Remembering Twain's War Prayer

War is awful, the premise being to inflict so much damage and kill enough of the other side that they have to give up and when you get one side overwhelmingly more powerful than the other, the death toll is horrendous.
What never changes is emotions run high and the rhetoric become absurd so we get the moronic Liz Truss making ridiculous statements that although the British military will not be lining up alongside Ukrainians, she would be happy to back British citizens who want to travel to Ukraine to fight Russia or as the Ukrainian minister put it, 'destroy as many Russian soldiers as we can'.
Regarding the Russia/Ukraine conflict, the only way out of this seems to be if the Russian's rise up and Putin is overthrown and applause must go to the tens of thousands of brave Russians protesting against the war in their name and currently being arrested and dragged to heaven knows what in Russian custody.
Whether it is Ukraine, Britain, America, Russia, Israel, Iraq, Afghanistan or anyone, it makes me wince when i hear people saying they want to 'destroy' or 'kill' fellow human beings and the American writer Mark Twain wrote his elegant 'War Prayer' which should be essential reading for anyone not horrified to hear the emotive language of killing.

Twain puts forward two prayers, one uttered, one not, when a patriotic preacher prays for victory over a foe, praying that God watch over their noble young soldiers, bringing aid, comfort, and encouragement in their patriotic work.
An aged stranger appears and announces that he is God's messenger and explains to them that he is there to speak aloud the second part of their prayer for victory, the part which they have implicitly wished for but have not spoken aloud themselves.

'O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle — be Thou near them! With them — in spirit — we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it — for our sakes, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen'.

Yes i get that Ukraine are defending themselves against an aggressor and i also get that Russian's are killing Ukrainian's but it doesn't mean that we have to cheer or will the horrific deaths of young men and women, regardless of what side they are on.

Hiring The Removal Van Before WW3

Us humans are allegedly the smartest species on the planet but some people who have their finger on a giant red button that could annihilate all life on the planet obviously challenge that theory so with our leaders seemingly getting more and more stupider, it is almost inevitable that at some point we wil blow up our stupid selves and we will be watching a mushroom cloud spread out across the sky which means that we really should be considering the safest place to go should the big boom take place.
My first thought is that all the nuclear armed nations are in the Northern Hemisphere so while they are turning each others countries into giant holes, it would have to be South of the equator and there are no major air currents running from north to south so the radiation fall-out won't make it past the middle barrier but with half a world to look at, where should i park up?
Luckily there are computer simulations which determine the safest places and they suggest anywhere in New Zealand and it does have a warm, enjoyable climate to spend your end of days in comfort or Perth on the East coast of Australia which is well away from anything else, so should be safe but there is only one place where you would be safest, Antarctica.
Now i am sure Antarctica is a lovely place and the pro is that you won't be vapourised by a nuclear weapon or die coughing up your own internal organs from radiation poisoning but quite a large con is that it’s a bit chilly, my MetCheck weather app shows it is -48C there at the moment and i don't think my scarf and coat will cut it, even if i throw on my woolly bobble hat popping to the local shops is a gamble with returning with a pint of milk or becoming a Popsicle halfway there.
I think therefore that it would be New Zealand over Australia for three reasons, New Zealand's scenery is magnificent, New Zealander's seem very nice people and thirdly they speak English there, i'm not sure what they speak in Australia but it sure isn’t any type of English i know.

Places Not So Lovely This Time Of Year

Reddit has been running a poll of countries that people will not ever visit and why and there are the obvious ones such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen because there is a war going on but there seems to be no lack of reasons for avoiding other places such as Italy because it is too loud.
Apparently Belize and Mexico have too many beggars, Cuba, Russia, India, Indonesia and the Philippines are too dirty, there is too much sexual harassment in Egypt and people want to swerve Japan and South Korea because it is just too weird there.
Finland, France, Luxembourg and Slovakia are too boring while poor old Canada is not only tagged as boring but too cold also so you could always go South into the warmer United States but people avoid there due to the racism but there is always Denmark, Norway or Slovenia at least if you got deep pockets because it is too expensive.
Reddit found that putting off visitors to the Czech Republic, Greece, Lebanon, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Switzerland and Turkey is how damned rude the people are but as hard as i looked, i couldn't find anything about Britain there so i assume everyone who comes here finds us Brits lovely, polite and adorable or maybe there was a whole page dedicated to the dreary British weather i just didn't see.

Kiev or Kyiv?

