Royal Referendum

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

How You Like Your Eggs? Expensive!

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

I'll Take Mine Black Thanks

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

Americanos (LucyP Mix)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Unfathomable Negligence

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

Eating Halal Meat Is Just Wrong

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

What Ceasfire In Palestine?

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

US Economy Tanking...Quelle Surprise

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

More Women Running The World?

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

Violence In The Media

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

Boycotting America

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

This Is Just The Trailer For Climate Change

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

Science Proving God?

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

Stephen King The Soothsayer?

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

Stay Out Of The Black And Into The White

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

AI Learning From Music Lyrics

 

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

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

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

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

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

Agent Trump...You Did Well Comrade

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

Last Day Of Winter

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

Trump (Possibly) Coming To UK

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

Trump Email Leak

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

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

Just Another January Day In 1913 Vienna

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

Still Making Me Laugh Today

The awful Tate Brothers are back in te News after being released from Romania to travel to the United States. Why the United States would want them there is anybodies guess but as they are accused of sex offences, and as the Top Banana there is a sex offender himself then we can expect to see a happy union of them all together soon but the Tate Bellend's  being out and about does give me a chance to relive one of the best and funniest posts on this Blog which was written way back in 2022.

I will let 2022 Lucy tell it.   

2022 comes to an end with one of the greatest stories of the year and it all begins when former kick-boxer and professional misogynist Andrew Tate, who was reinstated on Twitter, decided to celebrate his comeback and attempt to bolster his chauvinistic reputation to his fans by sending a tweet to Climate activist Greta Thunberg which said: 'Please provide your email address so I can send a complete list of my car collection and their respective enormous emissions'.
The brilliant Greta, not one to back down, replied: 'Yes, please do enlighten me. email me at smalldickenergy@getalife.com.'
It would be funny enough if the story ended there but it goes up another level when her hysterical reply gained traction and began trending, being liked 3.5 million times and shared directly 650,000.
Tate, obviously miffed that he had been so thoroughly taken down by a female, smouldered about it and hours later tweeted out a video in which he tried to reassert his masculinity by blathering on about what a virile, red blooded man he was in a dressing gown, with a cigar and a pizza box which clearly had Romanian branding on it which tipped off the Romanian police to his location and the Romanian Police were after him for alleged rape and sex trafficking.
Not long afterwards, the Authorities swooped and arrested him and his brother and they are now both sat in a Romanian cell awaiting trial.
Again, if it ended there it would be glorious, the fact that if he had not tried to demean and humiliate Thunberg he would not have attracted the attention to himself which saw him arrested but the majestic Greta had one more tweet to send which was the final coup de grâce to the whole sage.
Her tweet simply said: 'This is what happens when you don’t recycle your pizza boxes' and has been liked 2.6 million times.

Still makes me laugh now and couldn't happen to a better couple of morons.

Damn You God

I was reading a story about how in Romania a murderer unsuccessfully attempted to sue God for 'not protecting him from the influence of the Devil' when he committed his crime and apparently he got the idea from another unsuccessful previous case in the USA when in 1971, an inmate sued Satan for deliberately placing obstacles in his path which caused his downfall.
I do remember writing about a more recent case in Nebraska where the state senator sought to sue God for 'widespread death, destruction and terrorisation of millions upon millions of the Earth's inhabitants' but despite reserving an empty table for God and God’s attorney, he had his case thrown out of court because the defendant has no address so legal papers could not be served.
To be honest, I would say it was just as well because there was a very real possibility that God would lose the case as Hurricanes, Tsunamis and any other natural disaster that you care to name are actually called acts of God, how much more guilty could he be?
If God has gone into hiding and isn't going to step forward to defend his name, how about suing the Pope who is meant to be God's representative here on Earth. We know where he lives. Just look for the old in the funny hat sat in a hospital bed tearing out the condom adverts in the magazines.

Woo Hoo, 3 Day Weekends

Businesses are slowly ordering their staff back into the Office five days a week as the Working From Home era seems to be fizzling out but what could be replacing it is a four day week and the specter of the universal basic income (UBI) once again rears its strange head and trials have begun in some places in London with people receiving £1600 a month for doing nothing with their health and well-being monitored.
The Idea of UBI and a shortened work week gets taken down and given a dusting every now and then and even more now with Ai able to do many of the jobs previously done by humans.
I have never been able to square the circle of how UBI would work because who would pay for it it nobody was working or paying tax but i can certainly see benefits from a four day working week  but the devil would be in the details of if you would lose a day's pay or would you be expected to cram a five day week into four days which would make the whole episode pretty pointless if the idea is to relax workers.
The problem for Governments is that Ai is coming and so are the army of AI replaced unemployed workers so something is going to have to give, i'm just not sure what yet.

Modern Living Making Us Ill

When i was younger there used to be adverts with 1 in 4 people getting cancer but now the odds seem to be 1 in 2 and whereas it always used to be something older people got, it seems to be hitting younger people these days.
Studies in Scotland, Sweden and New Zealand has found that Cancer was being diagnosed more often than in previous years among people under 50 and when they broadened out the research, they found that  young people around the world are getting many different kinds of cancer at alarmingly high rates and asked 'Why is cancer increasingly striking people in the primes of their lives?'
Globally, diagnoses and deaths related to Cancer in the under 50's rose by 79% from 1990 to 2019, according to a recent study published in the medical journal BMJ Oncology with it rising most commonly in the breast, colon, rectum, pancreas, and stomach and while the majority of cancer sufferers are over 50, the under 50s group is the only age group for which the risk is rising.
The rise in diagnoses is partly comes down to advances in our ability to detect and diagnose Cancer but Scientists say there is a more complex web of factors in modern life and lifestyle choices affecting younger adults.
Classic risk factors such as drinking and smoking do not seem to fully explain the recent rise in Cancers as even young, nonsmoking women, for example, are being diagnosed with lung cancer in strangely high numbers and theories include ultra-processed foods, red meat and unhealthy fast foods contributing to weight gain.
Other researchers blame the microplastics littering our environment and leaching into our food and water supplies or one of any number of potential health hazards in the modern world  but they are agreed that something in our Modern World is making us seriously ill.

