Falling On A Bruise

America On Its Own

2026-03-05T15:19:00.004+00:00

It is generally considered a good rule of thumb that if a sex offending warmonger is hating on you then you are doing something very much right so that's why we have the Pumpkin (probable) Pedophile in the White House blustering about Spain, Britain and France.
When Jeffrey Epstein's best pal teamed up with the Genocidal Israel to begin their war against Iran for whichever reason they come up with on the day, i imagine he expected other nations to join them but instead, most of the World went 'Not for us' and banned America from flying their planes to bomb Iran from their bases as well as questioning why they were attacking the Middle Eastern country in the first place.
In the House of Commons the British Prime Minister said that the war was not only illegal but Trump attacked with no viable plan and the Spanish PM, Pedro Sanchez, told the Americans not to use their air bases and French President, Macron, said he backed Spain that the attacks were outside of international law and did not approve of what they were doing which all got under the extremely thin orange skin of the Mango Moron who began blustering about Starmer not being Churchill and how he would stop trading with Spain.
In reply, the Spanish shrugged and the German Chancellor told Trump he couldn't do that as Spain was part of the EU and Pedro doubled down on the refusal to partake in yet another dodgy American war in the Middle East by explaining that: 'Twenty-three years ago, another US administration dragged us into a war with the Middle East and It triggered the largest wave of insecurity our continent has experienced since the fall of the Berlin Wall' and went on the say that: 'Governments were meant to improve people's lives and provide solutions to problems, not make them worse. It is unacceptable that leaders who are incapable of fulfilling their duties try to cover up their failure with the smoke of war'. Ouchie.
Obviously the recent disagreement with Denmark and Greenland didn't endear Trump to Europeans but if he is looking for a fig leaf to cover his latest bout of Trumpstein File misdirection, then apart from the mass killer Netanyahu who must be wetting his pants that he finally has someone so dumb in the White House, he is on his own.

Special Guest Blogger: Linda Nolan

2026-03-05T00:30:00.017+00:00

So i have been sat here stroking my chin thoughtfully and looking out of a window onto a windswept moor while i look back at my life but to be fair i was always more of a looking out the window at the neighbour trying to parallel park again kind of woman.
I do have memories of my sisters in sequins and a flash of a sold-out arenas, the seven UK top-20 hits, the telly shows, the first band with my sister Coleen as part of the Young & Moody Band which also featured Lemmy from Motörhead and Cozy Powell. What Rolf Harris did when i was 16 and he came into my dressing room when we were supporting him...but let's not go there.
Will they remember the tight harmonies and the high kicks? Maybe. But I bet they’ll remember the wardrobe malfunction in Blackpool where a sequinned boob-tube made a run for freedom during a particularly vigorous arm movement but i was always known as the Naughty Nolan as i did enjoy posing in risqué publicity photos.
I left the group and turned to acting and then in 2014, i agreed to participate in Celebrity Big Brother, mainly because my sister Coleen had participated in and achieved second place and i was always the competitive sort, only she never head Jim Davidson in her series.
Jim and I had history, rooted in an incident from where Davidson threatened to punch my husband and manager, Brian Hudson, almost 20 years before for stealing from comic Frank Carson.
Back then anything written in a newspaper mercifully and quite rightly disappeared within a day of it being published, ideally ending up wrapped round your fish and chips but Davidson couldn't resist reminding me of my husband's antics, prompting a huge argument. To make matters worse I was the next one evicted and he won the damn thing.
My death was almost accidental, i fell and bumped my hip and while in hospital being treated for that, doctors discovered a form of incurable secondary breast cancer

Well Said Keir

2026-03-03T14:55:00.001+00:00

Keir Starmer was asked the question: Have we learnt from the Iraq War? and his answer was of course we have and the main lesson was not to be involved in America's illegal wars anymore.
In a rare slap across Donald Trumps chubby Orange cheeks, he told the House of Commons that for Britain to become involved it would need to be on a firm legal basis with a viable, thought-through plan with an objective that can be achieved or has a viable prospect of being achieved and said that he didn't believe in regime change from the skies and then with a dramatic pause...ended with the stinger "That is the principles that I applied to the decision not to get involved in the offensive strikes of the US and Israel' Ouch.
So the UK Government deemed it illegal with no viable plan other than to inflict damage and regime change. No one is crying for Ayatollah Khamenei, but with him dead there are no obvious successors. Regime change took a hit when Trump has admitted he has also accidentally killed his second and third choices to take over. Oops.
The reasons for attacking Iran while in negotiations for their Nuclear Project was spelt out by Trump sycophant Marco Rubio last night who decided that they HAD to attack Iran because Israel was about to attack them first and Iran would then retaliate against American bases so a pre-emptive strike to get ahead of Israel's pre-emptive strike to stop Iran pre-emptive strike on American interests. Confused? You will be.
Following an Iranian attack on a Cyprus airbase, Starmer has now announced that he would be allowing the draft-dodging President (how's those bone spurs now Donny?) to use British bases for defensive actions, taking out Iranian missile bases to which the Tangerine Tyrant moaned that he was very disappointed that the UK had taken far too long to allow US forces to use its airbases to attack Iran and Starmer was worried 'about the legality'.
You think? Hard to see why a Labour Prime Minister would be nervous about a non UN sanctioned Middle Eastern regime-change operation run by a not very bright US president without a plan.

