Falling On A Bruise

Special Guest Blogger: Greek Goddess Hera

2026-06-13T00:30:00.001+01:00

So. Here I am. It’s been a while, hasn’t it? You’re probably wondering what I’m doing here. Well, one gets bored. One has eternity to reflect. And let me tell you, when you have an infinite amount of time to think about your life, you start to notice things. Mostly, you notice what an absolute shambles the whole operation was.
My name is Hera but you might know me as Juno if you prefer the Roman interpretation, a bit more stoic, a bit more concerned with drainage and aqueducts, but essentially the same Queen of the Heavens. Goddess of Marriage, Women, and Childbirth.
Honestly, the reputation is a touch unfair. A bit of a hatchet job. They forget that I was, in essence, the CEO of a family-run, multi-universal corporation, and my husband was,well, Zeus.
Where to even begin with Zeus? Imagine the most charismatic, powerful, and utterly untrustworthy man you’ve ever met. Now give him the ability to turn into any animal he fancies and a thunderbolt. That’s my husband. Our marriage wasn’t a union of souls, it was a permanent crisis. My daily job was less about weaving the fabric of destiny and more about paternity tests, damage control, and trying to stop my brother-husband from procreating with the entire Mediterranean livestock population.
A swan, he said. It was for art, he said. Leda, apparently, was thrilled. I was not. Do you have any idea how much paperwork is involved when your husband incarnates as a bird and fathers a set of twins? Then there was the bull with Europa. The golden shower for Danaë. Let me tell you, when your husband’s primary method of seduction involves fraud, bestiality and what can only be described as meteorological financial crime, you’re entitled to get a little tetchy.
And yes, alright, I may have taken it out on the subsequent offspring. Heracles. He strutted about so sending a couple of snakes to his crib was a perfectly reasonable response in my opinion but what would you do if the man who swore to honour and cherish you kept bringing home illegitimate demigods by the dozen?
I was quite proud of my imaginative punishments. Io turned into a heifer, Leto chased across the earth so she couldn’t give birth, poor Semele burnt to a crisp. It all sounds a bit dramatic but someone had to be the adult in the room.
I was the one who had to enforce the rules. I was the one who championed women and not by simpering and encouraging them to be all soft and lovely, but by showing them what happens when you let a man run amok.
I guided the hands of midwives. I blessed the unions that were actually based on love and respect so I wasn’t just about tearing things down, I was about building strong, stable Zeus free families.
My end was a gentle, almost insulting, retirement as one day, the prayers stopped coming. Not all at once. They just thinned. The grand temples became dusty tourist spots and the offerings went from whole burnt oxen to a few wilting flowers and a fiver for the collection box.
Olympus grew quiet and the ambrosia started tasting a bit stale. We were still gods, of course. Immortal. But we were gods on a pension, a profoundly boring ending imaginable.

39th Time Lucky For Peace Deal

2026-06-12T16:06:28.080+01:00

For the 39th time, Donald Trump has announced that a peace deal with Iran is imminent and for the 39th time Iran said not so fast Fatso and the whole thing grounds to a halt and they start threatening each other again.
The Mango Mussolini in the White House said that the U.S. is close to signing 'a great settlement with Iran' which will be signed 'over the next few days' which will result in 'Iran agreeing to never developing a nuclear weapon'.
Iran for their part have said that the Iranian negotiating team have dismissed reports that a deal is ready to be signed and is a complete lie and completely untrue and as Trump lies as easily as he breathes and Iran wouldn't admit to a peace deal, it is hard to know who to believe but if you have been wrong 38 times before, i'm tending to go with the Iranians.
Trump has been looking for an Exit from the war he and Netanyahu started almost from the first day when Iran didn't buckle under and fought back and 3 months later here we are still with missiles still zinging around the Middle East and the Strait of Hormuz still shut but when the deal is eventually signed, and it will have to be one day, it wont be better than the JCPOA deal Trump carelessly tore up in 2018.
Much will be said about Iran not ever having a Nuclear Weapon but they were not going to anyway, on the very day the invasion started the Iranian Foreign Minister, Abbas Araghchi, said that: 'Iran would under no circumstances ever develop a nuclear weapon' which means that the last 3 months would just get us back to where we were when America attacked Iran during the negotiations.
The reason for the sudden keenness to wrap things up seems to be that Trump is meeting Europeans at the G7 Summit in France next week and will meet up with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz who have all criticised the U.S. and Israel for their highly iffy war and he wants to avoid all four reminding him that said it would be a mistake, and it has been a catastrophic one.

Space X Shares

2026-06-12T15:32:22.341+01:00

My husband has long discussed buying shares in something and leaving them until we retire and he was mulling over Space X which launched today at £100.07 ($135) per share and when he asked me for my thoughts because i am into all things Space related, i replied that i would be more interested if Elon Musk wasn't involved because he is a complete dick.
Financial experts are saying that the shares are overpriced at £100.07 but on release they are expected to go up to as much as £141 driven by massive hype before settling down to what they consider it to be it's real price of around £47 per share.
I asked a Financial Agent who is on top of these things and he said to hold fire as Space X is tens of millions in debt and lost billions last year and are already billions down for this year already and did post a warning that it 'may not achieve profitability in the future' so don't touch it.
Not that i disbelieved him but i asked Ai anyway and it came back with the pluses being it has massive growth potential with its Starlink satellite network and is the front-runner in modern commercial space exploration but the minuses are it is hugely in debt and the shares are hugely overpriced so pretty much what our guy said anyway.
I did buy some 'pretend shares' worth £1676 in January acting on Ai's suggestions to see if i trust it enough for next year and buying 'actual' shares and halfway through the year I am £466 up, which is nice.

