Paying For The United Nations

The United Nations always seems to be in the News and will be again soon as it celebrates its 80th year in business but i always thought it was one of those things which is a great idea, but the way they run it is awful with the UK, US, Russia, China and France holding a veto which can put the kibosh up anything the other 188 decide which has seen some truly evil regimes 'protected' by their veto holding friends.   
How the United Nations is funded is worked out by some complicated formula which takes into account gross national income, population size and external debt, conversion rates based on market exchange rates and a debt-burden assessment to work out who pays what which obviously doesn't work very weel because it is saying that it is facing a major budget shortfall.
As the world’s largest economy, the biggest bill which comes with the United Nations titled paper is handed to the U.S. who are expected to pay £607 million and then China who pay the next-largest share with £502 million then Japan third £173 million.
Germany's £142 million and the United Kingdom's £99 million make up the top five contributors but this is adjusted every 2 years to take account how much of a mess or a success each nation is making of their economy so for example China's contribution has been increasing since 2000 while Britain's has gone down since 2016 because for some reason (coughcoughBREXITcough) our economy has struggled since then.  
Before Americans start shooting guns in the air in frustration at paying the most for the United Nations, you may be exected to pay the most but you are actually the largest defaulter and owe £1.5 billion, then China £587 million, Russia £123 million, Saudi Arabia £42 million, Mexico £38 million and Venezuela £38 million have the largest outstanding budget balances.
So Happy Birthday United Nations, a great idea but oh so poorly executed.

Not A Pooping Robot

Not that i am regular reader of the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology but they had a great piece about Ai where it did an experiment in some sort of reverse Turing Test to discover which Words would convince other Humans that you are not a Robot.
In the first round they discovered that the the 1,089 study participants narrowed it down to10 categories with words associated to emotions, foods and bodily functions which makes sense as robots are emotionless machines, don't eat and struggle with bodily functions due to having no body.   
These were then narrowed down further to those top two words from each of the categories most likely to convince other humans of your humanity and asked a new group of 2,405 participants to say which one of the words, if uttered, would most make you think the respondent was human, and the top choice was 'Poop'.
This could, the researchers said, be because the word has the highest average relative strength, referring to bodily function and evoking an emotional response which satisfies the human mind that this must be another human.
All very educational and good to know if you ever find yourself in a scenario where you are trying to convince someone you are the real human and the other is a robot, just shout 'Poop' and the robot will be the one Shut Down or so you would think because the Scientists had a brilliant twist at the end of the piece.
'The Study does provide some fascinating insight into our self-perception and what we feel it means to be human' they said, 'although now that this information is on the internet where any old AI with WiFi could get access to it, the study may not now really help us tell person from machine'.
Brilliant, so they found a safe word for us to prove that we are not Robots and then told the Robots it so they can now make us believe they are human and not Robots therefore defeating the purpose of the whole study.
Poop indeed.

Special Guest Blogger: Rick Danko

The Band may sound like an unremarkable name for a legendary rock group but I wasn’t exactly the flashy headline-grabbing frontman although i did mange to pack in more tragedy, addiction, drama, and danger than most rock stars could ever dream of in my 56 short years on the planet.
Regarded as one of the pioneers of the Americana genre, the twist was we were actually Canadian but i started out in The Starlights but was sacked for being anti-social so joined The Levon and it turned out the girl I had been dating already had a boyfriend who tipped off border officers that I was  smuggling a trunkful of pot. The result?
Chaos, suspicion but not a trunkful of pot, just a small amount in our pockets but they were still going to bust us for that anyway.
Our drummer came up with a plan to get his girlfriend to seduce one of the key officers in a seedy Toronto motel and then afterwards, telling him she was underage and it worked because he fled and the case fell apart.  
Bob Dylan hired us as his backing band but it was just as he was turning to electric guitars and the atmosphere was awful but we still had fun on tour, or we did until one night when i was a little too drunk and a little too high and challenged a bandmate to a car race through the twisting mountain roads and I plowed right into a tree.
I almost died, breaking my neck and back and facing months in traction and a giant scar on my face and a shaved head with a metal brace bolted to it but credit to the band, they never sought a replacement and with the help of strong pain medication and some unprescribed medication to hold back the pain from the injuries, we went on a world tour.
The demand for tickets was reaching hysteria level but with sold-out shows and venues were bigger than anything we had ever played and I began indulging in some destructive habits with our new pals Eric Clapton and John Belushi.  
After our pianist, Richard Manual, was feeling a bit down and took a desperate step inside the bathroom of a hotel, hanging himself with his belt it was the wake-up call i needed to ditch the drink and drugs and start living clean but my attempt to lead a healthier life only brought new struggles and i ballooned to 350 pounds and during one concert i had to stop the show to catch my breath.
On December 10, 1999, just one day after celebrating my 56th birthday, my wife found my lifeless in bed at our home as the years of hard living finally caught up with me, and i passed in a not very rock n roll way, going peacefully in my sleep.

