Olympics So Far

Due to bodily differences, it would be impossible for men and women to compete against each other at the Olympics but the mixed teams events which has been introduced for these Olympics has made some great viewing.
The mixed triathlon relay last night and mixed medley swimming were exciting to watch as the changing leads kept the excitement going especially in the swimming which saw Great Britain's Anna Hopkin swimming the final leg against America's male star swimmer Caeleb Dressel and managing to just hold him at bay thanks to a lead built up by the previous GB swimmers.
The organisers have also introduced a mixed 4x400m relay in the athletics which is also going to be exciting and tactics may well play into it but as much as a success as this has been, can't say i understand their decision to let 335 Russian athletes compete under the flag of the Russian Olympic Committee when Russia itself is banned from competing until 2022 due to a doping scandal.
The IOC statement was that the Olympic athletes have been able to show they were not involved in Russia's doping scandal and there has been a few not so subtle comments made by athletes from other nations, mostly after they have been beaten by an ROC athlete which just stinks of sour grapes but they sit 4th in the medal table and they can call themselves what they want, they are Russia to everyone.
Annoyingly, Australia sit 5th, one place above GB despite our overall total being more than the Aussie's, they have won 2 more Gold's than us but i expect us to overhaul them by the end and hopefully the ROC also but it would be great top see Japan and China hold onto the top two places but the Americans usually rack up the medals on the Athletic track and the Asian duo not so much so i can't see it.

Boris Keeping His Pecker Up

Boris Johnson's Wikipedia page list the amount of children he has as 'at least six' but that will now be at least seven because he may not be very good at most things, but he seems to have a knack for producing offspring.
Strangely the Prime Minster is very good at withdrawing although that is usually from difficult BBC interviews or climate debates and not from his partner because even he doesn't know how many children he has, when an LBC presenter asked him how many children he has and whether he plays a full and proper role in all their lives, he refused to answer and started banging on about Brexit instead.
Maybe the 7+ children are all down to Boris's commitment to reducing his carbon footprint by not wearing rubber condoms but still, baby steps and he’s certainly missed a few of those as he has left other people to deal with/cover up/raise his prodigy.
Really, how he treats his partners and children could be an important clue as to how he might handle other things but with the baby due in December, a basic knowledge of the calendar explains the sudden dash to get married in May.

Don't Bother With The Latin

Latin is to be taught at state schools across England in an effort to counter the subject's reputation as one that is 'elitist' and largely at private schools and i am not against the idea per se, but it is called a dead language for a reason and that reason is nobody speaks it, ergo what's the point?
The amount of languages we do use today is multi, e.g. French, German, Spanish et cetera so any of these versus Latin is a no brainer although no doubt the Governments idea from the de facto Prime Minister is Bona Fide, they are keen on these Impromptu decisions, it is their modus operandi after-all!
Not known for their acumen, prima facie it might seem a good idea to them but if i had my way i would veto this decision as an agenda which includes learning a dead language is wrong, the minimum should be teaching students to speak a living language because that would look so much better on their Curriculum vitae.   
I will offer this advice to the Government Pro bono, no need for any Quid pro quo, but the range of languages currently learnt are fine so no need to change the status quo or learn Latin words verbatim because they will just never be used.

P.S. Obviously the caveat is if you are a smart arsed blogger, then learning enough to show off in a post is totally worth it.

Piers Moron At It Again

Looking at Piers Morgan's waistline i would think the only time he does anything energetic is when someone shouts 'The Buffets open', i would guess he would put any athlete to shame with his turn of speed then but being as athletic as a brick hasn't stopped him piling in on athletes, exclusively the female ones.
When tennis player Naomi Osaka said she would not be doing interviews due to her mental health, he called her an 'arrogant spoiled brat' and now he has taken a pop at the Gymnast Simone Biles belittling her explanation of pulling out of the Olympic Gymnastics due to 'mental health issues' and accusing her of quitting because of a poor performance at the Olympics.
Throw in that he famously quit his job at Good Morning Britain after ridiculing Meghan Markle's mental health claims and then flouncing out after Alex Beresford the weatherman said that he was just sore that she had 'cut him off' from their relationship and that is three women whose claims of 'mental health' he has now dismissed.
That all three are also black i don't consider to be an avenue to wander down, Piers Morgan is many things but i wouldn't say he was a racist, a misogynist with a massive problem with successful women obviously, but not a racist.
My personal highlight is when he was sacked by CNN for criticising the loopy American gun laws and there was a petition to send him back to the UK, the British then got their own petition up to keep him in the USA so he has never been the most popular person, Ian Hislop calls him Piers Moron , John Cleese said he was 'a slimy, attention-seeking little prole', and Jeremy Clarkson not only vowed to punch him on sight, but was as good as his word by landing one on him at a Press Awards to cheers from the watching journalists.
As well as quitting his GMB job and being sacked by CNN, he was also sacked from the News of the World and sacked from the Daily Mirror and is currently under police investigation for his role in phone hacking allegations during his time so weighing all that up, not the best track record and he should
have a bit more consideration for athletes removing themselves from situation's they are not comfortable with because that is exactly what he did at GMB when the weatherman disagreed with the tedious little moron.

