Union Flag Design Secret

At some point the British decided they needed to come up with an idea of how to let other Brits know that they were in distress but not to let on to Johnny Foreigner that they were in trouble so some bright spark came up with the idea of flying the Union Flag upside down.
Obviously their thinking was that unless you know what you are looking for, the British Flag is almost identical whichever way it is flown which was fine when you know but can cause a problem if you don't.
Fortunately for the hard of thinking, the right wing chose to hang the English Flag from lamp-posts all over towns and Cities to try and intimidate the non-English and even they with the few braincells they have rattling around in their heads couldn't get that wrong but more and more it is the British Flag we are seeing now with rain dripping off it while it wraps around the post because they may live here but England, United Kingdom and Great Britain are the same thing to them.
The problem with the England flag is that, despite it being very, very boring, it is mostly white with a red cross and as the morons have Zip Tied it to the Street furniture, they will be there for years over which time the red will become weathered and fade and what we will be left with is streets full of white 'Surrender' Flags which is probably the last thing the people who bravely anonymously abuse anyone who isn't White English intended.
Anyway, back to the Union Flag which is comprised of the Cross of St. George (England), the Saltire of St. Andrew (Scotland), and the Saltire of St. Patrick (Ireland) but doesnt have any Welsh in it although there was attempts to include the Dragon on it but everyone decided it would be far too hard to draw so never bothered but as flags go, it is a nice colourful one in a nice design but it does have a cunning design secret put in especially for the distress signal as mentioned above which almost everyone gets wrong.
If you look at the Irish part, their cross is off centre which creates a wider strip of white down the left hand side and the flag is flown with the widest section of white closest to the flag pole, the Military call it 'The Snow on Top' for some reason but if you see a British Flag flown and the thinner part is closer to the flag pole, then it is actually a sign of distress, usually along the lines of 'Help, a complete ignoramus hung this'.
It could also be a clever ruse that they know it is a distress signal and they are signalling that the country is now  swamped with non-White people coming here and doing the jobs we don't want to do and paying tax to the Treasury although that would take more braincells then they posses between the lot of them so it's very, very unlikely.

Special Guest Blogger: Michael Hutchence

Many music groups tend to meet each other while at school, make up a bands and give it a ridiculous names and INXS was no different. We all met at Davidson High School and went with the name Doctor Dolphin.
My original plan was to be a swimmer but a broken arm put paid to that so my fallback was to become a poet but that developed into songwriting for the Dolphins who by now was called The Farriss Brothers, then The Vegetables and finally INXS as suggested by another Australian Band, Midnight Oil, because we sucked at band names obviously.
Throughout the early 1980's, INXS kept chugging along and establishing themselves in Australia with me as the frontman and then in 1988 and our second album, Kick, and the 'Need You Tonight' single from it, launched us into global fame and five MTV Video Music Awards came around in 1988, INXS’s name came up several times. The music video for 'Need You Tonight allowed us to take home five awards.
In 1990, INXS released the hit single 'Suicide Blonde', inspired by my then girlfriend Kylie Minogue and the public loved us even more and we were winning BRIT Awards and I beat Bon Jovi and Prince as Best International Male Solo Artist and we were flying and then it all came crashing down because our third album sank.
The band took a rest but i never, dating Belinda Carlisle, Helena Christensen and Kym Wilson and i became labelled a wild man of rock when i became embroiled in a few brawls with journalists and one Danish taxi driver in-particular who fractured my skull on the pavement and damaged my brain and i lost my senses of taste and smell.
Then i was asked on the Big Breakfast and met Paula Yates, the wife of Bob Gedolf who was just as wild as me and it ended as obvious as you would expect, me hanging myself with my belt from the door handle in a hotel room while high and drunk.