Tales Of Ye Olde Christmas

I was having  a bit of a clear out of my computer and i found some things which i thought i had long deleted or just plain forgot about such as some half written blog posts, pictures and a folder within a folder within a folder of part written Christmas stories.
Back in 2020, during the lock-down i was asked if i wanted to contribute to a Christmas Short Story Anthology and i said why not and began scribbling down some ideas and even began writing a few but then time kind of got away from me so i missed the deadline and then they lay forgotten in that Folder, until today.
I threw down a lot of ideas and narrowed my final submission ideas down to either:

1) A story about a time traveller who goes back to witness the first Christmas and accidentally makes a few changes to it
2) Santa’s elves going on strike and forcing him to recruit famous Christmas icons to help
3) A Hedgehog who tries to stay awake during hibernation to see Christmas
4) Survivors of a future post-apocalyptic world trying to recreate Christmas
5) Christmas decorations comes to life to cheer up a recently widowed wife
6) A Snowman who comes back each winter but who wants to experience the rest of the year as well
7) A toy in a second hand shop which looks for a new child to love it
8) Aliens experiencing and observing Christmas on Earth,
9) The visits of the ghosts to Scrooge as witnessed by his neighbours
10) A single snowflake with the power to change even the hardest heart
11) A mildly horror one based loosely on the song Santa Claus Is Coming To Town

Most are just skeletons of stories waiting to be fleshed out and some are just a few lines waiting to be completely written but i would like to have a go at completing them if i get around to it and putting them on here in December and if someone who is a far better story writer than me (i tend to write too much and lose the flow of the story in the editing stage) who wants to pick them up and improve them, then feel free.

P&O Wish Boss Fair Winds And Following Seas

A spokesperson for P&O Ferries said today that Chief Executive, Peter Hebblethwaite, was stepping down from his role and they extend their gratitude to him for his contributions over the past four years.
It was not known what Hebblethwaite said but we know what he said to his workers back in 2022 which was 'Your sacked' because it was he who was responsible for sacked almost 800 staff at P&O Ferries and replaced them with workers paid considerably less than the UK minimum wage.
Described as 'Britain’s most hated boss', Hebblethwaite always said his actions were the only way of saving the ferry group from going bust although during questioning at a parliamentary hearing, he was asked 'Are you just a shameless criminal?' for which he probably didn't hear because he was too busy imagining what he would spend the £183,000 bonus he was paid in addition to his £500,000 salary after making the controversial dismissals to..ahem... 'save money'.
To be fair to him, he did say at the time he reflected on that payment before deciding to accept it which makes everything alright, at least he reflected on making 800 people unemployed first before trousering what it would take a worker on the new rate of £4.47 an amazing 37,577 hours, 755 weeks or 13 years to earn.
Hebblethwaite has used that standard excuse of wanting to step down 'to spend more time with my family' which hopefully means taking a cruise on a P&O ship where he will be served his steaming hot tea by someone who is so knackered from working a 12 hour shift for £58.44 that they drop it in his lap through exhaustion.

