56 Today!

Today is the end of my 55th trip around the Sun and the start of my 56th and the latest meeting of the 01/04 Club which consists of Me, Chris, Phil, Susan, David and Beth meeting up in the same coffee house, sing Happy Birthday to each other over a couple of lattes and a bit of Birthday Cake, shoot the breeze and then go back to our lives and agree to meet up next year.
It's kind of macabre but as i have made it through 55 still alive, I have lived longer than people such as Henry VIII, Tammy Wynette, Francis Drake, Bill Haley, Friedrich Nietzsche, Del Shannon, Johnny Ramone and Steve Strange who all died in their 55th year so now my next goal is to navigate the next 12 months and be able to list Abraham Lincoln, Steve Jobs, Beethoven, Sinead O' Connor, Linda McCartney and Rik Mayall who will forever be 56.
If you happen to be in the South Western side of the Country today and pass a cafe this afternoon and you hear the strains of 'Happy Birthday' and see a group of people slurping latte's and laughing raucously, pop over and say hi and if you are also celebrating a birthday today, pull up a chair.

Welcome Sir Killalot

Seems like hardly a day goes by without someone mentioning the words Artificial Intelligence and there was a scientist on the radio this morning claiming  that within our lifetimes we’ll be fitted with brain-enhancing microchips which will 'wake up' with us every morning which puts an image in my head of hearing and seeing the Microsoft Windows start-up screen in your head instead of the alarm clock.
The scientist was full of the benefits of Artificial Intelligence and was quite excited about the integration of machines and humans (Cyborgs?) and was quick to dismiss fears that robots will soon be out-thinking humans and experiencing emotions and in no way will our new metal chums be using us as squishy playthings as we will ultimately still be in control of them.
So for him no oppressing us with powerful laser eyes or giant metal claws and I think he may have a point because every computer I have ever owned has either crashed when I have tried to run more than two programs at the same time or stopped to tell me i need to download a driver, the one I downloaded three times already that morning.
Obviously the solution to make sure the Robots don't get too big for their boots and take over is to get the new robots to run on the Windows Operating Systems but then when you think of some of the people currently running the World, being lauded over by Sir Killalot and Wheelosaurus from Robot Wars and their army of USB 2.0 Stormtroopers may not be so bad after all.

Ho Ho Ho And A Bottle Of Arghhhh!

We are off on our first Cruise to the Norwegian Fjords in June and we are hopeful of maybe seeing some dolphins or whales which sometimes come alongside Cruise Ships so I have been informed but what I am not expecting to see is Pirates because it isn't 1680 and because you don't seem to get many splicing the main-brace or whatever they do in the North Sea.  
I imagine the passengers on the Cunard Cruise Ship, Queen Anne, are also hoping not to see any but a warning has gone out to passengers to turn off their cabin lights and close the curtains because of the risk of pirates in the area they are heading, the Sulu-Celebes Sea off the coast of The Philippines.
The problem with calling them Pirates is that for some reason, Pirates conjure up visions of swashbuckling adventure movies even if modern pirates don’t do any of the stuff the old, fictional ones used to do, like burying treasure or making people walk the plank or hobbling around on one leg with a parrot on their shoulder.
Modern pirates are not salty sea-dogs using flintlock pistols and saying things like Shiver Me Timbers, they are hardened terrorists using rocket launchers which isn't  really much fun at all and digging up recent Pirate attacks over the last 30 years, there have been over 13,000 attacks on vessels with the overwhelming majority in South Asia and off the coasts of Africa.
The trip to Norway and back then should be fine and Pirate free and the only ho ho ho and a bottle of rum will be in the bar. 

Too Much Of Anything Can Kill You

A common refrain in the world of science is: 'It's the dose makes the poison' meaning that almost anything can kill you, the question is how much it takes. Scientists at ASPScience have crunched the numbers and have compiled a list of just how much of something is enough to actually bring your living to an abrupt end.

11,000 Oranges
2,555 Skittles.
1,800 Cups of rice
588 Cherry Pips
480 Bananas
100 Apple pips
81 Cups of coffee
78 Espressos
48 Tablespoons of seasoning
47 Teaspoons of salt
40 Energy drinks
40 Bars of milk chocolate
29 Tablespoons of pepper
27 Big Macs
25 Green potatoes
24 Tubes of Toothpaste
14 Ounces of black licorice
13 Shots of alcohol in two hours
6 Litres (10 pints) of water
6 Cups of sugar
6 Carrots
6 Brazil nuts
5 Cigarettes (eaten)
0.5 Cigar (eaten)

Clocks Spring Forward Tonight

If there is a nicer couple of words to say than 'Circadian Rhythm' I haven't found them, i imagine it is something to do with the hard C in the first word and the pleasing mmmm sound at the end but if I ever changed the name of my blog, it would be that although what the rhythm of your body's natural 24-hour clock has to do with the tree hugging lefty stuff I put out I would need to work on but with the clocks due to go forward in the UK tonight, Circadian Rhythms are in the news.   
It may seem like a minor adjustment, we lose an hours sleep tonight but apparently scientific studies show that the alteration to our alarm clocks can take days to adjust to and for some people the transition period can last for weeks.
As usual, it all comes down to the brain and in particular the bit that regulates hormone release, body temperature and metabolism and if your  circadian rhythm is out of kilter, those things will be disrupted too.
Exposure to natural light is one of the most important factors in helping the body adjust to a new time so the more morning sunlight a person gets, the faster their circadian rhythm realigns.
German researchers monitored 50 healthy adults for four weeks before and after each transition and found that Spring losing an hour adaptation took longer than the Autumnal extra hour adaptation but even more worrying they found that the seems to create a slightly increased risk for those with life-threatening health conditions and a 2024 study analysing 14 million deaths in the US from 2015 to 2019 found a slight increase in all deaths after the spring transition but a decrease in mortality after the autumn transition.
In further news, i checked and i could not find a blog called Circadian Rhythms so...

Greenland's Own MAGA

The first words of the American Vice President, JD Vance, when he landed in Greenland was to mumbles that: 'It's cold as shit here' so to go with his cold fingers and toes was a cold shoulder which was delivered courtesy of the Greenlander's themselves who had their own idea of MAGA, their's was 'Making Arseholes Go Away' which they did in a hastily rearranged trip.  
The initial plan was for Mrs Vance to pop over with her son and attend the Avannaata Qimussersua dog sled race and grab a few photo ops of her interacting with smiling and happy looking Greenlander's to promote the boneheaded narrative that Greenlander's want to join the U.S. which they are openly trying to annex.
Everything changed though when the organisers of the dogsled race said the Americans weren't invited and a reported advance-party of officials were unable to find a local family who would be pleased to welcome them and suddenly the Vance offspring had to stay at home and go to school so dad and his friends would be going instead.
Rather than tasting Greenland culture and seeing the welcoming faces of the locals, due to angry locals protesting about the taking over of their country by the Jaffa Caked coloured moron and his best friend (who apparently no longer thinks Trump is an idiot, reprehensible and comparable to Hitler like he said a while ago), the visiting party were greeted by their own troops while making a whistle-stop tour of an American Military Facility and then swiftly danced out again before they got dinged on the head by a snowball.
While the rest of the World look on at the people running America now and making that universal sign of twirling your finger around your temple and making cuckoo noises, Donald Trump's new best friend and cheerleader in the Kremlin observed that:  'America’s plans in relation to Greenland are serious. These plans have deep historical roots. And it’s clear that the US will continue to systematically pursue its geo-strategic, military-political and economic interests in the Аrctic'.
While Vance was avoiding meeting people in Greenland, Donald Trump was making a speech where he said that with regards to Greenland, America needs it for: 'National security purposes' but he didn't explain who they needed security from, surely they don't need to be safe from those nice Russians do they?

Partal Eclipse

Scrabble players should pay particular attention to the Solar Eclipse today because you will probably hear a word to tuck away in your memory banks and is worth 25 points, Syzygy.
Pronounced Siz-ə-jee, it is a Greek word which means a roughly straight-line of three or more celestial bodies which is what is happening around 11am today in the British Isles as the Moon manoeuvres itself partially between the Earth and the Sun.
From where I am sat on the South Coast of the UK, approximately 30% of the Sun will be blocked so it isn't a total eclipse but should still be impressive if the weather plays along, which it is forecast to do.
It is a strange quirk which never fails to impress me that the Sun is 400 times bigger than the Moon but at this moment in time, the Sun is 400 times farther away so both are the same size but as the Moon is inching away, our future relatives will never experience a full Solar Eclipse as the Moon will appear too small to cover the Suns disk.
It should be emphasised that looking directly at something with a surface temperature of 5,500°C and a brightness of 35,730,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 lumens (imagine sitting directly in front of your car headlights and switching them on full beam and it still doesn't match the Suns brightness) might not be the cleverest thing to do so and your run of the mill sunglasses won’t cut it, you need eclipse glasses which are specifically designed to allow you to look at the Sun safely.

