Americans Leaving USA In Record Numbers

For whatever reason, be it mad gun laws or the flagrant disregard for vowels, Americans are leaving the land of the free in record numbers.
According to the Federal Register, the 1,780 ex-citizens who flicked two fingers to Uncle Sam in 2011 are set to be surpassed by this years departures from the land that invented the Cheeseburger but when Americans leave on a jet plane, where do they lay their Hawaiian shirts and baseball caps?
Mexico has the largest proportion of former Americans with 738,100, then the Philippines who have 300,000 and Israel which has 200,000 cluttering up their Kibbutz.
The United Kingdom is the eight favourite destination with 115,000 Americans who have ripped up their passports and made this side of the Atlantic their permanent residence.
Of course a warm welcome is guaranteed for any members of our former colony who seek a return to the Motherland but why are they swapping the country run by Obama for one run by David Cameron?
Apparently, its financial as US citizens living abroad continue to pay US taxes even if their income is generated elsewhere so the expatriates abandon their US citizenship for the sake of saving cash after paying the exit fee.
Considering that David Cameron's Government has wasted tens of billions on projects like HS2 which is a train that will get you to somewhere 10 minutes earlier, all the extra tax from fleeing Americans is welcome but just a heads up, don't try and adopt the British accent because you will just end up sounding either like a drunk Michael Caine or a butler and whichever it is, we will still mercilessly mock you when you call your backside a fanny or call your sandals thongs.
Welcome aboard.

Planning For Retirement

Seeing as my retirement pension pot means that i will be living on tins of beans and whatever i can find behind the fridge when i stop work, i have two options.
A) Plan for retirement by paying into a reliable pension scheme with a decent return or B) inventi a perpetual motion machine and sell it for gazillions.
While i have been relying on B, there are other ways that i can fund my twilight years of resting on a beach in Eastbourne moaning about how the youth of today are uglier than in my day.
The first is to claim the £25 million on offer from The Virgin Earth Challenge and all i have to do is come up with a way of scrubbing greenhouse gases out of the Earth’s atmosphere to avoid global warming.  
The second is the Google Lunar X Challenge which pays out £30 million for anyone who can land a robot on the surface of the Moon, move it 500 meters over the lunar surface and send images and data back to the Earth.
The perpetual motion machine is easy, a circle of powerful magnets set against a case of equally powerful magnets repelling each other will spin for infinity so all i have to do is get a carpenter to knock up a cabinet and a wheel lined with opposite facing magnets and that's my retirement sorted.
The scrubbing of Greenhouses Gases is a work in progress but involves creating artificial or genetically modified trees that can suck up more Co2 than 'normal trees'. Failing that putting massive domes over the USA and China will work.
The Google Lunar challenge is more tricky and involves stealing the blueprints for the Mars rover, slapping a Moon Rover sticker over the name and firing it towards the moon.
That's me sorted then and i can retire with a full bank balance and a pair of very dark sunglasses so i don't have to see the ridiculously ugly teenagers that will be cluttering up the place in 20 years time.

Lest, They Forgot

Crass insensitivity just doesn't seem strong enough to describe the Tower of London hosting a dinner for arms manufacturers the day after the sea of poppies remembrance installation closed.
The £240 per head event was held by the world’s biggest defence firm Lockheed Martin and was billed as an 'acclaimed and influential chance to make new business connections for senior defence manufacturers' and was attended by 200 industry representatives and Ministry of Defence officials.
Almost a million British and Commonwealth servicemen died in the First World War and two weeks ago the Tower was honouring them with a sea of ceramic poppies planted in the Towers grounds.
Within a fortnight, the same place that was a focus for remembering the horrendous loss of life in wars is making sure that there are always a fresh supply of victims for the politicians to urge us not to forget while shedding a crocodile tear over in front of the TV cameras.
If they made a sea of poppies for all the people who will be killed using military equipment manufactured in the UK they would have to find a new location because the Tower moat wouldn't be big enough.