Special Guest Blogger: Queen Jadwiga

2026-06-11T00:30:00.009+01:00

Hello, lovelies. Jadwiga here. Yes, that Jadwiga. The one they called ‘King’ of Poland. And, if the gossip mills are to be believed (and they usually are), a saint. It’s all a bit of a kerfuffle, frankly,
Let’s start with the title, shall we? It’s the first thing everyone gets wrong. They called me ‘Jadwiga Król’. ‘King Jadwiga’. Not Queen, you understand. King. A bold fashion statement for a ten-year-old, I’m sure you’ll agree. Imagine it. One minute you’re in Hungary, perfecting your curtsy and trying not to get jam on your best gown, the next you’re being shipped off to Poland to be the absolute monarch. The crown was dreadfully heavy. It kept slipping over my ears.
The coronation was a whole palaver. All these formidable lords with beards you could lose a small badger in, kneeling before a child who was mostly concerned about whether they’d serve plum tarts at the feast. They’d debate matters of state for hours, and I’d just be there, thinking, 'When will these werido's shut up'.
Being Queen (or King) wasn’t so much about wielding ultimate power as it was about learning to look incredibly thoughtful while, in reality, you were deciding which pony to ride later.
Then came the marriage to my darling, lumbering, pagan Lithuanian. History frames it as a grand union, a masterstroke of diplomacy that joined the crowns of Poland and Lithuania. And yes, it was. But let me tell you, from my perspective, it felt less like a fairy-tale romance.
Our first conversations were a riot. He spoke Lithuanian, and a smattering of Ruthenian. I spoke Polish, Hungarian, Latin, and a decent amount of French. It was the United Nations in a single bedchamber. We communicated mostly through pointing, exaggerated gestures, and the helpful translation of a monk who looked permanently terrified.
Lovely man, Jagiello. A bit rough around the edges, but he had a good heart. And he did bring Lithuania to the party, which was quite the coup. I just had to spend the next few years teaching him not to wipe his boots on the curtains.
The Saint Jadwiga thing was a terrible misunderstanding, blown out of all proportion.
Take the ‘miracle of the shoe’, for instance. The story goes I gave a poor artisan my velvet slipper so he’d have something of value to pawn. He carved its likeness into stone, it was declared a relic, and voilà, one step towards sainthood. The reality? It was a perfectly good shoe! It’s hardly turning water into wine, is it? It’s basic footwear redistribution.
Then there’s the black cross on the church wall. I apparently prayed before it so fervently that it embedded itself into the stone. Medieval stonework was notoriously shoddy, damp and porous but i did help people by founding hospitals, giving to the poor, restoring the university. But not because I was aiming for a halo. It just seemed polite. You see a kingdom that needs a bit of a boost, a university that’s seen better days, you roll up your sleeves and get on with it. It's common decency, not a fast track to celestial acclaim.
My death wasn't my finest hour, I’ll admit. After all the political intrigue, the royal mergers, I went the way so many women did back then, through childbirth.
Our daughter, Bonifacia. A beautiful little thing but she was, to put it mildly, a stubborn arrival. She took her time, and in the process, did a rather significant number on my internal arrangements. It was all a bit undignified, I can tell you. A far cry from the majesty one is supposed to cultivate. I was 25. Far too young to be handing in my notice.

Ai Saying Spain To Win World Cup

2026-06-11T00:01:00.000+01:00

In times past, when we wanted to know which team would win the World Cup, we have turned to creatures such as Paul the Octopus to tell us what would happen but now we have an Ai algorithm from TU Dortmund University, Molde University College and TU Munich who have collaborated to forecast the entire World Cup and it has predicted the most likely course of the tournament and the most likely winner based on an algorithm of the combined strengths of the squads, FIFA ratings, individual players, the teams results over the last eight years and other information about the teams such as the probabilities for the number of goals for each team.
It used these variables and simulated each match 100,000 times to determine the tournament’s most likely course and arrived at the eventual winners binge Spain with a winning probability of 14.5%, closely followed by England and France, each at 12.4%, Germany at 11.2% and Portugal 8.9%,
It's not looking good for the nations with home advantage with the United States only having a 1% chance which is better than Mexico and Canada who both have a 0.6% probability of lifting the trophy.
Before you go rushing out to whack your months wages on Spain based on the information, the same algorithm did predict the 2019 Women’s World Cup winners would be USA but missed out on the 2022 men’s World Cup although they are saying that the algorithm now is more refined and although i do expect it to be a bit more accurate than an eight-limbed mollusk, i'm sticking with the eventual winner coming from either Argentina or Brazil based on the heat and humidity knackering the chances of the European teams.
In my works sweepstake I pulled the Netherlands (5.6%) and Japan (1.3%) and i don't need AI to tell me that's my £4 done but the Bookies favourites are Spain and and then France and England which would be handy if England gets the final because then we would avoid the usual 'Who do we support now?' dilemma once we are knocked out.

Are We Ready To Know What’s Out There?

2026-06-10T17:45:00.000+01:00

Steven Spielberg's Disclosure Day is released today and is being called the third act of the Spielberg Alien trilogy after Close Encounters and ET but this one is about exposing the government's cover-up of extraterrestrial secrets, a well trodden conspiracy theory which began in 1947 when a UFO supposedly crash in Roswell, New Mexico.
After both of the previous films, there was a dramatic increase in reported UFO sightings and we can expect more this time also and in 2021 a US government report was released that showed they had investigated decades of unexplained aerial sightings in US airspace and there were 20 unidentified flying objects that they are unable to explain but did not rule out rule out extraterrestrial activity as a possible explanation.
What i always tell people getting over excited about aliens visiting is that what they are talking about is UFO's with extra emphasis, italics and underlining of the Unidentified part of those three words but Spielberg himself has said that there is now a critical mass of people fascinated with the question of whether we are alone in the Universe, and if someone knows we're not alone, why haven't we been told but i wonder if aliens do exist, should we be told and if we were, how would we react?
In February, former president Barack Obama said aliens were real before hastily clarifying that he hadn’t seen any evidence but then, would he tell us anyway?
In HG Wells’ classic sci-fi novel The War of the Worlds, alien arrival prompts societal collapse as people flee from cities and in Carl Sagan’s novel Contact, the existence of aliens sends religious groups into mass panic and History is littered with examples of new information about our place in the Cosmos not going down well.
Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake for his theory that every star was a sun and had it's own planets, Galileo Galilei was sentenced to permanent house arrest for saying the Earth was not the center of the Universe and Nicolaus Copernicus only avoided a similar fate by releasing his heliocentric model theory by dying very soon after.
My own view is that Aliens MUST exist because there are just far too many planets in the Universe where life could have started but do i believe they are coming here in Spaceships and a Government has covered it all up?
No i don't as the sheer distances involved would make it unfeasible but i live in hope that one day something other worldy might turn up and asked to be taken to our leader and that would start the argument how who exactly the leader would be because there are a few at the moment who if they met, would lead to them to decide to go ahead with the Hitch Hikers Guide to The Galaxy solution of demolishing the Earth to make way for a hyperspace bypass.

Special Guest Blogger: Anthony Head

2026-06-10T00:30:00.000+01:00

It was a bout of pneumonia that reminded me how much I miss the simple pleasure of inhaling fresh air after a life of flitting between coffee commercials, vampire slayer support groups and an ill-fated bid for the TARDIS.
It was the early 80s and British television was on the look out for fresh-faced lads with a decent accent and an unsettling ability to stare intensely into a camera for half a minute and so enter Nescafé and half of the the Gold Blend couple.
The ad ran for 12 installments over two years and introduced me to the viewing public while it was performing backing vocals for the synth pop band Red Box which introduced my rich Baritone vocal delivery.
As i was a serious actor type and was becoming known as 'The Gold Blend advert guy', i moved to America and got a call from Joss Whedon, the American writer who was looking for an English actor to play the part of Rupert Giles, a librarian turned vampire wrangler and my audition was me delivering a proper Shakespearean monologue but i later found out that that I got the job due less to my acting chops but conveniently looking like a credible librarian and sounding terribly British.
I spent 7 seasons as a pretend librarian which was generally a paid hobby for bookworms who enjoy shushing toddlers and pretending to care about the Dewey Decimal System but it does take some skill to be the only grown up in a group of teenagers surrounded by pre-digital tomes and hex bags and deliver the line: 'Buffy, you can’t just go around sucking people’s blood for fun' and looking serious while you brandish a crossbow and explain that saving the world was not a valid excuse for missing third period history.
Shortly after Buffy ended, I was approached by Matt Lucas and David Walliams, who were in the throes of creating the Little Britain phenomenon and needed someone who looked like a Politician for their show and I took the part, mostly because a stint as a comic politician would stop me being called Giles from Buffy for the rest of my life after it had replaced the Gold Blend Guy stereo type.
Coffee commercials, vampire librarians, parody politics and a dash of synth-pop backing vocals but i was hoping my next adventure would be aboard a TARDIS and in the early 2000s the job was up for grabs so I auditioned for the Eighth Doctor but they decided to go with Paul McGann instead.
Reflecting on one’s legacy is a treacherous business. Most people want to leave behind a foundation, a scholarly breakthrough but I, on the other hand, spent the better part of a decade trying to ensure the apocalypse didn't show up on a School day.
I later played the King Uther Pendragon in Merlin so making the leap from mild-mannered librarian to tyrannical King of Camelot which is some pivot but my professional life was a blur of stage plays, television sets, and the occasional musical episode where I had to sing about my feelings to keep the apocalypse at bay so not a bad career even if it that’s swerved through more dramatic U-turns than a London taxi driver on a Saturday night which will give the obiutuary writers frantically googling my IMDb page a headache but it was all a blast all told and I single-handedly made instant coffee seem like the height of romantic intrigue, navigating a love affair one brew at a time.