Coming Soon: More Special Guest Bloggers

Ever since I started this blog in January 2007, I have had a healthy number of posts written ready to post for when I didn't have time to scratch out something.
There was also many half written ones or a few paragraphs to expand on and some ideas for blog posts but the Folder on my Desktop is becoming very bare as I haven't really had the time to replenish them.
I have been writing a bunch in one sitting when I get the chance and post dating them so some of the Christmas ones from last December were tapped out in the Summer and the idea is always to use them and fill in the gaps with freshly written topical ones but for the first time in 18 years, I am running out.   
Not running out of ideas, I have plenty of them and there is no end of things to write about but it is finding the time to do them.
The posts which were most time consuming were the Special Guest Blogger ones although I did enjoy doing them, the Rev would email me the person and all the highlights (and lowlights) of their lives and I would arrange it into a 500 word satire of them and the Rev would nick the best bits on the Saints and Religious figures for his Services as a thank you.  
The number we wrote hit 720 and people seemed to like them and to be fair they were lots of fun to write, he even arranged them into some sort of order and created some free Ebooks for people to download and so we are doing some more with the idea of making up the round 1,000.
Whether we can think of another 280 dead people to write about is another matter, i kinda think we have hit all the main people from Kings and Queens to Actors, Musicians and even Saints and Deity's but trawling around for famous dead people is his job, mine is to try and stay as historically accurate as possible while making the posts entertaining to read by, basically, taking liberties with them and their achievements.   
I imagine we will delve into mythology quite a bit as they are the most fun ones to write but we plan to start posting them around Summer. 

Happy Now Rev?

When he isn't out using his TESCO CLUBCARD to stock up on the WINTER STORMS COMING or buying supplies for EID 2025, the Rev is my blog partner, I just do the writing and pass it to him and he does all the geeky bits because before he began baptizing babies and marrying people he was an IT Professional with an alphabet of letters after his name and he understands these things so when he said I really should include keywords or 'Search Engine Optimisation' as it’s known, I did what I always do when someone mentions geeky things to me, I say: 'yeah whatever' and ignore it.
I know that Print Journalists are encouraged to include often searched for phrases in their copy but newspapers have always jazzed up dull print articles, the tabloids do it with photographs of attractive female stars so you get a sexy picture of MEGAN FOX in a teeny tiny bikini to illustrate a report about the weather being quite warm this weekend or a hunky, topless dripping wet Adonis like DANI ALVES to embellish a staid report on the state of Britain's fountains or something .
Apparently, when you write your blog content you don't just throw in keywords willy-nilly, you should take care about their placement so they go into the title, first paragraph, somewhere in the middle and in the final paragraph, like here but the top person trending is HARRY REDKNAPP after his Nazi salute thing and that's not easy to wangle in, it would be easier to go with this weekends SOLAR ECLIPSE 2025.
I do know that the average reader quickly scans each page in an ‘F-pattern’ so reading along the top first, then glancing halfway along the line below, before skimming their eye downward along the left-hand side and if there’s nothing of interest within that golden ‘F’ zone, they quickly nick off elsewhere which seems  a lot of effort to try and position it all in precisely the right place.
Google Trends has a list of all the most searched for words over the past days and the top words today is MYANMAR and then PAUL O'GRADY,  TOURIST SUBMARINE SINKS IN RED SEA and GREENLAND so there you go Rev, hope you're happy and this blog post is now Search Engine Optimised up the wazoo.

Our Lives On Holiday

Since New Year things have been a bit busy at work, there are Filipino Fishermen who come home and almost collapse after 18 hours on the waters, only to rally themselves when their wives say: 'Think you had a tough day do you? Do me a favour, you’re not LucyP.  She's been at her desk for 3 hours and only had time for 1 Coffee ya lazy bugger'.
I am off next week for my Birthday and we have six days in Cornwall booked on a 'holiday' but we don't really seem to go on holiday anymore because unless you leave all your devices in your drawer, the internet makes it too easy to communicate with the folks back home so you end up bringing the folks back home on holiday with you.
It used to be the case that you would go away and hear no news or read any newspapers and you would be wondering how your team got on or what's happening in the World but now, even if you avoid the News websites, friends will text you if anything happens which is nice but do you really want to know that Brian has been nicking milk from the fridge again or that really awful juggler on Britain's Got Talent made it through to the Final.   
As usual i will leave the message that I am only to be contacted if there is an emergency or something really, really, REALLY important but I know it will be about anything and I know that I will answer that email or text because even on holiday, there’s no escaping our lives and in some ways it's frustrating but in other ways it's quite nice.

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Child Friendly Smartphones

Smartphones have worked their way deep into our lives and have become indispensable for work and socialising but many children want them too and that brings a whole host of problems with kids accessing inappropriate and harmful content.
Australia's government are ahead of the curve on this one and are introducing legislation to ban children under 16 from social media although the details on exactly how they will do that are sketchy but it is an idea being picked up by other Governments.
Some say it should be down to the Parents to police what their children access online and you may be able to do that on a computer in the front room but on a phone it is very difficult so it should fall to the Social Media companies themselves but as we know, they won't do it and age verification is easy to circumnavigate so that only leaves phones which restrict access to the internet and social media so they can only access services that are appropriate for them.
Many polls show that parents and teachers and even some children would like an effective restrictions on use of phones but a survey about when children receive a smartphone says most have a smartphone by the age 10 but as they cant possibly buy their own at that age, it must be given to them by the parents so the parents must hold some responsibility.
It is mostly agreed then that social media platforms and having 24/7 access to the Internet can be harmful to children but the only way i can see to prevent them is for the phone companies to  step up and sell phones with limited access to the harmful content and someone, somewhere must be developing it and I am sure would make a killing if they can get it right.

Vestibular Illusions And Angular Velocity

Watching the returning Astronauts be carried away on stretchers after being stuck on the ISS for 9 months only reinforced my belief that after 9 months travelling to Mars, the astronauts would be in no fit state to do anything once they got there although if they could somehow make a space ship that simulated the Earth's Gravity we may have a chance but how fast would something have to spin to artificially duplicate the Earths Gravity?
The scientists at the European Space Agency have always been very helpful when I have Space type questions so I emailed them and asked the question to them and they were very quick to reply with an answer but I still have no idea.
There was a bit about Centrifugal and Coriolis Forces and an object rotating about its own center of mass so artificial gravity could therefore be generated in the following ways but in order for a spacecraft to spin about its axis to achieve 1 g would require the mass of the Earth.
We then hit Instantaneous linear velocity added to the tangential velocity of the vehicle...centripetal acceleration...angular and tangential velocity...Coriolis force that results from the astronaut’s velocity in the rotating frame...linear velocity vector v of the moving object...Coriolis acceleration is perpendicular to the plane formed by ω and v in a right-hand-rule sense in accordance with vector calculus or F = 2m ω v...rotation rate should not exceed about 0.1 rpm to stay completely below the threshold of vestibular illusions and nausea due to cross-coupling accelerations... 0.1 rpm a 1-g spinning station would need a radius of about 90,000 meters...maximum station rotation rate of 6 rpm brings the radius of a 1-g station down to only 25 meters or 4rpm for a 50m craft.
There you go then 6 revolutions per minute for a 25 meter Spaceship or 4rpm for a 50m one or build one with the mass of the Earth but remember to allow for vestibular illusions and angular and tangential velocity obviously, would be daft not to.

The New Svelte Trump

Has Donald Trump lost weight? Apparently he has lost 30lb from somewhere but buggered if I can work out where from because he looks just as much of a chubster to me as he always did.
American's are obviously okay with having a President who looks like he’d steal chips off your plate when your back’s turned because they have twice voted him into office but maybe Melania has been slapping sausage rolls out of his hands every 10 minutes or possibly he has simply done it for his own sense of well-being. Although I doubt it.
He has now lost the plot over a painting because it made him look overweight and the rumour is that he was walking around the Colorado state capitol and stopped and said: 'That's a disgrace. That makes me look all fat and jowly and with hair like a squirrels tail' and an aide said, that's a mirror sir, the painting is in the next room.
I think most likely it’s that he was inspired by his new best friend Vladimir Putin who does like to get himself pictured with his shirt off riding a horse or judo'ing so maybe that is the plan and we can look forward to photo's of Trump topless doing a Nazi Salute or shirtless kicking an Environmentalist.
Trump is notoriously touchy about his weight, but to many of his supporters he has the appetite to Make America Great Again, always hungry and has the stomach for a fight even though he has much on his plate..such as a McDonald's Meal, Chocolate Cake, Biscuits...etc etc

Is The Next Pandemic Brewing?

Covid hasn't even left the building and we are waiting for the next potential pandemic with Bird Flu, or H5N1 Avian Influenza, the likeliest contender according to scientists.
The H5N1 virus has been found in Dairy Cattle in 16 US states and it has been detected in wild seals, foxes, dolphins, porpoises, otters and now sheep as the virus continues to now drift into mammals, especially ones we have close contact with, as it jumps species although the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) say it is still primarily a bird disease.
The UK is in a wave of H5N1, with large areas now part of avian influenza prevention zones and millions of poultry culled in recent months and the UK Health Security Agency, said: 'Globally, we continue to see that mammals can be infected with avian influenza however, current evidence suggests that the avian influenza viruses we're seeing circulating around the world do not spread easily to people - and the risk of avian flu to the general public remains very low.'
H5N1 is spread through contact with infected birds, or other species, including through touching their droppings and bedding and so far only one person working on a farm in the West Midlands has tested positive for Bird Flu but human-to-human transmission has not happened in the UK or Europe since bird flu first emerged in 1997 - but experts warn each infection increases the risk of the virus adapting to human hosts and causing a pandemic.
Probably burnt by the slow reaction to Covid in 2020, the government has ordered five million doses of a bird flu vaccine to prevent further spread between humans with people who work with birds are most likely to contract it by breathing in dust and mist generated by infected birds - or touching infected equipment or machinery.
Scientists at the University of Glasgow recently found that horses were also asymptomatic for bird flu, sparking concerns the virus could be spreading undetected.
In humans, symptoms develop between three and five days after exposure and can cause pneumonia, acute respiratory problems, and sometimes death in vulnerable people.
Human-to-human transmission is confined to a small number of cases in Thailand, Hong Kong and Indonesia and in America where it seems more rife, 70 human cases have been confirmed including one fatal one and another fatal case has been reported in Mexico, and a teenage girl in Canada became seriously ill from the virus last year.
'So far it hasn't been able to adapt enough to jump from human to human, so that's good news' said  Prof Hutchinson of the UKHSA but he stressed that: 'The virus is already doing a lot of the things that would count as early warning signs for a possible future pandemic - and every infection of a human is another opportunity for it to adapt so it is rightly being viewed with a lot of concern'.
So concerned but thankfully not overly worried yet.