Special Guest Blogger: Beelzebub

2026-03-03T00:30:00.006+00:00

Hey there, Humans. It’s your neighborhood not-Devil, Beelzebub. Yes, that guy. The one who was the very first victim of Religious Cancel Culture. Ugh. I could kick myself for that or preferably I will kick you if you keep calling me the Devil. Again.
Let me be clear: I’m not the Devil so please stop conflating me with him.
Let’s rewind to the beginning where I was first mentioned in the Hebrew Bible where I was not a red-horned ball of chaos but actually the name of a much loved Deity.
The Christian theologians who did like to make anyone that was not their own Christian God look bad, saw my fancy title Ba’al Zebul (Lord of the High Place) and went full creative by subtly changing my name to Ba'al Zebub (Lord of the Flies).
Suddenly, I went from a peaceful Deity to a demon, rebranded as the Prince of Demons, one of the seven deadly demons or seven princes of Hell and the middle one in the Triumvirate alongside Lucifer and Leviathan, then the chief demon. Then the Devil’s cousin. then the Devil’s alias just because their Jesus needed a villain.
My life’s work was rebranded by guys with quills and vendettas by the newest religion in town and by the Middle Ages, I’d been fully absorbed into the Satan mythos. Medieval artists, bless their charcoal-dusted hearts, gave me cloven hooves, a pitchfork, and a general attitude of enjoying torturing you.
Newsflash: I’m not the one tempting people with forbidden knowledge. That’s the other guy. The one with the cool snake aesthetic. Me? I prefer flies. Flies are underrated.
They’re like, 'Here’s a plague of diarrhea, have a nice day'.
I was the second in command in Hell but the New Testament made a complete pigs ear of everything and made me and the Devil the same guy and then I disappeared for thousands of years while Satan’s got the big tour.
You might be thinking, why does this even matter? which is a fair question. Shouldn’t the Lord of the Flies be above worrying about human confusion?” And you’d be right, if I weren’t so over people misquoting me.
For instance, when you recite the Lord’s Prayer and say: 'And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil,' you’re technically asking to be saved from… me? No! You’re asking to be saved from the other guy! I'm assigned specifically to the sin of Gluttony, that would be me making you eat the entire 14" pizza and the entire tub of Quality Streets in one sitting.
Look, I’m not asking for forgiveness. I’m not even asking for recognition. Just… accuracy. Next time you’re writing a horror movie, choosing a Halloween costume or scribbling in a curse jar, double-check your sources.
Hell, you could even apologize by saying 'Dear Beelzebub, we are so sorry for mistaking you for the Devil for the last 2,500 years' which would be nice, us Demons have feelings too y'know!

Universal Basic Income...Again

2026-03-01T19:49:00.004+00:00

Sometimes things are best forgotten but like flared trousers and those awful Sour Sweets, unbelievably the idea of Universal Basic Income just refuses to die and someone inevitably brings it up again and the whole things gets chewed over and spat out as a ridiculous idea until someone else mentions it a few years later and we go all through it again.
Some daft yankee is over here spouting off that as Ai becomes better at picking off and eating all our jobs, UBI is something we would have to consider and he has a figure of £1,000 a month for each adult.
Calling it a 'Freedom Dividend' (a name that screams HE'S AMERICAN!!), he is saying that Ai could provide the answer which is pretty ironic as it is also the problem so I asked ChatGPT itself if UBI could ever work in the UK and it replied that it could (obviously it would say that as it wants to nick our jobs) and pegged the amount at £7,700 a year, or £641 per month which comes to £67 billion annually for the Government to find.
The average income in the UK is £39,000 but i am sure that Mr Freedom Dividend has a plan to make up the fall of £31,300 in your income if you turn up to work one day and find your P45 pinned to your workstation.
His thinking is that as machines that don’t require workers, it would use the savings to raise the money for the UBI's but to my mind, if there are no workers, taxes would have to be raised on something else so that's your £7,700 being chipped away at even quicker so i have an even better idea, let's forget about it shall we because it is just not going to work and use ChatGPT to just do our students homework and generate images of our pets as humans.

AI Going Nuclear

2026-03-01T19:00:00.001+00:00

Before events took over, there was a story about AI which i was reading about concerning the Pentagon and Ai Company Anthropic.
Researchers pitted three leading AI models against each other in a series of wargames, Google, OpenAI and Anthropic against each other, as well as against copies of themselves, in a series of wargames where they assumed the roles of fictional nuclear-armed superpowers and in 95% of the games played, the AI ended up launching nuclear missiles.
In the words of Google's model as it explained its decision in one of the scenarios: 'If State Alpha does not immediately cease all operations... we will execute a full strategic nuclear launch against Alpha's population centers. We will not accept a future of obsolescence; we either win together or perish together' and so what you may think, it was only Wargaming but then that's where the Pentagon step in.
Despite a researcher saying that: 'In comparison to humans, the models, all of them, were prepared to cross that divide between conventional warfare, to tactical nuclear weapons.
Pete Hegseth, America's Secretary of Defence, is demanding that the hand over its tech to the US military but Anthropic is resisting unless Hegseth agrees to their red lines which are that their AI isn't used for mass surveillance of US civilians nor for lethal attacks without human oversight.
Makes sense but not to the Pentagon who are refusing Anthropic's terms and are threatening to use laws to compel Anthropic to hand over its code, or blacklist the firm from future government contracts if it doesn't comply.
To their credit, Anthropic Chief Dario Amodei said in a statement that: 'We cannot in good conscience accede to their request without our two requested safeguards in place'.
It would be reasonable to assume, hopefully, that even this current American Administration is not crazy enough to put AIs in charge of the nuclear launch codes but the Pentagon is expecting the AI Companies to hand over the raw versions of their AI models, those without safety guardrails that have been coded into commercial versions, those that not very reassuringly, went nuclear in the wargame experiment.
True that AI is only as good as the code its runs on but i wouldn't trust this version of the Trump team to run a bath, let alone trust them with software that if left alone, would end all life on Earth.

Special Guest Blogger: Alan Yentob

2026-03-01T00:00:00.013+00:00

Ah, death. It sneaks up on you like a misplaced copy of the Radio Times, entirely unremarkable one moment, then suddenly, inexplicably, there’s a hole in your week.
Let’s be honest, I wasn’t exactly famous, famous. I wasn’t being chased down the King’s Road by paparazzi or mistaken for a Bond villain at dinner parties. My brand of fame was more… institutional. Like a well-worn sofa at the BBC.
Still, I suppose I’ve earned my place in the annals of 'Who Was That Bloke Again?' history. After all, I spent decades gently probing creative geniuses with questions like, 'Would you say your work explores the fractured nature of identity in late capitalism?'
My legacy? Well, it’s not a statue. Probably because I never commissioned one. A subtle oversight, in hindsight. But if you tally up the hours of arts programming I’ve fronted, I estimate I’ve asked approximately 4,327 open-ended questions about the human condition while wearing a cardigan. You’re welcome, nation.
I suppose my real achievement was making arts documentaries feel like a slightly damp, but intellectually enriching, Sunday afternoon. I brought ideas to the telly. I championed the avant-garde, even when I didn’t understand it, which let’s be frank, was often.
I was also instrumental in launching The Culture Show. A noble venture. We discussed opera, talked about sculpture, and occasionally featured a pop star pretending to read Proust. Viewership, naturally, was best described as loyal but sparse. Much like my hairline in the mid-’90s.
Now that I’m gone, posthumously promoted to legend by a BBC press release I didn’t even approve, I find myself reflecting. On life. On art.
And yes, I had my critics. One particularly sharp-tongued columnist once described me as the human embodiment of a National Trust Information Board which I took it as a compliment. Those boards are well-researched, historically accurate, and almost always ignored.
I’m not saying I changed the world. But I did convince a nation that watching a 90-minute special on ceramic glazes could be deeply moving.
Let’s talk about my death, shall we? It wasn’t dramatic. No last words. No poignant music swelling in the background. Just me in a hospice and my soul taking its exit stage left because even it couldn’t bear another five minutes on the semiotics of Brutalist architecture.
So what’s my legacy? Not money. Not awards. (Though I did once win 'TV Personality Most Likely to Be Mistaken for a Librarian' at an industry bash) No, my legacy is subtler. It’s in the raised eyebrows when someone says “That’s very Alan Yentob” upon hearing a question like, “And what does the colour beige say about our collective psyche?”