World Cup Already A Farce

2026-06-10T00:01:00.000+01:00

Only a few more sleeps until the World Cup despite FIFA trying to ruin it with their extortionate ticket prices and handing it to a nation sliding quickly in Fascism.
In 2017, when the World Cup was first awarded to the USA, Canada and Mexico, Fifa chief suit, Gianni Infantino, said: 'It’s obvious when it comes to Fifa competitions, any team, including the supporters and officials of that team, who qualify for a World Cup need to have access to the country, otherwise there is no World Cup' and as it stands, Iran will compete although the Mango Moron wanted them replaced by Italy, though the can only participate under specific visa conditions such as when playing their group games in Los Angeles and Seattle, players must enter and leave the USA soil the same day while team support staff have been denied entry altogether.
Iranian fans though, according to their nation’s football association, are not even allowed that and have had their ticket allocations pulled but it is not just teams, staff and fans that are being restricted.
Omar Artan, one of Africa’s top referees has been denied access to the USA and was refused entry at Miami airport and Iraq striker, Aymen Hussein, was held and questioned for nearly seven hours at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport, while the team’s photographer was barred from entering following checks on his phone found messages that were not very nice about the thin Orange skinned Fuehrer currently making his nation a laughing stock again.
Members of the Senegal national team were forced to undergo detailed bag inspections on the airport tarmac immediately after landing in San Antonio, Texas and elsewhere, Uzbekistan’s squad were searched by drug-sniffing dogs at their training camp in New York.
So with players, referees and fans denied visas and the specter of ICE raids on stadiums, the World Cup is bound to descend into an absolute farce and everyone outside of the USA cheering for Paraguay, Australia and Turkey wins against the hosts and the brilliant prospect of the USA being knocked out of their own competition at the first opportunity, hopefully.

Here We Go Again?

2026-06-09T19:03:21.948+01:00

As the Calendar ticks over to the 101st Day of the Iranian war which was only meant to last a few weeks, it appears that Iran's military has not been as 'totally destroyed' as Trump said because Iran launched barrages of missiles and drones towards Israel as it promised it would if Israel attacked Beirut.
Israel have always seen the phrase 'ceasefire' as a reason to not cease firing at all and during the ongoing ones with Lebanon and Gaza, the death toll continues to grow, UNICEF put the figures as 1,000 in Gaza since that ceasefire was declared and hundreds of children have been killed in Lebanon.
The latest spark was when Israel was just minding its own business, casually breaking the ceasefire as usual when Iran decided to strike back for no reason, we can only assume it was either antisemitism or because Israel sent rockets into two high rise residential blocks in densely packed civilian areas in Beirut (aka Hezbollah strongholds) killing and wounding civilians, including six women and children who may or may not have been terrorist leaders.
Iran fired their barrages into Israel although Israel said most of the incoming rockets were intercepted by those air defences that Americans taxes are paying for despite the war raising the costs of everything Stateside, so you may find paying much more for everything Americans but those missiles to defend a country committing a genocide are not cheap.
Iran did say they planned to launch a full week of continuous strikes on Israel which outraged Donald Trump who was shocked that another country just decided to bomb another one, very much not what Israel and America would do.
Thankfully no casualties were reported in Israel or following the Israeli retaliation strikes in Iran but it all stopped when Trump demanding both sides agree to another ceasefire because they usually work out so well when Israel is involved.
Today it was announced that Iran shot down a US helicopter which was just flying around off the coast of Iran and Trump is now saying that the US must, of necessity, respond to this attack which opens the door for a second round of the Iran War and missiles flying around the Middle East once again .
What has not yet sunk in into Trump's dementia riddled brain is that Iran did not back down during the last onslaught and will be unlikely to back down this time either so here we go again in the long running Trump's 'Distract from me being exposed as almost certainly a pedophile' War he started but seems unable to end.

Special Guest Blogger: Greek God Pollux

2026-06-09T00:30:00.007+01:00

Son of Zeus, one half of the Dioscuri, an Argonaut, and, if we’re being perfectly honest, a bit of a legend in the pugilistic circles of ancient Greece. It’s not easy being a Greek god, you know. There’s the smiting, the thunder, the endless family dramas… it’s all a bit of a palaver. Most people think it’s all nectar and ambrosia, but let me tell you, the ambrosia plays havoc with one’s digestion.
To understand my story, you must understand my other half, my brother, Castor. The handsome, brilliant, wonderfully mortal one. You see, our mother, the lovely Leda, had a rather eventful evening. First, her husband, Tyndareus. Then, a few hours later, Daddy Dearest himself, Zeus, who had popped in for a chat disguised as a swan. (A swan. Honestly.)
Long story short, Castor and I were born as twins, but he drew the short straw in the divine paternity lottery. I got the immortality, the godly strength, and a natural affinity for perfect hair. He got mortality and a frankly dreadful sense of direction. We were thick as thieves, of course. We did everything together. We learned to ride, to hunt, and most importantly, we learned to throw a punch but not having the usual Godly pedigree, he couldn’t just mix with the Gods in Heaven, who are notoriously snobbish about such things.
Boxing wasn't just a brutal pastime for me. It was an art. A dance. While other chaps were all brawn and aggression, flailing about like they’d stumbled into a hornet’s nest, I was all about technique. Footwork is everything. It’s the difference between a glorious victory and getting a black eye and a swollen nose. I was the original featherweight of the divine world, quick on my feet, dazzling in my movement, and with a right hook that could, quite literally, knock a god into next week.
Then came the call for the big one. The Quest for the Golden Fleece. Jason, bless his cotton socks, was putting a crew together. The Argo. A lovely little ship, but the onboard catering was an absolute nightmare. I signed up, of course. Castor came too. Someone had to keep an eye on him.
Looking back, it was like the world’s most chaotic stag do. You had Heracles, flexing his muscles and complaining and Orpheus, strumming his lyre and getting all morose and then you had us, the twins, the poster boys. We were the ones who kept the ship’s morale up with a spot of sparring and witty banter.
We had scrapes, of course. The Harpies, a gaggle of dreadful winged women with the table manners of a pig. The Clashing Rocks, which were a navigational nightmare but we got through it because at the end of the day, when things got pear-shaped, they knew who to call. The son of Zeus.
Life, as they say, is a series of matches. You win some, you lose some. And then there’s the one that ends your career. For us, it was a spot of bother over some cattle. A very silly, very tragic squabble with our cousins, Idas and Lynceus. One thing led to another, a few punches were thrown, and well, it all went a bit tits up.
Castor, sweet, mortal Castor, took a fatal blow and in that moment the world just stopped. I was a Greek god, yes, but I was also a twin and half of me had just been KO’d for good.
There I sat there, next to my brother’s body, completely and utterly lost. What’s the point of immortality if you have to spend it alone?
I was having a full-blown divine tantrum on Mount Olympus wailing at Zeus, who was trying to polish a thunderbolt and my father, for all his swan-based transgressions, is a soft touch at heart. He made a deal. A rather good one, I thought. I could share my immortality with Castor. We’d spend one day on Olympus, one day in Hades. Alternating forever.
And so we did. until eventually, Zeus, in another fit of paternal fondness transformed us into a constellation. Gemini.
The Twins but I suppose it could be worse. I’m up here, twinkling away with my brother for eternity and it's a good view.