Coalition Of The Willing Take 2

Keir Starmer has been uttering the words 'Coalition of the WIlling' in regards to peacekeeping forces in Ukraine but anyone of a certain age will recognise the previous time this phrase was mentioned, by George W Bush in 2003 to invade Iraq more than two decades ago.
As the invasion was deemed illegal and was built on a tissue of lies about Weapons of Mass Destruction, Bush and his sidekick Blair managed to drum up support from 30 nations to support the invasion and remove Saddam Hussein including the military powerhouses of Estonia, Moldova, Dominican Republic, Honduras, Fiji Islands and El Salvador and led to eight years of chaos and bloodshed before fleeing and leaving Iraq to the terrorists who filed into the country.
Why Starmer and Macron, who are the brains behind the plan for Ukraine, decided on such a phrase with such awful connotations is what they went with is a bit of a strange choice but after the summit of leaders, Starmer said a number of other countries had agreed to join this coalition although he did not name them so who is in?
Led by the nuclear powers of UK and France, the initiative could see troops from a number of European and NATO countries deployed to Ukraine as peacekeepers in order to deter a nuclear armed Russia from breaking any ceasefire and Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia are also likely to be involved, especially as they border Russia and have obvious concerns for their own security.
The Finnish Foreign Secretary have said they will be part of the coalition as has Turkey, Spain, Australia and Canada but Poland, Italy and Germany have ruled themselves out and it is unlikely America will contribute with the ongoing weird Trump and Putin bromance.
In practise it all sounds great, send troops to stand as a buffer between Ukraine and Russia but in practise you have Russian troops pointing weapons at our troops and our troops pointing weapons at Russian troops which leads to two questions I have yet to hear answered.
The first is how long should we stay there? Ukraine is going to be bordering Russia for the rest of time so do we stay there until Putin leaves office and then hope the next guy is  not as warmongering and then leave them to it?
Secondly, and the most important, is if Russia does fire upon one of ours, will we fire back? Then we are into a war between heavilly armed nuclear powers and it's goodbye World in a mass of mushroom clouds.
I don't know the answer, I am torn between just ending the killing and not allowing Russia to get away with what they have done but by positioning ourselves to aim our  weapons threateningly at Russia on it's border is more than a tad provocative.
The last Coalition of the willing ended up as a complete catastrophe and this one has the potential to be even worse.

Trump's Slide Into Electoral Autocracy

Us British take the piss out of everyone, that is just what we do so when a fat man with atrocious hair and orange skin turns up on our radar doing Nazi salutes and saying embarrassing things while thinking himself a historical heavyweight, it is a coup for us and obviously he is going to be made fun of mercilessly and at every opportunity.
The bonus is that he is American so it is only a problem when he slimes outside of his borders but generally all the things he is doing is affecting his own country and an annual report by Global Watchdog V-Dem on the global state of democracy makes for depressing reading if you are that side of the Atlantic Ocean.
The number of Worldwide autocracies (91) has surpassed democracies (88) and the latest report still ranks the U.S. as a 'Liberal Democracy' but it does have a little asterisk next to it which states that the report only goes up to the end of 2024 and does not include events in 2025, meaning it does not cover the start of Donald Trump's latest presidential term.
It then goes on to explain that events since January such as Trump pardoning 1,500 criminals who supported him, firing independent agency watchdogs, threatened numerous universities with sanctions, deporting immigrants accused of gang membership without due process and defying court orders, demanding the prosecution of the media and certain adversaries, purging apolitical police and military brass, ignoring laws and deleting federal programs means that next years list will have America dropping past a 'Flawed Democracy' and into the 'Electoral Autocracy' column.
Officially, an Electoral Autocracy is a regime, in which democratic institutions are imitative and adhere to authoritarian methods. In these regimes, regular elections are held but are flawed and fail to reach democratic standards of freedom and fairness and Trump and America will be joining the likes of Russia's Vladimir Putin, Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Viktor Orbán in Hungary and Narendra Modi in India as well as Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Egypt, Venezuela and Nicaragua.
In an electoral autocracy, you can vote, you can protest, you can criticize the government but that comes at the price of losing your job, public funding or a contract and over time people, including the media, start to self-censor and the Autocrat's actions are unreported and uncriticised.
As i said at the top, to us over here he is a fat orange guy saying and doing ridiculous things thousands of miles away while cuddling up to the other Global Autocrat's who really must be looking at him and rubbing their hands in glee and wondering how can they take advantage of this complete joke before he is taken out of Office by either a coronary, his own people or one of those second amendment nutters and they get someone not quite so dumb to take over.

50,000 Now Dead In Israeli Genocide

With at least 39 deaths in the last 24 hours, the total number of people killed since Israel resumed its military operations in the territory on Tuesday hit 639 which takes the total Palestinians killed in Gaza since Israel offensive began in October 2023 to 50,021 or 2.1% of the 2.3 million pre-war population of the occupied territory.
A total of 113,274 others had been injured in the same period and although Israel blocks International journalists from Gaza to verify figures, the United Nations (UN) and international institutions find the numbers reliable.
In November, the UN's Human Rights Office said its own analysis showed close to 70% of verified victims were women and children and the Lancet medical journal published a study which suggested the death toll could be substantially higher than the official figures, up to 41% higher.
Israel and Benjamin Netanyahu were never going allow the peace of the last two months to continue,  they want the Palestinians out of Gaza and do not care how they clear the land  to pursue the larger goal of a greater Israel and destroy the Palestinian hopes of nationhood.
They and the murderous Israeli settlers use Hamas and as an excuse to expand land grabs and intimidate Palestinian residents in the occupied West Bank but what Netanyahu want peace but didn't expect Hamas to play along with the peace process so they had to concoct threats and seek a breakdown by moving the goalposts of the peace deal by demanding that Hamas release all the remaining hostages before the second stage which allowed him say that Hamas were in violation and started dropping the bombs again.
He only consented to stop shooting under pressure from Donald Trump who wanted to say that he stopped the war but  Netanyahu and his Government were not ready to stop and never intended to honour the second phase of the ceasefire which calls for full Israeli military withdrawal. He blocked humanitarian aid, cut water and electricity supplies and delayed second-phase implementation and obstructed talks to get it back on track.
Israel and Netanyahu, indicted for war crimes and Genocide by the international criminal court, is desperately running out of friends except for the ones in the White House who continue to arm and back him along with Trump’s absurd plan to ethnically cleanse the region and build a Gaza Riviera.
An Israeli apologist was on the radio this morning saying that as the number hits 50,000, Israel goes out its way to ensure civilians are not harmed to which the broadcaster said in exasperation: 'Really? With 50,000 dead they are not very good at it then are they' but the are very good at what they do, clearing Palestinians by either reducing Gaza to rubble to make it uninhabitable so the citizens have no choice but be moved elsewhere or just killing them all, which means we can expect devastating scenes of the Israeli war crimes entering our living rooms for quite a while yet and if you are backing Israel, you are backing the greatest Genocides since the 1940, when the Jews were the victims before they turned into the executioners themselves. 

Mental Health Of Today's Youngsters

I normally have time for the Labour Health Secretary, Wes Streeting, but when he was attempting to justify the cuts to Personal Independent Payments (PIP) to reduce the disability payouts, he pointed out that: 'Mental health conditions were being overdiagnosed' and went on to explain that this led to the growing population of economically inactive individuals, especially amongst the young.
There is a youth mental health crisis and the Government's own figures show that today's teens are suffering increasing mental health and eating disorders and mental health issues are affecting sleep and school attendance.
Around 30% of teens surveyed meet the criteria for suffering from clinical levels of anxiety and depression and the number of young people out of work due to ill health has more than doubled in the last decade, with mental health issues a significant driver.
I am sure that there are many social and economic factors playing into it including just being a teenager which are never the easiest years anyway but what today's teenagers suffered which we never, was the best part of two years isolated during the Covid Pandemic.
It was a necessary evil at the time and saved countless lives but i can't imagine how it would play with me if during my teenage years when instead of running around doing all the sorts of stupid things teenagers do, I was sat at home unable to go out and gaining my independence and confidence, building friendships and relationships and even moulding my personality and identity.
Instead, today's teenagers lived through a global public health crisis with catastrophic health and economic consequences and that has to have consequences
to their lives and shaped their social and emotional development and making all the existing struggles that young people face today worse at the most critical time in their young lives.
In April 2023 to 2024, 3.8 million people were in contact with mental health services in England alone, which is 40% higher than before the COVID pandemic but as it isn't a national problem and is International shows that far from it being 'overdiagnosed', it is a real issue Worldwide with young people more anxious, depressed and mentally ill than previous generations and antidepressants are being prescribed to over 8 million young people globally, an unprecedented number.
Rather than play along with the damaging 'millennials are snowflakes' mantra of the previous nasty Conservative Party, Labour should be working on programs to assist in responding to the health needs of adolescents because there is a demand and something needs to be done to prevent teenagers with mental health issues turning into Adults with them and all the problems that brings for themselves and Society in general.

