy, another Lucyp post about AI' but that just proves it is me and not an Ai, i twist my words, play on them and use slang and lie and exaggerate, humans err and are messy.
Spotless text hints at code but this is how Ai fools us but as Ai sharpens, we'll have to sharpen too. Keep questioning what you read. It keeps us real.
Trust me, I'm just like you.

Stuff

Something i always hear from the older generation is that: 'Things aren't built to last these days' and as they came from a period when they would patch things up to make them last a bit longer until they literally fell apart, they are more right then even they probably know.
There is a famous quote made by economist Victor Lebow who in 1955 said to fuel economic growth: 'We need things consumed, burned up, replaced and discarded at an ever-accelerating rate' which pretty much admits that  indeed things aren't built to last these days on purpose, so basically we are forced to buy that thing again, something called  planned obsolescence.
For occasions where stuff cannot break fast enough, there is also something called psychological obsolescence  in which products are designed to become obsolete in the mind of the consumer, even sooner than the components used to make them will fail so that would be things like most electrical items such as TV's radios, computers and phones which are constantly tweaked and improved, since 2007 there have 26 iPhone generations, each one worked or looked slightly better than the last with at least one new model released each year and we have all been guilty of buying a new phone despite having a perfectly good working phone in our possession.
Obviously the ever-accelerating rate of buying things and then disposing of them sooner creates immense pressure on natural resources and the trashing of the planet to extract them and at the other end of the line we have excessive waste hence the overflowing landfills and plastic polluted oceans and at some point we are going to run out of natural resources and/or run out of space to store all our discarded items.
Something called Overshoot days spells out that Humanity is using nature 1.7 times faster than our planet’s bio-capacity can regenerate and on 24th July 2025 was the date that humanity's resource consumption for the year exceeds Earth's capacity to regenerate it, meaning that by the end of this year we would have used 1.7 Earths worth of resources and this is expected to rise to 2 Earths by 2030.
We are running out of resources, basically using too much stuff and undermining the planet’s very ability for people to live on it and that is before we even consider the implications of how much we are polluting the air, land, water and drastically changing the climate.
I read something that said that the average British person is exposed to over 3,000 advertisements a day which seems a lot but Google states it is between 4,000 and 10,000 so the 3,000 could be an underestimate but regardless, the raison d'être of adverts is to try and persuade you that you need something you haven't got or need a new thing and it must work because in 2024, the total UK advertising spend was approximately £42.6 billion and that would be a lot of wasted money if it wasn't working.
Something will have to give at some point as we can't continue down this path as it is just not sustainable but it probably won't be in our lifetime, or even our children's.
The harsh truth, and i am just as guilty of this, is that we all want stuff and are easily manipulated by advertisers messages for stuff but as the planet's resources grow more depleted and our atmosphere gets more polluted and areas on the Planet become unlivable and the climate grows ever more angry and throws worse extreme weather at us, we will have to start cutting back and stop consuming, burning up, replacing and discarding our stuff because we won't have a choice, we will have to.

Woohoo...Space Race Back On

You would assume that as NASA have already landed people on the Moon, it would be relatively straightforward for them to do it again but it would appear not as NASA are saying that the 2027 date penciled in for their Artemis III Mission is now looking unlikely which leaves the field open to China's own Moon mission which is on the Calendar for 2030.
Former NASA Head, Jim Bridenstine, told a US Senate hearing: 'Unless something changes, it is highly unlikely the United States will beat China’s projected timeline' and the problem seems to be that the contract for the lander was given to Elon Musk’s company, SpaceX, and they are having a problem with the upper stage which is the part intended to carry astronauts to the lunar surface and are behind schedule for the 2027 launch.
With China seemingly full steam ahead for 2030, and SpaceX falling further and further behind before they even get to the long but critical safety stage, NASA have opened up the contract to other companies to see if anyone can solves the problem of actually getting the astronauts onto the Moon surface and are currently talking to the Jeff Bezo's company, Blue Origin, to see if  their uncrewed Mark 1 lander which is due to begin transporting cargo to the Moon Surface in 2026 , could be redesigned so that it can carry passengers.
Even then the required safety tests would take it sailing past the original 2027 date and would be cutting it fine to beat China in 2030 but it still gives NASA a chance where if they wait for SpaceX to get their act together, China will be there and it would be the flag of the People's Republic of China not waving in the non-breeze up there.
The problem NASA have always had is that after the initial Moon Landings, their funding was cut from 4.5% of all US spending annually to 0.4% today whereas China's is counted as part of their Military budget and good luck trying to find exact details of that figure but it is quite a few hundred billion Yuan.
Also China leadership does not change hands quite so often so a leaders singular vision is easier to follow rather than in America where NASA funding and its priorities change with the leader with the NASA budget being cut under every President from 1971 apart from slight increases under Ronald Reagan and George Bush in the 80's.
I suppose it is out of the question that they just get together and do it for mankind rather than national pride but whether it's China or America, i am just happy that we have a Space Race again which will drive us forward to infinity and beyond, to quote probably the most famous astronaut, Buzz Lightyear.

Sacking The Royals

We can sack Royalty? I didn't know that until yesterday when the King de-princed his brother who will  now just be known going forward as Andrew or that lying pervert friend of the massive pedophile.
As a bonus his awful wife, Sarah, has also been made surplus to requirements and both now face looking for somewhere else to live out their weird arrangement because they have also been booted out of their 30 bedroom mansion although i doubt if they will turn up at the Council Offices, more likely by way of punishment they will have to make do with a slightly smaller mansion because the Royal household does seem to have quite a portfolio of them knocking around.
People are quite rightly asking why now after we have known for a decade about all the dirty little secrets about You Know Who and his sex offender buddies especially after that car crash of an interview with the BBC where he denied even knowing Virginia Giuffre despite that infamous picture and handing over £12m to keep her from spilling all in court but for some reason, the King has chosen now to drag him out of the Royal Family by his earhole.
It is rumoured that the Queen wanted the whole sordid tale kicked into the long grass for someone else to deal with after she had gone and the release of the Epstein emails and the book by Giuffre made that grass shorter so off he goes to live out his life as that sexual deviant who used to be a Prince.      
I assume that the remaining Royals are hoping now that Mr Mountbatten Windsor is out of the picture, the monarchy’s future is secured but as now we know that people can be fired from the Royal clan, let's see who else can be handed their P45.
Prince Harry must be sweating at the moment as he would be the obvious choice to be told his services are no longer required and when was the last time anyone heard from Prince Edward or Princess Anne so they wouldn't be missed much and all those Dukes and Duchesses, apart from handing over the FA Cup once a year, what are they for so bin the lot of them.
What the King’s statement does appear to show is that he didn't believe his brother's lies either but while worse is expected to come for Andrew, he does have one friend left and he is sat in the White House refusing to release the files which would incriminate him even further and mainly because the lardo in the Oval Office's own name is written large in it as well so Trump may turn out to be his best friend, after Epstein obviously.

