That's Why

A few people have commented wondering why British Blacks and Asians are protesting after the muder of a black man in America by a police officer.
In 2017, David Lammy conducted a review of the criminal justice system in the UK and found that black people were more than nine times as likely to be stopped and searched by police as white people, three times as likely to be arrested as white people, were more than five times as likely to have force used against them by police as white people and that despite Black and Minority groups accounting for 14% of the population, 25% of the prison population are black or Asian and 50% in young offenders institutions.
That would be why then.

Special Guest Blogger: Marc Bolan

I made men wearing glitter and makeup fashionable so all those new romantics with their eyeliner from the early 80s have me to thank but the idea of glitter on the face as a fashion accessory came about when i dabbed some under my eyes before a photo-shoot and then couldn't get the damn stuff off in time so left it on and other performers soon took up variations on the idea and the era of glam and glitter rock was born. 
My first concert was a bit of a mess, i was booed off stage but i am credited with inventing Glam Rock with songs such as 20th Century Boy and Children of the Revolution but eerily 'Solid Gold Easy Action' contains the line 'Life is the same and it always will be, Easy as picking foxes from a tree' but if i had known what that turned out to be i would have changed it to Picking lottery numbers from a tree and living to 100.
Four years after i wrote it, while riding in a car driven by my girlfriend, she swerved into a tree killing me and the eerie bit is the car registration was FOX 661L and they had to pick me out of it.
I never learned to drive, refused to actually as the idea of driving a tonne of metal at high speed scared me but i did own a Rolls Royce which on the night i died had been leant to the band Hawkwind which is the only reason we were in the Mini that night.
So be careful when you write down whatever rhyming couplets come to mind songwriters, Bob Geldof has avoided getting out of bed on a Monday ever since.

Here We Go Again

As a designated key-worker, i have been able to move around outside over the past 10 weeks and have to admit i loved the deserted streets and the real feel of being Christmas Day with the shops closed.
Admittedly from about week 6 it did get gradually busier as people broke the lock-down and this week it has been pretty much back to normal which in one way is great because it means less Covid-19 doing the rounds but in some ways, i miss having the cities i went to to myself.
Somethings that i have noticed this week is more bicycles as more people re-found a love of cycling during the lock-down although as the amount of cars increases, the dangers of riding a bike in a busy city will sadly force them back into the sheds.
The amount of people at the beach is amazing, where i sat alone six weeks ago in sunshine and fed seagulls, is now heaving with people desperate to make up for a lack of Vitamin D and even though many shops are still closed, the town centers are busy and hardly a mask in sight.
All the way through the pandemic the UK Government's response has been a shambles, too slow to lock-down and now too fast to open up making a second wave almost inevitable which will only add to the second highest death toll in the World although it seems that the Brazilian Government is doing it's level best to challenge us for that unwanted position.
Speaking to Healthcare Workers, the most spoken fear is that they are drained emotionally and physically after the past 10 weeks and they are fully expecting the lifting of the restrictions will bring the dreaded second wave which will arrive in the next two to three weeks and the people designated to save lives are already exhausted.
With crowds turning out in large numbers into the cities while the reproduction rate is still hovering around the dreaded 1 and 2,000 new cases being reported daily, i may yet have the city to myself once again by the start of July as lock-down comes crashing back in again but i hope i am wrong because that will mean the grim death total will be climbing steeply again but to avoid it would mean Britain somehow manages to dodge what science tells us is sadly inevitable.

Special Guest Blogger: Neville Chamberlain

I have been accused of sucking up to Hitler and being an appeaser but during the rise of the Third Reich, i went to meet with one of the most sinister, evil man in history and returned declaring that, in exchange for giving Hitler small chunks of Europe, there would be 'peace'.
History would eventually prove me wrong obviously and my name has become synonymous with negotiating with an enemy rather than immediately bombing them off the map.
As the alternative to my deal was everyone dying in war, my popularity shot up to 68% as above all else, the British people did not want to get into another freaking war less than two decades after the last devastating one.
With hindsight, Hitler wasn't exactly a trustworthy guy and making the deal with him looks bad now, because we know it ends with millions dead in gas chambers, but it wasn't so easy at the time and i came back home from Munich making the deal with Hitler having bought a period of peace that i spent rapidly building the military that would eventually be strong enough to repel the Nazis.
The Parliament turned on me and i was removed, replaced by Winston Churchill who had no qualms for a bit of war against a racist using concentration camps, especially as Hitler was using the idea of concentration camps as advocated by Churchill in South Africa and was previously refused a place in Cabinet due to the racist, Hitler-esque views he held.
I did say that if Germany invaded Poland, Britain, France and the USSR would go to war with Germany which we did but my reputation was shot by then and the press and fellow MPs turned on me and i died six months after leaving office of bowel cancer.
At my funeral Churchill did say: 'Neville Chamberlain acted with perfect sincerity and strove to save the world from the awful, devastating struggle in which we are now engaged' and then in his book, 'The Gathering Storm' the fat drunk slating me for being a rubbish Prime Minister.