Gonna Need A Bigger Freezer

We have all played the game that if a massive Asteroid was about to smash into earth what would we do. Personally mine involves David Boreanaz, a length of industrial sellotape and a tub of ice cream so Häagen-Dazs had better stock up because the odds of 2024 YR4 asteroid hitting Earth has risen again.
A few weeks ago the 100m killer Asteroid was 83/1 to smash into us and then that was slashed to 43/1 but now the boffins have been back on the slide rules and calculators and have said the odds are now 33/1 that it will  cause 'severe damage' to whichever part of the Globe it hits at about 38,000mph.
The Asteroid is currently 27 million miles away and scientists have just a few more weeks to observe it before it disappears from view until 2028 when it turns around the Sun and heads our way with a likely date of December 2032 when it reaches us.
The shortening odds mean the Asteroid hasn't unduly concerned scientists though because they are stressing that there is no need for alarm and that the odds of an impact will fluctuate before it gets here anyway and would not be surprised if the impact odds drop to zero at some point.
The Asteroid's current trajectory takes it across the Southern Hemisphere and the Eastern Pacific Ocean, Northern South America, the Atlantic Ocean, Africa, the Arabian Sea, and South Asia but the good news is that it's made of a rocky substance rather than more robust materials like iron, which is significant because it means it could break into smaller pieces if it enters Earth's atmosphere so all we might get is one hell of an light show.
Still, doesn't hurt to prepare so gonna need a bigger freezer to hold all that Bourbon Praline Pecan Ice Cream.

Ceasefire? What Ceasefire?

Despite the ceasefire deal, Israel has postponed the release of 620 prisoners, has bombed cities in Lebanon and has parked tanks in the Palestinian West Bank and ordered troops to remain there 'for the coming year' and not to allow the return of 40,000 displaced residents.
A new report published in the U.K. medical journal The Lancet, indicates that the 47,000 deaths so far is likely an underestmate and the true number of the dead could be as high as 64,260 with a further 10,000 more bodies buried under the rubble which in total is about 3% of Gaza’s population dead since October 2023.
The report goes on to say that the horrific death toll from Israel's military operation is likely even higher, as its analysis does not include non-trauma-related deaths caused by disruption to healthcare, lack of food, clean water and sanitation, and disease outbreaks and the United Nations have repeatedly spoken out about Israel falling woefully short of allowing into the Gaza Strip the supply of the desperately needed aid.
Israel has shot and killed at least 25 Gazan's since the start of the ceasefire with the Israeli military not even trying to deny, saying Israeli soldiers fired on a crowd of Gaza residents several times as the crowd 'posed a threat' and in Lebanon, 120 were injured and 22 people killed while trying to return to their homes in the South of the country where Israel was meant to have vacated under their peace agreement, again for the vague reason of 'posing a threat to Israeli soldiers'.
With Donald Trump in the White House bizarrely backing the side committing the genocide and with Netanyahu reportedly to have persuaded several Ministers threatening to resign over the peace agreement with Hamas that Israel would resume its war on Gaza irrespective of the terms of the ceasefire and continually accusing Hamas of violations and issuing menacing threats to return to the conflict, then the death and destruction again looms on the horizon and the International community needs to treat Israel as the Pariah it has become and heavily sanction it.

Funding Increased Defence Spending

The Labour Party have been making noises about increasing defence spending to 2.5% of GDP which would could require several billion pounds more annually, with the UK’s military spending for 2024-2025 pegged at £64.4 billion.
However, with the economy bumping along the bottom it raises the obvious question of how will the increase be funded?  
Will our taxes go up to pay for it or will services be cut or budgets from other departments trimmed even though the previous Government cut almost anything that could be cut over the last 14 years.
Something i heard is cutting the Aid budget again, it is already at a reduced 0.5% of GDP or £10 billion, that is 6 times less on improving peoples lives than we pay on buying the bombs and bullets to take lives which is beyond obscene.
Keir Starmer could use it as an excuse to take us back into the EU Single Market, that would be an injection of the 4% of GDP we lost when we foolishly voted ourselves out but there is something else we could consider, get rid of the ridiculous Nuclear Weapons.
The Governments own website spells out that the initial cost of the Nuclear upgrade in 2017 was £133 billion and the annual upkeep of our nuclear weapons is £20 billion a year. If we have that sort of money knocking around to spend on nuclear missiles, then why are we wasting it on a way of killing millions of people rather than building schools and hospitals and paying the staff a decent wage?
The problem with nuclear weapons is if they are ever used, that would be the end of the World as launching a nuclear missile will not go unanswered and guarantee that whatever devastation you wreak on your enemy, the same will be wreaked on you, in a nuclear war, nobody wins, everybody loses.
There are a few who argue that we still need to retain our nuclear weapons for our safety although recent years has seen terrorist attacks in America, UK, Israel, China and Russia so the possession of nuclear weapons does not make a state secure and are absolutely no use against terrorists and the only point i can see for them, unless you count contributing to ending all human and animal life on the planet as an aim.
So there's your choices Mr Starmer, cut essential services and put up our taxes or scrap an exorbitantly expensive weapon we will never use or if we do use will mean there will be no need to fund anything else as we will be yet another lifeless rock circling a Star.

My CV

Another Labour MP has been caught 'embellishing' their CV and i do have some sympathy because everyone does it and so before someone digs into mine and exposes my own 'embellishments', i have decided to come clean and correct some factual inaccuracies.
I was not a Consultant for one of Britain's leading Insurance companies, i bought House Insurance from one and and then completed a survey on how i found the process but as the email said, it was used to improve their service so in many ways, i did give them valuable advice.
I did attend the prestigious Winchester college, I attended a Summer Fair there once and i am fluent in 5 language, just not foreign ones but i could hold a very good conversation in English, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand and American.
As for my qualifications, I do have a BSc,  i got a Bronze Swimming Certificate in Year 10 for swimming 2 lengths of the pool and those 2 years at RADA were true, that was how long i was a member of the Rotherham Automobile Drivers Association.
I do feel better for getting that off my chest and in that time honoured tradition of recent Labour Ministers, i will be blaming someone else for it.

Now They Tell Me!!