Shock Horror At Today's Adverts

It doesn't really matter to me what colour the people are on TV when they are buying beans from a Supermarket or showing how good Flash Wipes are for cleaning the kitchen floor but it seems to bother some people, and most of those people seem to be Right Wing Politicians.  
While the Conservative Party gammon faces are going red with anger at the lack of white faces in Birmingham, up popped the Reform Politician, Sarah Pochin, to moan about too many non white faces in TV adverts, saying that: 'It drives me mad when I see adverts full of black people, full of Asian people'.
Yep, if she doesn't see another non-white face in a 15-second spot for a toilet cleaner you didn't know you needed, she will literally lose her mind...and probably wet her pants.
Ironically, the racist rant is the domain of Talk TV and GB News, one of which had to ditch its TV shows in favour of radio because its failed to attract the advertisers and the other which is boycotted by all the main advertising firms due to being a bit unwatched and racist so if it wasn't for the stink she created being all I refuse to buy Quality Street until there adverts show them being eaten by an all white Aryan family, it would have gone unnoticed.
It does go to show that we seem to have moved into a period where some people feel they are able to say things which should have been unsayable long ago but here we are with right wing politicians feeling there are enough supporters who will agree with any old rubbish they fart out, even the racist trollop.
We seem to have imported from Donald Trump's weird little regime in America the idea that free speech means you can utter any old crap and act all indignant if you try to stop them but i will never try to stop you saying what you want, say it loud and clear because the louder and clearer the better we know who the idiots and morons are to avoid, like Sarah Pochin.

Ai Looking A Bit Bubbly

The Bank of England and a few other places are warning that the Ai bubble is in danger of bursting which would sound scary if only I knew what it meant, so i asked someone who should know and came away still not certain if i'm being honest.
From what i could glean, a bubble grows when new investors drive the share price of something up to unsustainable heights and then when they realise that the thing isn't as good or as profitable as they thought, they start selling their shares which causes prices to fall and more investors sell their shares and the whole thing comes crashing down, or in economic terms, the bubble bursts.
OpenAI's boss Sam Altman did say this week that: 'There are many parts of AI that I think are kind of bubbly right now' which doesn't sound great if you have invested in an AI company. 
A burst bubble results in massive financial losses for investors who bought into the hype, during the dot-com bust in the early 2000's, £5 trillion was lost and apparently the AI bubble has inflated even bigger, 17 times bigger according to some financial analysts which will make one hell of a pop if it does go with a bang.
More people, such as the people at the Bank of England and the International Monetary Fund are now saying that these AI companies are overvalued and mentioned circular financing with Nvidia investing $100 billion in OpenAI who buy their chips from Nvidia so they are therefore giving OpenAI the money to buy their chips with and the infrastructure needed from another Nvidea company, Coreweave,  so the company invests in its own customers so they can continue making purchases which is a headache, especially as OpenAI has never turned a profit but has cost the company a projected loss of $27 billion.
If investors don't see a return for their outlay soon then they could try and get some of their money back and things could go poof pretty quickly and the people who seem to know are saying we have the first signs of a bubble and the pin which could very well pop it.

A Little Skirmish

At least 104 people, including 46 children, have been killed overnight in Gaza after Benjamin Netanyahu ordered new military strikes after Israel claimed a soldier was killed on Tuesday afternoon by 'enemy fire'.
The Israeli military said that the ceasefire had been reinstated following a series of operations in which it targeted what it described as 'terror sites and terrorists' inside Gaza and the laughably self described man of peace, Donald Trump, justified the attacks saying that Israel had the right to launch them following what he described as an incident in which Hamas allegedly killed an Israeli soldier during an exchange of gunfire in Rafah.
Among these attacks was the targeting of a cancer patient camp, the Insan camp, in the ground of a hospital, tents camps for displaced people, individual homes and civilian vehicles.
Hamas has denied responsibility for the shooting and said that the attack on the Israeli soldiers were not following orders from Hamas and might not even be part of Hamas at all as Israel and the US has been arming rival groups in Gaza.
Hamas accused Israel of breaching the ceasefire agreement and i wouldn't trust the truth to come from either side, one a terrorist organisation and the other who has been pursuing genocide for decades but  Trump toady, Vice President JD Vance, responded saying the ceasefire in Gaza was holding, describing the violence as 'little skirmishes here and there'.
How the moron can call it a little skirmish where over 100 people with almost half them children shows just how much America is bending it over to take it from Israel which it continues to back despite it being on the list of current genocide committers just shows how this is going to go.
We need the Peace Keeping force in place to stop Hamas or whoever aiming their weapons at Israeli soldiers and to stop Israel from murdering innocent people in Gaza as part of their ongoing genocide to clear them out and claim the land for themselves.    
Unfortunately, nobody is willing to commit their troops to stand directly between Israeli bombs and Hamas bullets so on we go, with a ceasefire that never really stopped the killing and which Israel or Hamas can break at will and America dismiss as 'a little skirmish' when over 100 people are killed in attacks.

Don't Make Foolish Decisions Jamaicans

As beautiful as Jamaica is, you wouldn't want to be there on holiday at the moment as a Category 5 Hurricane is barrelling towards a direct hit on the Caribbean Island.
The slow moving Hurricane Melissa has strengthened even further and is now packing winds up to 175 mph and is expected to hit Jamaica tonight or tomorrow morning, bringing with it a 13ft storm surge and rainfall of up to 40in.
The Jamaican Government has been urging people to hunker down and 'not to make foolish decisions as we are in a very, very serious time over the next few days.
'There is going to be a lot of water. We are forecasting unheard amounts of rain for Jamaica' said the weather correspondent from NBC News, 'This is an island that has experienced hurricanes before, but nothing to this extent.'
The two times Jamaica has been hit directly under a Hurricane was in 1951 with Hurricane Charlie which was a Category 3 and is considered as Jamaica's deadliest natural disaster of the 20th century with rainfall of 17in and wind gusts of 125 mph with 152 fatalities.
Hurricane Gilbert in 1988 was also a Category 3 and came with a storm surge of 19 ft and 34.3in of rain leading to flooding and a total of 45 deaths.
As Melissa is so slow moving, 5mph, it will linger longer over the island and dump even more rain so the flooding is being called potentially catastrophic so good luck Jamaicans, listen to the Government advice and don't be foolish but it proves once again that if you mess with Mother Nature, she bites back hard.

Iraq War Blueprint Being Used For War In Venezuela?