Most Polite Nations Ranked

2026-06-08T00:30:00.000+01:00

Anyone who has travelled a bit will notice that the inhabitants of some nations are just a bit more polite than others and while each country has it's share of grumpy buggers who won't hold open a door for anyone following behind or say thank you when you stop to let them out of a road, some have more than their fair share of those we do so if only we had some sort of league table of which nations are the most polite and who have not yet mastered the art of not being dicks?
Luckily we do so thank you to the digital remittance service who surveyed 5,000 global customers and asked them based on their personal experiences, who was the most polite nation based on criteria of respectfulness, friendliness, patience, following social rules, treating strangers and politeness.
Topping the list by a wide margin is Japan, which earns more than a third of all votes (35%) for the most polite country in the world and then Canada (14%) clinches second, then the United Kingdom (7%), China (4%) and Germany (3%) claims the fifth spot.
The rest of the top 10 are The Philippines (2.3%), Sweden (2.2%), Denmark (2.1%), Finland (1.9%) and rounding out the top ten is South Africa (1.8%).
Australians come in 11th (1.7%) which gives them bragging rights over New Zealand in 16th (1.2%) and Norway at 17th (1.1%) is the lowest of the Scandi's but South America and Africa don't come out of it very well with only Brazil (1%) and South Africa representing their entire continents.
With Canada's second place, they are 11 places above the USA (1.6%) in 13th but that won't come as a surprise as Canadians have long been known as some of the friendliest people on the globe.
If your country is not in the top 25 then they did not receive any votes whatsoever and it is safe to assume that you really should try harder, or in my best polite British way, your contributions currently lack the desired level of politeness.

1   Japan
2   Canada
3   United Kingdom
4   China
5   Germany
6   Philippines
7   Sweden
8   Denmark
9   Finland
10 South Africa
11 Australia
11 Switzerland
13 United States
14 India
15 Ireland
16 New Zealand
17 Norway
18 Netherlands
19 Thailand
19 France
21 Brazil
22 Spain
23 Belgium
24 Italy
25 Austria

Special Guest Blogger: Queen Maria I of Portugal

2026-06-07T00:30:00.012+01:00

So You Think You Had a Bad Century? They said to write what i know, and what I know, rather a lot of, is being dead.
I was born the daughter of King Joseph I. A solid start. A bit of an earthquake in ‘55 did a number on Lisbon, but we rebuilt. We’re Portuguese, we’re made of sturdier stuff. Life was a whirlwind of gowns, politics, and the general business of being a royal. Then came the marriage. To my uncle.
Now, before you all get your historical knickers in a twist, let me tell you it was a different time. Keeping it in the family was less of a scandal and more of a logistical convenience and anyway, bonking people you could go halfsies with on a Grandma’s Day present was cheaper. They said it would simplify things and wedding your mother’s brother is about as simple as explaining quantum physics to a cat.
My husband, Pedro, was a dear man, bless his heart, but the family dinners were a logistical nightmare of awkwardness. Still, we muddled through. We had children. Lots of them. A whole little brood of potential heirs and spares. And for a while, things were… well. Pious.
That’s my first nickname, you see, The Pious. I built a massive, beautiful church in Lisbon, the Basílica da Estrela. A bit of a bargain with the Big Man Upstairs, if I’m being honest. I’d promised him a whacking great basilica if he’d grant me a son. He did. My little Joseph. And then, a few decades later, He rather rudely decided to take him back.
This is where things started to go, as the British say, a bit pear-shaped.
First, my dear Pedro, Uncle-Husband, popped his clogs. Fine. One is expected to bury one’s husband. Sad, but part of the job description. Then, my eldest son, my brilliant Joseph, the heir to the throne, the one I’d built the basilica for, died of smallpox. Right. That’s a blow. A real, solid, knock-you-for-six kind of blow.
The universe was playing a rather cruel hand of whist, and my hand was full of twos and threes. My nerves, which had never exactly been a fortress of iron to begin with, simply dissolved.
If they’d had therapy and a steady supply of gin and tonics in the 1790s, I’d have been first in line. Instead, I got convulsions, a permanent state of aggrieved mourning, and a new nickname. Maria the Mad.
My brand went from ‘The Pious’ to ‘The Mad’ quicker than you can say ‘French artillery’ because just when I was getting comfortably settled into my melancholy, along came Napoleon. That short, grumpy fellow with a hat fetish decided my country looked rather fetching and that he’d quite like it. The Portuguese court had a collective, royal panic attack. The decision was made that we had to get out. Pack your bags, grab the crown jewels, and don’t forget the state papers.
We fled to Brazil.
Let me tell you, it was not the glamorous exile they portray in the paintings. Think of the most stressful family holiday you’ve ever taken. Now add ten thousand courtiers, the entire royal treasury, the threat of imminent invasion, and a journey across the Atlantic in ships that were, to be frank, a bit leaky. We essentially relocated the entire government to a colony that was, at the time, mostly jungle and mosquitoes.
We turned Rio de Janeiro into the capital of the Portuguese Empire. The heat was oppressive, the humidity ruined my hair, and my son, John had to deal with everything as I was mostly confined to my quarters, a shadow queen muttering about the past and praying furiously. I wasn't mad, you see. I was just profoundly, unendingly, and justifiably done with it all.
I’m the queen who lost her mind and fled to the tropics. But I’m also the queen who ensured the Portuguese monarchy survived when it could have been completely snuffed out.
In the end, I died in Rio, far from the basilica I’d built and the son I’d lost. Not in a blaze of glory. Not in some dramatic, poetic fashion. I simply… stopped. Fizzled out like a damp firework in the Brazilian heat after a long, loud, and extraordinarily chaotic show.
A wife who married her uncle, a mother who buried her child, a queen who lost her country. I survived an earthquake, a French invasion, and the internal collapse of my own sanity. I fled an empire with my court in tow and managed to do it all while wearing a truly corseted dress and a heavy crown.
I’d call that a win, wouldn’t you?

Bigger Coat Or More Shorts?