After being inspired by Bob Ross 'Joy of Painting', I signed up for an online Art course a few years ago and i can bang out a cloud and a mountain but I seem to have a real problem with dimensions and many a canvas has been ditched because of it and i mentioned it in the group chat and got the answer that i should trace the outline first.
I said that would be like cheating and blow me, it turns out that i was probably the only person NOT doing it!
Something called the Da Vinci Eye is particularity popular and throws the picture onto paper or canvas so you can sketch it out before painting and although it would be very useful, that doesn't feel right to me, its like the audio books which i maintain doesn't count as 'reading' a book.
I checked with a few other artists and it seemed split between yep its cheating and nope, it's perfectly fine but to me Art should be from your imagination where you paint what is in your mind's eye and then after deciding it's shite, painting over it in a huff and starting all over again.
The fact that nobody told me about Blending Stumps for pencil drawings was bad enough but now to find out that some of the brilliant art work i see from my fellow learners is actually a traced copy of something else just makes me think am i the mug for doing it the way i thought it should be done?
Maybe i should make Bob proud and just stick to painting mountains and clouds with a few trees thrown in but have to admit, it is tempting to get some additional help so my painted people don't end up looking like an Easter Island statue.

Trump's Disinformation Bubble

I don't like to keep writing about Donald Trump but when it was clear that he was going to be voted back into Office, the happiest people were Fascists, Journalists and Comedians as all of us would get some decent material from the re-elected President of USA.
Obviously, voting someone into power with the IQ of a compost heap and diminishing with each passing day was never going to be a good idea but with the added bonus of throwing a cretin like Elon Musk into the mix it is beyond our wildest dreams which is why we are seeing them lay off Air Safety staff hot on the heels of a rash of plane crashes and realising that firing 300 employees responsible for managing America's nuclear weapons was not such a good idea after a grown up explained to him that it could have dire national security implications.  
Less than a month in and already he has most of the World leaders hoping he gives some more speeches outdoors in Pennsylvania but today he gave his opinion on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and seemed to blame Ukraine for starting it.
In comments after a meeting between American and Russian officials in Saudi Arabia, the Marmalade faced US president said of Ukraine: 'They've had a seat at the table for three years and a long time before that. You should have never started it. You could have made a deal.'
In his defence it could be that when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022 he was occupied with court cases around his sexual abuse of a woman in a changing room or the 34 Fraud Charges he was found guilty of so he missed it but i am sure the it would have been mentioned in the President's Daily Brief but again, maybe it had long words and no drawings in crayon so he never noticed it but Volodymyr Zelenskyy reminded him by saying he is in a 'disinformation bubble' and that Trump has not just drunk the Kremlin’s Kool-Aid, but is now bathing in it.
Just as Trump's idea of ethnically cleansing Gaza to please the genocidal maniac in charge of Israel was as popular as a pin in a condom factory, this latest idea of rewarding the Invading Russians with land they stole is not getting that much support outside of Moscow but with the way Trumps brain is disintegrating before our very eyes, i'm sure it will be forgotten shortly and we will be discussing something else, Pennsylvanian outdoor events allowing.

World Press Freedom Index 2024

Every year Reporters Without Borders publish The World Press Freedom Index (WPFI) based on an assessment of each countries' journalists freedoms for the previous year.
There are 180 countries and each is given a score under five categories with the first being the degree of media autonomy and top are Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Netherlands and Finland with Canada 14th, France 21st, the United Kingdom 23rd, Australia 39th, the USA 55th, Russia 162nd, China 172nd and the worst places of the 180 nations are Iran, North Korea,  Afghanistan,  Syria and Eritrea.      
The economic indicator evaluates economic constraints linked to governmental policies, advertisers and commercial partners and media owners and the Scandinavians come out of this well again with the top 5 being Norway, Sweden, Netherlands, Denmark and Finland with the UK 18th, Australia 27th, USA 33rd, Russia 148th, China 163rd  and the bottom 5 are Vietnam, Syria, Eritrea, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan.
The legal indicator evaluates the level of censorship and top is Sweden, then Norway, Denmark, Netherlands and the Dominican Republic with Canada 11th, USA 41st, UK 42nd, Australia 60th, Russia 157th, China 172nd and the bottom 5 Belarus, Myanmar, Eritrea, Afghanistan and Cuba.
The sociocultural indicator evaluates the impact of social and cultural constraints obstructing journalistic freedom and number 1 is Norway, Estonia, Portugal, Netherlands and Denmark and Canada is 22nd, UK is 40th, USA 54th, Russia 149th, 173rd China and the bottom is Iran, Syria, North Korea, Afghanistan and Turkmenistan.
The security indicator evaluates the risk of physical, psychological or professional harm against Journalists and the safest place is Luxembourg, then Liechtenstein, Samoa, Switzerland and Denmark with Canada 36, Australia 40th, UK 50th, USA 118th, Russia 168th, China 172nd and the least safest being Iran, Myanmar, Eritrea, Afghanistan and Syria.
All the above is rolled into one to get a final score and the freest places to be a journalist are Norway then Denmark, Sweden, Netherlands and Finland with Canada 14th, France 21st, United Kingdom 23rd, Australia 39th, United States 55th, Israel 101st, and the places where you really should reconsider your career choices are Iran, North Korea, Afghanistan, Syria and bottom of the pile Eritrea.

Richard Tice: Professional Thicko

The Reform Party gene pool has a very shallow end with some very high diving boards which is why they are so very wrong on many things and we can add another one to the list today as the Deputy Richard Tice rejected the idea that Climate Change was man made and it is actually down to the Sun and volcanoes and that there was no evidence that man-made CO2 is going to change climate change as it had done on for millions of years.
Tice also said that there are thousands of scientists who agreed with him which must have come as a shock to him when the scientists then all slapped their head in the universal sign which said 'You thicko' and explained why he was being even more of a douchebag then usual.
Dr George Adamson from King's College London began by saying that the climate had indeed changed over million of years but these changes were now happening in decades rather than over tens of thousands of years and called Tice idea that it wasn't man made as: 'Preposterous'.
Dr Andrew Jarvis from Lancaster University called Tice's comments 'categorically wrong' while Dr Philipp Breul from Imperial College London said Mr Tice was missing the point as: 'We are causing the climate to change significantly faster than it has in the last million years'.
Up next was Professor Sheila Rowan, vice president of The Royal Society of independent scientists, who said that 'the evidence is clear that burning fossil fuels has resulted in fundamental changes to our planet' and then Bob Ward, policy director at LSE University's Grantham Research Institute and Geological Society who said: 'There is not a single credible scientific organisation in the UK or the world that agrees with him about the causes or consequences of climate change.
I guess if Sky News had more time or a 6 year old with some crayons they could have explained it to him or they could have just wheeled out any of the 99% of Climate Scientists who agree that humans are causing recent climate change but then this is a man who still insists that Brexit was a good idea so hey ho, the eyes were open and the mouth was moving but Mr Brain had long since departed Richard Tice's head.