Top Threats

Our world faces a range of difficult issues so Pew asked adults across 25 countries what they saw as the three biggest threats and top of the list was online disinformation which makes sense in a time when Politicians just outright lie.
The Internet has become a hotbed of conspiracy theories and dangerous lies and amazingly many people are unable to see through them which i will leave to psychologists to ponder on.
The second biggest threats was perceived as Climate Change which has taken a long time to reach some peoples consciousness now that after decades of warnings of what is coming, is finally arriving although sadly it is too late to stop it but we can still get together to stop it being as bad as it could be.
The third biggest threat was the Global Economy but again unfortunately, until a fairer system of Capitalism is bought in or it is replaced with something much more fairer, we are stuck with as the people who could make the change are the ones who most benefit from it so not going to change anytime soon.
Other threats included terrorism and the memory of Covid hasn't gone because the spread of infectious disease is still of concern to many. 

Special Guest Blogger: Hillel Slovak

My parents came to America from Israel in the 60's when i was 4 and when they gave me a guitar as a bar mitzvah present, it set in train the rest of my very short life.
I had a knack for it and people said i was like Hendrix, unfortunately not in just the guitar playing as i will explain later.
I met Antony Kiedis and Michael 'Flea' Balzary, named because he was always bouncy around, at school and we talked a lot about music and experimented together in the drug scene.
We attempted to put together a band but Flea had no interest in playing the bass so we had to convince Flea to change his mind, and then make him into a decent player because he had never played bass before.
Me, Flea, and Kiedis worked on our own music and formed a new band that we called Tony Flow and the Miraculously Majestic Masters of Mayhem, then The Red Hot Chili Peppers but we had to stand out from the other bands so we played naked, except for socks or rather one sock which wasn't worn on our feet.
During the early years of Red Hot Chili Peppers, we made a pact not to do any heavy drug's while touring, so instead we drank oursleves into stupors instead and we put out some albums but by now Kiedis could barely function due to his heavy drug use so and whilst everyone worried about him, my own drug use when unmentioned.
Obviously our drug use was starting to affect the success of the band but our album,  The Uplift Mofo Party Pla, was a hit and took us to a new level of fame and mayhem so we deiced to quit but my withdrawal symptoms made me unable to fucntion so iwas replaced by DeWayne McKnight and Keidas threatened to sack me unless i got help.
When the tour ended the band tried to contact me but after weeks of no reply, they finally sent officers to my home to check on me but they were days too late because i wasn't okay, I was hunched dead over my front room table.

Welcome Back Youngsters

The Coronvirus lock downs changed many things but one of the largest fundamental changes was the Working From Home and we often hear of a push to get people back in the Office but it seems that home as the office is here for a while yet.
I occasionally worked from home in 2020 but being classed as a keyworker it was very infrequent and i really didn't like it but i get how it saves travel costs and not having to go halfway up the country for a meeting when you could log into Teams and although my industry never really took it up, i know many that have and i do feel that the youngsters are missing out on Office life.
In a new Bupa survey of 8,000 under 25's, 45% said they were considering looking for jobs with more social interaction and looking for jobs with a physical office where they had supportive colleagues, can socialise at lunchtimes and meet friends in the evenings as their work made them feel lonely.
So come back to the office youngsters where you can be provided with social interaction, support and intergenerational friendships but more importantly, you will never have to pay for stationery and toilet roll ever again.

Raynor Had To Go

I always liked Angela Raynor and always hoped that at some point she would take over from Keir Starmer and become the Prime Minster but that ship has well and truly sailed now that she has been caught out cheating on her taxes.
Now i don't even understand my own taxed let alone somebody elses but i never swallowed that 'I Took Advice' alibi as to why she had underpaid £40,000 of Tax on her second home and when the people she allegedly took the advice from came out and said they never, it was obvious she had been caught out and had to resign.
At least she fell on her sword but when you are one of the rule makers, to then get caught not following your own rules and breaching the ministerial code stinks so as much as i like her, it is right that she has been removed from Government and hard to see how she could ever be anything than a back-bencher now.
To make it even more of a farce, Rachel Reeves is thought to be considering higher property taxes in November’s budget in part at the prompting of Rayner herself who suggested to the chancellor raising stamp duty on commercial properties, warning that the existing 5% rate was encouraging individuals to buy properties through shell companies.
The worst thing is that after the Conservative such as Rishi Sunak's wife, Nadhim Zahawi and now Angela Raynor, it gives the impression that all politicians are as bad as each other and hot on the heels of the latest case, it is revealed that Nigel Farage diverts his earnings through his own private company so he pays less tax as a result so it gives the impression they are all at it.
The truth is Raynor attempted to dodge tax, then lied about it so she had to go as does anyone no matter who they are.