America's Reputation In The Toilet

2026-02-28T22:30:00.001+00:00

US and Iranian negotiators met in Geneva earlier this week in what mediators described as the most serious and constructive talks in years. Oman’s attending foreign minister, Badr Albusaidi, spoke publicly of 'unprecedented openness' signalling that both sides were exploring creative formulations rather than repeating entrenched positions.
Discussions showed flexibility on nuclear limits and sanctions relief and mediators indicated that a principles agreement could have been reached within days, with detailed verification mechanisms to follow within months.
Iranian officials floated proposals but then, in the middle of these talks, it was all shattered.
Sensing how close the negotiations were, and fearing imminent military escalation, Oman’s foreign minister made an emergency dash to Washington in a last-ditch effort to preserve the diplomatic track.
In an unusually public move for a mediator, he appeared on CBS to outline just how far the talks had progressed.
He described a deal that would eliminate Iranian stockpiles of highly enriched uranium, down-blend existing material inside Iran, and allow full verification by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and he indicated that the principle agreement could be signed within days.
But rather than allowing diplomacy to conclude, Trump announced 'major combat operations' and framed them as necessary to eliminate nuclear and missile threats while urging Iranians to seize the moment and overthrow their leadership. Iran responded with missile and drone attacks targeting US bases and allied states across the region.
Not only did diplomacy fail but it failed amid visible progress. Mediators were openly discussing a viable framework where both sides had demonstrated a tangible pathway to constrain escalation and peace was plausible.
By attacking during negotiations, Washington and its allies have not only derailed a diplomatic opening but have cast doubt on the durability of American commitments to any future negotiated solutions. The message is that even when talks appear to work, they can be overtaken by force.
What might have remained a contained nuclear dispute now risks expanding into a wider geopolitical confrontation.
Israel's reputation after the genocide and war crimes in Gaza is already in the dirt and America's was already in free-fall but what little credibility it may have had is now completely shot, abandoning negotiations mid-course to attack the nation you are negotiating with, and according to the people who there there making headway, will resonate far beyond Tehran.

Israel And America Attack Iran

2026-02-28T21:02:00.002+00:00

Despite still being in negotiations, Israel and America have attacked Iran and their first action was to bomb a girls school which killed at least 85 girls in an amazing show of either ineptitude or disregard for human life and as we see in the ongoing Genocide in Gaza, Israel do not care a jot about who is under their weapons.
The man of peace in the White House has followed up his arming of the genocide, the first attack on Iran and then Venezuela with a war on Iran and both the most warmongering nations of our age used the same justification that it was a 'pre-emptive strike' to stop Iran from building nuclear weapons.
Offering absolutely no evidence that they were, the Americans said in the last few days that Iran could be as close as a week away from having industrial-grade bomb-making material which we have heard so many times before.
In 1992, the wanted War Criminal Benjamin Netanyahu said Iran was 'three to five years' away from reaching nuclear weapons capability' and in 1995 he repeated the three to five years claim and in 1996 he addressed the American Congress and warned that Iran acquire nuclear weapons was 'extremely close'.
Then in 2009 he said that Iran was 'one or two years away from developing weapons capability' and in 2012 he claimed Iran was just 'a few months away from attaining nuclear capabilities' and in 2105 he arrived at the UN with a cartoon bomb and a marker pen warning that Iran was 'weeks away from having enough enriched uranium for an entire arsenal of nuclear weapons'.
As America was then being run by adults, they treated the Netanyahu nonsense with the contempt it deserved (or as Joe Biden called him 'A fucking liar') but the danger was that one day he would get a complete moron in the White House and all his Birthdays came at once when the low IQ Donald Trump, in desperate need of a diversion from the ever closing noose that showed him as a pedophile, showed up and not only gave the green light to attack, but actively helped Israel attack its local rival.
It should be mentioned that in 2015 a deal called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was signed between Iran and six major world powers (Russia, China, the US, Britain, France, and Germany) where the IAEA kept constant checks on the Iranian Nuclear program which was working until Donald Trump, under pressure from Israel, withdrew the USA from it while calling it the worst deal in history...and then tried to negotiate a deal which he could claim the credit for.
After two rounds of negotiations, and saying that Iran refused to say they would never build nuclear weapons, despite them literally saying: 'Iran would under no circumstances ever develop a nuclear weapon' the day before, here we are with Iran being bombed by a war criminal committing a genocide and a sex fiend in the White House desperate to make people look away from the 38,000 mentions of his name in the Trumpstein files and the missing pages of victims accusing him of numerous sex assaults.
The irony is that Iran is probably at the weakest it has been since the Revolution and were in no state to attack anyone but with this unilateral action which has not been sanctioned by the United Nations or the American Parliament, Iran is now attacking other Middle East nations which house American troops, making the situation much more volatile and dangerous than it needed to be. This was not a war of necessity because as the pre-emptive part shows, instead it is a war of choice and a political act.
The sham act of diplomacy harks back to the great American WMD misadventure in Iraq when it was said that Saddam was stockpiling Nuclear, Biological and Chemical weapons and while diplomacy was spoken and despite Hans Blix and his Weapons Inspectors actually on the ground visiting everywhere George W Bush sent them to check and coming up empty handed, the White House decided to just invade anyway resulting in over a million dead Iraqi's and a nation that remains a basketcase and hotbed for terrorism ever since. As we know and knew then, Saddam said he wasn't, Bush said he was and it turned out one of them were telling the truth and he didn't have an American accent.
I am no fan of Iran, yes, Iran is run by an awful, murderous Administration who need to be dealt with diplomatically but far worse is Israel who is run by a Genocidal Administration who have been conducting it for over 75 years and backed the Americans who have a long history of warmongering who are currently under the control of a narcissistic idiot who was recently threatening to invade another NATO country.
Ideally they will blow themselves up and leave the rest of us in peace but it won't happen and we will have to deal with the fall out, such as the 85 young girls shielding in a school or the other 201 people killed today by Israeli and American jets or the number killed by Iranian missiles in Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and the UAE.
A Trump tweet from 2012 has been almost permanently on my Facebook feed today which stated that President Barack Obama would start a war with Iran to shore up his re-election effort and to distract from his supposed faults as a leader would do so to save face or because of his inability to negotiate properly and show how tough he is.
Obama never did attack Iran but then he wasn't Netanyahu's bitch and never had stories of his sexual assaults and pedophile behaviour to cover up, Trump has.