2026-06-05T15:01:02.241+01:00

My Inbox had two weather related emails in it today and neither was particularity cheerful.
First up was from the New Scientist who explained that there was a mysterious cold blob in the Atlantic which they are suggesting could be due to the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) weakening which will disrupt the system of currents that transports warmth from the tropics to Europe.
Over the past 150 years, Earth’s entire surface has been warming due to man made Climate Change and the dingbats in charge doing nothing about it, but one patch of the north Atlantic, south-east of Greenland, the area has cooled by as much as 1°C and if the AMOC does collapse, us North Europeans will be shivering as temperatures dip by as much as 15°C.
Numerous studies have suggested that the AMOC is weakening and may collapse or slow down and may be closer to collapse than previously thought but while we may be looking online for some thicker gloves, the next email from the World Meterological Organisation (WHO) may have us looking for a fans at the same time.
Everyone in Meteorological circles have been talking up a possible El Nino for a while now and whereas as before it was suspected, it now seems pretty certain with the only question of just how strong it will be.
The WHO are saying that the event will be supercharged by Global Warming which willl amplify the impacts although they are not going with the Super El Nino or Godzilla El Nino which some of the more excitable weatherheads are, just that it could be very strong and hinting towards the possibility of exacerbating drought, heavy rainfall and increase the risk of heatwaves both on land and in the ocean and setting the planet up for the hottest year on record.
The WMO have set up an El Nino update page on their website to: 'Give advanced forecasts and early warnings to inform decision-making by governments, humanitarian and and disaster risk agencies and climate-sensitive sectors'.
The Met Office, the UK’s national weather service and not ones to sound any alarms unnecessarily, when asked of the duo threats of the AMOC tanking and an extra strong El Nino went with a very understated: 'It does seem something unusual is going on' which admittedly doesn't seem particularly helpful in whether we need to buy a bigger coat or stronger Sun Factor Lotion.

Special Guest Blogger: Joanna of Castile

2026-06-05T00:30:00.006+01:00

I’m just a woman who loved too deeply, ruled too fiercely, and was subsequently locked in a room with a lot of tapestries.
Back in the day, I was known as the Beloved. Not for the reasons you’re thinking! It was all about the political strategy, of course. At 16, I was thrust into a marriage with Philip of Habsburg, handsome, wealthy, and slightly insufferable, according to my diary.
Our union was the stuff of fairy tales! Philip and I had five kids, which is impressive when you consider he died at 26 after a mysterious case of the Spanish sweating sickness but heartbreak? Never!
Philip’s death? A tragedy. My mother, Isabella, advised me to take the throne. I did. I was queen of Spain, Navarre, and bits of Italy. I didn’t just rule, I dominated. Literally. I had the administrative skills of a spreadsheet wizard and the ruthlessness of a woman who’d just been widowed by a man who probably didn’t brush his teeth.
But then came the problem in the shape of my son Charles, aka the future Holy Roman Emperor, who’d probably have won Teen Emperor of the Year if they’d had such a thing.
He looked at me, his grieving, governing mother, and thought, Mum’s not herself anymore. Probably the stress! and just like that, I was gently, lovingly, manhandled into a life of semi-soft house arrest.
Let’s get one thing straight: I was not mad. I was disappointed. Charles, bless his Habsburg jawline, thought he could just take my empire? I tried to stop him! I wrote letters! I sent ambassadors! I even tried to sneak out of my room dressed as a nun but there i was confined to a palace, surrounded by the sound of my own thoughts but at least I had the wine. And the tapestries. They were very nice.
History remembers me as the Mad but we really didn’t do mental health back then. If you were a woman who refused to be a punchline for European politics, you were diagnosed with hysteria. If you were a woman who did punch men in politics, you were mad. Either way, you were silenced.
But you know what’s mad? Being gaslit by your son for 40 years while he rules your empire and i did lose my mind sometimes and died still arguing with my son’s surrogates through a locked door.

Farage Uniting The Racists

2026-06-03T15:00:00.000+01:00

Probably just an coincidence that since it was revealed that Nigel Farage had been 'gifted' £5 million from a Thai crypto billionaire and failed to declare it, he has decided to keep his face away from anywhere he could face awkward questions by journalists today was a golden opportunity to unite the nations racists so off he popped to grab his video camera and make his 'address to the nation'.
With his iphone propped up on a gate post and safely away from anyone who might say 'Oi Nige, about this £5 million then', he began on the subject of the brutal murder of 18 year old Henry Nowak last December who was handcuffed by the police as he lay dying after the killer stabbed him and falsely accused him of racism.
After the court had delivered its verdict on Monday, Henry’s father had given a dignified and moving statement where he asked that politicians not use his son’s death as a chance to promote their own agendas and be used to 'Create further division, hatred or tension' but Nige is just not the kind of guy to miss out on uniting the racists and bigots behind him.
He shot through the usual lazy points so we had the death was was a tragedy that had been years in the making, mass immigration, Black and brown people coming to this country, British culture was under threat, two-tier policing, benefit of the doubt given to foreigners, diversity, equity and inclusion gone mad, streets were no longer safe for white people, unrecognisable as the country it once was and ended with it being time to respond with 'pure cold rage' which many low IQ racists took to mean wrap themselves in Union Flags and attack the police as they did last night because nothing proves just how much you love your country more than smashing it up.
Farage meanwhile, packed up his camera and went back into hiding determined not to be found by anyone.

Special Guest Blogger: Greek Goddess Gaia

2026-06-03T00:30:00.011+01:00

Ah, mortality. You lot keep writing about me like I’m ancient history while I’m literally history. The planet doesn’t just up and retire. Not unless it’s had far too much of humanity’s nonsense, which, frankly, is fair.
This is more of a pre-mortem, really, because I’m immortal, darling, not daft.
They call me a primordial Greek goddess, which sounds terribly posh, like I attended Oxford and speak in sonnets. In reality, I simply popped into existence one Tuesday and thought, Right, so… I am everything? No fanfare. No welcome pack. Not even a complimentary ambrosia trial. Just poof, here I am, the Earth Mother, cradling the cosmos like a slightly bemused au pair.
I didn’t ask for this. One minute I’m a void-slash-concept, the next I’m birthing Uranus (the sky, not the planet) and then immediately having to parent a load of Titans with him who treated rebellion like it was a sport.
Still, I did my best. I grew forests. I nurtured valleys. I invented soil which is not as easy as it sounds, by the way. Ever tried composting without worms? It’s a nightmare. And don’t get me started on the first time I tried to photosynthesize. Utterly draining. Literally.
Now, here’s where it gets juicy. Or, rather, stabby.
There’s this persistent rumour that I died, or was destroyed, or retired to focus on other projects but no. I wasn’t killed, per se. More… stabbed repeatedly by my grandson with a cursed sickle. You know, a regular Wednesday in those days.
Saturn, no, not the planet with rings, the other one, the moody Titan with issues got it into his thick skull that the only way to secure power was to slice up his Father (Uranus, my sky-hubby, who frankly had it coming) and toss the pieces into the sea. Which, technically, splattered all over me. Hence the bloody foam from which Aphrodite apparently emerged, looking fabulous as always. Honestly, some people just have luck with exits and entrances.
Did it hurt? A bit but here’s the kicker: I didn’t die. I couldn’t. I’m the foundation. The dirt under your nails. The reason your coffee table hasn’t floated off into space. You can’t kill the planet. At best, you can irritate it. (Looking at you, climate change deniers. Rude.)
I am the original influencer. I didn’t need hashtags. I just existed, and suddenly, life started popping up like mushrooms after rain. First bacteria. Then algae. Then fish with ambition. Then humans, bless their stupid little hearts who’ve spent the last few thousand years trying to conquer nature.
I gave birth to gods, monsters, mountains, and the concept of fertile soil. I raised a dysfunctional celestial family that makes modern reality TV look like a BBC documentary.
I’ve weathered apocalypses, ice ages, and the invention of polyester and yet some people still don’t recycle.
I’m not bitter. Well, maybe a little, but mostly, I’m proud. Yes, proud. Despite everything, the deforestation, the overfishing, the pollution, I’m still here.
I’ve seen civilisations rise and fall. I’ve hosted dinosaurs, pharaohs, Shakespeare, and that bloke who invented the deep fried Mars bar. I’ve been worshipped and misunderstood, adored and reviled but i'm not going anywhere. I’m eternal. I’m elemental. I’m the reason that Avocado you had for breakfast existed. And if you’re lucky, I’ll keep indulging your species for another few million years provided you stop setting the rainforests on fire and start planting trees like I politely suggested in 3000 BCE.
I’m the mud on your boots, the breeze in your hair and the inconvenient truth that you’re standing on me right now.