The War Nobody Is Talking About

With everyone looking at the wars going on in Middle East and Eastern Europe, the one in Central Africa seems to be going under the Radar and has for the past few decades.
After years of conflict fueled by the plundering of mineral resources, fighting in the Democratic Republic of Congo has caused 'unimaginable hardship' according to the United Nations.
The fighting has centered around control of the nations gold mines and reserves of diamonds, gold, tin ore, coltan and tungsten ore with the nations mineral wealth is estimated at $24 trillion and the recent conflict over Goma ended with at least 2,800 people dead and displaced hundreds of thousands.
The Rwandan-backed armed group, M23, have been over-running the Conolese Army and capturing mining towns alongside Rwandan troops and other militia groups and Amnesty International has accused all sides of carrying out attacks that: 'constitute war crimes' and the Congolese Presdient, Félix Antoine Tshisekedi Tshilombo, has called on the international community to help keep the peace in the region, which the West replied by condemning the Rwandans and then doing nothing much else.  
Since the turn of the year fighting has forced around 700,000 people to flee their homes, the United Nations said and Camps sheltering displaced people have been bombed and fighters have also occupied schools and hospitals.
U.N. human rights chief, Volker Turk, said last week the worst could be yet to come, adding he was horrified by emerging, multiple reports of rape, gang rape and sexual slavery and The World Health Organization (WHO) has also warned of disease outbreaks with the M23 group expelling Aid agencies. Global Witness issued a 110 page report of who is buying the Congolese minerals and amazingly found  European and Asian companies, including the British groups AMC,  Afrimex buying minerals used to make mobile phones, computers and other electronics from the disputed mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) that are funding the armed groups and shamefully, when asked if they would stop, replied that had no controls in place to stop conflict minerals entering their supply chain.

Musk Wealth Tanking

The Nazi saluting Elon Musk doesn't seem to be worried where his next meal is coming from which is just as well because the World's richest fascist has seen staggering sales drops, swastika-daubed EVs and companies culling his Tesla fleet models.
Musk’s toxicity among many Europeans is such that even owners of Tesla news websites have ditched Muskmobiles for other EV brands. Jon Gibbs of Birmingham, England, runs what he calls the world’s biggest Tesla inventory site but even he has dumped his Musk car for a BMW iX electric SUV.
Maybe his MAGA fans or the right wing oddballs will make up for the decline elsewhere but his estimated $394.2 billion must be taking a hit after as he was worth $486 billion previously and Tesla makes about 60% of his wealth according to Yahoo Finance but it isnt just the Tesla shareholders who will be getting nervous, his social media platform X has lost 71% of its value since he bought by Elon Musk which he acquired for $44bn in October 2022 and is now worth $12.5bn.
Couldn't happen to a nicer Nazi loving imbecile.

First, Second and Third Thoughts On Trump Peace Plan

My first thought when i heard Donald Trump was negotiating with Russia to end the War in Ukraine was one of relief as it has gone on far too long and too many people have been killed but then my second thought piped up and said hang on, Trump and Putin deciding it without Ukraine having a say and then my third thought chipped in with he is giving Putin the reward of whatever he wants for invading another nation so Zelenskyy should tell him to shove it up his huge arse at which point my first thought did the 'ahem' thing and i went full circle.
I did make the joke that the first thing Trump asked when Putin picked up the phone was ensure that the Pee Tape was still safely locked away and as i have heard other people say that since, i claim ownership of it and if anyone has said it since Thursday then i expect royalties.
What i don't understand is why Trump would tell Putin what he would get out of not killing innocent Ukrainians anymore (i.e. they can keep the land they have stolen and Ukraine would not enter NATO) before negotiations have even begun but then this is one of the World's worst ever businessmen so that explains all those bankruptcies and i assume Putin must have thought when he heard that everything is on the table, i wonder if i can get the table also?
So i am torn between just ending a horrific war and not rewarding Russia for invading another nation with the victim wondering where they stand in all of it and realising well, nowhere particularly and not only are they not in the driving seat for negotiations like they should be but are not even in the car, more like cycling furiously along behind it.
That does seem to be the Trump negotiating tactic though, throw the victims under the bus (Palestinians, Ukrainians) and reward the genocidal warmongers in Tel Aviv and Moscow who can only feel emboldened that they have the backing of such a simpleton in the White House and must be considering their next move in warmongery.
Israel, i assume once they have ethnically cleansed the Palestinians from their own land will carry on their expansion into Syria and Lebanon and Russia will be fluttering their eyelashes at the likes of former Soviet Nations such as Georgia or Estonia while reminding Trump that it would be such a shame if that video of his stay in Moscow's posh Ritz-Carlton Hotel in 2013 got leaked,yep, that would be a real shame.

When A Boy Falls In Love

 

There are many songs by you humans about being in Love and the things your heart goes through when you meatbags fall in Love but the songwriters of mushy ballads have a very different view of it to biologists who can actually explain in details what happens.

You see love triggers the release of various chemicals associated with pleasure in the brain, such as dopamine, oxytocin, and vasopressin and when you are engaging with things that bring you pleasure, neurotransmitters in your mushy brain lead you to pursue that reward again and again so your brain says, 'Do that again.'

Norepinephrine and adrenaline can also flow into the brain's center, causing places such as the amygdala to give a sort of nervous and restless feeling, which increases blood flow and heart rate and the rate of many of your body's systems so your your palms get sweaty and you get jelly legs.

As such, your 'love' is no more than a mere feeling induced by a bunch of hormones in the brain all working together which may not be quite so romantic but it shows that Sam Cooke really had no idea about what happens when a Boy, or anyone, falls in love.