It was my son who asked me why Kiev is being spelt as Kyiv and pronounced as kee-yiv. I assumed it was the Ukrainian way of spelling and saying Kiev (as in the Chicken in breadcrumbs food) so i went and asked the Pronunciation Unit at work because the least we can do is say the name right and it turns out that there has been a Ukrainian campaign for years to get us Westerners to say and spell it right, i must have missed that email.
The short answer is that Ukrainians call their capital Kyiv (kee-yiv) but it was the Russian version of 'Kiev (kee-yev) which became accepted around the World and even more so when Chicken Kiev's became popular so as Russian tanks roll in Kyiv, if nothing else we can say the name the proper Ukrainian way.  
As for why it is usually called 'The Ukraine', that's us Westerners again and that goes back to the Soviet Union when Ukraine was part of the sprawling USSR and we used it when referring to that part of the Union but since 1991 when the USSR ceased to be and Ukraine gained independence, it became it's own country and 'the' should have been dropped but we had got so used to saying 'the Ukraine' that we just kept
saying it.  
There are other country names that are referred to with 'the', such as Congo, Gambia, Yemen, Lebanon, Sudan, Netherlands, Philippines and Bahamas but as for Ukraine, it's Capital is Kyiv and as is is not part of anywhere else anymore so we don't need to say 'the'.
If nothing else, and it is hard to see any silver linings however small, at least we have learnt that.

Dealing WIth Putin

I really didn't think Russia would invade Ukraine, i fully expected it to hang around the border menacingly so i was very surprised when i awoke to hear that the Russian military was stomping it's way towards Kiev.
The question now is what can the World do about Putin and his designs on Ukraine?
Military action against a nuclear Russia is out of the question and has been ruled out so it is financial sanctions but he has been building a multi-billion nest egg since taking Crimea in 2014 and it will be the Russian people who suffer, not him.
He has played the same card as America and Britain in their woeful wars against Iraq and Afghanistan of i'm going to invade so just you try and stop me, and now he has and we stand around bleating how awful it all is but unable to do very little to stop him slaughtering whoever gets in the way.
As this plays out on our TV screens, i am conflicted between how to approach it and recent history is not much use.
If we arm the Ukrainians it will just prolong an awful and bloody war and we end up with another Afghanistan and if we do nothing we potentially save hundreds of thousands of lives but Putin would have literally got away with murder and could be emboldened to turn his sights to other nations outside of NATO.      
That only leaves sanctions and they can take up to a decade to work and sanctions don't really do anything to punish the people starting the wars, they are insulated against economic downturns and it is their citizens who have to endure the hardship.
The threat of Human Right Courts won't scare him, George W Bush, Tony Blair and a host of Israeli leaders should have been in the dock but never got dragged to The Hague to answer for their war crimes so hardly likely Putin will, that just for the little guys.
So i don't know the answer when it is one of the most powerful, nuclear armed nations that brazenly invade another nation to remove a leader they don't like but i hope someone somewhere has an answer to it.

Why Did Boris Take His Peashooter To A Gunfight?

The West's intelligence services have been warning it was imminent for weeks but when Putin finally made his move it was the one that nobody at the CIA, MI6 or any of the other Intelligence Services mentioned, he officially recognised the Ukrainian Eastern Provinces he was pretty much de facto running anyway and then moved his troops in under 'security measures'.
The West's response was to impose sanctions on Putin and his cronies but Britain's sanctions were ridiculed, likened to taking a peashooter to a gunfight so why was Boris Johnson so reluctant to go hard on the sanctions?
The government said they have started off small as they want to be able to ratchet up sanctions if the Ukraine situation escalates further but many MP's are wondering if Johnson is afraid to upset the Russian money pouring into London which the leaked Pandora Papers showing £1.5bn of UK property owned by Russians accused of financial crime or with links to the Kremlin.
Boris Johnson said this week that: 'It’s very important that the house understands we do not raise money from Russian oligarchs' which is technically true as someone with only Russian nationality would not be able to legally donate to a UK political party but those with dual nationality do not have this problem, and the Home Office have issued 2,581 visas to Russian citizens.
A Labour party calculation based on Electoral Commission information estimated that donors who had made money from Russia had given £1.93m to the Tory party since Johnson became prime minister, the SNP's figures put the sum donated to Boris Johnson's Party at £2.3m inlcuding £700,000 from Lubov Chernukhin, a dual British national since 2011 and married to Vladimir Chernukhin who happens to be a former deputy finance minister under Putin and Alexander Temerko, also a dual UK national who handed over a £357,000 donation to the Conservatives and Mohamed Amersi, both working for a company controlled by an associate of guess who...the Russian President, Vladimir Putin.
Boris may have been 'giving it large' with the threats and rhetoric over the past few weeks but when it comes to actually doing something, he faces accusations of putting his and his Parties finances first and as we have found out, Boris does like his donations big and hopefully, not found out about.

22/02/2022

Today, when we wake up and check the calendar, it will show 22 Feb 2022 and if you remember to look at the right time, for sixty seconds it will be 22:22 on 22/02/22 which is cool but much more exciting for Numerologists and people of a Spiritual bent.
To them, numbers in a repeating pattern possess a spiritual meaning which can serve as reminders, warnings, or messages from the universe and means you can expect messages related to a specific area of life on that day and all those 2's mean on this particular Tuesday it’s all emotions, intuition, and unity. Apparently it's the perfect day to manifest harmony in your relationships if you need it.
As it is also a Palindrome, and palindromic dates are days of learning important life lessons, it's a particularly good day for those who are at a crossroads in their career or relationships.
So what can we do on 22/2/2022 to ensure we are all of the above?
Make a special effort to work together to build a structure or platform that idealistically brings us together is the unhelpfully fluffy reply, especially as i was looking for a more solid 'Buy shares in Tesla' or buy a Lottery ticket from a newsagent whose name begins with B which would be much more useful, especially as i have still not sorted out my pension which means i cannot look at Numerology to keep me in my dotage.