Special Guest Blogger: Niccolò Machiavelli

I am one of those historical figures whom everyone has heard of, but few know anything about although most know that being called 'Machiavellian' is never a compliment thanks to me and one of the most notorious political treatises ever written, designed as an instruction manual for any dictators to be even bigger bastards with the central theme being that it is more politically profitable to be feared than loved, and that dishonesty and lies pay off in the long run.
It came about as i was working for the Florentine Republic before the Medici family marched in, threw out the government and dislocated both my shoulders whilst torturing and exiling me, out-Machiavellied you could say.
It was while in exile that i wrote 'The Prince' to brown-nose my way back into the government with a text book for the Medici's, encouraging them that the ends justified theie terrible means and in a time of short-lived Italian governments, to engage in evil when it would be necessary for political expediency is the way to go.
It never worked as it wasn't published until five years after my death but leaders such as Henry VIII and Joseph Lenin have used the basic principles that a ruler must be willing to act unscrupulously to be feared, ruling by fear of punishment including brute force and the removal of anyone who may challenge their authority or who will inevitably attempt to replace them as ruler.
Of course five centuries on my views are pretty antiquated, i mean what population in the 21st Century would ever elect someone to office who is not virtuous, generous and merciful, honest and faithful?

Special Guest Blogger: Jesse Owens

It was a strange experience that i was shown more respect in Nazi Germany than i ever was in my own country. As a black man in 1936 America, i was a second-class citizen having to ride in the back of the bus and use the back door at restaurants, and even after returning victorious from the Olympics, had to take the freight elevator to my own own reception.
The head Nazi never shook my hand but then he never shook anybodies hand but he did wave to me when i passed his box and he sent me a telegram congratulating me on my Olympic glory which is more than i got from my own President, FDR, who didn't send squat because he didn't want to offend Southern voters mixing with a negro.
It does irk me still today that the guy who orchestrated the greatest racially motivated genocide in history behaved better towards me than my own countrymen, in Germany i had been allowed to travel with and stay in the same hotels as whites, at a time when African Americans in my own country had to stay in blacks only hotels.
The American Team even tried to disuade me from taking part in the 1936 Summer Olympics in Nazi Germany, arguing that an African American should not promote a racist regime but i said if there are minorities in Germany who are being discriminated against, the United States should withdraw from the 1936 Olympics for which the American Olympic Committee branded me 'un-American'.
I won 4 gold medals at the 1936 Olympics, setting three world records and when i returned to the United States, i was greeted by a ticker-tape parade in New York but after the parade, i was not permitted to enter through the main doors of the Waldorf Astoria New York and instead forced to travel up to the event in a freight elevator to reach the reception honoring me.
My amateur status was removed and ended my career after i tried to gain some lucrative endorsement offers and i was forced to find work because as i explained, 'I had four gold medals, but you can't eat four gold medals' so took jobs as a gas station attendant, playground janitor and manager of a dry cleaning firm and even raced against horses for cash.
After i died of lung cancer in 1980, the President said: 'Perhaps no athlete better symbolized the human struggle against tyranny, poverty and racial bigotry' which is true but the greatest struggle against racists and bigots was in my own country. 

The Real Land Of The Free

America likes to paint itself as the Land of The Free, they even have it in their National Anthem but the Human Freedom Index Report by the Cato Institute doesn’t seem to agree, ranking the United States as 17th most free so who should be singing about being the land of the free instead?
Using a combination of the freedom of an individual to have freedom of opinion and expression, equality before the courts, security of private property, and freedom to come and go as well as economic liberty and the freedom to prosper in a country without intervention from the government or economic authority, the real land of the free is New Zealand then Switzerland, Hong Kong, Australia and Canada.
The United Kingdom is joint 8th with Ireland and oh, i can you see by the dawn’s early light that the USA and Sweden are in joint 17th place so the National Anthem may be due a bit of a rewrite, the land of the just in the Top 20 Free perhaps.
Towards the bottom end of the 160 county Freedom league we find the nations we would expect to see there, Bahrain (75),  Qatar (103), UAE (117), Russia (119), Kuwait (124), China (135), Saudi Arabia (146), Iran (153) and the least free are the citizens in Syria, Venezuela, Iraq, Libya, Sudan and Egypt. 