Heart's And Flower's

Today is the most romantic day of the year, Heart's can be seen everywhere from heart shaped chocolates to sentimental cards and Hearts have long been a symbol of Love and  affection so give you heart away today, or at least wait until you are dead which is what Mary Shelley did, carrying around her Husbands heart in her purse for 30 years after he died in a sailing accident.  
Frédéric Chopin’s Heart is pickled in alcohol in the Basilica of the Holy Cross in Warsaw, removed after his death but after Thomas Hardy went to meet his maker, the doctor removed is heart and while they argued over where to bury it, the family cat sneaked in and ate it while Robert the Bruce's organ was taken in to battle, worn around the neck of his troops before being returned to Scotland.  
The Trevi Fountain in Rome is home to 22 urns with each holding the hearts of a Popes inside them but William Buckland, the 18th Century Dean of Westminster, when shown the mummified heart of King Louis XIV of France, picked it up and swallowed it.
There is an Urban legend from the Middle Ages, a story that has inspired many horror stories, a gruesome tale called the Legend of the Eaten Heart.
In the story, a married woman takes a lover and her husband finds out he kills his love rival and cuts out his heart, cooks it and feeds it to his wife telling her it is actually a steak and after she has finished, he tells her what she has really just eaten and in her distress throws herself to her death out of a window.
Have a great day, show your husband, wife, boyfriend or girlfriend how much you love and appreciate them but if they offer to cook you a steak, maybe go to a restaurant. 

Denmark Make Offer For California

Denmark trying to buy America was a bit of fun, what they really wanted was just the good bits which is why they are now offering to buy just California for a trillion dollars, or 7,142,285,000,000 Danish Krone. If the deal goes through they are offering to rename the State 'New Denmark',  change Disneyland to Hans Christian Andersenland and bring hygge to Hollywood because as they put it: 'Denmark needs more sunshine, palm trees, and roller skates'.
They will also make Los Angeles Løs Ångeles and introduce 'the rule of law, universal health care, and fact-based politics'.
The Eagles Hotel California will become Hotel Copenhagen, California Girls by the Beach Boys will be Roskilde Girls, Silkeborg Sol will be the new name for the Ramones California Sun,  Frederikshavn Dreaming instead of California Dreaming, Odense Paradise instead of The Runaways California Paradise, People will be singing if they know the way to Helsingør rather than Son Jose and  the Little Old lady isn't from Pasadena anymore, now she is from Ølstykke-Stenløse.
They are open to offers and have agreed to reluctantly also take Florida as long as the Orange Baboon and his family are ethnically cleansed from it first. 

Israel Looking To Resume Genocide In Gaza

With the ceasefire in Gaza seemingly about to come crashing down, it can't come as much of a surprise and i never thought it would last this long but we know who will get the blame for it failing.
Hamas has announced that the release of captives held in Gaza will be suspended citing Israeli violations of the ceasefire such as the delayed return of displaced people to different areas of Gaza and not allowing the entry of all aid that had been agreed upon as part of the deal.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reacted by saying that Israel would resume its bombing of Gaza if Hamas on Saturday if Hamas did not continue the release of captives which has drawn a response in Israel with protests against Netanyahu that a return to war would threaten the release of the remaining hostages if the deal fails.
Israel has killed more than 25 Palestinians since the ceasefire began and the UN has also said Israel has also fallen short in the supply of the desperately needed aid, while the inane mumbling of President Trump’s and the agreement of Israel around taking over Gaza and ethnically cleansing the Palestinians there hasn't helped but the Israeli Government were never keen on the ceasefire anyway.
The former National Security Minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, resigned from his cabinet position after the ceasefire was agreed, objecting to the truce and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich was widely reported to have been persuaded to remain in government only in return for assurances from Netanyahu that Israel would resume its war on Gaza, irrespective of the terms of the ceasefire.
Ben-Gvir, who boasted in January that he had repeatedly foiled efforts to halt the fighting, wrote on social media: 'Hamas’s announcement should have one real-life response: a massive fire attack on Gaza, from the air and land, alongside a complete halt to humanitarian aid to the Strip, including electricity, fuel, and water, and including the bombing of aid packages that have already been brought in and are in Hamas’ hands in Gaza. We must return to war and destroy!'
Netanyahu’s critics have frequently voiced the opinion that the prime minister has been prolonging the war including from the former US President, Joe Biden, who said there was: 'every reason for people to draw the conclusion that Netanyahu was perpetuating the conflict'.
We can only hope an agreement is reached and the war does not resume but if one side is hell bent on it, and has the backing of America and it's abominable leader to renew the killing, then this was just a brief pause in the ongoing Genocide in Palestine.

Why We Don't Ask Gen Z

New research from broadcaster Channel 4 reveals a trend towards support for authoritarianism among young people. The report found that 52% of the 2,000 13-27 year olds surveyed would agree that: 'the UK would be better with a strong leader in charge who does not have to bother with Parliament and elections' which correlates with a 2023 study from Open Society Foundations, which found that 42% of young people globally felt Autocratic rule was a good way of running a country. 
Luckily though Gen Z are in the minority, The Pew Research Centre asked people in 24 countries their view on five different types of Government and a strong leader making decisions without interference from the courts or Parliament that came out as the second least popular option with a median of just 26% saying it would be a good way to run the country with Sweden (94%) the Netherlands (87%) against it and in favour India (67%) and Kenya (52%).
The most favorable system was democratically elected representatives elected by citizens deciding what becomes law with a median of 77% expressing support for representative democracy with the lowest support in South Africa (32%) and Brazil (28%) and most keen Sweden (87%) and Germany (86%).
Direct democracy where citizens, not elected officials, vote directly on major issues  was second where a median of 70% said it would be a good way to run their country but it got the least amount of support in The Netherlands (37%) and Sweden (49%) but it seemed pretty popular in Greece (78%) and Germany (76%).
A technocracy which relies on experts rather than elected officials to make decisions for the good of the country sounded good to the Hungarians (80%) and the Spanish (65%) but not so much to the Dutch (53%) and French (52%).   
If an Autocracy came second to bottom, then the worst option was military rule although the Vietnamese didn't seem particularly unperturbed by the idea as 70% approved but 95% were against it in Germany but across all nations, 50% said things would improve if more women were elected into positions of Officialdom with people from India the most likely to believe policies will improve (60%) but not so much in Israel (33%) and Japan (32%) who believe policies would get worse.
How about a theocracy where government is run by divine guidance? Nigerians and Indonesians approved with 65% saying  policies would improve but In contrast it wouldn't have a prayer of taking off in Sweden (59%) or Australia (56%).
Sorry Generation Z but it seems you are stuck with Democracy.