Lessons Learnt From Covid

Today, exactly five years ago on March 23rd 2020, employees everywhere were being called into meetings to be told that the country was to go into lock-down as the Covid-19 pandemic reached the UK shores and it wasn't until March 2022 that the nation opened up again so five years on from the pandemic, how has Covid changed us?
As i was deemed an essential worker I had a very different experience to most as I was allowed out with a letter to show the Police who were now stopping people to interrogate why they were not at home as instructed.  
It was a scary and heartbreaking time and over 230,000 Brits never made it through and died with only an ipad to say good bye to loved ones with, I saw one such interaction with an elderly couple and it still brings a lump to my throat now that that was how their life ended after so many years together but it was a regular occurrence in our Hospitals for those years.  
Unfortunately we learned that banging on pots and pans in appreciation of our Medical teams didn't help the NHS who are still criminally underfunded and understaffed today and it may have ushered in the decline of the Conservative Party and the end of Boris Johnson's Premiership once it was revealed how he partied, making a mockery of the people who stayed home, but we have yet to regain the tens of billions which were handed out to friends of the Conservative Party in dodgy PPE contracts.
Vaccine's which would generally take 10 years to bring to the public was available after 18 months and undoubtedly saved billions of lives around the World but caused a severe reaction in some cases with possible long-term effects.
The take up of Masks to protect the vulnerable were everywhere and they are still worn by some today when they have a cold or flu, an awareness that you wearing a mask isn't to protect you but to protect those around you was a valuable and well received message that remains today.
Some of us have not gone back to using paper money and some shops and banks still have plastic screens that haven’t yet been disposed of and bits of tape on carpet telling customers where to stand to socially distance and there are still some rainbow signs in windows but probably the largest impact was it ushered in the era of Working From Home and learning IT skills for video meetings.
Some people decided after the lock-downs that moving out of the workforce into early retirement, or becoming 'economically inactive' to enjoy life was a viable option or changing jobs altogether with more flexibility with a better work / life balance.
One of the most important lessons I am not sure we have learnt though is that Covid showed the entire world that things needn't be the way they are. That we can change how we do things, how we live for example homelessness was ended, the environment briefly began to recover and there was a real sense of community with people looking out for each other and appreciating the unsung heroes such as bus drivers, shop workers, teachers, delivery drivers and NHS Staff who we took for granted before March 2020.
As the memory of Covid fades and things return to 'normal', it does feel a missed opportunity to take a long, hard look at ourselves and the way we do things.

Are The Left Morally Superior?

 
When the Government cut the Foreign Aid budget from 0.5% or GDP to 0.3% there was a clear split between the Right who celebrated it and the Left wing who despised it and out came the usual arguments that the Right are selfish and only care about them and theirs and everyone else can go hang and the Left care more about everyone else and their own can go hang.  
The Right believe that, to use that famous quote, 'Charity begins at home' and everyone in our own country should be looked after before we even consider spending money elsewhere but the Left argue that 'Charity begins where it is most needed' and there is no reason why we can't look after our own AND whoever else needs it.   
There is a Social Experiment which asks people to split 100 Moral Credits between a range of categories from 1 to 16 according to their capacity to empathize with and behave morally towards which starts (1) with your immediate family and runs through (4) all of your friends, (6) all people you have ever met, (8) all people on your continent, (12) all animals on earth and ends on (16) all things in existence.
With just 100 Moral Credits available, the Right Wing contributors split their Moral Allocation to cover up to (9) All people on all continents, while Left Wing contributors split their Allocation up to (16) All things in existence.
The Experiment was then redone with no limit on the amount of Moral Credits available and the same results where achieved with the Right Wing allocation again concentrated on the first 9 categories and the Left Wing splitting theirs across all categories up to 16.
The conclusion reached by the researchers was that those with Right Wing beliefs exhibiting greater concern and preference for family, relatives and friends, while the Left exhibited a preference for everyone and everything.
Obviously this can be interpreted in any way you want but to me it shows that as the Left covered the same as the Right but then went on to include everyone else also, it makes the Left morally superior so if you want a nice person as a friend or partner, cuddle up to a Leftie.

Don't Worry, Be Happy

Everyone everywhere is in pursuit of happiness and the citizens of some nation sare happier than others and the 2025 World Happiness Report points us in the direction of Scandinavia if you want to be content.
Countries were ranked based on a self-assessed score of 1-10 and include factors such as likelihood of helping strangers, giving donations, well-being, sharing with others, social connections and trust in your fellow natives and according to the data, Nordic countries top the chart.
Finland leads the pack for the eighth year in a row then came Denmark, Iceland and Sweden which only cements my notion that there is a link between snow and happiness.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, Afghanistan is the least happy places with Sierra Leone and Lebanon filling the bottom three places.
The United Kingdom is 23rd in the league of 140 countries which is it's lowest level since 2017 which is one above the miserable buggers in America who are 24th which is the lowest they have ever been but take a look whats going on over there and they did well to get to 24th to be honest.

The 3pm Tea Alarm

 

I did start to write this post just before 3pm which was a bit of an error because just as I was starting the Tea Alarm went off and I had to stop anyway so i should have just waited.
It has come as a bit of a surprise that some people are only just now finding out that we have a 3pm Tea Alarm here in the UK, I assumed everyone knew that we had mid-afternoon tea here, there was even a song about it a few years ago actually called 'Everything Stops For Tea'.
What seems to have come as a surprise to non-Brits is that there is a nationwide alarm which sounds a bit like an air-raid siren to alert us that it is 3pm and so time to stop for tea and there is also a small fine which could be applied if you don't stop although this is hardly ever enforced now and you can gain an exemption if your job is critical, for example who would want a surgeon to stop operating just for a cuppa?
Such is the confusion recently that The UK Government’s official TikTok has posted a string of videos on the alarm, even showing the button which ministers press to trigger the alarm and Tik Tok is now full of videos of people showing them stopping and brewing a tea when the 3pm alarm sounds.
The UK drinks around 100 million cups of tea each day which is about 36 billion cups per year and the original idea was that it was English Tea used to boost the economy so the likes of Yorkshire Tea, Tetley and Twinings but really the important thing, and to avoid that fine, is that you stop, drink tea and mostly chat about the weather.

Ideal Age For Life's Milestones

There is no right age to reach life's great milestones, you get married, become a parent, buy a house and retire whenever you want or circumstances allow but the Pew  Global Attitudes Survey asked the citizens of 18 nations around the World and found that overall, there is a lot of agreement around the world about the ideal ages for major life events.
On average across the countries surveyed, people say the best age to have your first child is 25 years of age and get married at 25.9 years old and lets just say that it is an amazing quirk that the age of marriage is 9 months after giving birth.
The best age to buy a home is 24.9 and the best age to put your feet up and retire is 57 so globally, the ideal milestone route is is buy a home, have a child, get married and then retire but obviously there could be many factors involved such as having a secure enough job to gain a mortgage and meeting your future husband and falling pregnant before you are 26 but that is for another poll.
As for retirement, 57 sounds good as you are still young and fit enough to bugger off around the World or do those things you still want to do but you are going to need a  decent pension to give up work that early and afford to globe trot so maybe that's why it is an ideal and not reality.

Changing My MInd On Mixing Sport And Politics

As the atrocious bombing continues in Gaza, the United Nations is hamstrung by the United States veto which they yield at any criticism of the genocide Israel is conducting in Gaza but what can the International Community do when one of the rogue countries is protected by someone with a Veto?
I am not usually one to mix entertainment and politics but we have come to a point where a stand has to be made and until Netanyahu is in the ICC dock for his war crimes, we have to do something to show our displeasure and so enter Sport and Entertainment.
Fifa promised a prompt ruling on whether or not to impose sanctions on Israel’s national team for the actions of its government over a year ago , and we’re still waiting, the International Olympic Committee brushed off demands to ban Israel from the Olympics saying that they are not in the political business but Fifa and UEFA banned Russia from all competitions and the IOC banned Russia and Belarus athletes for breaching  the Olympic charter.
The Eurovision Song contest banned Russia from competing and although there was protests from spectators and participants last year and highly expected this year, Israel is allowed to carry on competing.
We know, or we should know, right from wrong so killing civilians is wrong and presiding over a famine while ethnically cleansing a whole nation is wrong and banning a nation committing genocide from joining in the 'fun things' with all the rest of the World should be the minimum and it shouldn't just be Israel or Russia.
Any nation that conducts a war, be it if the USA and UK getting all GW Bush and Tony Blair again or China if it goes into Taiwan or Sudan, Myanmar, Mali, Somalia, Ethiopia and Sudan, Afghanistan and Pakistan should forfeit being able to play nice with the rest of the World because otherwise what's the point?
We need to show them that they may be able to get away with it on the political front but in the other spheres, not so much until they can behave like decent members of the Global Community. 

Got To Love Billy Joel

I have always been a fan of Billy Joel, my parents fault as they were always blasting his songs from the record player when I was growing up so  i sort of fell into his music by osmosis and can sing along to almost all of his songs as i price up the Brussels Sprouts in the Supermarket.
For some reason he has only troubled the UK top 10 five times in a 50 year career and three of them came in 1983 from his Innocent Man album so not a great return for him but his concerts are always sold out and will be when he comes to Liverpool next year and we already have our tickets but if you hoping for a front row seat then you will be disappointed because he doesn't sell tickets for the front row.
I will let the Piano Man explain:  'We never sell front rows. We hold those tickets at just about every concert. For years, the scalpers got the tickets and would scalp the front row for ridiculous amounts of money… I’d look down and see rich people sitting there puffing on a cigar'.
'It turns out the real fans were always in the back of the room in the worst seats. We now hold those tickets, and I send my road crew out to the back of the room when the audience comes in, and they get people from the worst seats and bring ’em in to the front rows. This way, you’ve got people in the front row that are really happy to be there, real fans.'
Just another reason to love the man.