Special Guest Blogger: Freddie Mercury

It was a simpler time, where a man could wear leather S&M gear on stage while bull-whipping another man and still be considered absolutely into girls but not many people could have been that shocked when i stepped out of the closet towards the end of my life although my homeland of Zanzibar cancelled a 60th birthday celebration because of my homosexuality.
I was a real hotchpotch, born in Tanzania, ethnically Asian, raised Zoroastrian, schooled in India and growing up in England.
I met guitarist Brian May in Art School and drummer Roger Taylor and we would sell second hand clothes in a market together and added a bass player, the guy who made Brian's amp, John Deacon, and made a band called Smile but i changed it to Queen, one reason was because it's a strong, regal name and also because of the gay connotations and i was the chief song-writer, 'Bohemian Rhapsody' was one of mine, a song about a homicidal dude, some Italian words, repeating the name of a Renaissance astronomer and then ending with a emo style freakout.
It was Queen who made the Sex Pistols famous, pulling out of the Bill Grundy Today programme at the last-minute, which saw our late replacement on the show, the Sex Pistols, give their infamous expletive-strewn interview which catapulted them to fame.
In my career i worked with David Bowie, Michael Jackson and Montserrat Caballe but my best collaboration was with Princess Diana.
She dressed up in an army jacket, leather hat and aviator sunglasses and we went for a night on the town to a gay bar and no-one noticed the most famous woman in the world standing right beside me.
I died of AIDS only hours after even admitting i had the disease and as one of the first major celebrity casualties of the disease, i brought attention to it i was voted number 58 in a poll of the '100 Greatest Britons' which is awesome for someone not even British.

Not Following The Science

The Government have continually told us that they are 'following the science' but the scientists have finally caught on that when the inevitable inquiry comes along regarding just how awful the Government has been and why we have the second highest death toll in the World, it is them who will get the blame so they have come out to explain that whatever science advice it is they are following, it isn't theirs.
Members of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) which advises the government, have spent the last few days explaining that their advice was that the reproduction rate of the virus is still only just below one and the infection rate still too high so any easing of the lock-down measures is happening too early and could lead to a rise in infections and should wait until the NHS test and trace system is up and running properly.
The number of infections is currently sitting stubbornly at approximately 8,000 new infections every day in England and John Edmunds, a member of Sage, has been at pains to mention that the easing of measures to allow the reopening of schools and more shops 'was a political decision'.
Too late locking down, causing thousands to needlessly die and now too early opening up, risking thousands more to needlessly die.

Special Guest Blogger: Edgar Allan Poe

It was upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary one turbulent, inky night in Autumn. The silence only occasionally interrupted by the woeful cry of a long-suffering animal in the distance as i stumbled along through a landscape of unremitting bleakness in a drunken stupor, the leaves whirling around my stumbling frame as i fell a final time onto the rain-sodden earth.
I lay on my back, the water soaking into my thin, thread-worn coat and stared up to the heavens, the shimmering stars seeming to mock me in my harrowing fate.
Several travelers in the night hurried past me, a drunken wretch prostrate on the ground but while I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping a kindly traveler who came to my aide, and i was taken to seek comfort inside a hospital but before i had chance to ponder the horrible fates that would befall wicked souls, i died, darkness there and nothing more.
To be fair, everyone who knew me saw that coming, i was thought to be permanently on the booze and opium, and lived a tormented existence where i would frequently venture out to wander the streets in the dead of night.
It fits, men who write weird horror stories are surely on drugs but i wasn't, my editor, Rufus Griswold, despised me and he wrote my obituary and all that bullshit but it's more appealing to think of me as a tragic, dark, self-destructive, strange figure.
The Raven is amongst my best known works but 'The Cask Of Amontillado' is one of my most favourites and is based on a fued i had with Thomas Dunn English who would spoof me in his stories, making out i was a crazy drunk so i wrote a charcater for him who was chained to a wall and left to die, gently mock me in fiction would he.
They were unable to find an actual cause of death so put it down to 'cerebral inflammation' but they didn't really know and speculation included severe alcohol withdrawal symptoms, heart disease, epilepsy, syphilis, meningeal inflammation, cholera and rabies but whatever it was, i shall be lifted nevermore!