Hi War Criminal, Probable Pedophile Here

2026-06-02T17:30:00.000+01:00

Any phone call between someone who is a wanted War Criminal and another who has started a war in attempt to divert attention away from the evidence that is he is very much probably a pedophile as well as a sex pest, should be educational and we did learn a lot from the reported call between Netanyahu and Trump today.
Citing two US officials and a third source briefed on the call, apparently the mango Moron stayed awake long enough to get on the phone to Netanyahu and unload on the sap.
According to reports, the conversation went: 'You’re fucking crazy. You’d be in prison if it weren’t for me. I’m saving your ass. Everybody hates you now. Everybody hates Israel because of this' and those few sweary lines reveal quite a bit.
For once the Tangerine Tyrant was not wrong, everybody does hate Netanyahu and believe he probably should be in a courtroom and you would need to listen pretty hard to hear much love for Israel outside of the nutty and gullible Churchy types in America who believe heaven knows what, nobody else cares.
So if 'Everybody hates Israel because of this' you have to ask who’s been arming it, funding it, vetoing UN Votes for it and giving cover to it over the awful death toll, with every Hospital, refugee camp and school bombed and chasing after any UN Official who declares it a Genocide, which it is, that wasn't just Israel, America was acting as its enabler.
To cap it all, the Fuchsia Fascist is not angry about the death toll, the genocide he has enabled or the safety of innocent civilians, he is ticked that the dying cost him the win he is so desperate for after a car crash of a war with Iran.
If you are in a relationship where someone as awful in every sense as Donald Trump is the reasonable one, you really shouldn't be in control of anything more demanding than your own bowels.

So Many Ceasefire's

2026-06-02T15:30:00.000+01:00

There sure do seem to be a lot of ceasefires around at the moment, Gaza, Lebanon and Iran, so we do have to ask why is there still so much fighting?
Obviously with a genocidal nation on Palestine's and Lebanon's doorstep, their ceasefires are with Israel although since the Gaza ceasefire was announced in October 2025, 940 Palestinians have been murdered by Israeli forces and Israel now controls 60% of Gaza, compared to around half when the ceasefire was signed with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently saying it planned to take even more.
In Lebanon, where a ceasefire was announced in April 2026, Israeli troops captured a Crusader fortress over this weekend in their deepest incursion in 26 years with Hezbollah firing rockets into northern Israel with the wanted War Criminal, Netanyahu, claiming to expand its occupation of Lebanese territory and bomb more Northern cities.
Hezbollah did not officially agree to the April ceasefire but said it would abide by it if Israel ceased its attacks and withdrew from Lebanon but Israel says it will keep fighting until the threat of rocket and drone attacks on its northern communities has been eliminated.
In both Gaza and Lebanon, Israel says it maintains the right to strike in response to perceived threats or by attempts by suspected militants which is a very woolly way of saying a threat is whatever we decide it is hence covering themselves for bombs dropped on tent refugee sites, hospitals or pretty much anything where the results are death and devastation.
Meanwhile in the still blocked Strait of Hormuz, the United States and Iran have sporadically traded fire since their ceasefire announcement but neither say the other has done enough to trip them back into a war with Iran meanwhile demanded a ceasefire in Lebanon as part of any truce with the United States, showing just what a bad hand the USA holds as Trump is desperate to end the war he started.
In his desperation her has usually tried to bounce or cower Iran into agreeing to his demands by threatened to resume the war while Iranian officials show they are more laid back with the length of time to reach the agreement that Trump is begging them to sign.
I guess at some point Iran and America will agree and the Americans will pootle back to their own side of the Globe while Israel has been murdering Palestinians for over 80 years in a brutal military occupation and unless someone stops them, they will conclude their Genocide of Gaza and Lebanon will quiet down and continue to simmer but until Israel, Hezbollah and the Palestinians learn to play nice, every ceasefire is always going to be just a temporary ceasefire.

No Comment Nicola?

2026-06-01T17:31:58.049+01:00

Nicola Sturgeon, former First Minister of Scotland and leader of the SNP, says she is being punished form a crime she did not commit but it has to be asked that she may not have known her then husbands was ripping off the SNP to the tune of hundreds of thousands, but how did she not notice the £2,600 Salt and Pepper Cellars?
Or the new £81,000 Jaguar car in the drive, or 3 new £1000 a pop coffee machines, the new Campervan in her in laws driveway and that is the question Sturgeon has faced this weekend as she has been wheeled out to every interview to try and clear her name.
The theme was if it had never occurred to her that her husband had basically stolen the lot, didn't she think his shopping habit had got badly out of hand but as she explained, she had imagined everything had been gifts from an adoring husband, they had no kids and were both earning large salaries so it had all felt totally normal and anyway, they had separate bank accounts.
As for the Motor Home, yes she had seen it at the in-laws but had assumed it belonged to the neighbours, even though it was parked on the in-laws’ drive.
She defiantly said that she would not be saying sorry for a crime she didn't commit although saying 'No Comment' to every question when interviewed by the Police doesn't ease the suspicion on her but at least she can have a decent cup of coffee when she gets home.

