As Clear As Mud

I imagine it isn't easy to find ministers willing to be sent out to do the Sunday morning media run after the last few weeks because they seem to spend the first few shows defending the Governments position on something only for the Government to do a screeching u-turn and the embarrassed minister then finds himself made to look even more of a fool.
It happened again this Sunday with Vaccine Minister Nadhim Zahawi painfully explaining to Sky News why the Government are introducing Covid Passports to protect everyone only for Boris Johnson to put out a statement that they have been scrapped moments before he was appearing on BBC News and Zahawi found himself explaining why Covid Passports are not all that important actually.
Ever since the pandemic started, the Government have been as indecisive as Donald Trump faced with a KFC, Mcdonald's and a porn star and one of Boris Johnson's very first press conferences was to joyfully say he had been shaking hands with Covid patients just after his Chief Medical Officer had finished warning about not shaking hands with anyone. Obviously Johnson went down with Covid and ended up on a ventilator but that is par for the course for him.
Now after last week's announcement that Passport's were definitely coming in followed by yesterdays announcement that they aren't, a press meeting has been called for tomorrow where the Prime Minister will set out his plan to deal with coronavirus during the upcoming autumn and winter months, including Covid passports which he has said could now be an option.
So just to be clear, the official message is work from home but don't work from home and take public transport only we don't want you to take public transport but try not to go outside and shake anyone's hands but make sure you stay in and don't actually shake hands but you can go outside but you will need a Covid Passport which they are not introducing but definitely will soon.
Got it? Good, now explain it to Boris because he hasn't got a clue. 

Special Guest Blogger: King Goujian of Yue

Wars are generally won by the side with the most advanced technology or the most soldiers so it isn't easy to think up new ways to win them but i came up with the idea of the most unorthodox ways of winning conflicts by proving that if i was a madman with little regard for my own sides safety, the other side would begin to worry so that's exactly what i did.
My family ruled over Yue, a state in China, and we never got along with our neighbours, the Wu's, and when my father died and i became King, i got a nasty present for my coronation when the Wu's attacked and i was captured and was taken prisoner and held in captivity for three years until i convinced the King of Wu that if he let me return to my state, i would not make any trouble and play real nice.
With a hearty farewell i bid the King goodbye and spent the next decade devising strategies for some payback and waiting for the opportune time to strike which was handily provided by a locust-induced famine which struck Wu, so i marched my army and all of the criminals who had been sentenced to death in our prison to the border.
Wu sent their army to meet us and we stood either side of the border staring at each other waiting for the command to start hacking each other to pieces and this is where my masterplan came into effect.
I ordered all the convicts to the front and told them to take a few steps forward and in full view of the enemy, ordered the men to take out knives, scream, and slit their own throats.
A few hesitated but the massive army of armed-to-the-teeth soldiers standing right behind them soon solved that and after that, i sent in another wave of soon to be dead anyway convicts, then another until all the criminals lay on the ground with their windpipes slashed by their own hand.
The enemy troops, not knowing they were convicts and assuming they were regular army, stared slack-jawed and contemplated how they could hope to fight people who were prepared to kill themselves and as they pondered on that, the rest of my forces sneaked up from behind and annihilate them.
As we marched onto the capital, the King of Wu committed suicide and we eventually took over and annexed the state and everyone lived happily ever after, except for the Wu academics, we slaughtered all them but everyone else was okay about it.

