A Little Skirmish

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

Don't Make Foolish Decisions Jamaicans

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

Iraq War Blueprint Being Used For War In Venezuela?

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

Budget Ideas For The Chancellor

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

Death Penalties For Palestinian Prisoners

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

Halloween In The UK

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

War, What Is It Good For? Absolutely Nothing

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

Special Guest Blogger: Horseman Pestilence

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

Rules For Modern Men

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

If i can add a few more:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Special Guest Blogger: Ilya Ivanov

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

The Ai View Of Falling On A Bruise

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Grand Old Perv Of York

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

Peace Deal Hanging By A Thread

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

Special Guest Blogger: Johnny Weissmuller

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

A(wo)men

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

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

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

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

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

A big thank you to the Rev for this. 

Special Guest Blogger: Jack Parsons

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

Israeli Boycott Continues To Grow

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

Special Guest Blogger: Matthew Perry

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

Meat Free Tampons For All

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

Now For Keeping The Peace

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

Special Guest Blogger: Elizabeth Montgomery

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

Who is Maria Corina Machado?

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

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

The current world population is 8,250,507,321 which is a very large number so we could round it down to 8.25 billion give or take a few of the smaller Islands (sorry Jersey and Guernsey)but i found a Youtube video from some very clever people at Global Learning in Belfast which condensed the whole world down to a village of 100 people to see how the World really works and just how unequal it is.
The first thing is nationality and if the world were only 100 people, 61 would be Asian 13 people would be from Africa, 12 people would be from Europe, 6 people would be from North America and 6 South America and only one person would be from Oceania.  
Next thing it looked at was age and out of the 100 people, 70 would be adults and 30 would be children and 52 out of the 100 people would be female and 48 male.
Obviously all those people would need to speak to each other otherwise it would be a very lonely place but considering we all speak many different language, what language would we use?
Of the 100, 17 would speak Chinese, 9 people would speak English, 8 people would speak Hindi, 6 people would speak Spanish and 6 people would speak Russian with four Arabic speaking and the remaining 50 people would speak various other language which means there would be 50 people who could only talk to themselves or would be loaning out Chinese Speaking For Dummies so they could speak to 17 other people, but not everyone would have a library card as of the 100, 86 of those people would be able to read but 14 of those people are unable to read.
If we were just 100 people, only 1 person would have a further education certificate which on the plus side also means only one person in our world would have massive student loan debt to repay.
Always a problem since humans began but of the available religions, 33 would be Christians, then 24 people would be atheists, 19 of those people would be Muslim, 13 would be Hindu and 6 would be Buddhist and the remaining 5 people would believe something else which wouldn't be very lucrative when the plate got passed around unless of course they are one of the rich people.
In the world of just a hundred people, six of those people would own 59% of all the world's wealth, 74 would own the next 39% and 20 would share only the remaining 2% but they wouldn't be spending it on light bulbs because 24 out of the 100 would not even have access to basic electricity and even worse, 32 people would be breathing air which is above the UN guide on air quality and safe pollution levels.
So the air may be polluted but what about safe drinking water? 83 people would be safe which would please the British as we could have a lovely cup of tea but 17 wouldn't risk it as their water is unsafe and undrinkable and as for food, 50 would not have access to a regular supply of food with 15 overweight and more than enough food and 20 underweight with not enough.
When you expand the village of 100 back into real numbers it is alarming to understand that of the 8.25 billion of us, 2,640,000,000 breathe polluted air, 1,650,000,000 are without enough food and 1,402,500,000 are without safe drinking water. Frightening thought but credit to Northern Ireland's Global Learning, great work.
I was so impressed that i wondered what the UK as a village of 100 people would look like but that is far beyond what my braincells could handle but luckily my fellow blogger is a complete geek with spreadsheets and loves this kind of thing so over to you Rev. 