Since the start of September, the Trump administration has busied itself with blowing up boats in international waters stemming from Venezuela under the guise that, according to them, they are carrying narcotics cargo destined for consumers in the United States.
Donald Trump called it an action 'of self-defense' against 'unlawful combatants' motivated by 'the inability or unwillingness of some states in the region to address the continuing threat to United States persons and interests emanating from their territories.'
Obviously, as a man who lies as easily as he breathes, it should be delved into but the American media is either unwilling or just too damn awful to dig into it and see if Trump is not just pushing the envelope but shredding it to bits and if he is, why?
Firstly, International Law experts are saying that the actions break all sorts of international law violations from the physical violation of another state’s sovereignty and wrongful intervention in a sovereign states affairs and violates Article 2(4) of the United Nations Charter and customary law.
Secondly, if the intention is to curb overdoses on U.S. soil from drug use, fentanyl is the largest culprit and the vast majority of that crosses into the US hails across the border from Mexico, not South America but telling is the Trump assertion that Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro is the leader of a drug trafficking organisation although no evidence has been provided.
Everyone is who anyone involved in the Drugs War states that Venezuela isn't involved in this fentanyl business in any meaningful way and the Mexican cartels certainly don't share the market with anyone, and certainly not with Venezuela.  
Venezuela is a large supplier of other illegal drugs but not as much as the much more significant drug producing countries like Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia, which are the largest producers of the coca leaf in the world which cocaine is made from and transport through Venezuela and then mainly leave the country from ports on the northern coast of the country.
America's own intelligence Community disputes this and the National Intelligence Council head,  Michael Collins, was sacked when he pointed this out and Trump went on to continue with the them by saying that  he had authorised the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to conduct covert lethal operations on Venezuelan soil and more broadly through the Caribbean, saying: 'We are certainly looking at land now, because we’ve got the sea well under control'.
He has ordered a growing military presence threateningly close to Venezuela so what is going on in that age addled brain of Trump?
Intelligence states that these boats from Venezuela are not heading to the US and that many of the boats targeted for strikes by the Trump administration do not even have the requisite fuel or motor capacity to reach the U.S, but are mainly heading to the nearby islands of Trinidad and Tobago, and from there they largely go to West Africa and Europe.
It's widely accepted the two most exported drugs from South America are cocaine and marijuana and the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention in the US says that synthetic opioids like fentanyl are responsible for most overdose deaths there and fentanyl is not produced in South America, whatever the president says.
So is he mistaken and misinformed, or does he has another motive.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio is a fervent supporter of the Venezuelan opposition, the recent winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, María Corina Machado, who must be salivating at the prospect of regime change and Rubio has been pushing for Venezuela's president Nicolas Maduro to be toppled for years now, redirecting millions of dollars in money previously allocated for “pro-democracy” measures in Venezuela.
A few weeks ago,  Maduro offered to turn over some of his nations oil resources to the U.S. in exchange for a cessation of hostilities, another that Trump himself acknowledged, telling reporters that: 'Maduro offered everything. You know why? Because he doesn’t want to fuck around with the United States' but Trump rejected the offer, Rubio making the argument that the best way to secure Venezuela’s oil reserves was to facilitate regime change in Venezuela and make a better deal with a new government.
So while Trump and his gang continues to insist their military manoeuvres are simply part of a wider counter drugs operation, it's hard to imagine that getting rid of an 'unfriendly' leader in a country with huge oil reserves, the largest in the world, to bring in a 'friendly' leader in the opposition who they can do business with, is not part of their equation.
In echoes of George W Bush's war in Iraq, the pieces are being moved into place, the lies are being spluttered and the useful idiots are repeating them while a next to useless media refuses to ask the obvious questions and the self-proclaimed peace maker in the White House could be preparing America for a war with Venezuela and following the same, blood stained and disastrous blueprint used by Bush and Blair in 2003.

Budget Ideas For The Chancellor

As the Budget looms over the hill, the kite flying by the Government has began in earnest as they throw out possible ideas and wait to see the reaction which allows the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, to either deny they were ever a serious plan while scribbling them out of her list or putting a little tick next to them ready for November 25th.
The issue the Government have is that in their election manifesto they said they would not increase VAT, National Insurance or Income Tax so with those restrictions holding firm, she will need to get creative or at the very least nick some policies from the other Parties.
The Green Party said they will introducing a wealth tax of 1% on assets above £10m and 2% on assets above £1bn and in a BBC Poll, 75% of Britons would support it so expect that to be aired at the dispatch box.
The Liberal Democrats suggested a mansion tax on homes worth more than £2m and in the poll 69% of the public put their thumbs up to it so another to add to the list.
An exit tax for people who are relocating themselves out of the UK for tax purposes and will be required to pay tax on unrealised capital gains sounds good to 60% as does reforming the council tax so it is proportionate to the exact value of the home as opposed to the current system based on which value band it falls in which 56% say should be in the final report.
Merging income tax and National Insurance together into a single tax is seen positively by 43% but that is pretty much the last of the ideas which won't get rotton fruit thrown at her because making road users pay car tax on the for the distance they travel on public roads is only supported by 38% and reducing the top rate of tax to be less than 40% is seen favourably by 29% and poo-pooed by 50%.
The least favourable idea is scrapping different income tax levels and replacing them with a flat' income tax that is set at the same level for everybody which only 20% say they would approve of byt 65% say on yer bike.
So if we take the popular ideas, how much would the Chancellor raise?
Economists at the London School of Economics suggest that a Wealth Tax could raise around £24bn a year, Mansion Tax £2.5bn, Exit Tax £500m per year and the merging NI and Income Tax would increase the take by £6 billion so potentially £33bn, equivalent to sticking 4p on Income Tax so bit of a no brainer really, hitting mostly only the richest except the merging idea which would mostly affect Pensioners currently not paying National Insurance but they all vote Tory or Reform anyway so no loss there.  
Of course, my own ideas of scrapping the Nuclear Weapons (£200 bn saved), reverse the madness that was Brexit (£140bn raised), a windfall tax on banks and utilities (£20 billion raised) and ditching the Royals (£100m saved) would flood an extra £360bn into the UK coffers so feel free to use any of these Rach. 

Death Penalties For Palestinian Prisoners

Since 1967, one million Palestinians have been detained in an Israeli Prison and currently 10,000 Palestinians are being held in Israeli jails and the occupied territory, according to prisoners’ rights group Addameer.  
Of these, 3500 are administrative detainees meaning they are held without charge or trial on renewable six month terms of imprisonment but a new law passing through the Knesset could soon sort that out as the National Security Committee under Ben-Gvir are seeking approval to impose the death penalty on any Palestinian who intentionally or negligently causes the death of an Israeli citizen out of racial or ideological hatred, or with the aim of harming Israel'.
In a system long built around mass arrests, indefinite detention and an apartheid justice system, Palestinian Right Groups are suitably worried that the Israeli regime, fresh from a genocide against the Palestinans, aims to legitimise the killing of Palestinian prisoners.
The bill, mandates the death penalty for any detainee 'convicted of murder motivated by racism or hostility toward a particular public, and under circumstances where the act was committed with the intent to harm the State of Israel and the rebirth of the Jewish people in their homeland, mandatorily, not optionally or at the court’s discretion.'
Ben- Gvir said that executing Palestinian 'terrorists' would free up prison space, publicly saying that Palestinian prisoners should be 'shot in the head', and called for them to receive only minimal sustenance and this week threatened to withhold his party’s support for coalition legislation unless the prisoners’ execution bill is brought to a vote within three weeks as well as stating that: 'Now that we have received the Israeli captives from Gaza, we must return to war and open the gates of hell upon Gaza. The captives were the only reason we stopped the war. We must continue the war on Gaza, whether the Qataris and the Turks are there or not. Qatar and Turkey are our enemies.'
In a nation that had no qualms with committing genocide against Palestinians and all manner of war crimes, that they are seriously considering turning prisons into execution sites for the people they are militarily occupying does nothing to help their case that they are not the current modern day version of the Nazi's who were so rightly reviled for their genocide and prohibitive executions.