Special Guest Blogger: Saint Olaf of Norway

There is no denying that i was a Viking and our culture was based on seafaring warfare, piracy and sporting natty horned helmets as we pillaged, raped and burned down a local monastery or village or two so there are not many other Saints whose average day was all about getting as drunk as possible, sailing into a foreign land and then setting fire to it's buildings and as the King of Norway i had to set an example so got drunker than most.  
I was nicknamed Olaf the Thick, not because i lacked the brain-cells although the Mead surely destroyed quite a lot of them, but because i had arms and legs like tree trunks, and a belly like one too and when i wasn't pillaging or toasting my hands on a burning Monastery, i was dispensing Christian values.
It was on the way back from ransacking London that i stopped off at Normandy and met Duke Richard II who told me all about Christianity and how it would help to unite Norway and he would love to have Norway on the side of God so i was baptized and set about it by following the Golden
Rule of 'Love Thy Neighbour' although the Viking version meant something a bit different to what it does today and i loved them to death by annihilating the other kings of Norway, raiding Denmark, Iceland and Sweden and burning down any other temple to the ground and building a Christian Church in its place.
I was the ultimate badass, a God-fearing Viking king until a bigger and badasser God fearing King called Cnut the Great promptly handed me my own ass at the Battle of the Helgea but i wasn't completely beaten and came back two years later with an army to show him and his gang exactly who the real King was. Sadly, it wasn't me and he killed with an enormous axe.
Numerous churches in Norway, Sweden, and Iceland are dedicated to me and the Church had no qualms with me bringing Christianity to Scandinavia by brute force because they made me a Saint for it and in my coat of arms i am shown to be holding a Cross in one hand and a Battleaxe in the other showing the oh so Viking way converting people to Christianity or else.

Covid Jabs For The Young

The Government are concerned that whilst the older generations feet never touched the ground in the rush to get their Covid-19 vaccination, the younger generation's feet are moving a lot more sluggishly and my official position is to urge the under 25's to get themselves down to the vaccine center, roll up their sleeves and think of whatever it is you think of when someone is jabbing a needle in your arm.
My problem is that the official stance makes me a massive hypocrite because i completely get why the youngun's are not battering down the doors to get jabbed because if i was under 25, i wouldn't be either.
The young generation have been brilliant in lock-down and i know for a fact that i wouldn't have been if this had happened 30 years ago when i was a firm buttocked teenager, i would have carried on necking my Merrydown Cider and smoking my Peter Stuyvesant cigarettes (are either of those still around?) with my friends and driving around enjoying the quieter roads and whooping it up as i was getting paid to not go to work and good luck mum and dad trying to stop me going out.
That is how the younger generation should be, you feel bulletproof and indestructible and want to go out and experiment and do stupid things and be irresponsible and have fun while you still can.
I would have been nagged into getting the vaccine at the end because that's what parents do but i would have been one of the very last so i understand the reluctance of the younger generation.
That said i am a boring old 52 year old grown up now and i no longer smoke, i wear sensible shoes and drink responsibly (mostly) so to all you kids putting off the Covid-19 jab i officially say make the appointment as soon as possible but unofficially say as soon as that bottle of string cider has been drank and you are out of fags.

5C's Of Vaccine Refuseniks

In every conceivable way the Covid-19 vaccines are saving lives and it too easy to label anyone who continues to refuse one as ignorant, dumb, selfish or a Covidiot and according to a recent report by the International Monetary Fund, that covers up to 20%, or 13 million people, in the UK who say they will not take the invite to roll up their sleeve.
A fear of needles accounts for 10% of those 13 million but what about the other 11.7 million refuseniks?
The Population Health Research Institute at the University of London have been investigating what is influencing these people and have found five psychological and social factors that can influence people's decision-making around vaccines and they are not a politically or anti-scientific cause, they are just making a considered decision not to take the injection.
Labelled the 5C's, they decisions are weighed up on:

Confidence: the person's trust in the vaccines efficacy and safety focusing on any dangerous side effects of the vaccines. 
Complacency: the person considers their chances of catching the disease are less than the average person so the possible risk of the vaccine outweighs the small chance of them catching it
Calculation: the individual's engagement in finding out about the virus, taking an out of sight out of mind approach  
Collective responsibility: the willingness to protect others from infection, through one's own vaccination, a person with a small social circle will see little requirement to protect his peers than someone with a large circle.
Convenience: how easy it is for the person in question to access the vaccine

Obviously we need to be aware of the context of other people's decisions, certain ethnic groups have very little trust in medical authorities or the Government telling them to get vaccinated and the relaxing of restrictions may tempt some to not bother now as we are coming to the end of the pandemic but the good news is that a good proportion of the people who were initially hesitant, do end up taking the vaccine.