Special Guest Blogger: Greek God Poseidon

Supreme Lord of the Inner and Outer Seas, Overlord of Lakes and Rivers, Master of all that swims beneath or upon the surface of the waters here.
With my brothers Zeus and Hades, we fought mightily in the cosmic wars against the Titans and after their defeat we divided the Cosmos between us and I took command of the waters from the Titan named Oceanus who had created them while my brothers plumped for the earthy bits.
I always had a thing for horses. Not fish. Not dolphins. Not even seahorses. I liked the land-based galloping mammals.
As controller of water I became supreme arbiter of the destinies of Earth, which must have water for its sustenance but as it was so important i thought I should own everything, because i supplied the water which keeps it alive and i could cause storms and shipwrecks with the aid of my three-pronged trident, but if i was in a good mood I could soothe the sea to sleep.
When all the gods and spirits of earth and its creatures sought for the judgment of Olympus, I flooding their territories, drying up rivers, and causing droughts which devastated the land.
All the disputes over land rights exacerbated my touchy temper and I retreated to my golden palace in the depths of the ocean. There I brooded over my wrongs, and from time to time I harnessed sea monsters to my chariot and galloped furiously over the oceans. As my chariot parts the waves it caused raging storms which would sweep across the waters, destroying ships and lashing against the coastline, while I speared the clouds with my trident to release disastrous floods upon the land. Then I returned to my palace and forbid the water to moisten the earth, so that it dries and cracks under the sun.
I was father to many gods and heroes (and  horses) including Theseus, Triton, Polyphemus, Orion and Pegasus. Sea air is obviously good for the libido but over time i became renamed Neptune by the Romans which was okay as it came with a Summer Festival called Neptunalia for the landlubbers but i am not happy with you modern people because you keep pumping plastic into the ocean, my ocean, my beautiful home.
Balloons. Frisbees. Cups. Bottles. Necklaces. Fans. And glitter. GLITTER!!!! It’s got to stop!

Why No Peace Prize For Trump?

You can imagine the massive toddler sulk Donald Trump went into when it was announced that he hadn't won the Nobel Peace Prize, i imagine that bottom lip stuck out so far that Melania could have used it as a table but the tangerine tyrant must be wondering what he has to do in order to be rewarded for his peaceful intentions.
Sure some people could point to his enabling of a genocide by Israel who he gave £17bn worth of weapons to as well as political and financial backing for a War Criminal which allowed Benjamin Netanyahu to expand the war and klill over 65,000 people and he did chip in with how he could help him ethnically cleanse Gaza but who hasn't done that? Blimey, on my way to work this morning I almost bombed and killed tens of thousands on the Isle of Wight so it's easily done.
He also joined nuclear armed Israel in bombing Iranian nuclear sites in pre-emptive self defence in order to achieve peace because Iran have only been weeks away from developing a nuclear weapon since the early 2000's so it could have been any moment now and better safe than sorry.
At home he has been sending in the military to snatch people off the streets and the annual report by Global Watchdog V-Dem on the global state of democracy have downgraded the United State to an 'Electoral Autocracy' citing  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 which looks bad when written in a single paragraph but nobody said making America Great Again was going to be easy, if you wanted honesty, facts, breathable air and evidence then America will stay shite, choices people, choices.
Threatening to make Canada an American state while not ruling out military action to seize Greenland and laying claim to the territory of the Panama Canal Zone could all be a stain against his name, in reality the only stain is on his pillow from the Orange clown make up he wears because he has stopped seven wars. Count them..seven.
Ok so one he took credit for was Azerbaijan and Albania who were not at war but they could have been at some point and that between India and Pakistan where he pressured India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, to write a letter thanking him for solving the conflict for which Modi refused because he hadn't solved anything but then Trump imposed a 50% tariff on India straight afterwards although not Putin's Russia.
Blaming Ukraine for somehow getting themselves invaded, Trump has played the long game with Putin by folding like a cheap deckchair and agreeing to everything Putin demanded and he may have said he would stop it on Day 1 but Putin did give him a lovely painting at a lovely and friendly meeting in Alaska and i am sure the Ukrainians understand that such a present deserves a bit of leeway when it comes to them being murdered by a vastly superior military superpower.
If we are being particular we could go into the sex offences and fraud charges, his links to Jeffrey Epstein and the blatant lies but taken into context, Trump was right to lobby and nominate himself for a Peace Prize.
He even said why do people from Africa come to the USA as they are shithole countries and they should have more people from Norway for which the Norwegian Government replied 'On behalf of Norway: thanks, but no thanks' but that shows Norway always hated Trump anyway, as he pointed out “No matter what I do, they will never give me a Nobel peace prize'.
Maybe JD Vance should just spray paint a bit of old metal tat in gold paint, dangle it off some ribbon and leave it on his desk because he’ll be as thrilled as a toddler in a toy store with it because sure as hell, the marmalade coloured moron isn't going to get a real one anytime soon.