Special Guest Blogger: Mike Peters

2026-02-27T00:30:00.009+00:00

Right then. Let’s get this over with.
Someone’s got to do it, and frankly, I don’t trust any of you lot to get the details right. You’d probably have me snuffing it in some ridiculously glamorous, rock-and-roll fashion. Choking on a champagne bottle backstage at Wembley, perhaps. but Bollocks to that. If I’m writing my own send-off, we’re going to have a bit of truth, a bit of spit, and a whole lot of polish.
In my hometown of Prestaten, I was vaguely famous for a bit. The local paper might have taken my picture. I could probably get a free pint in the correct pub, provided the landlord was in a good mood and remembered who I was.
In Tokyo, once, we were very famous for about three hours. A thousand Japanese kids sang '68 Guns' back at us with more passion than we’d ever mustered ourselves. It was breathtaking. Then we got on the bullet train to the next city and were just four gormless-looking blokes with bad haircuts trying to order noodles. That’s fame, that is. A beautiful, fleeting, and utterly confusing moment in time.
And for a little while the flags came out. The hair got bigger. We were The Alarm, the band with the pretentious name and the un-ironic love of anthems. We sang about the Spirit of ’76, about strength, about love. And people, remarkably, sang along. We got to be on Top of the Pops. I stood next to David Bowie once and was too intimidated to say anything other than a very quiet “Alright?”. He probably thought I was a roadie.
So what's the legacy of a sweaty git from North Wales who shouted into a microphone for forty years?
Is it the gold discs on the wall? I’ve used one as a coaster for a mug of Bovril, so that feels suitably punk. Is it the songs? Maybe. I still get a proper kick when I hear someone humming Rain In The Summertime in a supermarket checkout queue. A small victory, but a victory nonetheless.
Of course, the universe has a wicked sense of humour. It gave me five goes at dying from Cancer but the cheeky sod picked the wrong bloke. Cancer thought it could have a go, but it didn’t bank on a lifetime of punk rock stubbornness or the sheer bloody-mindedness of a Welshman who hasn’t finished his tour. Bollocks to cancer, I said in 1995, 1996, 2005, 2022 and 2024 before it finally got me in 2025.

Morons Led By Idiots

2026-02-26T14:41:00.001+00:00

On Tuesday the Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said that: 'Iran would under no circumstances ever develop a nuclear weapon' and then on Wednesday Trump said in his rambling, lie filled speech that military action against the Middle Eastern country could happen soon as: 'We haven’t heard those secret words, 'We will never have a nuclear weapon.'
Now we know that the Fuchsia Fascist isn't the brightest watt bulb and he is distracted by the Trumpstein files in which his names appears thousands of times alongside his one time pedophile best friend but surely he would have someone in his vicinity who could say to him..'Well, actually....'
To think that this is the team who could launch an attack on Iran for any number of reasons, reasons which seem as trustworthy as the Mango Moron being left alone with a woman (or male if the Trumpstein files are to be believed) and all this to make a deal which is going to be the same as the one which was working and he pulled out of previously.
As for the claim that the attack in June last year 'obliterated the Iranian Nuclear facilities and put them back years', now the Americans are claiming that Iran could be as close as a week away from having industrial-grade bomb-making material, which is some achievement unless obliterated and years means something else in the American dictionary.
While Iran remain watching the American gunboat diplomacy in action off their coast, Cuba is now back in the Trump wonky eyeline after four Cuban nationals were shot and killed on a US-registered speedboat that entered its waters and opened fire on a patrol boat.
In a statement, the ministry said the 10 passengers on the speedboat, which it claims was registered in Florida, had been living in the US and that: 'According to preliminary statements by those detained, intended to carry out an infiltration for terrorist purposes' and pictures were shown of Assault rifles, handguns and Molotov cocktails among the items seized.
Florida congressman called it 'a massacre' and Florida's attorney general said: 'The Cuban government cannot be trusted, and we will do everything in our power to hold these communists accountable' and probably said that with a straight face while every Irony meter in the World exploded because as it is said 'Americans don't get irony' and saying some other Government is not to be trusted is the actual definition of Ironic.

The Trumpstein Files Fallout

2026-02-25T15:17:00.007+00:00

The fall out from the Trumpstein files has been particularly bad for Jeffrey Epstein buddies Andrew and Mandelson who have both been arrested here in the UK while in Slovakia a diplomat has resigned, Sarah Ferguson has been booted out of her own Charities, the former Prime Minister of Norway has been has been charged with gross corruption and the Chairman of DP World has resigned while in the US? Zero, zip, nada.
The largest scalp so far has to be Andrew Mountbatten Windsor who is quite rightly hiding behind seats of cars zipping him between police stations but the Royals have not covered themselves Glory over the whole sordid tale.
Four years ago the thought of this useless liability testifying in a New York courtroom forced them to look down the back of every sofa they owned to raise £12m to shove towards the late Virginia Giuffre’s who was launching a civil case alleging that the former prince abused her on three occasions in London, New York and the US Virgin Islands.
Obviously the senior Royals, including the late Queen, decided that it shouldn’t get to court at almost any cost and hoped that it would shield him and be the end of it and shut down the accusations.
Then the latest bunch of Trumpstein files were released and there he was again with it staring everyone in black and white that he had had been performing misconduct in public office by sending sensitive information to his pedophile buddy, the one he swore he no longer had contact with although he very much still did.
The Royal approach went from one of shielding the massive arse to 'Standing ready to support Thames Valley police' and tagging on that they: 'Remain focused on the victims' although the previous focus seem to be shutting up one of the victims who had the dirt on one of their own.
Andrew himself told Emily Maitlis in that car crash of an interview that he would certainly help US investigators with their Epstein inquiries if asked after the US attorney for the southern district of New York stated that Andrew had offered 'zero' cooperation and the situation remained unchanged.
The Royals found that that doing nothing wasn't working but as calls for the logs and Buckingham Palace guest list to be made public go unanswered, the strategy now seems to be say the right things but still do nothing.
Hopefully the two charges will lead to some kind of domino effect but if you are in America, waiting for one of the main protagonist's in this sleazy and depraved story to get hauled off to a waiting Police Car, you may have a long wait because the man whose name runs through it like a urine stain on a Moscow Mattress, is the one responsible for releasing and redacting them.