Halloween In The UK

In the list of money spent on celebrations in the UK, Halloween is towards the bottom with the £776m spent on decorations and scary costumes well below that is at Christmas (£46.4bn), Mothers Day (£2.4bn), Easter (£2.3bn), Valentines Day (£1.5bn) and Fathers Day (£1.1bn) and beats only Bonfire Night (£497m) in the main celebrations so why is Halloween not such a big thing here?  
Some shops do make a bit of a token gesture to flog us Halloween stuff, my local B&M has half an aisle full of cobwebs and spiders and skeleton and vampire costumes but it also has 2 aisles of Christmas things so make of that what you will.
A YouGov found that only 28% of Britons will celebrate Halloween in some way this year with the most common contribution being carving a Pumpkin and watching a scary film to mark the occasion.
I'm not really sure why Halloween has never really taken off over here, some people do make an effort but personally, while not going out of my way to ignore it, i don't do anything to actually celebrate it although i do appreciate the horror films played wall to wall on the TV  but mostly i see it as one of the days, along with Bonfire Night, to get out of the way and then it is a clear run through to my favourite celebration, Christmas. 

War, What Is It Good For? Absolutely Nothing

It seems like every time you turn on the news there is a conflict being shown and a recently published report by the United Nations and the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), show that there really are more active conflicts now than any time since the second World War.
The Peace Index shows that in 97 countries, peace deteriorated with 92 countries currently involved in conflicts beyond their borders leading to 110 million people who are either refugees or internally displaced.
Last year recorded 162,000 conflict related deaths, the second highest toll in the past 30 years, with the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza accounting for nearly three-quarters of these deaths.
One key factor the UN point to is the use of relatively inexpensive drones which makes it much easier for non-state groups, as well as smaller or less powerful states, to compete in conflicts with larger states or governments. The number of drones used by Governments last year rose by 150% increase while the number of non-state groups which committed at least one drone attack increased by 1,400%.
Since 2023, militarisation has increased in 91 countries and globally the military spending has increased by over 10%.
Africa is the most affected continent with 28 interstate conflicts involving one or more state actors, Asia has 17, the Middle East 10, Europe 3 and the Americas 2.
'There are worrying signs that militarisation is likely to increase in the near future' said the PRIO, 'with the very high number of smaller conflicts means that the risk of an outbreak of more major conflicts is higher now than at any other point'.
Humans. What a bunch of morons.

Special Guest Blogger: Horseman Pestilence

Hi, I'm Pestilence. First Horseman of the Apocalypse. Destroyer of Empires, Harbinger of End Times and the winner of the Inaugural 1654 Leighton Buzzard Hide-and-Seek Championship.
While I am no longer splashed across the tabloids and hot on the lips of the masses so much, I was an indelible part of your history and was a household name for many centuries but it wasn’t all rainbows and pustules overnight.  
I cut my teeth in Asia in small mammals, rats mostly. Hardly glamorous, but it got me ready for my big break which was my move into humans, a move that would change the course of your lives forever and with my technique perfected, i made a direct line for the largest Empire of the time, that of the Romans.
At that time the mighty Roman Empire was being picked apart by invasions, corruption, debts and even Jesus finally said 'sod this' and packed it all in which plunged the entire continent into what’s commonly been known as the Dark Ages which was a bit of a rubbish time to be alive due to one of the worst pandemics the world has ever known, called the Black Death courtesy of the ultimate harbinger of misery, lil ol me.
Taking what i learnt, i knew i could take a disease from rats to humans with a bite but humans were wary of letting a rat bite them so i used fleas, practically undetectable until the sneaky little buggers had taken a big bite out of an old man’s butt and that was it. I was in.
As infected rats died, their hungry fleas made the switch to human blood and i was up and running and it wasn’t long before i was in the tavernas and the workshops, the brothels and the palaces and I worked my way around the whole continent bringing you fever, headaches, swollen lymph nodes, muscle pain, tissue necrosis and then when i was done playing, I  handed you over to the fourth horseman, Death.
I was flourishing and the Plague was a spectacular debut, but not my magnum opus which came nearly a thousand years later with the Black Death in an era before hand sanitizer and face masks, the preferred method of hygiene was to sniff vinegar and encourage children to smoke so unsurprisingly I saw off 50 million souls, almost two thirds of the population. A Golden Age indeed and possibly too successful because the lousy squashed and insanitary conditions in which i thrived got cleaned up.
You learnt about hygiene, about contamination and infection and inoculations and nowadays it isn't easy to start a global pandemic unless it is a completely new one, the golden oldies are being inoculated against now and it isn't easy to come up with new ones although i did have some success with Smallpox and more recently Covid but otherwise now is it a few isolated incidents, the odd mini flare-up in small communities, but with modern medicine, most are treatable although the rise of the anti-vaxxers in recent years does give some hope of an overdue return and that that my best may be yet to come.

Rules For Modern Men

GQ Magazine (the GQ stands for Gentlemens Quarterly) have gone all Men, What Are You Like? and have compiled a list of 125 Rules for Modern Men.
Now 125 is a lot but as they say:  'Knowing how to be a gentleman used to be straightforward but that’s not exactly the case anymore' and have produced a tick list 'to craft the ultimate guide to being a well-mannered gentleman in 2025' but i will be buggered if i am going to wade through all of them so i will pick out the most pertinent which annoy me such as:  

Rule 1. Take out your earphones when you’re talking to someone. Especially if you are listening to something naff like Susan Boyle, in that case actually take them out before even hitting Play.

Rule 5. Always sneeze as if you’re at a library or a funeral. Damn right, nothing worse than sneezing in such an exaggerated way that people 3 counties over hear it.

Rule 12. Greet people you know with a single kiss on the left cheek. Nope, if i don't know you and you come in for a kiss i'm going to knee you very hard in the knackers.

Rule 28. Clean your sheets every week.  You don't anyway?

Rule 52. Stand up to greet people when they arrive. That is fine but go for the kiss thing and it's knee, knackers and then you speaking in Soprano for the next two hours.

Rule 87. In general: Talk less. Not much to say about this, except shut ya face sometimes.

Rule 88. Ask questions about the other person than talk about yourself. True, nobody cares and if you sound boastful you will be forever called Billy Big Bollicks.

Rule 96. Offer up your seat on public transportation. At best just don't man-spread and take up 3 seats with your akimbo legs.

Rule 116. Pick your socks up off the floor. And underpants, towels, plates, mugs. Actually, if you put it down pick the bloody thing up again.  

Rule 123. Don’t get into bed with dirty feet. You really need to be told this???

If i can add a few more:

Rule 126. Don't Hog The Remote Control. Dive bombing through all 150 channels in two minutes and settling for golf or snooker and then falling asleep within ten minutes...grrr.

Rule 127. If you pee on the bathroom floor, wipe it up. It's approximately a 2ft drop from midriff to toilet bowl!! How do you miss so damn much???

Rule 128. If you got a sniffle, don't keep mentioning it. Laying on the sofa moaning and acting as if you are about to write your last will and testament doesn't help, wuss.  