Mum's The Word To Tax Man

As well as the emotional toll, returning to work after spending a long time on leave with a baby is tough especially with the soaring childcare costs and many are struggling financially or even end up in debt each month so they end up quitting as a result.
A study by UN Women UK found 25% of mothers with children aged up to 18 years old and 33% with children under five have had to unwillingly give up work and 26% have had to reduce their working hours for childcare reasons.
One European nation has come up with a solution and made a offer to women of child bearing age which not only helps with the financial side but the falling fertility rate.
Mothers in Hungary who have two or three children will be exempt from paying income tax for life and women with one child will be exempt until they turn 30.
Hungary had a fertility rate of 1.5 which by comparison, the UK had a rate of 1.6 but a rate of 2.1 is thought to be required to sustain a nation's population level.
Can't see it catching on here though unfortunately.

Genocide Resumed

To keep the Israeli Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich, in his cabinet, Benjamin Netanyahu was widely reported to have told him that Israel would resume its war on Gaza, irrespective of the terms of the ceasefire and today the genocide in Gaza continued after a short break.
At least 404 Palestinians have been killed overnight and over 600 injured as Israel attacked the Strip, citing Hama's refusal to accept the ceasefire deal which would have seen a tosal withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza and and end to hostilities in return for the relases of the remaining 59 hostages held by Hamas.
Despite agreeing to the deal which was split into three stages with part two due to come into action, Israel and America were pushing instead for an extension of Part One and the return of all remaining hostages in exchange for further prisoner releases and a 30- to 60-day truce and when Hamas said No, Israel accussed the group of a refusal to release hostages and the attacks began again.
So with ammunition stocks replenished thanks to US deliveries and troops rested, off we go again and the 48,700 death toll of Palestinians in 18 months at the hands of Israel, is sure to swell horribly in the latest attempt to push the Palestinians off their land by either reducing it to rubble so nobody can live there or by killing them all and to be fair, I don't think Israel mind whichever way as long as their settlers get it afterwards. 

Putin's And Netanyahu's Bitch

Donald Trump, it is said, is keen to bag himself a Nobel Peace Prize but from what we are seeing so far as he gives backing to Israel while they commit genocide in Palestine and Russia while they continue their war in Ukraine, he may be waiting a while yet for that phone call from Norway.  
Donald Trump’s weird affinity for Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, has long been the subject of intense speculation with two former KGB officers claiming Trump was recruited in Moscow in 1987 and given the codename 'Krasnov' and has been dancing to Putin’s tune ever since.
The Steele dossier, the FBI and US intelligence agencies all agree there were: 'multiple, systematic Russian efforts to swing the 2016 vote to Trump' although Trump can't seem to decide whether he has met him or not, confusingly saying he had and then hadn't but called him 'a strong leader' anyway.
They did agree on a phonecall to discuss Ukraine and whatever Putin said, it must have been good because Trump has been falling over himself to please and appease the Kremlin’s dictator since by initially suspending US military aid and intelligence assistance to Ukraine, invited Zelenskyy to the White House and then pilloried him and has been demanding he sign up to a peace deal on Russia’s terms.
Meanwhile, he has been floating plans to take over Gaza by forcibly removing the 2m inhabitants and bending over to take it whichever way Netanyahu wants to give it to him.
If Trump is not the stooge of two war criminals and mass murderers, then he is a damn fine actor although his supporters are saying Trump is a master dealmaker and peacemaker. Really?
From where we are sitting, Israel is breaking the ceasefire deal daily and murdering civilians while Russia is intensifying the war to gain further ground while mulling over Trump's peace deal which hands over 20% of the invaded country to Putin and plans to ease or lift sanctions as a thank you.
Trump may not win a Nobel peace prize but he has certainly earned the Order of Lenin from Putin and The Presidential Medal of Honour from Netanyahu for being their bitch.

Not A Labour Thing To Do

 
Only the most rose tinted wearing Labour Supporter would say that the first seven months of the Labour Party have been successful.
I initially gave them a bit of leeway due to the economic £22 billion mess the previous Conservatives left them with but i winced when they cut the Heating Allowance for most pensioners, then got angry when they cut the Aid Budget but have to shout at them now that they are targeting cuts to disability benefit.
Thankfully, enough Labour backbenchers have also shouted that they are backing away from it including Former Labour shadow chancellor Ed Balls who said that cutting disability benefits is: 'Not a Labour thing to do' but it is bad enough that they were even considering it, especially as Foreign Aid and disability benefits was always the first thing the right wing Conservatives went after.  
Health Minister, Wes Streeting, was on the media round this morning denying that Labour are 'changing into the Tories' and then undermined it by repeating that much used Tory defence that they were merely 'helping disabled people back into work' which is just a nice way of saying taking away their money giving them no choice regardless of their disability.
The Heating Allowance withdrawal was estimated to save £1.4bn, the reduction to the Aid Budget approximately £6 billion and the same for the plans for disability payments so those three actions alone will save the Government £13.4 billion but that is from taking away from the most vulnerable.
Why they haven't considered increasing tax rates on the highest earners by 1% which would raise £24 billion according to their own figures I do not know but with a massive majority they could do anything, but have decided to hit the pensioners, poorest and the disabled which is beyond disappointing when rejoining the EU, which most of the country now support, would give a boost of an additional £140 billion to the UK Economy and no old person will go cold, no disabled person forced into inappropriate work and the World's downtrodden will not go hungry or thirsty.
The most disappointing thing is that the Conservatives were beyond awful and if Labour are going to do the same things, then where can us Lefties turn? 

Forget Friday 13th, Hide On Monday 27th

To many people Friday 13th is the unluckiest day of the year, a fear that has been with us for centuries as Fridays were the day of crucifixion and 13 people who were at the Last Supper but analysis of a million insurance claims by the British Automobile Association has revealed that accidents are more likely to happen on Monday the 27th than on any other day.
The Insurers put down Monday 27th to be the unluckiest date to a combination of post-weekend and end-of-the-month tiredness and also as most people get paid on the last Friday of the month, are more likely to be still feeling the effects of drink heavily over the following weekend.
Luckily 2025 only has two Monday the 27th's in it and one was in January so well done if you survived that but you still have to navigate the one in October but if you want to go traditional then we only have one Friday 13th this year and this is in June but we have three next year to make up for it.

 

 

Asking To Use The Facilities

 
English people can be socially awkward at the best of times but even worse when we are in a strange place and all those glasses of water are having an effect and there is no obvious doors with the tell-tale pictures on them.
It is bad enough that you now have to announce where you need to go to a complete stranger by asking but what is the correct way to ask?
I always discreetly ask for directions to the ladies but you could ask the way to the Bathroom, the WC, Lavatory, Bog, Crapper, Loo, the John, Privy, Khazi, Latrine, Dunny or the most politest way, to powder your nose so what is the proper way to announce that you are looking for somewhere to pee because I know at some point someone is going to answer with: 'A Ladies What?' and its back to square One.
Apparently the most proper and politest way in British English to let people know you’re looking for a toilet is to ask 'Where’s The Bathroom?' because that is not specifically saying what you are going to do once you get there as you may be wanting to check your hair or wash your hands for all they know.
According to Lexicographers, there isn’t a proper name for the smallest room in the house but a Lavatory is the French word for somewhere where you wash, a toilet is a lady's dressing table and Loo is from the French word for water but we have never had a single, universally accepted term to describe the place where we go to answer the call of nature.
This is quite strange given that every single one of us goes there on average 2,500 times a year according to someone who been paid to has count these things but not sure what some people do when they get there because last year 476 people were somehow injured while using the facilities.

Royal Referendum

There was once a discussion over whether the British Royalty should be made defunct after the Queen who went by the name Elizabeth 2nd stopped reigning but she went, Charles plonked his derriere on the Throne and the Family the Late Queen called The Firm carried on with a new face on our stamps and bank notes.
Whether we have a Royal Family doesn't matter much to me, the whole idea of putting anyone above anyone else grates with me and especially a family who over the last thousand years have been some of the worst people the nation has ever produced.
We have had cruel kings and mean queens as well as the mad ones, bad ones, greedy ones and murderous ones and some have been all these things at the same time so do we want to raise such a bloodline onto a pedestal and pay for the privilege?
The amazing answer is: 'Probably' as figures from the National Centre for Social Research (NatCen) shows that just over half (54%) think that it is important for Britain to have a monarchy.
Britain did get rid of the monarchy once before when Charles I got the chop but as he was replaced by a religious nutter who banned everything, the 17th Century Brits decided it was too boring without a King and Queen and brought back Charlie’s son to rule again.
Obviously removing the monarchy would throw up some interesting questions such as what would the media report on if there weren’t royal scandals (looking at you Harry and Andrew) and whose face could we stick on the stamps?
The Royals are as useless as they ever were but a (slight) majority of the Brits seem to like them...for now anyway because 54% is the lowest figure of support since the NatCen poll started in 1983 when 86% of Brits said having a Royal was important.
In the Final year of Lizzie 2, 62% felt that having a monarchy was important and since the third Charlie took over support has only dwindled further so maybe we should seek a referendum on whether we should continue to give then £100m a year or spend it on something more worthwhile.

How You Like Your Eggs? Expensive!