It's Beginning To Sound A Lot Like Christmas

'Tis the season to hear the same songs repeated endlessly on the radio and in every shop we enter and none has been heard more than 'Fairytale of New York' according to new research.
The 1987 song by The Pogues, featuring Kirsty MacColl, topped the list of 50 top Christmas songs played on the radio according to musical rights body PRS for Music.
The list by PRS for Music found the second most popular was "Mariah Carey’s All I Want for Christmas is You" and the 1994 tune was the most recent in the top 20.
The original Band Aid hit "Do They Know It’s Christmas" was close in third place and i am happy to see the much underrated 'Merry Christmas Everyone' by Shakin Stevens at number 11.
To rub everyone else's nose in it, 7 of the the top 10 are British which proves my point that when it comes to songs about Christmas, Brits do it best. 

Fairytale of New York - The Pogues feat. Kirsty MacColl
All I Want For Christmas Is You - Mariah Carey
Do They Know It's Christmas? - Band Aid
Last Christmas - Wham!
Santa Claus is Coming to Town - Harry Reser
Do You Hear What I Hear? - Bing Crosby
Happy Christmas (War Is Over) - John & Yoko
Wonderful Christmastime - Paul McCartney
I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday - Wizzard
Merry Xmas Everybody - Slade
Merry Christmas Everyone - Shakin' Stevens

Show Us Your Award Tony

Tony Blair must be wondering if with the distance of a decade, the British public might finally be ready to forgive him for his role in the Iraq War and he got his answer, a resounding no they are not.
Save the Children has been criticised by all and sundry for giving Tony Blair an award for his anti-poverty work in Africa and has sent the Save The Children UK rushing out a statement saying it was nothing to do with them, it was Save the Children US.
Over 200 of the Save The Children staff signed a petition against their charity handing it over to former Prime Minister and after they went ahead and did it anyway, 100,000 people signed a petition calling for the Charity to snatch it back off him as 'his legacy in Iraq overshadows his achievements in Africa'.
Accepting the award last week, Mr Blair said: 'It's amazing how nice people are to you when you stop being prime minister'.
Maybe he should do a tour of the UK to show off his award and i am sure that he will find out just how nice his own people are to him.

Band Aid 30

Band Aid 30 sits atop the Top 40 as expected after sales of 312,000 copies in the first week, equalling the achievement of the original Band Aid record in 1984 although that racked up sales of over 1 million in week one. 
Read into that what you want but for whatever reason the 2014 version is not a patch on the one that we heard in 1984.
Some people are blaming the song, an argument that i have some sympathy with as i hoped they wouldn't just rehash the same old tune with different singers but apart from a few changed lines, it's exactly what they did.
Others are saying the British public is suffering from charity fatigue, coming so soon after Children in Need which is yet another plea for our cash which is in short enough supply already at this time of year.
It does seem that you can't step outside the door without someone trying to sign you up to donate a monthly amount to one charity or another.
Another reason put forward is that the spark that set the original Band Aid on it's way was the horrific and shocking scenes in Michael Buerk's news reports in 1984 which showed the appalling famine in Africa and 30 years on we have become a bit more immune to such sights of people literally starving to death.
Finally, the 1984 line up was a who's who of superstars of the day with the likes of Paul Weller and David Bowie rubbing shoulders with Paul McCartney and George Michael.
Today's big names of One Direction, Ed Sheeran and Ellie Goulding are not so much out of that league but almost a whole other sport.
Despite all that it is a great cause and i hope it raises as much money as possible but next time let's have a different song Bob.

Will Lewis Hamilton Ever Be Liked By Us Brits?

While Britain is not falling over sporting champions, when one does come along we seem to go off them pretty quick or in the case of Lewis Hamilton, not think much of him in the first place.
I would assume that Hamilton and his achievement of becoming the first British racing driver in over 40 years to win the Formula One drivers Championship twice has been greeted with lukewarm appreciation by the British public is because he comes across as a bit of an arrogant tosser.
As if arrogance is not enough of a red line to the British, include the fact that as soon as he began making some serious money he turned tax exile in Monaco and he not only crossed the line, he vaulted it so it isn't surprising that the British public has not taken Hamilton to heart.
Something the British can't stand is a show off and Hamilton with his sparkling diamond earring, pop star girlfriend and red carpet lifestyle almost guarantees that Hamilton will not be picking up any Sports Personality of The Year Awards when they are handed out next month.  
Stirling Moss touched on the subject the day after Hamilton's triumph when he said 'He’s whatever you call those superstars. And that’s not really the way we English go. We’re more reserved.'
Hamilton may well get the recognition for being the best in his sport, even one as boring as F1, but it is unlikely that he will ever gain national acceptance until he does things the 'British' way, whatever that is.

