Jupiter – why bother? (515)

 Jupiter is about 11x larger than earth. This big gaseous monster lies between Mars and Saturn. It's the 5^th planet from the sun in our solar system. It’s out ‘big daddy’ planet with a gravitational pull that sucks in massive asteroids and space debris that would otherwise obliterate us. And yes – that is not to say it’s always successful. It missed, obviously, the one that got the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. But on the whole we cannot complain.

Our very existence – and by that I mean – the inhabitability of planet Earth, is so much of a miracle even considering it could make your brain explode. Like a super-nova.

But, if I were Jupiter – I’d be seriously thinking (with my gassy, stripy brain) – why bother.

From endless warring to the horrors that humans can mete out to each other, the Spanish inquisition (lowest estimate for deaths 30,000) to the witch trials (scholars reckon that those murdered for witchcraft is between 40 – 60,000). And remember this at a time when the earth was not made up of 7bn souls, so those numbers represent a huge percentage of what was then the world's population.

World wars – x2; estimates range from 55m – 80m dead.

In short, humans are pretty good at killing other humans.

But in the 21^st century we are excelling.

Netanyahu has racked up 43,000 deaths in Gaza in just one year with his “most moral army in the world”.

But this is dwarfed by what we now manage from pollution alone.

In 2021, UNICEF estimated 8.1 million annual deaths globally from air pollution.

One of my very early posts on this blog (I link it here) was called Armageddon will not be televised.

What I said then is true today x 1000

So – for this week, instead of the usual general invitation to check out my other stuff I shall simply link you to Zero One Zero Two - we are all dead...

‘Stalingrad’ – coming to a country near you… (514)

Here is a film that deserves some modern day attention. No, I’m not turning film critic and I’m not going to do that thing where you suggest your current hobby horse ‘should be taught in schools’. Kids are far far too busy working out how to get their next vape session in.

The Film is ‘Stalingrad’ - the original 1993 German-made anti-war film, is rightly referred to by NME as ‘A Masterpiece’. It stands out as one to watch not because of the brutal war scenes but because of the scenes of casual human brutality that starkly portray how very quickly callousness becomes a dull, monotonous, dreary, unavoidable, wasteful reality and routine.

Unlike a lot of British war films there is no sentimentality and there is no bravado either unlike the Hollywood counterparts. In fact sentimentality is shown to be wildly misplaced and naive in the attempts at romantic letter-writing by one of the main characters, by the casual placement of women and children among the battle scenes in others and the juxtaposition of utter bland stupidity and horror when it comes to death and human carnage.

For those who have not experienced war up close – thankfully most of us in this country  - or for those without an imagination or those who prefer the intellect-wiping stupidity of intravenous reality TV – this is the film that could pinpoint the actual grimness of a Gaza or Ukraine or Syria.

Ignore the platitudes of Starmer and before him Sunak about Israel’s ‘right to defend’. And ignore that little voice inside that tells you Ukraine – etc. - is nothing to do with you because it's ‘over there’.

Wars spread. Putin may have been held by the constant sacrifice of the Ukrainian people but if Netanyahu is allowed to continue to escalate the bloodbath in Middle East and manoeuvre the US to engage in more than the proxy war it usually enjoys, the pressure will be off Putin.

And in this global world, even if not caught up in the actual butchery, we can never escape the effects of extreme disruption to the production and distribution of food and oil for example – ya know – that stuff we can’t live without. Especially when the countries that make things and those that mega-consume are now so far apart.

‘Stalingrad’ coming to a country near you…

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I’m linking you here to one of the earliest posts in this 12 yr long political therapy session – post no. 12 -  Armageddon Will Not Be Televised

Because what I said then is at least 23% truer today… 

Gargantuan Gambling Gremlins chew through society while we look the other way. (513)

A recent study by Gambling Aware revealed that gambling ads at sports events had trebled in just one year.

Anyone – like me – who has turned to commercial and or local radio to avoid the slush of BBC nonsense will not be at all surprise.

These stations rely not on the free government hand-out to the stale old stultified, out of date, out of touch, unreliable, sycophantic, London-centric BBC but ad revenue. In my experience it’s rare to get through an commercial break without something relate to gambling being pushed in that hysterically happy snappy ad voice.