Not sure what it is about eggs but it does seem whenever the US economy is mentioned someone there seems to bring up the price of eggs.
The price of eggs was mentioned during the Presidential race and only yesterday Donald Trump was banging on about how the price of eggs have come down 30% since he has been in office which would be bemusing enough if the Irish Taoiseach, Micheal Martin, wasn't sat beside him wondering how the hell we got onto the subject of the price of eggs.
Obviously as it came of of Trump's weird shaped mouth it was a lie as everyone shouted that the cost of eggs had actually gone up 28% since Trump took office so another thing he said he would do on day 1 failed along with ending the Ukraine War.
Weirdly there is a website that compares the cost of 12 eggs around the World and if Americans don't like paying £3.16 for eggs they had better steer clear of Switzerland which is the most expensive at £5.26, then New Zealand at £4.74 and Iceland where your brekkie eggs will cost £4.62.
The United Kingdom comes 14th in the league table of egg costs at £2.96 for  a dozen but the cheapest countries are Pakistan at £0.92, Iran at £0.88 and India where 12 eggs will cost you £0.74.
Hard up Americans could always go North of the border into Canada to buy their eggs as they only cost £2.59 there or head South into Mexico where they are even cheaper at £1.75 but with a Trumpian recession heading your way, bring a big bag because you may well be stocking up on other things as you are there.

I'll Take Mine Black Thanks

We have been milking Cows and Goats for centuries and even some people even put the milk of Coconuts and Almonds in their teas but I don't know if I could be tempted by the latest milk trend, Cockroaches.
Scientists in the International Union of Crystallography say cockroach milk is an up-and-coming super-food and they have a study that finds it's three times more nutritious than cow’s milk and may even be one of the most nutrient-dense substances on our planet and contains a tonne of proteins, amino acids and healthy sugars to help will cell growth and repair.
Before I can say 'You first chum' they do say that Cockroach milk is not yet available for human consumption because the Cockroaches make only a tiny amount of the fluid and the insect is not milked in the way that cows and goats are and anyway, they are not yet 100% certain that it's safe for human consumption.
Despite all that, they think that Cockroaches milk could be  part of a next generation of super foods which seems a bit optimistic because good luck with that because it would need to be one hell of an advertising campaign before many people let a bottle of that anywhere near their fridge. 

Americanos (LucyP Mix)

 
It seems that the World and it's dog is boycotting American made goods as the path to the Economic sunlit uplands promised by Donald Trump takes them straight through a certain brown creek without a paddle but it isn't always easy to know which brands to boycott but why just print a boring list when we can put it to music and what's better than the 1989 Holly Johnson classic, Americanos.

So with the sincerest apologies to Holly, it goes a little something like this:

There's a place, where a kid without no sense
Grew up, to be president (to be president)
A fascist kingdom now filled with guns and loons
If you're annoyed, here's what to avoid
Ah yeah.

Americanos shove your Lee Jeans and Chinos
Coke, Pepsi and Oreos - and Cheerios
Facebook and Levi's in the land not that free
Be as racist as you wanna be.

No more Starbucks or French Fries
Netflix at any time
Need them or not, that's what you got, yeah.
Take no KFC from anyone
Don't look to Burger King for any fun
The countries lost it's soul
Don't put Kellogg's in your bowl
(In your bowl)
Ah yeah!

Americanos shove your Lee Jeans and Chinos
Coke, Pepsi and Oreos - and Cheerios
Apple, Gap and HP's, in the land not that free
You can be as poor as you wanna be

Satellite stations across the nation
That's Starlink to you and me
Under Armour, Google, Disney too
Everything's boycotted from Nike to Twitter time.
Mastercard and Stanley Tools, don't buy a Tesla from Nazi fools.

Americanos shove your Lee Jeans and Chinos
Coke, Pepsi and Oreos - and Cheerios
Skip Subway and please, boycott the land not that free
Until they get someone not so crappy

Americanos shove your Lee Jeans and Chinos
Coke, Pepsi and Oreos - and Cheerios
A fascist kingdom now filled with guns and loons
If you're annoyed, you know what to avoid
Ah yeah.

Unfathomable Negligence

I'm sure all will come out during the inquiry into the North Sea collision between  two tankers, the Solong and the Stena Immaculate which was laden with jet fuel and was entirely stationary ten miles off the coast of Hull when it was hit.
Over 24 hours later, the Solong is still ablaze and drifting out of control in the North Sea and experts are saying that it's initial assessment reports suggest it is unlikely to stay afloat and the East Coast has the potential to seee an environmental disaster.
A Downing Street spokesman has said that there is no suggestions of foul play and data from MarineTraffic appears to show the Solong was travelling at 16 knots (18 mph) in clear visibility but there was no suggestion yet of exactly what happened.
It is hard to work out how with all the technical equipment on board and with clear visibility, a tanker can plough straight into another one, at 183 meters and 49,729 tonnes it should be easy to see especially as it was anchored.  
One sailor remains missing from the Solong but it can only be an unfathomable amount of negligence from the Solong crew that led to the disaster. 

Eating Halal Meat Is Just Wrong

Since I was a teenage I have left meat on the supermarket shelves and if other people choose to eat it then that's their affair, i'm not their conscience but killing animals for food is bad enough, but Halal meat is even worse.
Halal meat, for anyone unfamiliar with it, refers to the requirement in Islamic and Jewish law for an animal to be killed with a single cut to the throat, severing the windpipe and blood vessels, while the creature remains conscious. No stunning beforehand, no bolt to the skull or electric jolt to render it senseless.
Any animal which dies before the blood has drained out is considered not permissible to be consumed.
In the UK, laws require that animals must be stunned before slaughter but an exception is made for religious slaughter but studies have shown that  animals are conscious for a period of time after their throats are cut during the religious slaughter.
A report by the Farm Animal Welfare Council, published by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, highlights that sheep are conscious for 7 seconds after the cut, 5 seconds for goats, 40 seconds for adult cattle, and 120 seconds for calves compared with  stunning beforehand which have shown that there is no brain response activity afterwards.
The UK’s Halal Monitoring Committee which certifies much of Britain’s halal meat, insists that such slaughter is 'swift and humane' but secret camera footgae has shown the animals’ throats were inadequately cut, allowing them to run around for several minutes while they bled out an d some sheep still visibly conscious as workers began to cut their legs off.
Now it is up to you if you choose to eat meat, but if we have to kill animals then let's do it humanely as possible.

What Ceasfire In Palestine?

Apparently there has been a ceasefire going on in Gaza for the past 6 weeks but someone seems to have not told the Israeli's as over 100 people have been killed since the 19th January.
As well as Israel halting humanitarian aid into Gaza, they are also turning their attention to the West Bank and in the past year alone, more than 224 children have been killed by Israeli forces and settlers, including a two year old shot in his own home, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
The justifications are similar to those used in Gaza,  and include destroying infrastructure, driving people out of their homes with no right of return (40,000 so far, in less than two months, according to Unrwa), targeting medical facilities and personnel and flattening entire neighbourhoods.
According to Unrwa: 'The use of airstrikes, armoured bulldozers, controlled detonations, and advanced weaponry by the Israeli forces has become commonplace in the West Bank, and is a spillover of the war in Gaza'.
Israel’s defence minister, Israel Katz, said troops would remain in the West Bank for the coming year and  the 40,000 displaced residents would not be allowed back in that time so the the aim seems to be the expansion of settlements and the collapse of the ceasefire and a return to the bombardment in Gaza
Donald Trump, Arab leaders and the Israeli government can go back and forth as much as they like on what is the best plan for Gaza but the reality is that Israel never saw the war ending and won't until they have driven out, or killed, the Palestinians from their land, or as they state in their Government manifesto: 'The Government of Israel flatly rejects the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state west of the Jordan river'.

US Economy Tanking...Quelle Surprise

What could possibly go wrong when you put a six times bankrupt businessman in charge of a nations economy?
'It's a very rough patch for Wall Street' said one economist from  B. Riley Wealth as they queued up to give a bleak analysis of the US economy, with one economic indicator suggesting it was shrinking at its fastest pace since the pandemic.
When the markets opened this morning Wall Street's main indexes fell amid fears a trade war could spark an economic slowdown with the Nasdaq and the S&P 500 falling 1.3% and 2.03%, respectively and the Dow Jones Industrial Average falling 0.72%.
Nvidia was down 2.2%, Meta and Amazon.com were down more than 3% each and Tesla was down 7% while JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs declined more than 3% each.
To make matters worse still, Chinese retaliatory tariffs come into force today and a Reuters poll showed 91% of economists see a high risk of a recession risks due to Trump's economic policies.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, acknowledged that the price of some goods may rise but to be honest I don't know what any of that means except going by the shaking of economists heads, it isn't good for America and yet another example of everything the Mango Moron touches turns to crap.

More Women Running The World?

This week saw International Woman's Day and there was a discussion around how the World would be a more peaceful place if more women were in charge.
A look at the World today and you can't help but notice that the list of current wars in Ukraine Gaza and Sudan are all are waged by men and the former Irish president Mary Robinson was on TV today saying that having more women in the roles of World Leader's was necessary for a more peaceful world.
As the owner of a pair of X Chromosome's you would expect me to agree but I ask which women do you mean and throw out some recent names from our own little island, Margaret Thatcher, Theresa May and Liz Truss and ask are they an example of a World you would want to live in?  
The problem women have when they become leaders is that they feel they have to act and talk tough to avoid being labelled as stereotypically soft by men, it is widely reported that  European Queens in the 15th to 20th centuries were more likely to go to war than the Kings.
Of course for every Thatcher or Truss there is a Jacinda Ardern, the former New Zealand Prime Minister who reacted to a terror attack in her country not with a willingness to hit someone hard and continue the circle of violence but reacted with sympathy and compassion for the victims.
The solution then seems to be not more women at the top, but just better people and less idiots running things regardless of their sex. 