Oh Bugger, I Agree With Trump!!!

I have had many showers and baths but i can't seem to get rid of this dirty feeling that i actually agree with Donald Trump about something.
Before i reach for the Carbolic Soap and Bleach, the issue the Apricot Arse and I agree on is transgender athletes in female sports and i admit i am not a Biologist as i spent most Biology lessons at school around the back of the bicycle sheds with Benson and Hedges but a male physiology is very different to a females, one scientist who did less smoking at school than i did put the advantage at as much as 34% which is very unfair that women could be competing against other athletes with such a biological advantage of having a male body that no amount of training will be enough to overcome the physical advantage.   
In any other walk of life i support the rights of anyone Transgender, but when it comes to sport i am completely in the camp that say's athletes who were once men should NOT be competing against women so i am firmly in agreement with the Tangerine Tyrant although i suspect for very different reasons.
I understand the argument that transgender athletes should be able to identify as male or female and more power to them, they can be who they like, but not in a competition, where some athletes take drugs for just a tiny advantage, a male body is just too much to advantageous to overcome for female athletes who, if reversed, would be left treading water if they competed against males.
The simplest way to avoid any confusion of what category someone should be in is the biological fact that though you may be able to change your gender, but you can never change your sex, that is biologically cast while in the womb (not at conception as the Marmalade Moron said) and you are destined to forever have XY or a XX chromosomes and no medical procedure can change your chromosomes.
It doesn't change the fact that i find myself agreeing with the Carrot faced Cretin in the White House which pains me but at least my view only applies to sport, he’s is a small part of what he called 'transgender insanity' in his weird fight against anyone that isn't white and male.
Phew, for a moment there i thought i was going to have to get a MAGA hat and have my brain surgically removed and replaced with a grapefruit.

Phwoor...Scrubs

Valentines Day is fast approaching and all single women are on the lookout for that hunks desk to land a Valentines Card on but if you work in economics or the finance sector then it seems you will be spending another February 14th alone, at home eating a microwave meal for one because singletons are not interested in what you have to offer and have their sights set on Medical personnel.
Hippocrates is considered the father of medicine but unless you are into baldy beardy men i don't fancy your chances much as he died over 2000 years ago but there is Egypt's Imhotep who was the first Doctor and he has I'm Hot' in his name although he died 2600 years ago so your potential partner should first be alive and then into saving lives.
A study of 2000 single men and women found that they are looking for Dr Right with 29% of respondents considering Healthcare workers as the sexist sector and then education (23%), emergency response workers (19%) with brace wearing Finance Johnnies (18%) booted down the league table to 8th, one below IT workers (17%) which to be fair is higher than i would have thought for the pasty faced computer nerds.
There was obviously a missing page in the release i got as i couldn't see Journalist on the list but for singles this Valentines Day, if you have an accident in a school, get taken to the Hospital by an Ambulance and then get treated by a Doctor that's the top three all hit in one day.

Why Do We Suck At Group Think?

Winston Churchill is credited with saying that Democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried which could be why he wasn't quite so keen to give the vote to other nations the British ruled over and manufactured famines, dropped chemical weapons and tortured them instead but what Democracy does give us is the chance to vote for window shakingly stupid things.
In the UK we got given the deciding decision on Brexit and in an amazing act of self harm voted for it and recently in America we saw Donald Trump voted back into Office, that is convicted criminal and sex offender Donald Trump whose first act was to release the thousands convicted of trying to subvert the Democratic process when he lost the 2020 vote and threw a petulant hissy fit.  
Delving into it we can say that the Voters were expressing a dissatisfaction with the status quo and either didn't know, or didn't care, that they were voting against their self-interest.
With Brexit the 52% are experiencing the non-benefits of their choices, Americans are quickly finding out their error but that is how Democracy works, everyone has to live with and abide by what the majority decide and so we go back to Winnie again who also said that the best argument against democracy is a conversation with the average voter.
There are many Psychological experiments which show Group Think which is when a group of people were asked to answer a question together they would attempt to come to a consensus with some conforming to the other view without critical reasoning or evaluation of the consequences or alternatives in a desire not to upset the balance of a group of people.
I have heard that we are moving into a 'post-democracy World' but i think that at some point, with AI becoming more critical to our lives, humans will be removed from the decision making process altogether because, to be fair, we have proved we are not very good at it.

Asteroid Destruction Odds Slashed

It was only a week ago that we heard of a 100m large asteroid barreling towards us to destroy whichever unfortunate city it landed on but that came with the soothing warning that it would probably just whizz harmlessly by and Scientists put the odds of it hitting us at 83/1.
A week is a long time in killer Asteroid detection though because that 83/1 has been slashed to 43/1 after the men in white coats at the European Space Agency had another look at the trajectory which if it does hit, will be somewhere South of the Equator between South America and sub-Saharan Africa.
To be fair 2024 YR4 is 27 million miles and eight years away so it must be difficult to be exact but the Worlds Telescope wielding fraternity are concerned enough to be  making recommendations to the United Nations that maybe they might like to consider doing something to deflect it.
The Asteroid has risen to the top of both NASA's Sentry Risk Table and European Space Agency's Impact Risk List but the caveat is that we shouldn't start to worry just yet as there have been several objects in the past that have risen to the top of the risk list to then drop off as more data comes in and new observations may result in reassignment of this asteroid to zero.
More updates are expected in due course ahead of December, 2032 which is when the asteroid could potentially strike our planet but as luck wuld have it, we have already been practising deflecting massive Space Rocks with the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) which rammed spacecraft into a 170 meter Asteroid and changed it's orbit.
It was also a test in capturing an Asteroid and putting it in orbit around the Moon so it was a large step towards us having an freaking pet Asteroid circling the Moon in one of the coolest astronomical ideas ever, oh and yes, also preventing the residents of Buenos Aires being wiped out which is also very important.
For all that i am not concerned for three reasons, 43/1 is still very long odds, secondly we have already moved an Asteroid by lobbing our old Spacecrafts at it and thirdly i am sat 3,826.26 miles North of the Equator.