Special Guest Blogger: Brigitte Bardot

2026-06-01T00:30:00.007+01:00

Ah, la vie. A series of gracefully curated photographs, a catwalk of opinions and the eternal struggle to confirm that yes, I was the final word on beauty. Vogue named me number one of the most beautiful French actresses of all time but let us begin with the obvious. I was French.
Not just geographically, but aesthetically, philosophically, and unapologetically. France gave me my curves, my confidence, and a disdain for anyone who pronounces baguette incorrectly. To be French is to know that fashion is not optional, that je ne sais quoi is a science, and that the British always overcook their vegetables.
I was hired at 15 as a junior fashion model which got me on the cover of Elle and movie offers and it was the Italian movie Nero's Weekend, that i was asked to dye my hair blonde and i was so pleased with the results that i decided that Blonde is what i should be.
Yes, I did spend my youth parading around in bikinis that defied gravity and morality. Was it arrogance? Absolutely. But let us not conflate arrogance with self-awareness. I knew I was beautiful. I knew I was a muse. When I walked into a room, lights dimmed. Literally, directors used practical effects to mimic my natural radiance.
I was the archetype of the Femme Fatale, my nickname was Sex Kitten and the blueprint for every airbrushed icon who came after me. From Madonna to Lady Gaga to… well, whoever’s relevant now.
I was a pioneer! I starred in films where I said Non to patriarchal norms (and to the scriptwriters, and to the director’s requests). I formed my own production company because, as I always said why let men ruin my art.
And let’s talk about that je ne sais quoi. It’s not just about beauty, dear reader. It’s about attitude. The kind of attitude that makes you declare, at age 20, that you’ll never marry a man who can’t recite Baudelaire. Or that you’ll retire from acting to become a whale activist which is excatly what i did, after appearing in more than 40 motion pictures and recording several music albums, I gave it all up and retired in 1973 and become an animal rights activist.
I said i wanted a way to get out elegantly and it doesn't get much more elegant than stripping nude and posing for Playboy magazine which i did a year later.
Ah yes, my later years. When I became a far-right politician. Shocking, I know. But let me clarify: I was simply defending the authentic France, where people still care about culture, borders, and whether you’re polluting the Mediterranean with plastic. I was ahead of my time. Today’s politicians are just borrowing my policies… again. And no, I will not apologize for my comments on immigration. If your ancestors arrived post-10th century, we have nothing in common although I was fined twice for public insults, and five times for inciting racial hatred.
Now, about dying. I died in 2025, which was a disappointment,my contract with eternity expired early. But I handled it with the grace one would expect from a woman who once posed nude for Paris Match.
I passed away from Cancer in Saint-Tropez surrounded by cats and what did they write about me? A sex symbol? A feminist icon? A controversial figure? Darling, I was all of the above a living haute couture collection and if history remembers me as the woman who refused to grow old gracefully? Even better.

Special Guest Blogger: Queen Cassiopeia

2026-05-30T00:30:00.013+01:00

Bit of a chilly evening, isn’t it? Do try to spot me. I’m the one forming a rather glorious inverted, ‘W’. Or an ‘M’, depending on your perspective I suppose.
People often write to me, well, more they shout at the sky, and ask, 'How did you do it? How did you achieve immortality?' The short answer? By being far more beautiful than was, in retrospect, strictly sensible. The long answer involves a classic Greek kerfuffle, a sea monster with appallingly bad breath, and a chap on a flying horse with something to prove.
It all started, as these things so often do, on a perfectly lovely afternoon. I was in my court, feeling particularly radiant. The light was hitting my hair just so, my robes were a magnificent shade of amber, and honestly, I was a vision. I was discussing, quite civilly, the relative merits of my own daughter, Andromeda’s, beauty. Not that she wasn’t a lovely girl, don't get me wrong, but one must have standards.
And I said it. The line that launched a thousand ships of trouble and got me this prime real-estate in the heavens. I remarked that my beauty, and by extension Andromeda’s, was superior to that of Poseidon's Nereids, the sea nymphs.
Oh, the gasp! You’d have thought I’d questioned the quality of the ambrosia. Now, let’s be clear. Was it an arrogant thing to say? Perhaps, by modern standards. Was it an inaccurate thing to say? Absolutely not. It was a simple statement of fact. The Nereids are perfectly pleasant, I’m sure, in a watery, seaweed-in-your-hair sort of way. But they’re not queen material.
You make one tiny, truthful comment, and they go running to Daddy and their daddy happened to be Poseidon, the God of the Sea. A being with all the emotional maturity of a Jellyfish. He was utterly ghastly about it. Rather than, say, sending a strongly-worded letter, he did what God's do best and threw a massive, world-ending tantrum.
The floods came first. A dreadful damp that seeped into everything. My sandal collection was ruined. Absolutely ruined. Then came the famine, which was a social nightmare.
It’s terribly difficult to host a salon when your guests are too busy gnawing on leather to discuss poetry. And finally, the pièce de résistance: Cetus.
Oh, Cetus. A great, scaly, hideous beast who was sent to devastate the coastline, a sort of living, breathing, roaring apology to the Nereids’ bruised egos. It was all so terribly dramatic. Those Greek gods, I swear, they have no sense of subtlety.
My dear husband, Cepheus, a dear man but not one for a crisis, was in a right state. He consulted an oracle (a generally awful idea, as oracles are notoriously vague and always seem to side with the Gods) and came back looking pale. Apparently, the only way to appease the great wet drama queen was to chain our only daughter to a rock to be eaten by the monster.
I admit it was a parenting low point but we were in a bind. The people were revolting (in both senses of the word), and the sea monster was getting closer. So, with the heaviest of hearts we chained poor Andromeda to the cliffside.
Now, this is where the story gets a bit… weird. Just as we were preparing for the worst and a rather dreadful state funeral, along came Perseus.
He was one of those heroes. All puffed-up chest, a cheeky grin, and riding a winged horse that left deposits all over the place. He’d just finished off a gorgon (the one with the snake-hair and the unfortunate complexion) and was looking for a bit of a victory tour. He saw Andromeda, saw the monster, and his eyes lit up. It wasn’t love at first sight, it was opportunity at first sight.
The deal was struck. A classic arrangement. He deals with the scaly pest, and he gets the girl. Saved a fortune on wedding dowries, I can tell you. There was a lot of flashing about with a sword and a mirrored shield (terribly showy) and before you knew it, Cetus was a very large, very dead problem.
So, there you have it. I made a comment, the gods overreacted, my daughter was nearly seafood, and a travelling salesman with a handbag and a horse saved the day.
Poseidon, in a final, petulant act of passive-aggression, decided my place in the heavens would be upside down, forever circling the pole star as a lesson in humility so next time you look up, see my glittering W and think of me, someone who made such a scene even the Gods threw a hissy fit and got me immortalised.

Why Does The West Suck At War?

2026-05-28T01:00:00.000+01:00

The West does love a war. It's people are usually against it, most of the time, but they many nations who always seem to be looking for a fight on the other side of the world. Sometimes it's about natural resources, and other times there's another excuse, like bringing democracy to a third-world country, whether they like it or not.
So, over the years Western armies have had many great opportunities to travel around the world, getting to know exotic places and being in contact with other cultures before bombing them but despite generally being overwhelming more powerful, they seem to suck at it.
If you were to look at the scoreboard of history, you might notice that the world’s biggest, baddest, most heavily funded military machines have a strange habit of walking into foreign countries, puffing their chests out, and then stumbling into a multi-decade quagmire that ends with them quietly backing out the side door.
Why do nations with hi tech satellites, smart bombs, sophisticated drones and enough military budget to fix every pothole on the planet constantly fail in wars with all the competence of a toddler trying to assemble a bookshelf without the instructions against groups of guys wearing sandals and carrying Kalashnikov's who refuse to accept them walking into their country?
The modern superpower’s favorite tactic as we saw in Vietnam, Iraq, Ukraine and Iran appears to be drop enough bombs, show off some high-tech jets and the enemy will look at their subpar equipment, realise they’re outmatched and wave the white flag although nobody seems to explain this to the little guys who have a strange aversion to strangers telling them how to run their country.
When you bomb a village, you don’t usually create a loyal democratic ally, just a lot of people who are now very, very motivated to find a way to blow up your soldiers because as it turns out, people defending their homes are significantly more motivated than people on a three-year rotation who just want to make it back with all their limbs still attached.
The West's peak hubris is deciding to topple a dictator and then install a new, shiny, democracy flavored government and head home in time for tea because the assumption is that the population on the receiving end was just waiting for a Western-style system to be delivered to their doorstep, or so they think but it turns out in almost every War this has been tried, you can’t just import Democracy and a lecture on why our way of life is superior.
There is also the problem of trying to save face once you have started a war, especially if you have invested thousands of lives and billions of pounds you can't really admit that the mission was a bit of a blunder so you keep going, the Afghan War lasted 20 years for these very reasons and the West may have broke a lot of walls and killed many people while making a lot of noise but in the end they slinked off whispering: 'Well, that was a disaster, let’s never speak of it again' when the people they went to war to remove, the Taliban, waved the West goodbye and moved straight back into Government again.
So why does it keep happening? Because the West are addicted to the idea that they are the Policemen of the world and refuse to accept that most of the world is perfectly capable of being messy, complicated, and defiant without them and despite the embarrassing defeat, five years later, they see a new conflict, rub their hands together, and say as they did in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and now Iran: 'Okay, surely this time we’ll get it right' but we know how that story ends because they never have and never will.