There is the obvious stuff – bingo websites etc. but then there is the subtler stuff like the post-code lotteries – charity lotteries and you’re chance to win anything from a 5 star holiday to a brand new car to cash.

I’ve never hear it announced how many people enter or how tiny is your percentage chance of winning. I do remember when the National Lottery was introduced during the Thatcher years it was condemned as a. a tax on the poor and b. as a replacement for proper funding. And it did not start well as one of the first uses was to buy documents from Churchill’s descendants ‘for the nation’ when many people believed they belonged to the nation in the first place.

Since then the lottery has become a staple and extended to scratch cards and any number of have-a-go chance grifts. Go to any outlet the night before a big draw and you cannot fail to see the hunched figures bent over their purchases frantically (miserably) scraping away or checking figures. Often these are bought in many multiples not just one. And on a weekly basis.

But this is nothing compared to the huge increase in online gambling often very poorly regulated despite the hurried ‘be gamble aware’ statement crammed onto the end of glitzy, slick, expensively produced ads.

Personal debt in the UK reached nearly £2billion at the end of June 2023 and debt per household was running at 96.3% of average earnings (The Money Charity). And a now three-year-old report from the CAB put personal gambling debt at an average of £10k per household but of course Citizens Advice only has access to those seeking help and or acknowledging there is a problem.

There is a deep fault line running through society on this issue.

And we may question the effects of advertising but Science Direct has studied this and discovered – no surprise – gambling advertising IS effective against one very key demographic –young adults and teenagers. The same demographic that spend most time online.

Anecdotally, as I am not a car owner and spend a lot of time on public transport, I can attest to the casual gambling that happens daily and it seems such a regular and integrated pass-time that I find the figures quoted above surprisingly LOW.

I recall listening to one young man on the train with pals claiming he enjoyed gambling because he was sensible – limiting himself to £40. Now he did not say if this was per day or per week. But let’s go with the week. That is the price of a pair of kid’s shoes (or an entire school uniform if you buy sweat-shop products) EVERY seven days and I was not at all convinced by his statement as people almost always underestimate these things whether its drink or food or drugs.

Years ago under the Gordon Brown administration there was talk of limiting gambling outlets that always seemed to huddle and multiply in poor areas. A phenomenon that tells a tale in itself.  But little has changed in that respect and it has become almost immaterial anyhow with the exponential grown of online gambling; it’s a battle that has been lost.

Like a lot of shit that flowed out of the sewer of the Thatcher administration last century – privatisation – de-regulation – we are paying the social price this century - and how.

But I see no push back. For some reason – despite the documented negative effects on social well-being, family life, economic well-being, mental health etc. – there is little to no resistance against the behemoth that is the insatiable GARGANTUAN GAMBLING GREMLIN chewing its way unchecked through society.

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As always thanks for reading and do check out My BOOKS

King Bags-of-Cash & Queen Fag Ash – need an extra £45million? (512)

My main reaction when I read that the ‘Sovereign Grant’ is to rise by £45m this year from £86.3m to £132m was – huh – they’re still there…

And remember the sovereign grant is just the tax payer money they get given – pocket money so to speak - on top of a whole lot of everything else. The royals are rich from land ownership and inherited wealth and they cost the tax payer money in so many other ways not least policing for when they are out and about in their dressing-up clothes shaking hands with the great unwashed.

The King’s coronation cost (as UK papers estimate) between £50 - £100 million. Why there is not an exact figure is anyone’s guess – maybe its considered poor taste to calculate to the odd £50 million when dealing with anything Royal.

Despite all this, Charlie boy was reported to have accepted 3m euros in cash in shopping bags from a Qatari politician (2022). Clarence House trotted out the balm that the money was ‘immediately passed to one of Charlie’s charities’ – and that was that was sufficient explanation as the UK press was concerned - so that’s ok then. Nothing grungy at all about that. And yes – Charlie has a talking house as opposed to a talking horse.

There is absolutely nothing about this that makes any sense. And by this I’m talking about THE MONARCHY in what is supposedly a modern Western democracy.

And after a decade and a half of Tory austerity where a disgraceful number of children are now living in poverty and there is a scrap over whether pensioners should keep their winter fuel allowance. UK pensioners receive between £200 and £300 for the whole year  while others with titles are getting £333 per day in the House of Lords for doing fuck all. So clearly, in the UK, it’s something to do with wearing ermine that entitles you to free money!