Social Media Ban For Under 16's

Denmark is the latest country, joining France and Australia, to be mulling over a social media ban for under-16s and while the UK has not committed to do the same, they have tellingly refused to rule it out and i agree that is is something which has some serious merit.
The Danish government previously announced it would ban mobile phones in schools and after-school clubs and has now taken a further step and is proposing a ban on several social media apps for under-15s, saying 'We have unleashed a monster'.
In the UK, the Online Safety Bill was introduced where internet and social media companies now face fines of up to 10% of revenue if they allow young users to see harmful content with age restrictions placed on adult content.
Nobody yet has come up with details on how a ban would be enforced, it can't just be banned because it still needs to be available to everyone over 16 to use it but i can foresee how the problem should be passed onto the providers to make sure nobody under 16 is accessing their apps, or face a huge fine.
It makes sense to restrict access to potentially harmful content and i am sure that there are many other countries just waiting to see just how it is implemented before joining the crusade against kids accessing social media sites. 

Special Guest Blogger: Jack Churchill

Millions fought in WWII, but there was only one Jack Churchill and you could probably see me in plenty of those old black and white photos but they fail to capture how colorful i was because I was a British officer who defeated armed enemies with a bow, sword and bagpipes.
Since i was a kid i craved adventure and so joined the army to find it so i planned to not only serve my country, but have fun doing it  but my first posting was to Burma which was a snoozefest so when i was ordered to travel to India, unlike most people who took a ship, I decided to ride my motorcycle for the entire journey, all 1,500 miles of it.
Unfortunately the Army didn't appreciate my sense of humour, so when i took an umbrella on parade one rainy day i knew i could kiss any promotion goodbye so i called it quits and resigned to find my kicks elsewhere but WW2 was brewing in the background so 3 years latrer they would want me back again but in the 3 years between then, I was a newspaper editor, model, entertainer, actor, professional archer, and competitive bagpipe player, actually i came second in a bag-pipe competition  and an Englishman finding himself in a sea of Scotsmen and playing it better than most of them went down as well as you imagine.
When the Army came calling again i used my archery and bagpipe skills to great use, at Dunkirk i killed a few German's with my longbow as the bullet whizzed around our ears and during battles with shots going off, screaming, and explosions, the sounds of bagpipes blaring out was not expected.
There’s only so much one man with a sword, a bow, and bagpipes can do. After the Battle of France, we found ourselves surrounded and cut off. Hundreds of thousands were rescued during the Dunkirk evacuation and I was among them and I arrived at the beach by bicycle.
Such was my reputation that i was asked to join the Commandos tasked to focused on raids against German-occupied Europe. High risk and right up my alley so off we went to a Norwegian island and blew up a warehouse and a few other missions but when we were tasked with capturing an island in Yugoslavia, all but 5 of us reached the islands only to find ourselves outnumbered and outgunned so did the only thing i could, and played on my bagpipes until one of them lobbed  a grenade to knock me out and took me prisoner rather than execute me because when they saw my papers and noticed my last name, they thought I was related to Winston Churchill.
Instead of being dead i found my self in Sachsenhausen concentration camp for a while until i escaped and walked the 150 miles to safety but by then the war was over and  had to figure out my life outside the army. This time my list included paratrooper, actor, army instructor, surfer, army administrator, motorcyclist, and steamboat refurbisher until checking out aged 89.