A Pretty Good, Conclusive Ending Coming Soon

Although he stated 53 times in the run up to unfathomably plonking his wide load behind the Oval Office table again that he would end the war between Russia and Ukraine on day one, it still rages on during Day 222 of the latest Trump Presidency.
Another war he seems less keen to end is the one in Gaza although he recently declared that: 'I think within the next two, three weeks, you’re going to have a pretty good, conclusive ending' although he is light on details and doesn't explain what a 'pretty good conclusive ending' entails although at this point in time Israel just not horribly starving to death or having a couple of missiles dropped on you while you visit a hospital would be an improvement for the Palestinians.
The US president’s previous version for Gaza went from grotesquely horrifying genocide and ethnic cleansing to upscale Beach resort but as Israel's only friend and the supplier of their weapons they are gratefully blowing up women and children with, unfortunately a pretty good ending relies on him, Netanyahu, Hamas and now Tony Blair who in any other realm of life would all be in prison if they were not in office.
That foursome are some of the worst people in the world but the path to peace in Gaza seems to through these politicians, one who is a convicted sex fiend, criminal and self described fascist dictator, another who has war criminal stamped through him like a stick of rock and currently sits 35th in the Table of leaders who have killed the most people in History, just two places below Vlad the Impaler, whoever is left in charge of the terrorist group Hamas and Tony Blair who even lied about the lies he told to start a war in Iraq.    
While Labour Keir Starmer and the Conservatives Kemi Badenoch get their Sunday best dry cleaned, the Liberal Democrat Leader, Ed Davey, had made a bit of a stand by announcing that he would not be attending the king’s banquet for Trump during his forthcoming state visit although it would be assumed Trump wouldn’t have the first clue who he is but maybe Davey believes boycotting the Royal dinner for Epstein's best buddy could inspire more to follow suit and it will just be Trump and an embarrassed looking King sat down to the Swan Quiche and Salmon sandwiches.
That said, my Social Media feeds seem to be full of people with no medical knowledge predicting the bruises on Trump's teeny tiny hands are a sure sign he will be dropping dead soon anyway so Charles may not have to get the best China out just yet.

Blair's Back

Just when the Palestinians thought it couldn't get any worse........Tony Blair turns up.
Donald Trump, head cheerleader and financial backer of the Israeli genocide, was visited by the former British Prime Minister Tony Blair to listen to his advice on the future of Gaza which is as ridiculous as..well.. asking Tony Blair for his thoughts on the future of Gaza.
Interesting that he has chosen America to poke his head above the parapet, the last time he did that in the UK someone tried to take it off with a shoe outside a bookshop where he was supposed to be signing copies of his book but that didn't go well and he had to be bundled away by security under a hail of eggs and insults.
Unfortunately the pound signs spinning in the eyes of Blair's dry cleaner never materialised because he went to meet the pedophile Jeffrey Epstein's best friend in Washington DC although everyone is being tight lipped on what the discussions were actually about, but if Trump and Blair were involved it isn't going to be good news despite Blair doing so well as a 'Middle East Envoy' all those years ago, mere months after he had lied his way to jointly razing a section of it to the ground alongside a barely educated American President who must be thanking his lucky stars that a thicko like Donald Trump came along after him.
Any chances Blair had of being taken seriously once he leaves power went up the chute the first time he rolled over to have his belly tickled by the most globally unpopular American President ever (up until that date anyway) and we all assumed that once he moved out he took his poodle with him but just like Smallpox and flared trousers, he refused to go away.
For anyone who wasn't around in 2001, the main charge against Blair (anti-war protesters had the good fortune to have someone to rage against whose name changed from Blair to Bliar with such little effort) was that he lied to take us to war with some of his justifications unravelling almost immediately such as Saddam developing nuclear weapons and having links with Al-Queada in his dodgy dossier of so called 'intelligence' before dropping any pretense and just throwing his lot in with Dubya to invade Iraq.
That he has the Orange coloured ear of someone who should be so far removed from having control over anything more important than his bladder shows that the lunatics really are running the asylum.