Rule 129. Offer to park the car. We haven't left in the middle of the road for exercise, it's because the parking space is too small.

Rule 130. If you start a sentence with 'I'm not sexist/racist/homophobic but...' then don't say it. I wont defend to the death your right to say anything, i will let you say it and then point out what an absolute dick you are.

Rule 131. Do not buy a kitchen utensil as a Christmas Present. That shiny new frying pan would look lovely against the decorations as it twists through the air to bounce off your head.

Special Guest Blogger: Ilya Ivanov

I was  a professor who specialised in artificial insemination and i was good at it, whilst working as a researcher in the Askania-Nova natural reserve I perfected artificial insemination for horse breeding and was so successful that i could take the sperm from one stallion and use it to fertilise up to 500 mares instead of the usual 20–30 and horse breeders from around the World were clamouring for my services.
Then in 1927, backed by the Soviet government, I attempted to create an entirely new creature from existing representatives of both ends of the human evolutionary spectrum: a hybrid of man and ape and as we share almost 99% of our DNA, i failed to see how it couldn't work.
After years of frustration in pursuit of my 'humanzee', I finally got my chance when the governor of French Guinea gave me free rein to conduct a breeding program at the botanical gardens near the capital of Conakry.
My son and I took two captured female chimpanzees, named Babette and Syvette, held them down with nets and squirted into them human sperm taken from a local man.
Unfortunately for the fate of mankind, neither chimp became pregnant and then nor did a third chimp, Black, who was knocked out with chloroform and inseminated.
So I decided to switch tactics and approached the governor with the idea of introducing chimpanzee sperm into hospitalized women, without their knowledge.
The governor said no so I returned to the Soviet Union and obtained permission to impregnate women there, provided they were willing and kept in isolation for a year.
I did found a volunteer, a woman, identified only as G who wanted to do her bit for science so i got an orangutan named Tarzan but the government officials then got cold feet and reconsidered their support of my experiments and slapped me into prison for alleged counterrevolutionary activities.
Soon after my release, I died from a stroke unfortunately without leaving a humanzee, or a hurangutan, as my legacy.

The Ai View Of Falling On A Bruise

Love this, asking Ai for a breakdown of Falling On A Bruise, i got this

Based on an analysis of its content, the blog "Falling On A Bruise" (http://bruisefalling.blogspot.com/) exhibits a strong left-wing or anti-establishment/liberal political leaning.

The blog expresses views that are critical of religious social conservatism and critical of certain power structures, all of which align with the left-leaning side of the political spectrum.

The author is strongly critical of social conservatism which is a position typically associated with the political left or secular liberalism. The author is also critical of powerful figures and reflects a skeptical view of the establishment.

The blogger's posts are driven by issues they perceive as unfair, which align with left-wing political views.

The blog does include posts which are politically neutral, but the overtly political posts all lean to the left and are written in an informal, first-person style, expressing strong opinions, commentary on various subjects and commentary on political figures and often employs provocative language.

While references are based on actual news, you can trust this blog for the author's strong opinions and perspective and it functions more as an expressive, polemical, and entertainment-focused commentary platform.

The writing is characterized by a strong, opinionated, and often cynical or critical voice. It frequently uses informal language, sarcasm, satire and strong rhetorical framing to express the author's viewpoint on controversial topics in informal, sometimes provocative, and satirical writing.

In summary, the blog often use strong, blunt, and sometimes sarcastic language to criticize public figures and institutions but it is engaging, provocative, and highly opinionated, making it effective for expressing the author's viewpoint on current events. The topics are serious and often controversial, reflecting an interest in social justice, political ethics, and cultural issues.

The blog Author projects a persona that is outspoken, critical, passionate, and heavily opinionated on social and political issues.

The Grand Old Perv Of York

It is interesting that in that infamous photo of Prince Andrew and a teenage girl, everyone else in the picture and the person who took it are either dead (Giuffre taken her own life and Epstein somehow killing himself in a jail cell) or in prison (Maxwell jailed for 20 years for perpetrating heinous crimes against children) and the Prince is the only one who has walked away although the drip drip of scandal has made him persona non grata with even his own family.
The latest twist to the sordid tale is the tragic Virginia Giuffre’s memoir released this week which comes hot on the heels of the revealed Andrew 2011 email to sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in which Andrew declared 'we are in this together' and urged them to 'play some more soon' which contradicted his on‑camera claim in 2019 that he’d severed ties with the pedophile back in 2010.
The smiling arse with his arm round the teenage girl (who he denies he had sex with later that evening) is currently living in a 30-room mansion on a 98-acre estate and was just sort of riding it out but now after the latest damaging revelations, his elder brother and current King has made his perv brother renounce the use of his titles although Andrew tried to make it sound as though he had done it voluntarily although the threat was issued that if he never did it voluntarily, they were going to be forcibly taken from him anyway.
It is an attempt to publicly show that the Palace was taking this seriously and this would put an end to his remaining links with royal life although it may be a deep blow to his pride, he's still a prince and he's still living in a mansion in Windsor.
As well as no longer being able to call himself the Duke of York, he can no longer attend the annual Order of the Garter lunch which means he can not now deputise in the event of the king’s incapacity and the Police are now looking into exactly how he earns his money, especially as King Charles finally cut off his £1million-a-year allowance.
Whether Andrew can be thrown into the back of a cab and packed off somewhere remote in disgrace is not clear but with Giuffre's book about to hit the shelves and with apparent further revelations that contain all manner of embarrassing revelations for him, it is quite the bind for Charles and the heir apparent William because he may now be restricted to scribbling 'Duke' off his stationary but otherwise, not much seems to have changed.

Peace Deal Hanging By A Thread

A week on into the Peace Deal and already it is looking to unravel as Israel and Hamas accuse each other of breaching the deal.
In the past week, Gaza journalists have accused Israel of committing 47 violations since the signing of the Peace deal, leaving 38 dead and 143 wounded with the violations ranging from direct shooting at civilians to deliberate shelling the media office said which included 9 killed in a van of women and children returning to their home in Northern Gaza which was targeted by Israeli military because they considered it 'suspicious'.
Today, Israel's military launched attacks in Rafah and killed 11 after it said its troops came under fire and Benjamin Netanyahu met the heads of his security forces and instructed them 'to act forcefully against terrorist targets in the Gaza Strip' which is chilling as previously Israel deigned everything as a terrorist target, including schools, hospitals and even people homes.  
The security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, has declared that Hamas violating the ceasefire is a reason to reignite the fighting in Gaza which has led the White House to issue an order that Israel must: 'Respond proportionately but show restraint'.
As it all seems to be hanging by a thread during stage 1 of 20 is not a good sign which is why the Task Force from several Gulf nations needs to be hurried to the area, to stop Israel and Hamas from igniting things again.
The concern was that Netanyahu was reluctant to stop the offensive anyway, and just needed a reason to start it up again especially once the hostages were released while Hamas are looking to be removed from office once the peace deal progresses so they have no incentive to rush things which leaves behind a very explosive situation.  
The deployment of a 4,000 strong international stabilization force which is to be led by Egyptian forces  and included Azerbaijan, Turkey and Indonesian troops, is part two the Peace Plan  and a draft resolution has been handed to the UN Security Council to vote on in the coming days and we can only hope that cool heads prevail long enough for Part 2 to be reached.
Considering the belligerents and what they both stand to lose if peace happens, Hamas their removal from Government and Netahyahu his freedom as he faces several court cases for corruption and bribery as well as his arrest for genocide, it may be worth keeping fingers crossed and hoping.