Cheering On Emma Raducanu

Nobody seems to have heard of Tennis player Emma Raducanu until a few weeks ago and suddenly everyone is falling over themselves to try and find where they can watch her play fellow teenager Leylah Fernandez in the US Open Final tonight.
Previously the final was on Amazon Prime and you needed a subscription but hats off to Channel 4 who have paid a massive amount to Amazon to show it live on Free-to-Air TV so we can watch along at 21:00 BST tonight.
Hers is an incredible story, ranked too low to make the main draw, the 18-year-old had to come through three rounds of qualifying and has become the first qualifier to reach a major final and doing all that without dropping a set.
Her opponent, Leylah Fernandez, is only a year older at 19 and did face Radacanu in the second round of junior Wimbledon in 2018 with Raducanu winning that match 6-2 6-4 but we are being warned not to use that as a gauge as both have changed since and Fernandez has had a much tougher route to the final with four of her six matches going to three sets and featuring five tie-breaks.
You would have got great odds at the start of the tournament that the women's final would feature the world numbers 150 and 73 but although Raducana was born in Canada to Chinese and Romanian parents, she came to the UK aged two and is a product of the British Tennis Association so this isn't a Greg Rusedski or Lennox Lewis situation where they waved the Union Flag but were never really accepted as British, she is truly one of our own.
What is certain is that once she returns to Bromley, she is guaranteed a heroes welcome so well done Emma, well done Channel 4 and well done the Advertising Executives who have their new very photogenic and very smiley new star to flog us stuff we never knew we needed.

Singing Wakey, Wakey, Wakey Rise And Shine

The Big Breakfast was once described as like being woken up by a pair of cymbals which described it perfectly, it was loud, funny, colourful, anarchic and it just seemed to fall it's way through from 7am to 9am every weekday morning with mad game shows and weird humour which sometimes sailed very close to the edge.
It really hit it's stride with Johnny Vaughn and Denise Van Outen in 1997 and then in 2002 it ceased to be and left a huge void in many peoples Breakfast-time viewing, mine included because i loved that show.
This morning, almost 20 years later, Channel 4 bought it back for a one off special as part of it's Black to Front campaign which saw black presenters host some of Channels 4 most successful programs and with AJ Odudu and Mo Gilligan in the Big Breakfast seats, it was as brilliant and mad as i remember.
With the TV on offer while you eat your cornflakes limited to Good Morning Britain or the BBC Breakfast, i did wonder if the bosses at Channel 4 would use today's one off show as a pilot to judge reaction to possibly bring it back to our screens and my initial reaction is i hope so but the more i think about it, maybe not.
As much i miss the fried egg wallpaper and the whole madness at 7am, they tried it without Johnny Vaughn and Denise van Outen when they left in 2001 and after trying many different presenters, it sang its last wakey, wakey, wakey rise and shine song a year later and despite the same format, it was never the same.
I was never much of a fan of Johnny Vaughn in anything he has ever done since, i find his whole laddish thing a bit much but him and Denise was perfect together and so with a heavy heart i say don't bring it back, the odd special is fine such as today which was for a very worthwhile cause but those 4 years from 1997 to 2001 was as good as it was ever going to be, anything else, as funny, mad or brilliantly bizarre as it may be, it would be a pale imitation so let it go Channel 4 and don't ruin the fond legacy it has amongst us fans.

Special Guest Blogger: James Jameson

The problem with being an heir to a family fortune is the waiting for relatives to die so i had to find something to while away the days until the inevitable giant pile of family money dropped into my lap.
I was the great-great-grandson of John Jameson, the founder of the Jameson Irish Whiskey company and i got bored with all the drinking fancy wine, hunting and eating all the best food so i thought i would give exploring a try and tagged along on the expeditions of more accomplished explorers such as one led by Henry Morgan Stanley to central Africa to bring Belgian supplies to Emin Pasha, the leader of an Ottoman province in Sudan that was cut off by a revolt and as this was the time of various imperialist European countries fighting over which chunks of Africa they'd get to oppress, if we happened to spot some nice land ready to be annexed for the Belgian Free State colony in the Congo, that also.
It was on this expedition that i was accused of an unspeakable crime of purchasing a ten year old slave girl from a slave trader so i could see her get eaten by cannibals which i flat out refute.
Yes i did say it would be cool to see it but that was just locker room talk while i just happened to know a slave trader in Congo, his name was Tippu Tip but just because i handed him six handkerchiefs and he arrived with a ten year old slave girl in no way implicates me.
How was i supposed to know that the natives i handed her to were going to tie her to a tree then stab her in the belly and cut up the body and sit around eating the dismembered pieces of the child.
Such was my shock and indignation that i not only made some drawings but retired to my tent and turned them into splendid watercolours.
There was much noise and i made the English and Irish newspapers but another string to my bow of innocence was that nobody ever charged with anything, mostly due to my dying from some fever i picked up in the Congo not long afterwards but i was innocent of the whole thing and i have some brilliant watercolours of the events to show that i was in no way involved and it was not a case of a rich, thoughtless westerner using their wealth for evil, sure i felt sorry for the girl but remember i ended up six really nice handkerchiefs down on the deal so who was the real victim here?