Living With Covid To Save Boris's Job

Today we hear Boris Johnson's Government set out the plan for Living With Covid and that isn't the bit i am concerned about, it is the dying with Covid bit worries me as we are still registering over 1,000 deaths a week and 300,000 new infections which is higher than when we went into lock-down.
I don't think it is much of a stretch to imagine that Boris is doing this, and has actually brought the date forward by a month, to save his own neck as the public and his own MP's wait to see if the Police are going to charge him with breaking his own lock-down rules.   
The thinking seems to be that he will be charged but he can point to the rules no longer being in place so what's the problem, they were the old rules.
It is ironic that he was far too slow bringing in the rules which cost people their lives and now he is too early ending them which again will cost people their lives and that's coming from medical experts and scientists including his own Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies advisors who are calling the decision to end the restrictions early 'premature' and 'not based on current evidence' and the virus would receive a 'tremendous boost in transmission resulting in many more cases'.
Nobody should be in any doubt that Boris Johnson and his Government are sacrificing people's lives for the sake of his job, a job that he has performed so badly at that if you are a Conservative MP are are not one of those calling for him to go, then you really haven't been paying attention and hope you enjoy the opposition benches.

Why Is It So Windy in UK?

As the Jet Stream acts as a division between the cold, Polar air and the hot air from the Equator, the general rule is everything above it is wet and cold while everything below it is warm and dry but if you are stuck directly under it, you get the storms which get trapped in the Jet Stream delivered to your door.
The Jet Stream generally snakes up and down but for the past week it has been stuck directly over the UK flinging Dudley, Eunice and now Franklin our way over the past week and meteorologists are keeping an eye out for a potential Storm Gladys which could be coming on Thursday to render pointless any hairdresser appointments we may have.  
Not that this stormy weather isn't expected, our weather isn't random and there is something called a Weather Singularity which is the probabilities of certain weather types happening at the same dates based on geography, atmospheric conditions, the earth's rotation, sea conditions and other sciency stuff which happens at the same time each year and there is an 88% chance that from towards the end of February to 9 March, it will be, stormy and wet and windy.
There are many websites which will show you the Jet stream and forecast where it will be for the next few weeks so you can dress accordingly and the one above from netweather.tv shows where it is sat today (left pic above) and when we roll forward where it will be sat until 9 March (right pic above) and in my best meteorologist speak, that bad boy ain't going nowhere.
As we have another couple of weeks of watching our neighbours fences swing precariously, we had better get acquainted with the names of the storms as provided by the MET Office that the jet stream will deliver to us like a demented Deliveroo driver, so we have a good chance of greeting Herman, Imani, Jack, Kim and Logan and then they seemed to to take on a more exotic flavour with Méabh, Nasim, Olwen, Pól, Ruby, Seán, Tineke, Vergil and Willemien.
As the highest we have got to it in the names was K in 2015/16 (Storm Katie), if we get to Logan then we are in record breaking territory but the good news is that the windy and stormy singularities ends around 9th March and then we can expect some more settled weather...until March 22nd to March 31st when the next one arrives with a 67% chance of it being stormy so we better learn how to pronounce Willemien.

Eunice

Us Brits do like to talk about the weather and we have had weather up the ying-yang today as Storm Eunice huffed and puffed and blew the roof clean off our garage.
If nothing else i had a good view of birds doing their Usain Bolt impression and wheelie bins whirling through the sky like a scene from The Wizard of Oz as i parked the car.
I don't know who at the MET Office was responsible for naming Eunice, and Storm Dudley previously, but Eunice doesn't conjure up images of 127 mph winds bowling over trees, something like Dante or Harley would be more appropriate, Eunice and Dudley sound like a kindly elderly couple who puts milk out for hedgehogs.
I am sure that other nations roll their eyes when us Brits bang on about our weather but it really is fascinating, when I snuck outside for a vape about 9:30am it was sunny and calm, and an hour later when i went out again it was a twilight-esque dark grey and i had to dodge a wind assisted dustbin lid skidding towards me at high speed.
Luckily i spent all day in the office watching the storm unfold on TV watching the news bulletins with dripping wet presenters standing dangerously on beach-fronts, cliff edges and flooding rivers as they warned viewers that under no circumstances should anyone go anywhere near beach-fronts, cliff edges and flooding rivers.
As it took the local council almost a year and the intervention of US President candidate Bernie Sanders to replace a light bulb above my garage a few years ago, heaven knows who i will have to contact to get a roof put back on but i am googling Elon Musk's email address just in case.