Special Guest Blogger: Johnny Weissmuller

As a five-time Olympic gold medalist, I exemplified the ideal American athlete of the early 20th century. Unfortunately, I had nearly as many failed marriages as Olympic medals. But my broad shoulders, muscular body, and thousand-watt smile made me the perfect physical specimen to bring Tarzan to the big screen.
Strangely, I wasn’t even American but Romanian and moved to America early in my life and loved nothing more than swimming in the Ocean and i was pretty good and entered swimming competitions which i won and got me into the Illinois Athletic Club (yep, i'm as American as Apple Pie i lied) and was the that of me swimming my way to stardom, as long as they never found out i was actually as American as a Steak and Kidney Pie.
Over the course of my swimming career, I set 67 world records and grabbed international attention at the 1924 Olympics in Paris, France with three Gold medals and then i competed in the 1928 Olympic Games in Amsterdam and led the American athletes as the standard bearer during the opening ceremony and snagged a further two golds and retired to become a  model and actor and got asked to audition for the upcoming Tarzan the Ape Man film which i got and they even wrote some additional scenes to make sure there was lots of swimming in it and not much dialogue although i knew i wasn't hired for my acting skills, i looked buff dressed only in a loin cloth.
I started on a  17-year run as the character but it almost ended straight away as the chimpanzee that played Cheetah attacked me the very first day on set so i bopped him on the head as advised to gain dominance which worked too well because every time my Jane came near me, he attacked her instead.
During filming I invented that famous Tarzan yell, basing it on the yodeling that i learnt as a kid which saved my life later on but i was getting too old to be swinging around on vines so i retired and  married a golfer, Allene Gates, and toured the World playing in golf tournaments and exhibitions including Cuba where we visited for a celebrity golf tournament and the only reason I left with his head still on his shoulders was because of that famous Tarzan yell.
A group of Fidel Castro's revolutionaries stopped us  and with so many guns pointed at us, I stood up in the vehicle and gave my famous Tarzan yell. The revolutionaries instantly recognised me and insisted on being our escort to and from the tournament.
It later turned out that my business manager had been swindling me out of my millions and my wife, not interested in being with a poor former ape man, upped and left leaving me without a wife and my fortune.
By now I was no longer the perfect physical I had once been and broke both my hip and leg in an accident which happily led to the discovery of a serious heart condition but less happily 1980's  medicine couldn't help me and after a series of strokes i died at the age of 79 but at least i outlived that bloody chimp

A(wo)men

Let he who is without brains cast the first stone and cast the Christians do all in the name of their Lord Jesus Christ, who, unless I’m grossly mistaken, was actually rather keen on tolerance and forgiveness and turning the other cheek.
You’d have thought human beings had evolved beyond this kind of idiocy but since Christian's don’t believe in evolution, I guess they’re exempt but what would Jesus make of Sarah Mullally becoming the 106th Archbishop of Canterbury?
If he is anything like Paul The Apostle he certainly wouldn't be laughing his halo off, more like standing there indignantly stamping his feet, well maybe not physically stamping his feet, not what with his stigmata and everything but metaphorically anyway because it states quite clearly in the Bible, filed under 1 Timothy 2:12, with Paul instructing his guys that:  'I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; she must remain quiet'.
That the principal leader of the Church of England does not have the requisite things hanging between her legs has upset a number of Christians, the peaceful and loving community only allowed female Bishops in 2015  and that was only after bodging the vote to state that while a female bishops may be available, every parish could request they don't send her to them.
So what do Christians have against women anyway? Obviously Paul didn't like them cluttering up the place looking untidy and exercising authority and i did hear a particularly flowery response that the interplay between men and women is an echo of the love between God and the church, with God in the masculine role and Church leaders are his representatives as he speaks to his bride and to ordain women is to lose some of our understanding of the love of God.
Absolute horse hockey of course but it has also said that Sarah Mullally supports SHOCK HORROR...same sex marriage and even proposed prayers for same-sex couples which had the men clutching their bibles to their chests and swooning in horror as quite clearly the Church doesn't even try to hide its homophobia after all the BIble states: ‘If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads' but then the Bible also says people who work on Sunday should be killed so not exactly a hotbed of rationality and inclusiveness.
What i don't understand how, after all this time, nobody high up in the Church hasn't looked at what was said and said: 'You know, that Paul, bit of a dick wasn't he' and ignored it but then i never wrapped my head any religion that preaches a message of love and peace so important that it's most ardent followers start killing anyone who don't want to hear it.

If The UK Was A Village Of 100 People...

Following the great work by the some very clever people at Global Learning in Belfast who took the 8.2 billion people currently on the Earth and shrank the World down to a village of just 100 people, my blog colleague put pen to paper and finger to calculator and the 2021 Census and various other statistical authorities to produce a snapshot of Britain today, squishing all 69 million of us into a village of 100 people.

So if Britain were a village of 100 people...

There would be 51 females and 49 males with 17 under the age of 15, while another 16 would be 65 or over and 3 of them over 80 years old.
92 of the villagers would be white, 2 would be black, 2 Indian, 1 Pakistani, 1 of mixed race and 2 would be of other races and of the 4 nations making up the UK, 84 of them would live in England, 8 in Scotland, 5 in Wales and 3 in Northern Ireland..
6 people would be gay or lesbian and 40 adults would be married, 11 would live alone and 4 would still live with their parents.
Identifying as Christian would be 72 people, 15 people would say that they were not religious, while there would be 2 Muslims, 1 Hindu and 10 people who practised other religions.
17 of the villagers would smoke, 19 adults and 3 children would be classified as obese and 16 men and 8 women would exceed daily the Government's sensible drinking benchmark with 8 men and 4 women having taken an illegal drug in the past year.
8 people would have asthma, 8 adults would be suffering from depression and 1 would have dementia. Amongst the 100 villagers there would be 118 mobile phones, 90 televisions sets and 32 of those would be connected to satellite, digital or cable television with 27 households having access to the internet, 30 people would have a Facebook account and 1 person in the village would be illiterate.
Of the 62 villagers of working age, 45 would have jobs, 9 of them would be in the public sector and 7 people would be in further education with 4 unemployed and 20 people receiving the state pension, 12 of them female and 8 male.
The richest 10 people in the village would earn more than the poorest 50 combined with 2 adults not having access to a bank account at all.
If Britain were a village of 100 people, there would be 3 vegetarians and 5 partial vegetarians and 78 of the villagers would have a passport and 55 would have a driving licence.

A big thank you to the Rev for this. 