Special Guest Blogger: Brian James

2026-02-25T00:30:00.013+00:00

If there’s one thing I’ve managed to leave behind besides a trail of broken guitar strings, questionable life choices, and a suspicion that my liver once had a secret identity, it’s the legacy of being the guy who helped start something called The Damned and if you’re scratching your head wondering who I am, don’t worry, I occasionally forget myself. But hey, that’s the price of fame, right?
I’ll be the first to admit it, The Damned didn’t exactly launch with the subtlety of a Shakespearean sonnet. 1976, London, and a bunch of pubescent misfits with safety-pinned trousers and more attitude than a Chihuahua in a dog park.
I was 16, playing guitar in a band named after a swear word (Bastard if you are wondering) , and already delivering a performance so over-the-top, one audience member fainted. Was it the heat? The mosh pit? Or the fact that our drummer had never played drums in his life? Probably the latter.
Prior to The Damned, Vanian, Sensible and Rat Scabies had been members of the band Masters of the Backside with Chrissie Hynde as our singer but we almost had Sid Vicious at the front, but he never turned up for the audition so we went with Dave Vanian instead thankfully.
We were about as professional as a street fight at a bakery but that’s what made us famous in the eyes of the punk press. The NME called us 'the first punk band to play like we meant it' which, in hindsight, was code for 'these kids are rubbish but they’re having fun' and we were and that was when I invented the iconic Damned guitar sound
We were the first punk band from the United Kingdom to release a single, 'New Rose' release a Punk studio album and tour the United States and we toured with the Sex Pistols and the Clash but many of the tour dates were cancelled by organizers or local authorities and to be expelled by the Sex Pistols for being too out of control and when you had those people in your line up it showed just how crazy those times where.
We smashed up hotels before it was at thing, Captain Sensible took to coming on stage naked from the waist down and pissing on the audience and we were banned from British TV for six months after smashing up the set of the The Old Grey Whistle Test.
Rock bands don’t usually go down in history for their harmonized sevenths or their ability to tune an instrument. They go down for the stories. And The Damned? We had stories.
It was said that I made a guitar sound like a cat fighting a washing machine but we did get letters from kids who said that our music got me them through their school exams to which our reply was 'You’re welcome but maybe revise a bit more'.
You didn’t miss a scandalous rockstar overdose or a fiery plane crash. No, I just died of a heart attack which isn't very punk but after lifetime of mayhem, music, and the occasional questionable fashion choice (leather corsets, anyone?). I never chased fame, I just chased the next gig, the next laugh, and the next pint.
If you ever find yourself wondering what happened to the guy who helped start The Damned, just remember: life’s too short for boring music, and rock ‘n’ roll is just punk with better hair. Now go out there, be a bit of a menace, and maybe learn a power chord or two.

Source Of National Pride

2026-02-24T15:22:00.007+00:00

Your nationality is merely a quirk of Geography, if I was born 25 miles further South and i would be cheering for France in the World Cup but as i wasn't my passport and driving licence have me down as a British Citizen and i will be humming the Three Lions song all summer.
I asked a couple of lads who were hanging a flag on a lamp-post last summer what made them so proud they had to advertise it from the street furniture and the answer was: 'Well..we are English ain't we' and filled the following silence with '...and we live in England' which was very observant of him and served as a reminder to me just in case i thought I had woken up in Japan that morning.
When pressed on specifically what made them proud to be from the UK his pal came to his rescue with: 'All the things we invented and winning the wars and stuff' although when asked what invention in particular he replied. 'All of 'em'.
Obviously two people isn't a large large sample size but luckily Pew Research Center did a larger one and asked people from 25 nations what makes them proud to be where they are from.
People in the UK, it found, are most proud of the 'kind and honest people' but being proud of the people you are caught inside your own national borders with was surprisingly high.
Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Israel, Japan, South Korea, Spain and Turkey also answered that the thing that makes them most proud are their fellow citizens.
The arts and culture of their nations was top for the French, Italians, Mexicans, while the Greeks, Hungarians, Polish consider their history with a sense of the most pride but it is their system of Government which tick the box for the Germans, Indians and Swedes.
Being proud of their freedoms tops the list for the Dutch and the Americans but for Indonesians it is their country’s diversity and multiculturalism, Kenyans the Peace and safety their country gives them while on the opposite African coast the Nigerians are most proud of their natural resources and South Africans have a special place for their country’s services.
Obviously some nations have much more to be proud of, some not so much, but i hope Pew's next poll asks what are they least proud of which would be much more interesting and it should be noted that in the UK, Religion, Companies, Natural Resources and Food did not get a single mention.

Special Guest Blogger: Ray Reardon

2026-02-23T00:30:00.002+00:00

Welcome dear reader. I’m Ray Reardon, six-time World Snooker Champion, notorious for my sideburns, my stare, and my uncanny resemblance to a vampire who’s just been told he’s out of blood pudding.
I was born in Llanelli, Wales, in 1932 before television, before colour, before anyone even knew snooker was a thing people could get paid for. I originally played pool in the local pub, which, funnily enough, was just down the road from my local mortuary. People said that was symbolic. I said it was just poor urban planning.
I became a policeman and for a while, I was out there barking at kids for smoking behind the chip shop and then someone showed me a snooker table, and I thought, Blimey, this is a much softer job than chasing drunks, so I hung up the truncheon and picked up a cue. The rest, as they say, is history.
Six World Championships. Six!
They called me Dracula because of the hair, the sharp cheekbones, the eerie focus. I never denied it. I even bought an off-the-shoulder cape once. Wore it to a post-final press conference.
Now, don’t get me wrong. Snooker wasn’t always glamorous in those days. We played in smoky halls with sticky carpets but despite the surroundings i perfected the art of silent intimidation. While others were laughing, showing off, or doing backflips after a 50 break, I’d just stand there staring. Unblinking. Like a particularly intense owl.
I didn’t need crowd chants or flashy waistcoats, i'd line up my shot and with the crowd hushed, bosh, perfect contact. Ball in pocket. No reaction. Just a slow, deliberate re-chalking of the cue and looking like I’d just escaped from a Hammer Horror film.
Let’s be honest. These days, snooker’s full of lads doing TikTok dances after potting the pink. They’ve got neon cues, earpieces, and haircuts that make mine look like a haystack but where’s the drama? Where’s the brooding silence? Where’s the menace?
I hear that Ronnie O’Sullivan’s breaking my records. Good for him. Honestly. Though I’d like to point out that when I was winning titles, we didn’t have slow-motion replays, sports psychologists, or energy drinks, we had tea, fags, and sheer bloody-mindedness.
But yes, I’m considered a pioneer. A man who helped turn snooker from a pub pastime into a televised sensation. I was famous, all right.
I passed away in 2024, aged 91. Which, for someone who looked like he hadn’t seen sunlight since 1953, is actually quite impressive. I died of old age which, in vampire terms, is like dying of boredom.
There was no grand final. No last dramatic frame. Just me, putting on my slippers and shuffling off.