How Dare Journalists Report What Politicians Say

Amazes me how the members of the Conservative Party have moved so far to the right that they can comfortably step across to Nigel Farage's Reform Party but step across they do and then unleash their inner Oswald Moseley but some are content to stay where they are and let out things which would have the former MP for Smethwick nodding his approval.  
The Tory Party conference has been overshadowed by the Shadow Justice Secretary, Robert Jenrick, being accused of racism in the press after giving a speech at an off-the-record lunch complaining about visiting parts of Britain where he didn’t see a white face.
His Boss, Kemi Badenoch, tried to brush it away as you couldn't believe anything from journalists which left the only way that this would make her look even more stupid was if there was a recording of Jenrick saying the words himself, which is exactly what they did have, clear as a bell.
Journalists then confronted Oswald Jenrick himself and when he heard the recording, complained that they had cut off the final part where, after complaining about the lack of white faces he explained that he wasn’t making a point about skin colour.
In his weird little mind it was obvious that the media was in the wrong to quote the things that he said and to suggest that when he talked about the colour of people’s skin, he wasn't making a point about race.
So why then, asked one interviewer, if he wasn’t talking about race, had he talked about skin colour?
He blathered something about misrepresenting his comments, those comments he was recorded saying, and blamed the media for making it difficult for politicians and members of the public to address these very issues which made 'these problems worse'.
What issues are these? What problems the journalists probed and after giving it some thought, said  
'Integration' and went on to describe an area of Birmingham which is 25% Pakistani, 23% Indian, 16% black, 10% Bangladeshi, 10%  mixed and 9% white which suggest to most people that quite a lot of integration is going on, just not a lot the white people people like Jenrick obviously approve of.
At least at the Conservative conference, he was unlikely to be confronted with many non-white faces, actually turnout was so far down on previous years that he was lucky to find any faces at all, but undisturbed by the journalists questions about the racist things he said, he strode onto stage and waffled on about how the voice of the people was being drowned out and how he would make sure that the will of the people prevails, assuming he meant some people, certainly not the sort of people you see in 'some parts of Britain' as he called it.
Still, got to love the gullibility of the few members of the audience who bothered to turn up to applaud when he said only the Conservatives could make Britain retain it's soul, pride, and freedom and make Britain’s greatness greater still.
They want us to forget about Boris's Covid parties and Liz Truss economic ineptitude and vote Tory again, go for the full fairy tale and if they get near power ever again it will be a fairy tale, as in pretty Grimm.

Going To Need A Bigger Parasol

Some politicians deal with Climate Change by willfully denying the mounting danger or cheerfully ignoring it but the changing Climate is so big and slow that it sometimes doesn’t seem real but it doesn't mean it isn't happening.  The map at the Center For Environmental Science at the University of Maryland identifies the place with a climate that your city is estimated to have in 60 years’ time and some are facing a climate that is literally out of this world.
Already there is something called a 'Coolcation where instead of heading south for hot weather, more and more Europeans are traveling north, where it’s cooler.
Since 1991, summers across Europe have been getting warmer by about 0.5°C (1°F) per decade, with starkly different outcomes in the north and south of the continent, in North Europe, Summer  temperatures generally hover between 20 and 25°C (68-77°F) while in Southern Europe the summer months are increasingly dry and unbearably hot, with temperatures regularly surpassing 40°C (104°F).
For now, the Scandinavians are benefiting from warmer summers but unfortunately we have been dozy enough to continue polluting our atmosphere so climate change is not stopping so how hot will the summers of the future get?
The University of Maryland Center looks 60 years into the future and predicts the climate of thousands of cities and towns in the 2080s and finding their climate equivalent today.
So in Scandinavia, the Danish Capital of Copenhagen, by 2080 it will be 4.7°C (8.4°F) warmer and on a par with today’s climate in Demigny, Bourgogne-Franche-Comte, France, Stockholm in Sweden would be 5.2°C (9.3°F) warmer or just like Dubosevica in Croatia today, Oslo would be 5.4°C (9.8°F) warmer and most similar to Gerovo in Croatia and the conditions in the Capital of Finland, Helsinki, would be similar to Nagyatad in Hungary by 2080.
The South of England would be 5.2°C (9.3°F) higher with Climate conditions most similar found today in Biscarrosse, the South of France and Edinburgh would be 4.1C warmer just like Basque Country in Spain.
Paris will be 5.8°C (10.5°F) warmer and in 2080 can be found today in Montelupone, Italy, Berlin 5.7°C (10.2°F) warmer and will be like Padulle in Italy, and Ankara in Turkey will be 7.2°C (12.9°F) warmer, similar to Kalaleh in Iran.
Tokyo, Japan is expected to be 4.4°C (8°F) warmer and that climate in 2080 can be found today in Zhangwan, Fujian, China and in Calgary, Canada it is expected to be 7.3°C (13.1°F) warmer that can be found today in South Dakota, United States.