Special Guest Blogger: Greek Goddess Artemis

I was the result of a wild fling between Zeus with a lovely lady called Leto. He was married to Hera at the time, and not wanting his wanton ways to reach her jealous ears, changed himself and Leto into quails. Gods can do that sort of thing. Especially randy Zeus, who must have experienced sex in the guise of almost every animal at some time or another.
So Zeus laid Leto, and Leto laid me and it must have been a double yolker as my brother Apollo was born at the same time.
Having a sex-mad quail for a dad can put a girl off men so when i grew up, i ran off into the wild and took to hunting with a band of women’s liberation Nymphs (particularly the Dryads) such as Callisto, who joined me in the vows of chastity.
Despite the hunting, I did care deeply for animals but i had little respect for human males. When a prowling peeper called Acteon caught sight of me bathing naked in a pool, i hounded him to death with his own hounds. Then the Great Hunter Orion got belted into oblivion with the aid of a large scorpion when he was doing the same pervy thing.
There are many ‘hunting accidents’ when the name Artemis crops up but nobody was willing to point their finger at me, probably because I would just chop it off, but i wasn’t a complete man-hater, as my efforts on behalf of Hippolytus show, bringing him back to life after Aphrodite had him killed.
My temple at Ephesus contained a statue of a female who, it seems, had undergone breast implants on a multiple scale. She was festooned with them and the busty statue was actually Cybele, a Goddess known for having lashings of lust (and bloodlust).
In due course the Romans came and changed my name to Diana and my public relations were much improved. Now I am the top Goddess of the feminist movement and an inspiration to animal rights activists, as long as quails aren’t involved.

Special Guest Blogger: Shannon Hoont

If you were a teenager or a young adult in the early 1990s, you knew the music of Blind Melon, our hit single 'No Rain', that one with the tap dancing bee girl, was everywhere.
I was a normal teenager, with a girlfriend, the occasionally run-in with the law, and enjoyed a bit of weed every now and again and thought i could be a musician.
I made a band called Styff Kytten and in 1990 LA was where the music scene was and it was at a Party that i found my bandmates and taking the name from a 1920's Blues Musician, Blind Melon was born.  
We began playing around LA and writing music and Capitol Records came around and offered a record contract and I got in touch with an old friend of my sister’s who had also moved to LA, Axl Rose, who asked me to sing backing vocals on the band’s 'Use Your Illusion' albums so next time you listen to 'The Garden', 'Live and Let Die', and 'November Rain', that's me singing in the background.
Hard Rock was not where i wanted Blind Melon to go though, we were not a rock or grunge band so we moved to North Carolina away from the influence of the hard rock scene in California and went down a more pseudo-psychedelic sound.
Rick Parashar, famous for producing Pearl Jam’s debut album Ten, worked with us on our debut album and the single No Rain with the young girl dressed as a bee with was big on MTV and people were paying attention to Blind Melon and we opening for major acts like Guns N’ Roses, Ozzy Osbourne, and Soundgarden then the rock and roll lifestyle opened its enticing and dangerous doors to me.
During the next two years of touring i was fully into the rock star lifestyle, alcohol and substance misuse became a problem for me and ended up doing multiple stints in rehab and then went to record the second album and although grunge music was one of the most successful styles to emerge in decades, we were determined that Blind Melon was brave enough to be different regardless of whether or not that was what the world wanted which it turned out it didn't.
Our later singles and albums tanked but we went ahead with the tour anyway and the record company employed a drug counselor to help me through any difficult times but the counselor was fired after only one week, I decided that an all-night binge was the answer to my problems  and if my problem was being alive it did because i crept back to the tour bus and promptly died from a drug overdose.