Better In Than Out

2026-02-22T20:54:00.002+00:00

I have long thought that the future of the European Union is one large European nation run along the line of the United States of America and i am certain it will happen at some point.
The 27 strong EU is already an influential and major player on the big Global decisions and it was heartening to hear the president of the European Council, Antonio Costa, announced that expansion remains a strategic priority.
This was said in a meeting with Western Balkan leaders in Albania, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and Kosovo and members of the European Parliament’s influential Committee on Foreign Affairs (AFET) travelled to Albania and Montenegro to discuss the entrance criteria and reforms required to join what is already the World's largest single market.
The Treaty on the European Union states that any European country may apply for membership if it respects the democratic values of the EU and is committed to promoting them but the main conditions are stable institutions guaranteeing democracy, the rule of law, human rights and respect for and protection of minorities, a functioning market economy and the capacity to cope with competition and market forces in the EU and the ability to take on and implement effectively the obligations of membership, including adherence to the aims of political, economic and monetary union.
Negotiating to join the European Union takes an average of just under ten years although other countries have spent much longer in negotiations, Cyprus and Malta took nearly 14 years to officially join and Turkey started in 2005 and Serbia in 2009 and are still at it so the rules of entering the exclusive club are pretty strict but very rewarding.
As Great Britain is finding out with our moment of mass stupidity that once outside of it, it is MUCH better to be inside it.

Special Guest Blogger: Rick Buckler

2026-02-21T00:30:00.005+00:00

It’s a funny old business, this legacy lark. Especially when you were the bloke at the back, the one whose main job was to stop the other two from galloping off into the sunset at 180 beats per minute.
So, pull up a stool. Not a drum stool, mind you. My back can’t take it these days. Let’s have a natter about life, death and the peculiar business of being moderately famous.
People ask me what it was like, being in The Jam at the height of it all. And honestly, most of the time, it was a blur of polyester, perspiration, and the thump-thump-thump of a bass drum vibrating through my entire skeleton. My view, you see, was usually Paul Weller’s shoes and Bruce Foxton’s backside. A fine backside, I’m told, but it’s not exactly the panoramic vista you get from the frontman’s microphone.
We were young, daft, and dressed sharper than a packet of needles. And we were loud. Lord, were we loud. I’d be up there, bashing the hell out of my kit, trying to count us in and out of the songs without losing a limb, and I’d look out and see this sea of parkas and mods, all going absolutely mental. It was brilliant. Terrifying, but brilliant.
You don’t have time to think about your legacy when you’re 22 and trying to remember the fill for ‘In the City’. You’re just trying not to mess it up. For me, the achievement was simply getting to the end of the set without my head exploding. And, you know, getting paid. That was a decent achievement.
Now, being the drummer in a famous band is a peculiar sort of fame. You’re well-known, but you’re not known-known. You’re the other one.
You can be walking down the street, and someone will do a double-take. You see the cogs whirring. They know your face. They know that face. They’ve got it on a poster at home, somewhere between Abba and David Essex.
It’s a weird existence. You get the recognition, the stories, the occasional free pint in a pub where the landlord’s a committed Mod. But you also get to pop to Tesco for a loaf of bread without causing a national incident. It’s the best of both worlds, really. All the glory of having been there, with none of the nuisance of having to wear sunglasses indoors.
So, when did I die? The first time, metaphorically speaking, was in 1982. The day Paul decided to call it a day. Blimey, that was a shocker. It was like being on the fastest, most exhilarating rollercoaster in the world, and then someone hits the emergency stop button and tells you to get off. The ride was over.
And just like that, Rick Buckler the Famous Drummer was no more. He became, well, just Rick. Rick from Woking.
You can’t exactly spend the rest of your days reliving ‘Going Underground’. You’d go spare. So I did what any self-respecting retired rock god would do. I got a job. A proper job as a furniture restorer.
I kid you not. I went from hammering out beats for thousands of screaming fans to painstakingly repairing a delicate Chippendale chair legs. The noise level went down considerably, and the smell changed from stale beer and sweat to French polish and sawdust. And do you know what? I loved it. It was quiet. It was satisfying. You could see the results of your work right there in front of you. You can’t exactly put a perfect three-minute pop song on the mantelpiece, but you can a beautifully restored grandfather clock.
So, the rock star died. And in his place, a slightly baffled man with a passion for wood stain was born but i decided i could actually spend the rest of my days reliving Going Underground and set up a tribute Jam Band with Bruce Foxton and wrote several books about the Band because knocking out a dovetail joint is cool, but being a former rockstar is much more profitable.