Don't Cancel Your Plans Just Yet

Got any plans for September 11th, 14th and 26th? If so you may want to make sure you have kept the receipt to get your money back because a time traveller from 2714 has come back to warn us to stay at home those days.
A self proclaimed time traveller has turned up on TikTok and has been the recipient of much ridicule so he has responded with a request for proof by saying 'you still don’t believe I am a real time traveller from the year 2714, so remember these three dates in September'.
Those dates are September 11th when an alien ship lands and kidnaps 4,000 earthlings then on the 14th when the first ever category 6 hurricane slams into the US East Coast and then the 26th September when a chimpanzee is able to talk because of a mutation in its vocal cords.
The time traveller did claim that aliens were going to land on Earth on 11th August and start a war with humanity and i am sure that would have been mentioned on the News and in the papers unless i missed it, the Olympics were on the time so it is possible.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say there won't be 4,000 missing humans, the inhabitants of the US East Coast won't need to strap themselves in from a Category 6 hurricane and a chimp won't be verbally explaining the best way to peel a banana but boy will my face be red if i wake up on the 11th and find myself and 3,999 others in a spaceship destined for Alpha Centuri.

Another Crazy Scheme From The Desk Of Priti Patel

Despite once admitting that under her own rules, she wouldn't be allowed in the UK, the Home Secretary, Priti Patel, is doing her damnedest to make sure that other  non-Brits are not welcome here and her latest wheeze is to turn back rickety floating vessels overladen with desperate people in British waters attempting to cross the Channel back towards the French coast.
The French have called it dangerous and insisted that 'safeguarding human lives at sea takes priority over considerations of nationality, status and migratory policy' and has said that a large boat attempting to approach a smaller craft will cause it to capsize for which the Government have hurried out an explanation that it will only be used in 'very limited circumstances for sturdier, bigger migrant boats' which appears a bit pointless when most of the boats are inflatable dinghies
The UN Conventions of the Law at Sea says that 'every state is required to render assistance to any person found at sea in danger of being lost' and in response by lawyers that it could be against the Geneva conventions, EU legislation and Maritime Law to attempt to push back refugees in boats claiming asylum, Patel has ordered officials to rewrite Britain's interpretation of international maritime law.
In an unfortunate turn of phrase, the Immigration Services Union called the plans 'dead in the water' due to the legal implications or maybe it wasn't unfortunate as that is exactly what will happen as seen in the Mediterranean when the Italian Border Patrol tried the same thing and the migrants threw themselves off the ship rather than be forced back, so many drowned that the Italians stopped the practice.
As most of the migrants are coming from Afghanistan, Syria, Libya and Iraq, the countries whose citizens are seeking to live elsewhere may ring a bell to anyone who has been paying attention to the news over the last few decades, for those who haven't it is where the West have intervened militarily and left the citizens in a more perilous state for it.  
Maybe our foreign policy needs to be looked at and the floods of refugees accepted as a consequence of our terrible decisions in these countries and not crazy, dangerous hare-brained dog whistle calls from Patel to her right wing brethren with schemes like her other awful scheme to install giant wave machines in the Channel.