Special Guest Blogger: Jack Parsons

My claims to fame were helping to put a man on the moon and summoning and marrying a powerful demoness.
My work in rocketry shaped the early years of space exploration but it was my devotion to Thelema and the dark arts that defined my life. I could have been an occult Oppenheimer if it hadn’t all literally blown up in my face.
My parents were into new-age spiritualism and I grew up reading science fiction magazines and i would make mini rockets from the unburnt black residue of fireworks, glue and aluminum foil but when i wasn’t attempting to build rockets in my backyard, I was doing rituals in my bedroom to make contact with the Devil.
Between my two hobbies, I paid little attention to school and worried for my future and my eternal soul, I was sent to a Military Academy but after i blew up their toilet with explosives, they sent me straight back again.
America in he 30s was torn with the Depressions and I got a job at Hercules Powder Company, where i had easy access to massive quantities of explosives for my rockets and i hired a proper laboratory and attended a lecture at the California Institute of Technology, where i met PhD candidate, Frank Malina which was the moment that everything changed and i got taken on by the Institute.
At the time, scientists thought that rocketry was just science fiction and I set out to prove them all wrong, Even if i had to conjure spirits to do it.
Our research would form the foundation of NASA’s rocket program that put the first man on the moon so as well as making dreams come true, i first had to set them on fire as  my initial experiments had disastrous results and when I was not nearly blowing myself and the wider CalTech community to smithereens, i was experimenting on creating my own nitroglycerin, right inside my home.
By 1936, i had a ten strong team and was ready to test my first liquid-fuel rocket and picked the rocket launch on Halloween Day near the Devil’s Gate Dam.
Our first three attempts to launch the rocket all failed and on the fourth i set myself on fire which weirdly got me noticed by my cotempories and a man called Aleister Crowley who founded Church of Thelema.
My notoriety got the US Government interested and they gave me a massive lump of money for further rocket research and by now I tried to combine the dark arts of Thelemic magick with quantum physics to reach new levels of understanding  and continued blowing things up in the hopes of sending a rocket into outer space.
With the outbreak of WWII, my research into engine fuels became of the utmost importance and they ignored me keeping my own livestock to butcher for blood rituals but they couldn't ignore me when neighbours  reported seeing a heavilly pregnant women leaping through flames outside my home which finally proved to be too much for the scientific community and they encouraged the government to cut its ties with me.
I moved away from the influence Crowley to save my career and took up with another leader, L. Ron Hubbard, who told me he was in direct touch with some higher intelligence but also, and more importantly, his body parts were even more in direct contract with my girlfriend.
I did what any jealous man would do and tried to invoke demons  and bring forth the Thelemite goddess, Babalon which i did but she was so hot i married her instead so decided to summoned another (less attractive ) Demon, the vengeful spirit of Mars.
By now I was struggling to find work in rocketry and so doubled down on my occult practice and found work making fake explosives for movies which ironically turned out to be more dangerous than my years of rockets and rituals.
While mixing chemicals, I dropped a tin of mercury which mixed with other chemicals on the floor and the resulting blast completely destroyed the lower half of the building i was working in.
Obviously i discovered that being married to a goddess doesn't comes with any advantages and i died horribly in the explosion and but my work with rocketry laid the foundation for space exploration, even if i did get a little help from the Goddess Babalon.

Israeli Boycott Continues To Grow

I have been writing here for far too long that Israel should face a South Africa moment and from what i am seeing and hearing, that moment is nearer than ever.
The thinking then was to isolate South Africa on the world stage due to the Apartheid system and since the war broke out in Gaza, companies such as McDonald’s, Starbucks and Coca-Cola have faced boycotts because of their connections to Israel, while some global Israeli-owned companies have been targeted and even Netanyahu has spoken of his country’s growing economic isolation.
The campaign against white minority rule in South Africa saw the country banned from the Olympics with FIFA as well as tennis, cricket and rugby governing bodies expelling them from their big competitions.
Writers, musicians and artists were urged not to perform in South Africa or publish their work there and consumers were urged to shun South African goods.
In echoes of that time today, 380 writers and organisations signed a letter stating that the war in Gaza is genocidal and the literary community announced a boycott of most Israeli cultural institutions. Last month more than 4,500 film workers, many from Hollywood, signed a pledge to boycott Israeli film institutions and festivals.
Eurovision song contest organisers have said member countries will vote in November on whether Israel can participate next year with many nations stating they will pull out of the contest if they compete and hundreds of musical artists have joined a call to block their music from being streamed in Israel.
In Football, FIFA and UEFA are facing growing pressure to ban Israel and it's club sides from international Football competitions.
Economically, one survey stated that the refusal by many to buy Israeli goods has shaved 5% off the Israeli GDP but with America backing it financially as well as militarily and diplomatically, the effects may not be as stinging as they were on South Africa but Israeli actions in Gaza and the West Bank have led to a huge shift in public opinion and even with a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas agreed, the pressure as the revulsion at Israel’s wartime conduct has mounted, as images of starving children emerged and the death toll exceeded 67,000 people and many official International bodies now speaking openly about Israel committing a genocide.
As they always do, supporters of Israel and the extreme right wing warmongers running the country will try to paint all this all antisemitism to try and intimidate people but as the excellent Greta Thunberg said when Israel weirdly tried to paint delivering aid to starving people was antisemitic: 'It is not antisemitic to say that we should not be bombing people, that one should not be living in occupation, that everyone should have the right to live in freedom and dignity, no matter who you are' so boycotting Israel is not in any way antisemitic, it’s a flat rejection of the Israeli government going back decades.

Special Guest Blogger: Matthew Perry

My dad was the face of Old Spice in America during the 1980's which meant i saw him all the time in my childhood which is ironic because him and my mum was split up and i was living in Canada with her at the time.
She worked for Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and i knew his son Justin at school, actually i beat him up one time but i knew i was destined for great things so at just 15 moved to Los Angeles and got some bit parts in TV shows but one time i was helping a friend get ready for an audition for a sitcom called Six of One.
Without really trying, and because i knew the script because i had been helping my friend read it,  i gave it a go as i was there impressed them and they offered me the role of the show which they were now calling Friends but my path to the sunlit TV uplands went directly to shit creek.
One of the perks of being in a hit show is dating other celebrities. Friends was a huge hit and some major stars wanted to be guests on the show to increase their fame.
One such star was Julia Roberts and we began a whirlwind romance but i was so insecure because she was so famous, i broke it off and got with Yasmine Bleeth from Baywatch.
Just as Friends was at its frenzied peak of popularity, I had a jet-skiing accident and along with the accident came some ongoing pain and my doctor prescribed me with Vicodin for this, and no idea he was creating a monster.
You see, with this one prescription, I made a dark discovery that the pills made me feel better than i’d ever felt in his life.
It didn’t take long for me to become addicted and went into rehab for addiction to Vicodin and after 28 days i came out free of a Vicodin addiction but I soon found something else, OxyContin and alcohol, which led me straight back to rehab.
The big wigs at Warner Bros had concerns, not for my health or anything but because i was gaining weight which wasn't a good look on their golden goose of a TV show so it was back to rehab and a promise to clean up but my colon didn't agree and exploded and i was in a coma for two weeks.
With my body rebelling, i went back to the Vicodin but the doctors refused to give them to me so i found a replacement in Ketamine and predictably I soon wasn't so much at deaths door as standing in the hallway and commenting on the coat hooks and i was found dead after falling unconscious in my bathtub and drowning.