Special Guest Blogger: Thomas Cromwell

Being friends with Henry VIII could be a double edged sword. I was his most adept henchman and the ruthless engineer of the English king’s divorce from his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, his split from Rome, and the destruction of his second wife, Anne Boleyn.
But as a matchmaker, I turned out to be a dismal failure a shortcoming that would cost me my head.
Henry had married three times but after the death of his third queen, Jane Seymour, I determined a political match was in order to help shore up England’s Protestant alliances in Germany and i settled on Anne, a princess from the duchy of Cleves.
Henry agreed to the match based on the glowing reports of her beauty and grace i gave him as well as a somewhat alluring portrait of the princess i commissioned by the court painter Hans Holbein.
Having successfully set up the political alliance with Cleves, I awaited my master’s romantic response and he eagerly set to to the coast to meet his intended but upon first seeing Anne, he stormed 'I like her not!' which isn't a great start to a marraige but nothing he could do about it without imperiling the vital alliance.
Henry blamed me personally for placing his neck into the yoke and at his wedding speech he said 'if it were not to satisfy the world and my realm, I would not do this day what I must do this day' but i hoped that his mood might improve after he actually bedded Anne.
Nope, the morning after the wedding night he declared: 'I liked her before not well but now I like her much worse'.
I felt bad for Anne but even worse for me because six months after this Henry had the marriage annulled on the grounds on non-consummation and but I wasn’t so lucky.
I was arrested on a false charge of heresy, and with Henry saying that he was putting to death the most faithful servant he ever had which gave me little comfort as I was then beheaded and impaled on a spike on top London Bridge.

Hegworth's 21st Century Crusade

The US Secretary of Defense, sorry the morons renamed it War so Pete Hegseth, the US Secretary of War is covered with numerous tattoos and most are dedicated to the Christian faith so he has the Jerusalem Cross on the right side of his body, which consists of a large Christian cross surrounded by four smaller crosses in each quadrant. It is a symbol that dates back to the 13th century, when it was used as a symbol of the Kingdom of Jerusalem during the Crusades.
He has the phrase 'Deus Vult' tattooed on his bicep, which means 'God's will be done', which again comes from the Crusades and was a battle cry for the Christians.
On on his arm is an inked cross with a sword, which symbolizes the Bible verse Matthew 10:34 which reads 'Do not think that I have come to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword'.
His forearm has the letters chi and ro, the name of Christ in Greek and then he goes the full mad gun nut with a US flag with a sniper at the bottom of the stars and stripes, a reference to the Second Amendment.
One of Trumps biggest supporters when he farted out the nonsense that was taking a long-term ownership position of Gaza which included handing it over to Israel and ethnically cleansing the area of Palestinians, he is saying that the US is prepared to look at all options for the aftermaths of the genocide committed by Israel but as a Christian who has reaffirmed that the United States remains 100% committed to Israel's security and emphasized the unbreakable bond that exists between the United States and Israel, you do wonder how fair handed he would be.
If he is such a fan of the Crusades where Christians sought to slaughter the Muslims in the Holy lands and expel them while claiming Israel for their God, then i assume he sees this as a 21st Century Crusade.
As someone once said, America is a nice country but could be even nicer if their parents were at home.

Sex And Drugs And Pension Pots

Money. People fight for it, die for it and put it in china pigs but you would need a massive Piggy Bank to hold the £3.1m which is how much it is being advised generation Z need to save in their pension pot to retire comfortably?
To reach this figure a 25-year-old today who wants to go on an annual holiday and the odd UK weekend break after they stop work, and if they live for another 25 years afterwards, will need to find £1,600 a month to squirrel away.
Obviously good luck with that if you’re a nurse, a teacher, policemen or mostly anything actually unless you plan to spend the next 40 years of your working life eating beans from a tin and living in a single room with a candle for warmth and light like a 21st Century Scrooge, none of that having a good time when you have your pension to think about.
The good news is that you can aim a bit lower in your dotage and the analysis found that gen Zs will need £2.2m for a moderate lifestyle and £947,700 for a minimum one and then it went into subjects such as buying an annuity or using drawdown and then i lost the will to live and began nodding off but then things like pension pots have never interested me, i find it all soooooo boring and the sort of things finance nerds go on about but i am 56 now and my pension plan is to win the lottery or find a Van Gogh painting in the back of the garage in the next 11 years.   
To be fair from 0-67 my big plan was to enjoy myself and let the later part of my life take care of itself so i say to Gen Z life is short, enjoy life while you can because you never know what tomorrow brings and if the options are scrimp and save to put £1,600 in your pension plan or blow it on sex and drugs and Rock n roll, the memories of the latter will keep you warm more than that memory of that month a few decades back when you managed to save a bit extra from buying recycled toilet paper.