Violence In The Media

 
Back in the 1990s, after the killing of Jamie Bulger by young boys who acted out scenes from horror film Child's Play 3, a fellow Journalist and i looked into whether violence on TV and movies inspired real life violence and i went into the project thinking it would be easy to prove, as there was surely a link.
To my shock and surprise, we where unable to find a consensus amongst the many psychologist and psychiatrists we spoke to, some said probably, some said probably not but mostly it was a non committal 'maybe' but on the whole they just didn't know.
Our research uncovered many scientific experiments but just as many showed viewers having no reaction to violence as showed a reaction but then i left for another job and we never actually reached a conclusion but still, at the back of my mind i always felt surely that what people see must have some effect, what would be the point of advertising if it never?
I was reminded of it when i heard a radio debate about the amount of Pornography on the internet available to anyone with an Internet connection and the effect that watching it from a young age has on developing minds.
That debate between scientists leant towards it being detrimental and leads to relationship problems in the future and other consequences including how males (primarily) view females as well as problems with becoming desensitised to sexual arousal and mental problems.
A World Health Organisation (WHO) report found that that the number of people watching porn has doubled since 2019 and up to 8% of the world’s population is affected by porn addiction and 90% of children age 8-16 have viewed porn.
A classic case of what the viewer is watching having a direct effect on the viewer but watching porn and getting turned on is obviously different to watching violent films and then being violent yourself but we can throw violent video games into the equation and it is just too big a subject for me but despite everything, i still end up at the position of if you have violent tendencies anyway, violent films only make it more likely you will act on them but if the Worlds scientists can't reach a conclusion about it then who am i to argue...but still...

Boycotting America

 
At my local extreme left wing Stalin loving Communists Party meeting it was mentioned how in view of America being run by Fascists and backing the Genocidal Israel and sucking up to Putin's Russia while introducing tariffs on everyone and generally being dicks, we should boycott all things American.   
We was going to put it to the vote but being Communists, we just told everyone to do it anyway but we had a problem when we tried to devise a list of things to not buy which had Made in USA stamped on it.
In response to Trump's tariffs, the EU is lining up tariffs on imports of US cranberries, orange juice, sweetcorn, peanut butter, bourbon whiskey, cigarettes, cigars, cheroots, cosmetics, motorbikes, boats, jeans, leather footwear, swimwear, underwear and steel products but as none of the above in our homes are American, i guess we have unwittingly done our bit by not buying them anyway but we agreed that the next motorbike we buy is not a Harley Davidson or our next packet of cigarettes Lucky Strikes.
Leaving it to one side with a suggestion that we will just carry on not buying things made in America until we can find something made in America we can purposely not buy we moved on to avoiding American culture such as TV and movies.
Staying away from American comedy shows is quite easy, to be frank those guys are just not that funny and as most of their comedy shows are cheap rip off of our own, we can just watch the far superior original anyway but TV shows will be harder, I am only on Season 6 of the brilliant Supernatural so will avoid them once I have finished with Sam and Dean adventures and as there are 15 seasons, it could be a while yet.
Musically i will struggle as almost permanently going into my ears (or rather the one working one anyway) are bands such as Green Day, Guns N Roses and the Ramones and i recently found my way to the Megadeth discography but luckily Canada, Australia and Britain has some great musicians so out goes Billie Joe Armstrong and Billy Joel and in comes Billy Idol and Billy Bragg.
Facebook, Twitter and Whatapp accounts have been deleted en mass and our Apple and Google mobiles phones will have to go and be replaced with mobiles from Huawei, Nokia and Samsung and my HP Computer will now be a Lenovo, Acer, Fujitsu, Siemens or Sharp.
The final agreement was not to use the words Trump or Musk so we will no longer play Trumps or Top Trumps and Trumping will now be called a trouser trumpet or tooting and any perfume with a strong sweet musk will now be simply called a smell and orange's, tangerines, mandarins and other Orange coloured fruit will be banned from our fruit bowls.        
Hopefully this boycott will only need to be until 2028 when an adult will regain the American Presidency but until then, as Billy Bragg sang: 'Bring up the banners from the days gone by'.
Wow, its going to be a long 4 years. 

This Is Just The Trailer For Climate Change

Only a quarter of the way through the new year and already Globally we have had the hottest January on record, wildfires in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, floods, heatwaves and droughts and Cyclones further south than we can expect affecting Australia so extreme weather is our new reality.
Global average temperatures are already 1.75C above the pre-industrial average which is a reality check given that leaders are still declaring that they want to limit global temperature rises to 1.5C.
The changing Climate comes with serious implications which are manifesting and slowly unfolding now and as bad as it seems, this is just the trailer for the devastating main feature, it is no longer a future possibility that can be avoided, people are dying and having their lives destroyed now.
In 2022 Pakistan was hit by unbearable heat just shy of 50°C and drought before violently destructive flash floods displaced 33 million people in a week, only to be followed by landslides that destroyed key infrastructure.
In this era, we can expect more severe and frequent extreme events and disasters which will affect everyone regardless of where you live so Society has to change to survive the upcoming disasters because Climate change is now beyond our ability to reverse, all we can do is learn to manage it but we can't say we were not warned, I am amongst many who have been banging this drum for decades but have been mostly ignored by the Governments who could actually make the changes, now it's here and getting worse.
The further bad news is that even if emissions are reduced to zero immediately, the impacts of existing emissions are 'locked in' and we face temperatures rising to 2.7 degrees which means in your grandchildren's lifetime, climatic temperatures will be higher than anything any human would have faced over the past 11,300 since modern human civilization developed years according to The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who analysed data from sediment cores drilled in lake bottoms and sea floors and from ice cores.  
Humans tweaked the nose of Mother Nature by unbalancing her Earth but the planet ultimately will be fine, we probably won't be and quite frankly, the Earth would be better off without all those strange little humans messing things up for her.
As for people like me who are told to pipe down as we are scaring the children with all our doom and gloom, I say good, hope we do but blaming us is a classic case of shooting the messenger, the blame is squarely on the shoulders of the people who could have done something decades ago and instead did nothing, and still don't.

Science Proving God?

If you have ever tried to reason with a religious person, you will know that no matter what you throw at them, they will not change their mind or even consider that they have been sold a Pup and that's fair enough, they apparently see it as some sort of test of their faith but they do wonder why everyone doesn't see what they do, or rather don't see, but believe in it anyway.
I recently heard an argument that science, rather than dispelling religion, has strengthened it which is an interesting argument, to me it is like saying just because Charles Darwin spelt out how man evolved, it doesn't mean that we didn't come from Adam and Eve fully formed but then the religious mind is sometimes a wonder to behold.
The argument is that as science closes the gaps on what was once put down as the work of God, this actively points toward the existence of a God as people are still having religious and supernatural experiences which gives room for belief.
They go on to explain that as Science shows that if the physical laws and constants of the universe were even slightly different, life on Earth and existence itself would be impossible which strongly suggests that it was designed by God for our benefit.
Trying to explain that life only began once the conditions on Earth were right for it to thrive rather than the Earth's conditions being changed to fit life doesn't seem to compute with them and the gaps in our knowledge has been closed through science over the Centuries and will continue to do so.
There is a famous example of religious folk flipping things with the Gods Spectacles analogy where God, while designing humans, put our ears at the side of our head so we could wear spectacles rather than we wear spectacles because we handily have ears on the side of our head to hang them from.  
The classic example I always fall back on with Supernatural experiences is Angels, something which 30% of British people and 70% in the USA believe in and many have said to have seen.
Asked what they saw they will explain a human shaped being bathed in celestial light and always with wings rather than the HP Lovecraft horror as described in the Bible as wheels within wheels, the rims of which are covered in eyes and some having four faces so the Angel's they picture is the portrayal of them by Renaissance painters who gave them wings as a way to identify them from the regular people in the painting.
Religion is therefore a collective game of Chinese Whispers which each generation being told, and believing, what they are told by the generation before them without, it appears, stopping to think for themselves about it at all.

Stephen King The Soothsayer?

I do love a good Stephen King novel even if he does tend to bloat his books these days and you can read 30 pages which go nowhere and you think well i could have skipped that bit but back in 1982  he was in his pomp and he put out a novel set in a dystopian United States called The Running Man and based it in 2025.  
In 2025 the American nation's economy has tanked, Climate Change is running away and the country is run by power-crazed despots who pump out misinformation and propaganda and run a Game Show where contestants are on the run from a crew of assassins and if you survive you win a massive cash prize, get caught and your grisly death is live-streamed.
To be fair he isn't far wrong in the 2025 he envisioned.

Stay Out Of The Black And Into The White

You don't find many answer to the Climate Change Crisis in women's magazines but i came across an article in one of my Mum's old Good Housekeeping magazines about keeping cool in Summer.
The jist of it was if you want to stay cool in Summer, the colours to wear where White, Red or Orange which will reflect the heat away from you and keep you cool while avoiding Indigo, Violet or Black which will absorbs the heat and make you only feel hotter.
If the white reflects heat why are we not painting all roofs of our buildings white to reflect the sunlight and reduce  the need for air conditioning?
Research indicates that making surfaces more light-reflecting can have a significant impact on lowering extreme temperatures, very important as our Summers are only going to get warmer and why stop at roofs, our roads are all black and there are 262,300 miles of them in the UK trapping heat.   
Anyone who lives in a  City will know how hot it gets there, 'Walkin' on the sidewalk, hotter than a match head' as the Lovin' Spoonful elegantly put it or as much as 3°C warmer as the MET Office less lyrically say if you prefer.
'The creation of lighter land surfaces could help to lower extreme temperatures in much of Europe says the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich, and New York introduced rules on white roofs into its building codes as long ago as 2012 and cities such as Melbourne, Australia are encouraging owners whiten roofs to cool individual buildings for the benefit of their occupants.
The National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado looked at what might happen if every roof in large cities around the world were painted white, and found that it would decrease the maximum daytime temperatures by an average 0.6°C.
It may not be enough to ward off climate change, that genie is out the bottle and battering us already but it could buy us some times to come up with a solution to our own stupidity so why are we not clambering up onto roofs and sloshing about the white emulsion?
A look at the weather tomorrow reminds me I live in the UK, where it is cold for 6 months of the year and rather than air conditioning we have heating blazing so having a roof which will make it cooler isn't a very bright idea.
Ok, fair enough considering I am sat here in a cardigan over my thick pyjamas so maybe just you places with warm climates do it and let those of uas in cold and windy, rain-swept islands off the coast of Europe keep our black roofs.
Doesn't mean we can make our tarmac roads white though, surely someone can come up with a way to make tarmac white instead of black.