Missing Out On The Why, When, Where, Who and How

The World can seem a scary place and if you watch the news every night or read the newspapers then it can seem every where you look bad things are happening which is why many people tell me they just don't bother anymore.
Research from the University of Jyvaskyla in Finland found that more and more people are limiting their consumption of news or generally avoid news and current affairs because it makes them feel emotional distress, sadness, fear and anger that sometimes affected their mental health.
Amongst younger people climate anxiety is a real thing, affecting their study, work and sleep and making them feel completely overwhelmed so they switch off and disengage and this may allow some emotional relief but it is only treating the symptom and the disease continues merrily on, the Israeli genocide in Gaza, Donald Trumps madness, the Ukrainian War and environmental disasters still go on, its just that you don't know about them.
Not reading or watching the news can be dangerous and there has been a decline of newspaper circulation and even news viewership especially in the age of social media misinformation and i do understand that, it is depressing but i do wonder about where the withdrawal leads.
As a journalist, the fact that so many people have basically stopped, or at least tried to stop, reading or watching the news is a concern as they then make choices based on ignorance and poor education of the subjects, as Trump himself said : 'I love the poorly educated'.
Turning off the news dramatically increases the danger of not knowing enough to know what is true and what is misinformation that one should understand for our own good, how can you hold our politicians to account if you don't know what they are doing and they don't want you to know and that is playing directly into their hands.
I do get it, we lose many new recruits to Journalism because we get to see and hear things before they get sanitised for public consumption and some are traumatic and there are things i have seen which i wish i could unsee but as you are not going to be able to avoid the events of the World, or the effects on your life, surely it is better to know the Who, Why, When, Where and How of what is happening then stay ignorant until it's too late.    

Making Money

I was reading the Terry Pratchett Book 'Making Money' when one of the character's asked the boss of the Mint how much it cost to make the coins which turned out to be each cost more than the face value of the coin which got me thinking, how much does it cost to make our British money?
The Royal Mint was no use as it gave a sniffy response of: 'The Royal Mint does not reveal exactly how much it costs to make specific coins as such information could be used to its competitors advantage' but i do vaguely remember reading or hearing somewhere that the Government planned to stop making 1p and 2p coins as it costs more than that to make them.
In the Isle of Man who mint their own money and who are not so sniffy about telling us, it cost 20p to make a 5p coin so i assume it is around the same cost to the UK Mint so i expect that will go the same way in the near future but it does play into the idea of a cashless society.
I for one hardly ever pay with cash anymore, it is always my card that comes out my purse and it is not just me, apparently only 1 in 5 transactions were used with cash last year and has been in decline for the last decade so there is generally less need for cash today.
More than 7,000 cash-points have been shut down across the country since 2020 yet at the end of last year there were still more than £81 billion worth of banknotes in circulation according to the Bank of England which is up from £70 billion at the end of the previous year which does me make me wonder if people are spending less of it, what is it being used for?

The War Criminal And The Sex Offender

 'The Government of Israel flatly rejects the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state west of the Jordan river' The Lukid Manifesto.

It has always been Israel's plan to shift the Palestinians off their land and claim it for their own, it is what they have been doing for over 70 years with their land grabs, settlements  and sabotaging of any peace talks which may lead to a Palestinian State, now if only they could get their bitches in America to help but what was needed was a President stupendously clueless and as ignorant to help.  
So there they stood, the sex offender Trump and the war criminal Netanyahu and announced their plan to 'take over the Gaza Strip' and would be making an announcement on Israel assuming sovereignty over the West Bank 'over the next four weeks'.
Netanyahu, who has bribery, fraud and breach of trust charges waiting for him as well as being slapped with an arrest warrant, stood grinning like a lunatic beside the Tangerine Tyrant who said, without any irony, that by moving the Palestinians elsewhere they could: 'live out their lives in peace and harmony without getting murdered and safe from bombs and bullets' without seeming to notice that it was the Genocidal tendencies of the man next to him that was the reason the Palestinian people were getting murdered by bombs and bullets, at least 47,000 since October 2023 and with bombs and bullets helpfully provided by America.
Obviously the World is not so keen as Trump when it comes to cosying up to a nation committing Genocide and came out to lambast the awful pair with Saudi Arabia rejecting it, the UK stating the Palestinians must have their own state, Germany and Turkey both calling it unacceptable, France said it would constitute a serious violation of international law, Spain said the land belongs only to the Gazan Palestinians, Egypt said Palestinians should not leave the territory, Jordan said they rejected the idea, Australia, Russia and China said they only support a two state solution and the UN called it going against international humanitarian law and international human rights law as the forcible transfer of people from occupied territory is strictly prohibited.
Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, said the Palestinians will not relinquish their land, Iran said it does not support any displacement of Palestinians, Ireland called the idea of displacing the people of Gaza anywhere else would be in clear contradiction with UN security council resolutions and Amnesty International added Gaza is the home only to the Palestinians but special mention must go to the US representative, Rashida Tlaib who considered her words carefully and went with the President was spewing  'fanatical bullshit' and said shame on the support in Congress for funding genocide and ethnic cleansing.
Whether the idea bubbled up all by itself inside Trump's empty head or the idea was planted there by the mass murderer stood next to him, it obviously hasn't occurred to Trump or anyone agreeing with him that if you are supporting a nation that has been militarily occupying another for 7 decades, is being investigated for many War Crimes and Genocide including directing refugees to safe zones and then bombing them and then openly talking about ethnically cleansing a population, you really are on the wrong side of the argument.
At the end of the presentation, Netanyahu praised Trump as: 'the greatest friend Israel has ever had in the White House' but almost certainly added under his breath 'and thankfully for us also the most stupid, ignorant and credulous'