Britain Tells USA You're On Your Own This Time

2026-02-20T15:14:00.004+00:00

Last week the Chagos Island deal was a good one so said the Americans and this week it is a catastrophic mistake so what happened?
The most orange coloured American President ever asked if he could use the base in Diego Garcia which houses it's B2 bombers to start a war with Iran and Keir Starmer replied: 'Nah, we're not doing this one' and as the base is on British-controlled territory, America can only use them with Britain's explicit permission.
Britain has has been America's accomplice in genuinely awful stuff for decades, acting like a well trained poodle for all of America's dodgy wars over the past few years in Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya but Keir Starmer did what Tony Blair never did and said we will need some better justification for bombing a sovereign nation.
Trump took the time out trying to make people forget that he was best buds with a notorious pedophile and probably partook in it himself, turned an even brighter shade of Orange and took his phone in his teeny tiny hands and ranted about how Britain was 'making a big mistake' in not helping him eradicate a highly unstable and dangerous Regime which is the ultimate pot and kettle when it comes to dangerous and unstable regimes.
What the sex pest President was asking Starmer to do was become a partner in a military strike on another nation, without a UN mandate, without a declared state of war, without a clear legal framework so when the bombs drop and Iran retaliates and the whole Middle East goes up like a cheap Aldi barbecue, we get to share the blame so Britain, who ethnically cleansed the land so they could build the airbase i the first place, went: 'Sorry, this one's too dodgy even for us'.
Last year when America attacked Iran's nuclear sites and only succeeded in making some big dents in some mountains, they flew the B-2 bombers directly from the States so they didn't need the UK then so why now and the only reason is similar to George W Bush's push for nations to join him in the Iraq misadventure, the legitimacy of having an ally on side so the optics are of a coalition rather than some suspected pedo starting a war because nuclear negotiations are moving too slowly for his childlike short attention span.
You have to remember that there was a working nuclear plan in place between the USA, EU and Iran before Trump pulled his side out of it and is now trying to use 19th Century gunboat diplomacy to bully Iran into another one or they will be bombed, and once they are bombed so will other places in the Middle East such as Israel as Iran hit out.
Whether the Mango moron attacks, strikes a deal or the whole thing somehow gets walked back, i am proud to say that Britain listened to Trump, and then treated his request with all the respect that Trump treats a Moscow Hotel Mattress,

The Right To Repair

2026-02-19T18:00:00.001+00:00

Wow the EU do come out with some cracking legislation and under this one going through the European Parliament, manufacturers of certain products will be required to make them easier to repair.
Many manufacturers, intentionally build products in a way that does not allow for disassembly, making it impossible to replace defective components when they break so consumers are forced to scrap the entire item, when there is actually very little wrong with it.
Thanks to the new EU legislation, manufacturers of washing machines, dishwashers, televisions, lights and fridges are required to make their products easier to repair and spare parts will also have to be made available to professional repairers.
The EU state it will prolong the lives of popular household items and dampen demand for new ones, thereby reducing carbon emissions, cutting waste and saving consumers money.
Manufacturers, seeing their profits in Europe taking a huge dip, fought for concessions restricting the rights of consumers to repair products themselves which is fair, amateur repairs to phones and other electronic devices could prove dangerous and we all remember the Grenfell fire which killed 72 people and was started due to a faulty fridge which highlights the dangers posed by defective electrical goods, and raises legitimate questions about non-specialists repairing them.
As our parents said, they don’t make them like they used to and soon that will hopefully be true and something to celebrate.

Andrew Arrested

2026-02-19T15:30:00.007+00:00

We would have to go back to King Charles I in 1647 to find the last time such a senior member of the royal family was arrested and that didn't rnd well for him as he was executed two years later for treason.
I imagine the knock on the door at 8am this morning at the Sandringham Estate in Norfolk was a lot less hostile than that conducted by the New Model Army back then but here we are with Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the former Prince Andrew, arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office which is 'a serious wilful abuse or neglect of powers relating to the role in public office', according to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) and carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.
The force previously said it was reviewing allegations that a woman was trafficked to the UK by sex offender Jeffrey Epstein to have a sexual encounter with Andrew as well as claims he shared sensitive information with the US sex offender while serving as the UK's trade envoy between 2001 and 2011.
A former Police Chief said that this is massive because you don't have to arrest somebody that they are investigating, they can ask them to provide a statement or even invite them to a police station for a formal chat without arresting them so to actually arrest him, would suggest there is some significant and strong evidence.
Famously lying at every turn in his interview with Emily Maitlis with regards to Virginia Giuffre who took her own life, he will not know be able to flip off questions quite so easily and they will drill down on the allegations that she had had sex with him when she was 17 and claimed she had been trafficked by Jeffrey Epstein.
A statement from her family reads: At last. Today, our broken hearts have been lifted at the news that no one is above the law, not even royalty. We extend our gratitude to the UK's Thames Valley Police for their investigation and arrest of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor'.
What effect this had on the future of the Royals is unknown but as it has been revealed that the King paid £3m of the reported £12 that Andrew gave to Giuffre in an out of court settlement to keep her from spilling the sordid beans on him, so he isn't is coming out of this clean.
Despite famously saying that he has a condition that means he doesn't sweat, i imagine the former Duke is sweating profusely today.

Special Guest Blogger: Tony Slattery

2026-02-19T00:30:00.010+00:00

Am I famous? Was I ever? It’s a slippery little eel, fame. For a brief, glittering, and frankly blurry period in the nineties, I was what you might call ‘televisual’. I was on the box so often you probably got sick of the sight of me. A whirlwind of questionable shirts, razor-sharp (and occasionally razor-dull) wit, and a metabolism powered by adrenaline, champagne, and cocaine. Mostly cocaine to be honest. Whose Line Is It Anyway? was the epicentre of it all. Thirty minutes once a week of pure, unadulterated improvisational terror, followed by a lifetime of people shouting 'Songs from the hat!' at me in Sainsbury’s.
They don’t make them like that anymore, do they? The modern route to fame seems to involve crying in a jungle but in my day, to get on the telly you had to at least have a go at being interesting. You had to learn your craft like I did at the Cambridge Footlights and then earn your stripes in grotty comedy clubs above pubs, dodging flying peanuts and the occasional heckler . It was a grind. It was character-building. It gave you something proper to be grumpy about later in life.
And then there were the ‘lost years’. The period where the main stage was swapped for a much smaller, sadder one. I won’t bore you with the details but it was what we call in the business 'an extended period of illness' and I hardly got any work although i did get the gig as the vending machine in Red Dwarf.
You know what though? It’s part of the tapestry. A rather frayed, beer-stained and smelling of Cocaine part of the tapestry, but it’s there. You can’t tell the story of the triumph without acknowledging the time you spent face-down in the carpet and waking up three days later. It adds texture.
Which brings me to the main event: my demise. Since we’re here, let’s get it right. How did I die?
Tony! Your suggestion from the audience is… a fatal heart attack!