Japan's Recycled Olympic Medal's Idea

The Olympics are underway and the medals have started to be handed out but the Gold, Silver and Bronze baubles hanging from around the necks of those who go higher, faster and stronger than the rest are not quite the same as those from over Olympics.
The clever Japanese, one of the technological hot-spots on the planet with companies such as Hitachi, Mitsubishi, Panasonic and Sony, noted that electronics contained the required three metals of bronze, silver and gold so invited it's citizens to donate their old and unused mobiles and other gadgets so they can extract the valuable metals and in a little more than a year, the project received 4.32 million used mobile phones and 34,000 tonnes of small electronic devices from which they have have retrieved 50% of the 30kg of gold required, 43% of the 4,100 kg silver and have already reached the 5,950 kg of the needed Bronze.
The United Nations says that we generate almost 50 million tonnes of e-waste each year but only 20% of that is recycled so making 5,000 medals won't make a big dent in that but it could be a start of something and anything that stops us polluting our planet has to be appreciated.

Applauding Ben & Jerry's Israel Boycott

Like many with a social compass, i have boycotted all things Israeli for decades, going out of my way to check the country of origin sticker and if it says Israel, i put it back on the shelf and a report by the Israeli Manufacturing Association in 2009 claimed that people like me has cost it a 5% drop in the Israeli export economy.
The problem is that the USA backs Israel to the tune of $3.8bn aid each year, therefore giving it tacit approval for its continued abomination against the Palestinians and allowing it to carry on with the status quo which includes stealing it's land and keeping its neighbour well and truly under its military jack-boot while it erases it.
The 5% drop is therefore more than covered by the USA funding but a company has stepped forward this week to say what the Israeli military occupation of Palestine is wrong and Ben & Jerry's have said that it would no longer allow sales in Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian land.
Of course the Israeli's predictably reached straight for the anti-semitism card as they always do to try and shut down the argument whenever the question of their atrocious actions against the Palestinians is aired, a view that waters down the real anti-semitism which is far too prevalent in the World but it's their go-to action so as boringly expected from the Israel leadership.
The company’s stand against illegal Israeli settlements is a small but welcome contribution to what is a ongoing shift in opinion against Israel as its human-rights crimes rack up and in condemning the occupation and settlements, Ben & Jerry highlights the Palestinian cause and adds momentum to a growing global movement which aims to replicate the South African anti-apartheid movement which also had tacit approval from the US and the UK, the Conservative Government at the time branding Nelson Mandela a terrorist for trying to over-turn it.
The Anti-Apartheid movement took 30 years of boycotts and pressure to abolish and all the time America is paying Israel to keep up its genocide then the nation will keep up its atrocious and murderous actions but hopefully Ben & Jerry's move will make it a little bit easier for some other big names to come into the fold and increase the pressure further.

Soul Asylum - Runaway Train

1993 was the Grunge years in music for me but in June of that year there was a different kind of song which got to number 7 in the UK Charts which would appear between the Nirvana and Pearl Jam videos which i always found quite hard to watch, because it's subject matter was wholly depressing.   
The song was Soul Asylum's 'Runaway Train' and the video featured children who had gone missing along with their full name and when they had gone missing and these sections were tailored for different countries so the video for the United States version begins with 'There are over one million youth lost on the streets of America' while the UK version begins with "100,000 youth are lost on the streets of Britain'.  The video was directed by Tony Kaye and showed some difficult scenes of abuse, child prostitution and babies being stolen from pushchairs but what made it so hard to watch was that it was true, these things were really going on and the children whose name was on the screen were real, missing children.
After the video, the lead singer speaks direct to camera saying 'If you've seen one of these kids, or you are one of them, please call this number' with the following screen showing a number one could contact.
The song came back to me today on a Guess The Year radio show and i did wonder if any of the kids in the video had actually been found and after Googling it i found an interview where Kaye said that 26 had been found although he didn't say if that was just in America or Worldwide although 26 is great, it is quite bittersweet.
In the UK Version of the video was Vicky Hamilton and Dinah McNicol, who each went missing in 1991. Their remains were found in 2007 at a house in Margate, victims of Peter Tobin who was later convicted of both murders.
It also featured Mark Bartley who was kidnapped in 1992 and was recognised in the video by a man who knew Bartley was staying in the flat below him but by the time the police arrived, Bartley and his kidnapper were gone and he had never been seen since.
What is pleasing is that Kaye and Soul Asylum defied the Record Companies who didn't want the missing kids in the video, instead wanting more shots of the band so they could get better exposure but the band refused, and said the video with the kids stayed.
I'm not sure what Soul Asylum did next, i don't think i ever heard another song by them, but because of them 26 kids returned home or were located and they deserve a massive clap on the back for that.