Trump Not Dead Yet

I have seen plenty of stories this weekend where i have read that Donald Trump is not so much at Deaths Door but is standing in the hallway commenting on the carpet but although he looks awful in the recent photo's (which only added to the conspiracy theory as it was from a week ago and not this weekend as the White House said), he never looked  a picture of health and anyway i am not convinced that the people making the comments are suitably medically qualified to say when someone is about to croak.
The evidence presented is that he has those strange bruises on his hands, his ankles are swollen, he seems to be even more incoherent than usual and he seemed to be unable to walk in a straight line so put altogether he is on his last (rather swollen) legs so i asked a medical expert for their opinion and as expected they were non committal but did say his lifestyle was not healthy, he was grossly overweight and there was something 'going on' but they could not say what.
So 'Something going on' was the expert medical opinion which isn't very clear but to muddy the water some more, he has recently began making references to his death,  saying that  he hoped helping end the war between Ukraine and Russia would help boost his chances of getting into heaven and so if the Medical Experts won't say if I should start writing a Famous Dead Bloggers entry for him ASAP, handily I know a Reverend very well so what is his thoughts on Trump either being handed a harp and sat on an Angelic cloud or having a pitchfork jabbed up his jacksy in the pits of hell?
To paraphrase him, if a lying sex pest who has defrauded millions and had several adulterous relationships like Trump can get in then Hell would be empty so that's a no then but those of us who have read Dante's Inferno know, Hell is a big place so which circle can the Orange one find himself in? In Dante Alighieri's Inferno, adulterers are punished in the Second Circle of Hell where they are buffeted back and forth by the terrible winds of a violent storm, without rest but don't reserve a Trump shaped space just there yet because the sin of gluttony, which can manifest as overeating and obesity, is punished in the Third Circle where an incessant, cold and heavy rain of hail, sleet, and snow creates a disgusting, foul-smelling mire and the three-headed hell-hound, Cerberus, regularly mauls the wretched souls which sounds more like it but wait, what about sex pests?
Dante's Inferno doesn't have a specific circle for 'sex pests' but sins related to sexual exploitation are punished in the eighth circle of hell which is also where  fraudsters and liars go so pretty certain that's where he will find himself being whipped by demons and probably where Jeffrey Epstein is so would nice for him to catch up with his good friend.   
So Trump is, as far as we can tell, still with us and as much i don't wish anyone dead, it is a truth that the World would be a better place without certain people in it.

Special Guest Blogger: Egyptian God Osiris

Mr Big of the Egyptian Underworld, that's me, in charge of the Dead End scenario and married to the beautiful Isis which is kinda cool considering i was a green-skinned deity with a pharaoh's beard, partially mummy-wrapped legs and wore a crown and carried around a crook and flail.
I was quite content to rule Vegetation and Fertility until I was knocked off by my evil brother Set, who chopped my body up in many pieces, locked my body in a chest and chucked it into the Nile.
Luckily, nothing is ever that simple when it comes to the Gods, and the chest was washed up on the shore, stuck in a giant tree, turned into a pillar and relocated to the palace of King Byblos where Isis, having searched high and low, eventually found it.
Poor Isis had to collecting bits and pieces of her dead husband until she had every last scrap and then got  Thoth and Anubis to help put the jigsaw puzzle of me back together.
Luckily there were no pieces missing. Except one pretty important bit, my penis .
Summoning all her Godly Reconstruction powers, which were pretty formidable, she managed to fashion another one made out of gold and thankfully fully functional so she breathed new life into me and she became pregnant with Horus hours later.
Thanks to my Underworld connections, I was promoted to Judge of the Dead where you could be thrown to the fiery pits and the soul-eating demon Ammit to be annihilated or reborn.
I know that religion has moved on since my time and now there is a real pick n mix available but i would like to think that at least some of them picked up the idea of a resurrection and being thrown into a fiery pit if you are a sinner.