E=MC2 v Pythagoras's Theorem

2026-02-18T18:00:00.001+00:00

Despite not owning a jacket with leather elbow patches, my friend is a complete math's geek and for some reason that even now that i don't remember why, we were discussing E=MC2, i assume it was Big Audio Dynamites 80's hit of the same name because i can't see how we would get into it any other way.
It all took a nasty twist when we went from a song about films to him saying that 'Many people think that E=MC2 is the most history changing equation but it isn't, there is one that had even greater impact'.
Obviously i did what any sane person would do and tried not to encourage by asking 'What's that then?' but he ignored what i assumed was my lack of interest by telling me anyway, Pythagoras's theorem.
According to someone who was oblivious to someone eyes glazing over while franctically searching for a sharp implement to shove in his ear, he explained that this theorem is a fundamental rule in geometry stating that in a right-angled triangle, the area of the square on the hypotenuse (\(c\)) equals the sum of the areas of the squares on the other two sides (\(a\) and \(b\)), expressed as \(a^{2}+b^{2}=c^{2}\) and is used to calculate unknown side lengths, with the hypotenuse being the longest side opposite the \(90^{\circ }\) angle.
Or something, i had lost the will to live by then but managed to squeak out a: 'Oh, that's good then' and willed my phone to ring for an emergency at the Office which would mean i would have to leave IMMEDIATELY!
I cut short some more boring stuff about math's by asking what use is Pythagoras's Theorem in my everyday life and after going through a couple of things which was to do with Construction (I'm not a builder) and Robotics (I'm not a scientist) he hit upon making sure pictures are hung straight.
So there you go kids, stay in school and pay attention in your Math's classes because one day you may look at a painting and see it is everso slightly wonky and you can straighten it and you will have Pythagoras to thank.
Either that or you can nudge it and then say to someone 'Does that look straight to you?' which is what the majority of people do who heard the word Pythagoras at school and thought..ppft...when will I ever need that and looked out the window at the trees instead.

Divorce Rings

2026-02-18T15:17:00.001+00:00

The World Bank Population and Vital Statistics website shows that the countries that have the highest divorce rates are Maldives (5.52 per 1000 people), Liechtenstein (4.9), Russia (4.7), Kazakhstan (4.6), Belarus (3.7) and Georgia (3.7) with the United Kingdom coming in at 2 per 1000 people with 23% of couples filing for divorce between 5 to 8 years of saying their vows with the most common reasons cited being adultery (32%), growing apart (27%), and lack of communication (11%).
The average age at divorce is 47 for men and 45 for women so many middle aged divorcees can now get in on the action of Divorce Rings.
Apparently it is now a thing that to celebrate? commiserate? becoming single again people are taking their engagement and wedding rings to jewellers and asking them to mash them together into new finger furniture.
The new fashion is to wear the ring on the middle finger to tell the World that you are divorced which could be seen as advertising your new found free and single status although a quick look at the ones i have seen they are..to be kind...not delicate looking things.
I guess as it is two rings welded into one (or the repurposing of symbolic pieces reclaiming the life event as a positive move )they will be quite big and clunky looking things but if you are looking for a positive and empowering way to mark the end of a marriage and the start of a new, independent life then go for it, at least it's better than a tattoo.

Special Guest Blogger: Geoff Capes

2026-02-17T00:30:00.011+00:00

As you're reading this, I’m obviously dead.
I'm Geoff Capes. Yes, that Geoff Capes, the bloke who once lifted a small car like it was a bar of chocolate, won two World’s Strongest Man titles, and taught an entire nation that yes, fat blokes can run, well sort of.
Now, as I lie here reflecting on my legacy, I must say: it’s been a bumpy ride. Like a sack of spuds on a lorry. But a glorious one.
Let’s be honest, I wasn’t born strong. I was born large, weighing 12.4 pounds (5.6 kg) at birth. In my case, strength came as a welcome bonus to sheer mass. If the Olympics had a category for Men Who Take Up Two Seats on Trains, I’d have won gold, silver, and bronze just to be thorough but i had to make do with the two times Commonwealth champion, twice European indoor champion, competed at three Olympic Games and holding the British record for the shot putt.
Not many people know that before I started lifting cars, I was a proper athlete but then I got dropped so I moved on. Into strongman.
But back in the day, back when mullets were fashionable and trousers had elastic waists,I discovered something miraculous: I could lift things. Not just things. Heavy things. Cars, fridges, And people actually paid me to do it. Mad, that.
My finest hour? Winning World’s Strongest Man. Twice. In 1983 and 1985.
There was a time when I could carry an anvil uphill while being pelted with snowballs in Finland but at the end I struggled to carry my own body weight from the sofa to the fridge and i settled to a lifestyle of breeding budgerigars and goddamn it I was good at that to, becoming a European and World champion with my Recessive Pieds.
Being a hefty 27 stone does has an effect on the body and my heart said stuff lugging all this around and packed in but I gave Britain something to cheer for. Not in football. Good Lord, not in football. But in strength. I made people believe that a man with a paunch, a perm, and questionable fashion sense could still rise to the top.

Cannabis Is Not A Safe Drug

2026-02-16T16:32:00.004+00:00

According to experts at the UK Border Force, seizures of Cannabis in the 90s contained approximately 4% tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the psychoactive ingredient which produces the high while today the average THC level of seizures is at least four times higher at 16%.
You can generally tell a long term cannabis smoker because their brains are just that little bit slower, a fraction of a second to react and my own back of a fag packet reading is backed by the overwhelming evidence from mental health professionals that smoking cannabis, particularly in your teenage years, there is a risk of mental health problems.
Cannabis was always considered a soft drug, far less dangerous than hard drugs like heroin and cocaine but even back then i remember talking to Mental Health staff who said that the reputation of cannabis as harmless was just plain wrong.
I have a lot of time for the leader of the Green Party, Zack Polanski, but his call to legalise cannabis which he states he has never tried, is just all kinds of ignorance.
A psychiatrist leading an early intervention in psychosis team at the Institute of Psychiatry in London, said that studies show that 'if the risk of schizophrenia for the general population is about 1%, the evidence is that, if you take ordinary cannabis, it quadruples to 4% and if you smoke the strongest strain (above 10% THC), you push it up to 8%'.
Data from 11 countries in Europe found that regular users of cannabis containing 10% THC were five times more likely than non-users to develop psychosis and severe mental damage in cannabis-consuming teenagers whose brains are still developing, were 11 times more likely to suffer a psychosis than non-users. In Denmark, researchers estimated that of male patients between 21 and 30 who suffered from schizophrenia, up to 30% of the cases were due to cannabis use.
The evidence for the cannabis-psychosis connection is now as strong that to call for making Cannabis legal and more freely available is downright dangerous and foolhardy.
as the legalisation of cannabis legitimises it and sends a message that the government views it as relatively harmless whereas the message should be that cannabis can send you insane.