Meat Free Tampons For All

It is nice that Reform leader Nigel Farage is taking time out from his busy racism schedule to the most pressing issue and though he may have gone quiet on Climate Change since it was noticed that one his his parties largest donors is a polluting oil baron and support for Israel has dried up since the whole Genocide thing, the gammon faced goon has a new soap box, vegan Tampax.
Turns out that our period wear can actually contain glues or fragrances that are of animal origin and as ever, where there is a crackpot cause (remember Brexit? How's that going for ya Nige?) Farage is there pushing it and expect to see tampon content to be on the Reform manifesto shortly.
Quite why the existence of vegan tampons has irked Farage is a good question which the wonky faced racist answered with: 'Vegan Tampons. God Help Us' which if nothing else distracts the public that he's plans for running the country amount to kick out all the non English and even those who are English if they are not white, oh and everyone can have lots more money if we can find a way to raise £90 billion, hang on, we scrapped that policy, just the racist one then.
So apart from being inept at even thinking of running a Government, we still don't know just how much meat does the Reform leader want in our female hygiene products?

Now For Keeping The Peace

Today, Donald Trump, Keir Starmer, Emmanuel Macron, Pedro Sánchez and others are meeting to: 'End the war in the Gaza Strip, enhance efforts to achieve peace and stability in the Middle East, and usher in a new era of regional security and stability' which would be amazing if it does but it does leave some unresolved issues.
In the coming weeks and months, a true picture of the sheer devastation of Gaza will come into view and accountability will need to be sought.   
Most, if not all, of the Hamas leadership responsible for the October 2023 attacks are dead but the ones behind the Genocide by Israel and their backers are still around and they and any remaining Hamas leadership need to be tried and punished.
The concerns are that Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, a man who had been reluctant to end the war ever since it began, will seek a return to the battlefield once all Israelis are safely home which is why Palestine not only needs to be rebuilt, but the root causes which stretch back 80 years are addressed  
If the ceasefire holds, and who knows with Donald Trump leading the peace as he appears to get bored and move on to different toys very quickly, but if it does hold then the military occupation, annexing of Palestinian land and the illegal settlements will have to be discussed else we end up back where we started, the conditions that enabled it all allowed to continue to fester.
People are returning to where their homes used to be in Gaza City and the death toll of 67,000 will certainly rise as more bodies are pulled out of the rubble but the focus needs to be on protecting Palestinians from its warmongering genocidal neighbour just as much as protecting Israel from another terrorist atrocity from Gaza.
Donald Trump is due to take a victory lap for his peacemaking as if unaware that he enabled the genocide so the United Nations and International Criminal Court have to make sure that the war criminals are bought to book for their war crimes.
Most importantly though, after the clean up and the true devastation is shown once journalists are allowed into Gaza, leaders who aided and abetted the genocide which we witness before our eyes, must not be allowed to brush it under the table, to say let us move forward and not back because if we normalise this and return to the status quo where Palestinians continue to be killed and their homes and land stolen, then we may have ended one war only to keep in place the conditions for the next one.

Special Guest Blogger: Elizabeth Montgomery

You probably know me as the angelic faced Samantha Stephens from the popular TV comedy Bewitched, where I played a typical suburban housewife with a terrible secret but  I had even more secrets than my character such as a long list of husbands and an even longer list of lovers.
As I had two show business parents, they were desperate to keep me away from their world so they must have been disappointed when i enroled in acting school but when i married Frederick Cammann, a rich, well-connected socialite who had nothing to do with show business and wore suits so sensible they could do their own tax returns, they assumed it was over it but i wasn't and got cast in my first Hollywood film, The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell, opposite heartthrob Gary Cooper, which was great for my career but not for our marriage's as we got hot and heavy and both got a divorce.
Now a free woman, I ramped my life right up and after countless appearances on TV, and an Emmy award, i appeared in Warner Bros Presents and promptly fell in love with the show’s host and marriage number 2 followed a few years later by divorce number 2.  
I was gaining a reputation for an actress who met her boyfriends at work and as it turned out, I began dating and married the Director of Bewitched, the story was about a modern day witch and her hilarious relationship with her very mortal husband.
After a few series my husband got moved on and guest director Richard Michael's stepped in and he took on two roles: TV show director and lover of the lead actress. Yep, we started an affair and things got a bit awkward and i decided that my time on Bewitched was up and quit the series.
Now divorced again, i made a few more TV films and I clearly liked working on edgy material but the edge doesn’t get any sharper than my next project, The Legend of Lizzie Borden, a true true story of a woman who hacks up her father and stepmother with an axe.
In A Killing Affair, i starred opposite OJ Simpson which made me thankful that I didn’t pick up a boyfriend on this particular film but by then i  had almost given up on marriage and was shacked up with TV actor Robert Foxworth but i was also tangling with Russian ballet dancer Alexander Godunov but by now i was getting into politics and spoke out about the Vietnam War, gay rights and inequality in the US .
In the 1980s, during the AIDS crisis, I saw many of my gay friends suffering and was one of the first celebrities to show their support, raising money for the AIDS Healthcare Foundation of LA but my own health was failing and what i thought was flu symptoms, turned out to be terminal cancer.

Who is Maria Corina Machado?

Politicians are fond of saying that they got into politics to make things better for people but the sad truth is that once they get into a position to actually do anything, they don't but one World leader I always considered a shining example of what all World leaders should aspire to was Venezuela's Hugo Chavez.
He inherited a country from the brutal right wing dictator Carlos Andrés Pérez and his first action was to nationalise the country's oil reserves and set about using the revenue from the oil business to be used to finance social and development programs.
He began literacy campaigns, built free medical centres and hospitals and constructed schools in the poorest neighbourhoods as well as subsidising supermarkets to reduce the cost of food to the poorest families.
Before he sadly died in 2013, he named Nicolás Maduro as his successor and then, it all turned horribly wrong because Maduro was no Chavez and he suppressed demonstrations, rigged elections and became so corrupt and authoritarian that it is estimated that eight million Venezuelans have been forced to flee the country.
Into the spotlight stepped Maduro's political rival, Maria Corina Machado, who yesterday won the Nobel Peace Prize for 'her tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela' although she had to accept the award in hiding because Maduro has disqualified her from public office, vilified and repeatedly threatened her life
The award makes Machado the first Venezuelan to receive the Nobel peace prize, and she has refused exile and rejected violence and talks of advancing human rights, an inclusive democracy and social justice she is in a good position to talk about it as she came from a rich and powerful business family and was educated in exclusive schools in Venezuela.
Her economic agenda talks of democratic renewal and economic reforms with social protection and address inequalities in such things as healthcare and education in Venezuela.
The Nobel Prize should send a signal that global institutions are watching and recognising her as a symbol of peace and changing inequality and although Chevez was very left wing, Machado is very much on the political right and terms like equality and human rights are not normally allies of that side of the political fence, she acknowledges that of Chavez: 'We have to recognize the positive things that have been done' so if she will be another brilliant Chavez or just yet another right wing dunce, we will hopefully find out one day.