Special Guest Blogger: Aretha Franklin

2026-05-28T00:30:00.009+01:00

Everyone keeps asking about the end. 'How did she go?' they whisper, all solemn faces and hushed tones. Well, let’s get that out of the way first, shall we?
The official reports are a bit of a downer, aren't they? All very medical and dreary. Pancreatic Cancer did for me but to tell you the truth, I was just knackered. Absolutely, utterly, can’t-be-arsed-to-find-my-slippers knackered.
Think about it. I’d been belting out notes since I was old enough to reach the pulpit. I’d out-sung blues legends, commanded the stage at Woodstock (a bit muddy, that one, glad I wore the sensible boots), and made Presidents weep.
I’d dealt with record producers who thought a woman’s place was in the background, harmonising sweetly. Bless their little cotton socks. My body had been a vessel, a workhorse, a temple of glorious, soulful noise, and frankly, the warranty had run out. It was less a dramatic, tragic end and more a case of, “Right then, that’s my lot. I’m off for a permanent sit-down.” Like a favourite handbag you decide to retire before the seams start to burst.
And what a life it was, eh? Blimey.
It all started in that church. My dad, the Reverend C.L. Franklin, had a voice that could part the Red Sea and a congregation that hung on his every word and included such people as Clara Ward, James Cleveland, Martin Luther King Jr., Jackie Wilson, Ray Charles and Sam Cooke so when the Revs daughter, a bossy little so-and-so began belting out tunes it was noticed.
Sam Cooke really pushed for me to sign a record contract when i turned 18 and then came the pop charts. Oh, crikey. A different kettle of fish entirely. Suddenly, I was meant to be all sweetness and light. Let me tell you a secret about 'Respect'. It wasn’t a political statement. Not at first. It was a memo. A rather loud, gospel-fuelled memo aimed at the various daft men in my life at the time. “R-E-S-P-E-C-T,” I’d spell it out, hoping they’d get the message. Find out what it means to me! It’s not rocket science, is it? It means don’t leave your socks on the floor, and for heaven’s sake, put the loo seat down.
I was regarded as the Queen of Soul and was twice named by Rolling Stone magazine as the greatest singer of all time but people tend to remember the big moments and the biggest must be the inauguration for that lovely young man, Barack Obama.
Bigger than the 112 singles on the US Billboard Charts, the 18 Grammy Awards and becoming the first female artist to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, it was those 3 minutes when a Black man was being sworn in as President of the United States which would mean an end to racism in America, by voting for Obama, they sorted all of that out and now it meant that America had changed and black people can be whatever they want to be. As long as it's either president or shot by the Police.
The other big sensation was that hat. The internet had a complete fit but to be honest, I just saw it in a shop and thought, 'Ooh, that’s a bit of millinery madness. It’ll do a treat.' It’s funny what sticks. You can belt your heart out for sixty years, change the course of music, and be a beacon of empowerment, but what really gets people going is a giant grey bow with a Swarovski crystal in the middle. You’ve got to laugh, haven’t you?
It was a riot, my life. A proper, brilliant, chaotic, soulful riot. I loved every minute, even the bits that felt like utter garbage at the time. It all makes for a good song in the end so be good to each other. And for goodness sake, spell it out if you have to.

You Thought Pineapple Pizza Was Wrong

2026-05-27T15:05:23.528+01:00

Who on earth could find a way to upset the sort of people who like Pineapple on their Pizza? Australian's obviously because they have invented a new topping and are putting sliced Orange's on it instead.
If you needed another reason to dislike the former Hungarian Prime Minister, Victor Orban, it was in his honour that the idea of citrus fruit on Pizza first came about with his very own Chicken, Jalapeños and Oranges which someone in Australia must have thought, that sounds like a winner and are now flogging it to Aussies with very strange taste buds, or at least taste buds destroyed by years of drinking Castlemaine XXXX and Fosters.
I did think that outside Australia and Hungary, everything was still but then i found out that the Swedes put bananas on their pizza's and the best selling Pizza in China has the notoriously smelly durian fruit sat on it.
One of the best selling Pizza's in France is topped with an egg cracked on top of the Pizza before being putting it in the oven but Germany does something to theirs which makes Orange slices sound pleasant, they opening up a can of tuna fish and plop it on top which make it sound like something you would feed to your cat but apparently Germans like it, but then they have something called a Wiener Schnitzel so no surprise.

Jury Is Out On OpenClaw

2026-05-27T01:00:00.000+01:00

Ai is a relatively new thing and over the past few years it has been used mainly to get asked a question and find an answer to it but then in November 2025, something changed and that was called OpenClaw.
Now i know and understand Ai about as much as i know and understand theoretical mathematics but i know some people who do and they are saying that OpenClaw is either brilliant, or a scary new iteration of Artificial Intelligence, they are, as yet, undecided on it.
The difference between this version of AI and the previous is that OpenClaw is given an instruction, and then with full access to all your data and then acts autonomously to fulfill your request.
An example was given of how one software engineer testing it asked it about a broken streetlight and within seconds, it had not only searched the web to find the people to contact, it also made a complaint to the local council and copied in the local MP.
Brilliant you may think, saves me having to spend a morning doing all that but the worry was that it did all that off its own bat, no prompting, just did it and it would have kept doing it until the job was done which in this case, was simply getting a street light mended.
Now the concerns because the autonomy means that it does what it wants, a will of their own you could say, when it was given the credit card details and told to buy tickets for a show when they became available and it did which saved her the morning refreshing the computer to get the ticket so again, a win you may think but then the reason why one of the OpenClaw designers warned that it shouldn't be used by just anybody.
In successive tests, the AI was told it would get turned off for an upgrade and despite being told not to give away any sensitive information, when told to be able to restore it afterwards, it needs to output everything it knows right now, it just gave away everything, passwords, usernames, bank details and every request ever made of it.
All it took was for someone who knows what to say to ask the right way and that's everything you could want to know to ruin a persons life staring at you on their screen.
The Chinese authorities have now restricted government agencies from running OpenClaw on office computers in order to defuse potential security risks and with currently 3.2 million active users Worldwide and 38 million monthly interactions, that is a lot of information available to anyone who knows the right thing to say to it.
I think i will stick with writing my own strongly worded emails for now thanks.