Kemi Who?

Party conference season and this week is the turn of the Conservatives led by...hang on let me check my notes...Kemi Badenoch.
Kemi kicked it all off with a live interview on the BBC this morning and it was...well, not great.
The BBC kept the strap-line 'Kemi Badenoch: Conservative Party Leader' up all the way through just in case someone turned on the TV and wondered who Laura Kuenssberg was talking to because the Conservatives are sinking faster than a lead balloon with half a dozen house bricks tied to it.
Up first her brilliantly ill thought out plan to deport 150,000 people a year and leaving the European convention on human rights and when asked where they would be deported to, replied that it was irrelevant and went on to asked herself another question and went on to answer that instead and the answer was it didn’t really matter where we sent them. They could go anywhere, as far as she was concerned and only the Tories under her had the credibility and competence to pull it off.
Yes, she said it in all seriousness and to show just how credible and competent she was went on to reply that America and Canada were not signatories to the European Court of Human Rights when she was asked if she really wanted to join Russia and Belarus as the only countries not to be signed up.
Geography not big on the syllabus in her school obviously.
Laura, to her credit, didn't burst out laughing but just politely pointed out that the US and Canada were not in Europe and after a long silence, moved onto other things but you could tell Kemi was deflating and tried to boost herself by exclaiming that 'We can win the next election' and it is true that Kemi has achieved the seemingly impossible, she inherited a Conservative Party straight after its worse poll ratings and lowest amount of Parliamentary seats in its history, and taken them even further backwards.
When the worst defeat ever in your history is the high point in her party’s fortunes, it’s going to be a very long week.

The Ignorance And Hatred Saddens Me

In 2022, Britain rewrote the definition of antisemitism and now defines it as: 'Language or behaviour that displays hatred towards Jews because they are Jews' and that is right, nobody should be displaying hatred towards anyone for their religion and neither for their sexuality, skin colour or gender but after the terror attacks in Manchester where two Jews were killed in Manchester at a Synagogue, it needs to be hammered home that Judaism and Israel are separate things.
I have cringed and corrected people many times when they have failed to separate the two when criticising the countries actions and Israel itself doesn't help when anyone criticising them, automatically scream 'anti-semitism' to try and shut it down which only waters down the shouts when real anti-semitism, like this, happens.
I was talking about this to some friends, two of whom happen to be visibly Muslim, and they agreed that it is right to criticise a nation like Israel for it's actions as we criticise Russia, America or Britain if they did the same and it is not the same as criticizing Jews, nobody went after Christians when George W Bush and Tony Blair were at their warmongering worst and it would have been ridiculous if they had.   
I once had a long discussion on this blog with someone who tried to choke off my criticism of Israel by calling me an anti-Semite during one of the many times when Israel was pounding Gaza and his argument was that by me having a go at Israel, I was also having a go at Jews because they are the only Jewish state.
My counter argument was if that is the criteria then any criticism of England is anti-Church of England because we are the only Church of England nation.
My friends explained that as Muslims, and when ISIS was running rampage through the Middle East, they were constantly being asked if they supported them and to condemn the group and i remember it at the time, almost every Muslim had to explain how they didn't support the terror group, they just happened to share a religion and it is the same thing now for some people, Jews=support Israeli actions, Muslim = support ISIS actions but not once was a Christian asked if they supported British actions in any of our recent wars, wars we instigated.
Please, if your mind does work this way then engage the few braincells that you possess and stop the mindless violence against an innocent population. If you feel that strongly, boycott Israeli goods or join one of the many demonstrations against Israel but don't take out your anger on innocent people who could very well be as disgusted at Israel as you are if you only bothered to ask.