Reduced Brains In Dope Smokers

You can always tell someone who has been smoking weed for any length of time because they are just that little bit slower in the way they respond.
Only a fraction of a second in most cases but enough of a delay to alert us that we are dealing with someone who has lost a few braincells through a certain kind of herbal cigarettes.
New research has now borne it out that using marijuana may be related to certain changes in the brain related to a smaller volume of grey matter.
'We found that there is not only is a change in structure, but there also tends to be a change reflected in the connectivity' said study author Francesca Filbey, an associate professor in the School of Behavioural and Brain Sciences at the University of Texas at Dallas who explained that the connectivity could be compensation for the loss of grey matter
'All we can say is that we do see these differences in people who use marijuana, Filbey said explaining that 'We also saw that the younger you are when you start using marijuana regularly, the greater the changes in the brain'.
Of course it is not 100% reliable to surmise that the person you are talking to is a bit slower on the uptake due to marijuana smoking which has reduced their brain volume, they just may be a Sun reader or a UKIP voter who have naturally reduced brains anyway.

Snowmageddon

'You global warming advocates look kinda silly now that we are getting record snow fall' said one lady to me during the week as New York received a years worth of snow in just 3 days.
Of course climate-change sceptics are always groping for anything to embrace as evidence that global warming doesn't exist but a quick look at the science behind these catastrophic storms suggests that they do not occur despite global warming, but in fact because of it.
The basic science behind snow and its relationship to climate change is fairly straightforward as warmer temperatures cause more water to evaporate into the atmosphere and warmer air holds more water than cooler air. The warming results in air that becomes supersaturated with water, often bringing drenching rainfall, followed by flooding or, if it is cold enough, heavy and intense snowfall.
A study of 20th century snowstorms by the Northern Illinois University department of geography found that most major snowstorms in the United States occurred during warmer-than-normal years and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Climatic Data Centre predict that a warmer future climate will generate more winter storms.
So more water in the atmosphere and when you mix in a blast of unseasonably frigid conditions courtesy of the jet stream delivering Arctic air down into the United States because of the warmed Arctic region, you get a massive dumping of snow.
It doesn't help that the ice coverage on the Great Lakes has dropped with the warming climate, creating conditions favourable to more evaporation as the temperature difference between the lake and the air is greater creating heavier snowstorms.
Rather than looking silly, it confirms that the warmer atmosphere is holding more water vapour and so there is more of that water vapour available for precipitation and as long as it's cold enough for that precipitation to be snow you will get larger snowfalls.
It really isn't that difficult to grasp unless you are grasping incorrectly to try and prove your point which is based on ignorance.

Cosby Allegations

The Bill Cosby allegations first surfaced in 2005 when Cosby was accused of drugging and sexually assaulted four women, now the count is up to 13 including Janice Dickinson who claimed in 1982 he gave her a glass of red wine and a pill before raping her. 
Settling out of court always seems an admission of guilt without the trail, if you were innocent why not go to the court and be exonerated completely?    
It seems that in 2006, after the undisclosed amount was transferred out of the Cosby bank account to his victim, the allegations were forgotten and everything carried on as before reminiscent of the Michael Jackson child sexual abuse accusations case in 1993 when he paid out $15m to 13 year old Jordan Chandler and resumed his career.
Although Jackson's career recovered, the second allegation bought everything crashing down around his ears and it appears that it is the further allegations which is doing for Cosby now.
It does appear that the court of public opinion has now decided to feel disgusted with Cosby, even though the allegations against him being a serial rapist have been rumbling in the background for the past nine years.
I am sure someone more qualified than i can explain why we are willing to forgive and forget people like Cosby the first time is due to the position people like Cosby holds in our lives.
Most of us grew up with Cosby in shows like The Cosby Show and we don't want to think that someone like the wise-cracking, goofy, advice-dispensing patriarch we loved to watch turned out to be one of the lowest human beings on the planet is too shocking to contemplate until the second time around.