Look Up In 2032

In 2032 Brisbane are hosting the Olympics but they may want to hold off spending million on arena's just yet because Scientists are monitoring a 100mx40m Asteroid that could hit Earth and put a huge crimp in the Opening Ceremony.
The European Space Agency (ESA) has revealed it is closely monitoring an asteroid called 2024 YR4 which they peg the odds at 83-1 that it will smash into our Planet and cause 'severe damage'.
The large space rock is currently 27 million miles away and its path will not cross the Earth's orbit until 22 December 2032 so the silver lining is if you look up and see a rock the size of a football pitch hurtling towards you then you won't have to bother buying Christmas Presents that year .
The warning does come with the caveat that it will be close but not THAT close and will probably bowl straight past us but all the top Space types are meeting in Vienna this month to discuss it and if they are in agreement that 83-1 was way to optimistic, then they will make recommendations to the United Nations that maybe we should consider doing something to deflect it.  
The ESA does admit that their early warning system is designed to flash red lights and scream that we are all gonna die  so they can monitor the trajectory of these things so they say they are not worried just yet but then scare us again by saying how a smaller asteroid, only 60m across, landed in Siberia in 1908 and flattened every tree over 830 square miles.

Oh Dear, What A Shame...Nevermind

Those of a certain age will remember the Windsor Davis Character, Sergeant Major Williams, in 'It Ain't Half Hot Mum' and his catch phrase 'Oh dear, how sad, never mind' which he delivered to any of his squad who had a problem and that is exactly what came to mind when i heard the head nerd of OpenAI whinging that AI Rival DeepSeek may have nicked their idea, or 'inappropriately distilled our models' as the geek put it.
The  share price slashing Chinese outfit are accused by OpenAI of using their ChatCGT software and making 'unauthorised use of it' which by an amazing coincidence is exactly what  it says on the lawsuits against OpenAI's top boffin, Sam Altman who is being buried under lawsuits from other AI firms trying to claw something back for the alleged copyright victims of his firm’s own inappropriate methods.
So he stood looking all sad eyed and accusing China of using his stuff without asking while hoping nobody would say hang on you massive hypocrite...
I am sure the sorry tale will end with Trump either banning DeepSeek or insisting it gets sold a US company at a cut down rate but the narrative they seem to be going with at present is that we should all be worried about the authoritarian Chinese stealing our data and using it for nefarious reasons and not at all worried about Silicon Valley stealing our data and using it for nefarious reasons.
That's your choices, take your pick of who you want to be screwed over by or ditch all your technology and go live in a tent in a field on Exmoor.

Keir Does Brussels

And so, with the happy inevitability of a smear test, we approach the fifth anniversary of Brexit and to mark the occasion YouGov released a poll where the question asked was: 'In hindsight do you think Britain was right or wrong to leave the European Union?' and got the answer 'Right' from only 30% of those asked with the rest saying ' We fecked it up good and proper'.
When even Nigel Farage of all people, the cheerleader for all those people who wanted to kick foreigners out the country without actually admitting it so weaseling on about taking back control or some other nonsense, even that craggy faced loser conceded that it has failed, why are the Government afraid to tell voters the 52% got it wrong, its been an absolute shambles and they are going crawling to the EU to take us back?  
The Prime Minister is travelling to Brussels tomorrow to forge a 'reset' between the UK and EU although he was at pains to point out that it: 'does not involve a return to the EU.'
Why not i ask? If everyone can see that leaving was a monumental mistake and the British economy has floundered ever since, why not rejoin the largest single market on the Planet that just happens to be situated right on our doorstep?
Those without the required amount of working brain cells point blame the British economic downturn on other economic shocks such as COVID and the Ukraine war-related energy prices but none of them seem to be high enough up the chain in the independent Office for Budget Responsibility who put hit from Brexit to our GDP at 4% and who should we listen to, some bloke who drives the Iceland delivery lorry and boo's at the anti-racism knee taking at football matches and or experienced professional economists with all the relevant data?
It's a bind i know but i will go with the people who actually know what they are talking about so why not start the process of saying sorry and joining up forces again with our closest neighbours and largest trading partner.
The Liberal Democrats are the only Party calling for it but the chances of a second referendum are scarce without one of the main parties joining the call although as the Presidential criminal in the USA is starting to throw tariffs around, the silver lining is that it may push us that way anyway.
Our prosperity depends on reversing the damage the previous Government done to trade with the EU, and Keir going to meet the heads of the EU is a good start but as almost half our trade is with the EU while only 22% of theirs is with us, they hold all the cards and just saying: 'Sorry, we messed up, can we come back please' won't cut it.

Tariffs And Trade Wars

'To me, the most beautiful word in the dictionary is tariff' so said Donald Trump although personally i would go with the word Autumnal as i love the way that sounds but for him it is tariff which don't really mean much to me except i know he did them last time and is doing them again this time so how did it work out last time?   
Not great appears to be the answer to that if the U.S. Director of the National Economic Council Larry Kudlow is to be believed as he said the previous tariffs either had a moderately negative impact on the economy and reduced real GDP by 1% as many companies just passed the costs of the tariffs on to consumers in the form of higher prices with some goods rising by 10% to 30% so maybe the Tangerine twit should get a new dictionary.
I did ask a Economic experts for an idiot's guide to tariffs and here is what he came up with:
'A tariff is a type of tax imposed on goods when they cross national borders and is often used by governments against trading partners to protect local industries as it makes imports more expensive
and giving a price advantage to locally made goods.'
Do they work? 'They are a pretty inefficient tool that typically leaves consumers in the country imposing them bearing the brunt of higher costs for example, if a house builder imports materials that are used in its constructions, then tariffs on those goods will add to production costs and the final price the buyer pays.'
Will they just buy locally sourced material? 'They can but they may be of inferior quality which is why they imported them in the first place or the local supplier will ratchet up the price as their materials are in demand.'
So what happens to the country that has had the tariffs imposed upon them? 'They almost always retaliate by putting tariffs on the other countries imports and the cycle repeats there also and we can get into a full blown trade war'.
Which is? 'Well the last big one was in the 1930's which preceded the Great Depression so trade wars create more losers than winners but that is for another day'.
That's clearer then, still don't understand why anyone would want to do it but as Trump and his cabinet colleagues are not short of a few dollars, making Americans pay a bit more won't directly affect them. The rest of America and at the moment Canadians and Mexicans it will but not them, so that's ok then.