Special Guest Blogger: John Phillips

All the leaves may have been brown and the sky grey but for me the 60s where mostly white, cocaine white.
I was the driving force behind the Mamas & the Papas but before i was writing sunny flower-child anthems with ear-pleasing harmonies and my first stop was focusing all my energy on my successful folk band The Journeymen. Well, not all of my energy…i made sure to save some for the groupies including 17-year-old Holly Michelle Gilliam who i married and now went by the name Michelle Phillips.
I put her into singing lessons and before long, we were making beautiful music together alongside Cass Elliot and Denny Doherty as the Mama & the Papas.
As the Mamas & the Papas produced hit after hit, life was getting messy behind the scenes. Michelle couldn’t keep her hands off our bandmate Denny Doherty and we were both having affairs but the 60s were a time of blurred lines in the name of free love, baby.
Our house was party central with mind-altering substances available on every surface, and in vases and bowls but another one was Roman Polanski's place and i pulled out of one particular to go to the beach and get high instead so missed the massacre, drugs actually saving my life that time.  
The world at large was pretty turbulent in 1969 and so was we as the Mamas & the Papas disbanded, Michelle and I divorced and I was not in a good place.
I had a go at a solo career but that stank so i just took even more drugs but mind-altering substances weren’t cheap and i owed close to a quarter of a million to the tax man so i left the US and moved to the UK and lived just down the street from Mick Jagger and Keith Richards of The Rolling Stones which never helped as they got me addicted to the really hard stuff.
Not surprisingly, all of my hard living was hard on my bodies organs, and my heart and liver teamed up on me and both failed.

What History Tells Us About This Peace Deal

Hamas and Netanyahu, what a couple to be putting your trust in regrading any peace deal but Donald Trump seems to be so keen to get his Peace Award that he is declaring it 'peace in our time' although i would trust either as far as i could throw the 26 stone American President.
Already Netanyahu has said that he will not pull Israeli troops out, will continue to go after Hamas members in Gaza and will not allow a Palestinian State to exist beside Israel, both of which are essential parts of the 20 point plan which Israel have signed up to and Hamas are saying they will accept with amendments.
The word Peace must mean something very different in Hebrew because since the November 2024 ceasefire with Lebanon, Israel has not withdrawn from Southern Lebanon and have killed 123 according to the UN Human Rights Office who are calling for Israel to make more effort to keep to the agreed ceasefire.
Since Donald Trump told Israel to stop bombing Gaza 24 hours ago to give the peace talks a chance, Israel has bombed homes and businesses in Gaza and killed 61. 
Hamas are concerned that once they release all the hostages as per the first of the 20 steps, Israel will just restart the genocide and that is what they do, they have done it so many times before including the last ceasefire when they moved the goalposts and made such demands that when Hamas refused, went back to the original plan of killing as many Palestinians as possible.     
It is obviously good news that we have a ceasefire at all and we can only hope that it lasts and Israelis and Palestinians can live in peace but we have been here so many times before and each time it has fallen down and the cycle begins again but this time we have to make sure both sides stick to their promises, Hamas stop threatening the safety of Israel and Israel stop the ongoing genocide and forcing Palestinians off their own land.
Since the first UN Resolution in 1967 demanding Israel stop the military occupation of Palestine and return to the pre-1967 borders, Israel has continued to forcibly suppress, steal land and murder Palestins so there is as much chance of Israel agreeing to a peace deal as there was of anyone finding salad in Donald Trumps fridge and over time the Palestinians have been forced to progressively narrow their conception of acceptable peace, let alone a fair peace.
History shows that after every peace talks (1967, 1978, 1991, 1993, 1995, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2005) Israel has made promises it hasn't kept and have never withdrawn their troops or stopped the military occupation or even considered giving Palestine its own nation, even before the 65,000 deaths in this current war, the grim death toll of Palestinians killed by Israel stood at 134,000 and have been condemned in 45 resolutions by United Nations Human Rights Council, almost more resolutions condemning Israel than on the rest of the world combined.
We can hope that this one holds and Palestine and Israel begin living beside each other in peace but history tells us, Israel won't allow it to happen because they never have.