Special Guest Blogger: Christian Archangel Azrael

Nope, I'm not the mischievous cat who gets up to all sorts of smurfy shenanigans, i'm the Angel of Death which is quite a crappy cartoon name for a cat I grant you.
I was an Archangel which are a high-ranking class of angels and depending on which religious text you read there was either three, four or seven of us but whatever, we are powerful spiritual beings who serve as messengers, protectors, and agents of God's will.  
However many of us there was, i was particularly close to Lucifer and we had a great time in heaven together but then Lucifer rebelled and was banished to Hell and that sort of thing strains a relationship and anyway, by then i was far too busy fulfilling my role as the Angel of Death.
There is some confusion between myself and the Grim Reaper but apart from him having terrible fashion sense, my job is to transport the souls of the deceased after their death, that's the bit the Grim Reaper does.
I have a scroll with all the details of you mortals and record your names at your birth and erase them on your death but i began out as an Islamic deity called Ezra’ël then the Christians thought we need one of those and pinched me for their new religion which is fine by me although they lazily just called me Azreal instead.
My main boast is that it was I who took the dust from Earth to hand over to God to make man with and i kinda assumed as a reward he would make them in my image but considering my real image is a body with numerous eyes and tongues, 4,000 wings, that would have been a lot of dust so he went with you lot looking like him instead.
For this success he made me the angel of death and taking the souls of the deceased away from the body as well as all the admin that goes with it but i don;lt get to decide when your allotted time is up, that's down to the big guy who, 40 days before the death of a person approaches, he drops a leaf from a tree below the heavenly throne, on which I read the name of the person who's soul i must take.
I can't give away trade secrets but if you have lived a righteous life then i take on a beautiful form and use my sword to extract the soul from the body with care and compassion but if you haven't then the separation is a bit more rough and painful and i arrive in my real form with all my eyes in the right place so if at the time of your demise you hear the sound of 4,000 wings flapping, it may be too late to regret that you skipped Church on all those Sunday morning's.

Christianity In Decline

Christianity may be the Johnny come lately of religions but up until 2010 it was going great guns but a Pew Research poll found that the religion is in decline due to millions of Christians around the world leaving the religion.
Christianity numbers stood at 2.4 billion in 2010 and is still the Worlds largest religion with 2.2 billion followers in 2025 but the flock are not dumping their rosary beads for another religion, they are just giving up on the whole concept altogether, or becoming 'religiously unaffiliated' to use the correct term.
Globally there are 1.9 billion religiously unaffiliated which range from atheist, agnostic and nothing in particular against 5.8 billion who say they believe in something but what the the reasons that people give for being like REM and losing their religion?
The list includes an increase in access to information and education, the rise of individualism, personal freedom, a decline in trust towards religious institutions due to scandals and hypocrisy, dissatisfaction with social stances on issues like LGBTQ+ rights and gender equality, and a questioning of rigid religious explanations for life's suffering and evil.
As someone who believes that if you sit down and think about the whole idea of religion and conclude that you still believe in a God (or Gods) then you really didn't think about it long enough then i am happy to see people walking away from whatever faith they had because something which should be predominantly about caring and loving your fellows has been responsible for so many wars, conflicts and hatred throughout history that it is hard to make a case for what the World gains by having religion in it.

International Tourists Poo-Pooing America

If you look at a map of North America, between Canada and Mexico is somewhere called the United States of America which has things such as the Statue of Liberty, the Golden Gate Bridge, Mount Rushmore and Route 66 which all look lovely in photos which is great because that is all anyone outside of the place will see now because nobody is flying in to visit them.    
According to the World Travel and Tourism Council, the U.S Economy is set to lose $12.5 Billion in International traveler spend this year, a fall of 22% and the only country among 184 economies analysed by WTTC forecast to see international visitor spending decline in 2025.
The U.S. Department of Commerce pinpointed that visitors from key markets since January 2025 are down UK down 14%, Germany 28%, South Korea 15%, Spain 24%, Colombia 28%, Ireland 29%, Ecuador 30%  and the Dominican Republic 33%.
Even within North America, Visitors from Canada are down 20% and now 90% of all tourism spending came from domestic travel and the main reason why some of the
20 million jobs the tourism industry generates are at risk.
While the rests of the World poo-poo's America, it would be easy to blame the Orange sex pest in charge...so let's do that because you don't need to be a genius to work out what happened in early 2025 to make non-Americans want to go elsewhere.