AI Learning From Music Lyrics

 

A group of 1,000 music artists are protesting the use of their song lyrics to train Artificial Intelligence but looking around at some song lyrics, it wouldn't help us much anyway.

Pink Floyd singing 'We Don't Need No Education' in their song ‘Another Brick In The Wall’ shows that in using a double negative they badly do need education, and it probably wouldn't be wise to go orienteering with The Who as who knows what sort of crazy compass they were using when they came up with the lyric 'The north side of my town faced east and the east was facing south' in their song 'Substitute'.

The song 'Catch a Falling Star' tells you to not only catch it but to then put it in your pocket although the next line should warn you that as it has just reached a heat of 3000 Fahrenheit falling through the atmosphere, it will probably burn straight through your leg if you did.

Such disregard for all thing astronomical is also present in 'Save the Best for Last' where Vanessa Williams tells us 'Sometimes the sun goes 'round the moon' which it doesn't and Christopher Cross in Arthur’s Theme tells us what to do 'When you get caught between the moon and New York City'. He suggest fall in love but as the moon is about 240,000 miles away which would put you 120,000 miles out in space if you are caught between New York and the Moon, i would suggest screaming while you fall to your death as more appropriate.

Lions are nocturnal and sleep during the day so 'The lion sleeps tonight' is misleading, as is Abba's 'Waterloo' because Napoleon didn't surrender at Waterloo, he was captured by the British weeks later trying to sneak off to North America so you shouldn't trust Swedish singers with British and French history so rest assured Music Artists, most of you will be passed over.

Agent Trump...You Did Well Comrade

Nobody cares more about people than Donald Trump. During the pandemic, when asked if  he was worried about Covid spreading at his indoor rallies, he replied: 'I’m on a stage and it’s very far away' so nobody...nobody..cares about people more than him so when the beleagured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy arrived at the White House, US President Donald Trump treated him like he would a Moscow hotel mattress.
You do have to have some sympathy with the American President, one one side of the equation you have a tyrant who invaded a neighbouring country and on the other the victim of said invasion and you can only side with one, and him and the ding-a-ling who is the Vice President went with backing the Tyrant and bullying the poor sap who has seen 20% of his country stolen and has seen over 70,000 dead citizens.
It was a surprise after calling him a dictator and saying that he started the war a week ago to see Zelenskyy at the White House at all but as soon as he ignored the instructions to fawn over Trump and just sign over the Mineral rights of his nation to him, Holy roller JD Vance took the opportunity to spring the ambush and drop his rosary beads in mock shock when Zelenskyy answered his question about Diplomacy with a question of his own about what sort of Diplomacy and launched into the Ukrainian for being ungrateful and not saying Thank you to America enough.
Trump, then joined in and together they berated the Ukrainian for not wanting to sign a peace deal and hating Putin while not listening to the explanation that last time Ukraine signed a peace deal with Putin he broke it 25 times but by then Trump was off on one about playing cards while in Red Square, if you listened carefully, you could hear the sound of deranged laughter coming from the Kremlin.  
Zelenskyy then left the White House without signing any deal to surrender his nations minerals to America and went directly on pro-Trump Fox News for an interview before flying to Britain with the endorsements of almost every other leader ringing in his ears.   
Meanwhile, a certain chum of Little Donny in the Kremlin must have been very pleased with how it all went, smiling and saying: Agent Trump, you did good (and the Pee tape remains in the safe...for now).

Last Day Of Winter

Today is the last day of Winter and although I generally like the season with it's crisp air, i sincerely hope someone has let Mother Nature know because i seem to have complaining i'm cold for the last 4 months.
I don't know if this Winter has been particularly cold in the UK or if it's just my aging bones but I have definitely been digging out the thicker jumpers and cardigans this year as i scraped the frost off my car windscreen with heavy gloves in -6°C with a Feels Like temperature of -10 °C which wasn't fun although it could have been worse and I could have been doing it in Scotland where temperatures sunk to -18.9°C in January.
The MET Office says that the average Winter temperature in the UK is between 2°C and 7°C  and this Season it has been 1°C below average which by chance is the amount the UK's average winter temperature has increased by around in the last century due to Climate Change, meaning in some roundabout way it would be even further below average if we hadn't been stupidly shoving all our poison into the atmosphere.
As it is officially Spring tomorrow and the Northern Hemisphere of the Earth starts to receive more of the Sun's direct rays it will warm up but today my Car said it was 2°C at 6am and it felt like it but I feel bad complaining about cold and snowy winters because with Global Warming really starting to bite, we had better make sure we enjoy them while we still got them.

Trump (Possibly) Coming To UK

Get out the inflatable Baby Balloon, hide the doughnuts and keep your women outside of groping distance between the Tango Tyrant has been invited to the UK.
I am certain that the British public will give Donald Trump a very warm welcome when his bloated carcass lands on our shores but that is if the Marmalade Moron can make it past the border guards because as a convicted offender after being found guilty on 34 counts of falsifying business records after paying hush money to a porn star, he isn't allowed into our green and pleasant land.
Under UK law, a convicted criminal is barred from entering unless: 'An Immigration Officer is satisfied that admission would be justified for strong compassionate reasons' and 'can be refused entry so long as the crime they committed would also be punishable by imprisonment in the UK' which under the Fraud Act 2006, it is.
As a convicted criminal, the list of countries he can visit has gotten much shorter with 35 other nations potentially banning him including Australia, China, India, Israel, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, South Korea, Ukraine and Canada who made former President George W. Bush apply for a special waiver to enter Canada due to a drunk driving conviction.
It is doubtful that Keir Starmer will stop the US President coming here but it is noted that the trip is happening in Scotland, well away from the inevitable protests which the fascist, sex offending criminal can look forward to.

Trump Email Leak

Elon Musk sent out an email asking all Government employee's what they did so here at FOAB we have the Exclusive of the email President Donald Trump sent back  with a breakdown of his day.

08:00 - Breakfast, applied Orange Toner and watched cartoons
09:00 - Called meeting with Intelligence Staff
09:02 - Ended meeting as someone forgot the crayons
09:05 - Snack
10:00 - Emailed Putin funny cartoon i saw about that Ukrainian Dictator guy   
11:00 - Snack
11:45 -  Changed trousers as I spilt Pepsi down myself...again.
12:00 - Lunch
13:00 - Signed Executive Order banning anyone not white speaking directly to me
14:00 - Mid Afternoon Snooze
15:00 - Snack
16:00 - Sent Truth Social Post about the Climate Change Hoax
16:10 - Rang Scotland to see if the Climate Change protection Wall I ordered had been finished around my Golf Course.
16:30 - Rang Putin for chat but he was too busy to take my call
16:45 - Pre Evening Meal Snack
17:30 - Evening Meal
20:00 - Replied to Melania's Text that she was going to bed early as she has yet another headache
20:05 - Watched Fox News to make note of what i was going to think tomorrow
22:00 - Went to Bed and read a few chapters of Mein Kampf
22:15-  Snack
22:45 - Fell asleep counting all of Elon Musk's kids

Just Another January Day In 1913 Vienna

The first rule of the Spatio Temporis Correctores is that you don't talk about the Spatio Temporis Correctores except to say they are the team who travel through time to make sure that things happen exactly as they should do so sort of going to do what they know they are going to do because they have already done it because if they hadn't done it already they wouldn't be here to make sure it gets done. Or something like that but the question they get asked the most is what time would you choose to go back to just for the hell of it and they always answer the same, January 1913.
Not that anything particularly noteworthy happened in 1913, a British suffragette ran out in front of the King's horse, Stainless Steel was invented and Gandhi was arrested but the place to be in 1913 was amongst the 2 million residents living in Vienna, Austria.
The Capital of Austria was buzzing with people coming from all over Europe to find fame and drink in the Coffee Houses and on any given day you could meet Croatian's, Georgian's, Czechs or Ukrainian's just milling about and there was the chance the Young Royal next in line to the throne would happen by as he sometimes did and all were sipping coffee and just waiting to see what the New Century would bring, as it happened it bought them.
One of the Croatian's was Josip Tito who dreamt of bigger things while he worked in the cities Daimler automobile factory and there was a young artists called Adolf Hitler with dreams of studying painting at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts.
A couple of Russians Revolutionaries, in Lev Davidovich Bronstein from Ukraine (aka Trotsky) and Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin from Georgia plotted their return to Russia one day and in the city centre a doctor called Sigismund Schlomo Freud was perfecting his Psychoanalysis technique.
The young heir to the Austria-Hungary throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand was living in the Capital's Belvedere Palace and was free to move amongst his citizens so within the same January in 1913,  you had Tito, Trotsky, Stalin, Hitler, Freud and Franz Ferdinand all within 2.5 miles of each other, six men who would go on to dominate the rest of the Century.  
No idea if they ever met but they must have at least walked past each other in the street or stood behind one another in the shops which is just mind boggingly weird.