Better Late Than Never I Guess

Each year, we foolishly throw billion of tonnes of Carbon Dioxide into the atmosphere and as we are seeing, that has terrible consequences for us living on Earth and as stronger hurricanes blow and the waves lap higher up in low lying nations, it seems we are already too late to stop the effects of Climate Change but while the most polluting nations countries seems to be doing very little about it, technology is lending a hand.
Iceland has began operation of the world's largest plant which will suck 4,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide from the air per year making it the 15th such machine who altogether will capturing more than 9,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year, according to the International Energy Agency.   
Global emissions last year were 36 billion tonnes, according to the International Energy Agency and i couldn't even do the math's for that on my calculator but Google reliably informs me that 36 billion divided by 9,000 means it would take 4 million of these machines to scrub out the CO2 we spew out annually.
While 9,000 will hardly make a dent in 36 billion, it's a start although depressingly it seems a case of too little too late for some, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimated it causes over 150,000 deaths annually, while the rest of us and future generations are facing more extreme weather events as the global temperature creeps ever upwards.
The problem with Climate Change is that is was always something that was going to happen and it was easy to ignore or for the more gullible, deny, unfortunatley the going to happen is now happening as we literally reap what we sowed but at least we have made a start in doing something about it, many, many decades too late obviously but it's finally sunk into the thickest of skulls.

Special Guest Blogger: Charles II of Navarre

I was the ruler of Navarre, a tiny then-country wedged between Spain and France and it was during the time of the Hundred Years War with England and played them both, continually changing sides depending on who was the most useful at the time.
When the King of France was preparing to attack my territories for my role in having his son killed, i teamed up with the English and the King backed down and even gave me some more land which didn't go down well with the English who threatened to invade me themselves so i signed a treaty with the French to protect me but the English invaded anyway and took me captive.
As wars were coming thick and fast, my brother, Philip of Navarre, threw in his lot with the invading English army of the Duke of Lancaster for the next one and made war on the French and i was released and opened negotiations with both the French and English Kings, telling the English we should divide France between ourselves and telling the French King he could rule over parts of Navarre but the suspicious Kings no longer trusted me and the Kings of England and France agreed to jointly make war on Navarre's and i was overthrown.
I was making plans on regaining my territories when i came down with a bad cold and consulted a physician, who ordered me to be wrapped up from head to foot, in a linen cloth impregnated with brandy, so that 'i might be enclosed in it to the very neck as in a sack'.
It was over-night when this remedy was best administered and after the maid finished sewing me in, she placed the pan of hot coals under my bed to keep me warm.
Unfortunately, we need to remember that the karma is a raging arse and the maid given the job of sewing me into my sack that night wasn't the brightest and when she noticed an errant thread, she decided to burn it off with a hot coal and i went up like a fancy Molotov Cocktail.
On hearing of my demise, and the way that i died, the French and English took it as evidence of divine will and proof that God was on their side but as the war between them raged on for another 66 years, i think it was just evidence of crap medical advice and proof that material soaked in alcohol is incredibly flammable.

Special Guest Blogger: Phalaris of Acragas

If you close your eyes and picture your ideal death you are probably picturing either an elderly version of yourself peacefully snoring into the Grim Reapers embrace or some other dignified departure from this mortal plain but if you are picturing your final moments screaming while you are roasted alive inside a metal hollow torture chamber shaped like a bull than i'm your man.   
All things considered i was a pretty decent leader, i built Sicily into a prosperous, well-equipped place with amphitheaters, residential housing blocks, granary buildings, aqueducts, public baths, triumphal arches and a bronze bull statue with a trapdoor installed in the belly to shut people inside the statue and enough room beneath it to set up a roaring fire.
It was a present from a local blacksmith named Perillos who said that he had made it in such a way that the screams will sound like the bull is bellowing which i found hard to believe so he learnt a valuable life lesson that handing an ingenious execution device to madman was a poor decision so i demanded a demonstration from the inventor himself and had him thrown him inside it, got a roaring fire going and listened and you know what, it did sound like the bull was mooing. Burnt Perillos to a crisp in the process obviously but i thought it was a nice touch.
With my new toy i went on a roasting spree and stuffed victim after victim inside the brazen bull and i was enjoying myself immensely although the people of Sicily not so much because i was overthrown by a citizens uprising and was stuffed in my own metal chamber and though it was much more fun seeing other people inside it, my last thoughts were i wonder what makes it smell so nice inside here, then realised it was the smell of me slowly roasting.