Fag Ash Lil – who currently holds the title of queen consort – despite all we hear about tradition and continuity when the sycophants are drivelling on about royalty – was the ‘third person’ in the Diana / Charles marriage and has since been credited with some of the most abusive treatment of Meghan Markle who was hounded out of the UK by the racist royals and a gleeful press.

And yes – any royalist reading this will possibly trot out the tired old argument about what ‘they’ do for Britain – the income from tourism etc but no one ever puts a figure on that or weighs it against the cost and the stupidity of it all. No one points out that many countries without a Charlie and a Camilla – get far more tourism than we do.

So my question is not so much why the increase in free money to some of the richest folk in the world – my question is WHY still a monarchy at all??? 

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As always - do check out My OTHER STUFF

Starmer’s social cruelty. Surprised? You shouldn’t be… (511)

Sighs of relief reached gale-warning levels when the Tories were ousted in July. However, that storm front fast lost its identity as the new reality was battered home by the son of a tool maker (did you know?). No one who understands politics or the sheer social carnage of Conservative maladministration this past decade and a half can have been expecting instant Nirvana. However, what we got, it seems, was a posturing PM who wanted to show he could be tough.

Not sure that’s what the electorate that bothered to turn-out, voted for.

It’s to do with expectation. Somewhere at the back of our minds we still think of Labour as more ‘caring’ than the Tories – despite the dead-eyed stare and forced smile (grimace) of Wes Streeting. Despite the treatment of Diane Abbot (and I’m no fan) by the party she served for decades. Despite the enthusiastic, unnecessary welcoming into the folds of Tory right-wing loon Natalie Elphicke earlier this year. Yes – that Elphicke. Not only extreme right wing but took over her husband’s seat when he was accused of sexual assault. Her defence of him being (and I paraphrase) these women chased him because he’s so gorgeous. – Do look up Charlie Elphicke.

So the clear lack of empathy evident in initial decision making in the early days, the bits folk will remember – have shaken people. An equivalent would be the shockwave that reverberates through society when we learn of a woman involved in extreme physical cruelty to a child. We all know it’s a possibility but deep down it’s something we still on the whole associate with men. Statistically that is a correct supposition.

There were expectations that Starmer’s administration would be more compassionate than a Tory government and Starmer could have made decisions that supported that expectation. He did not.

So – choosing to keep the two-child benefit cap brought us up short – and it was a choice. Scrapping the winter fuel payments to the elderly stuck in our collective craw.

Add that to Labour’s trotting along in the US tail-wind regarding the soft touch on Israel’s ‘Trump’ - Netanyahu for nearly a year now – despite the other 3 nations of the union calling for an immediate ceasefire back when it might have made a difference - and we are already wondering what is going on.

I would argue strongly Starmer’s Labour is acting entirely true to form.

Blair’s New Labour chose to stick to Thatcher’s fiscal programme for two years. It was the Blair administration that introduced tuition fees – crushing generations under debt. It was New Labour that introduced the private sector into NHS and Education infrastructure and of course – it was Blair who served up the tragedy of Iraq, the nightmare that followed and which reverberates today.

But step back further into the mists of time. During the pre-Thatcher Labour years 1974 – 79, £750million worth of shares in BP were sold off, there were extreme public spending cuts and the sell-off of council house stock was sanctioned by the Labour government albeit it the sell-offs happened in Tory-controlled councils.

What I’m saying is – Labour has ‘form’ and I’m not just referring to the last Labour government.

Anyone surprised by Starmer’s Labour needs to dust off some mental cobwebs.

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Do check out My OTHER STUFF

Blair & a Convenient Untruth – (510)

 I re-start this blog with the nasty surprise I got a few days ago because political Nosferatu Tony Blair has reared up again, possibly revived by sucking at the arteries of Labour’s resurrected political body and with the aid of his media thralls.

As those achieving power seem to come and go faster and have (with some not particularly honourable exceptions) come in younger, our tired political circus is having to juggle departed but undead politicians – post-party/ post-mortum (!) politicians so to speak – ever faster.

There are none more shudder-inducing than the cadaverous old war criminal Tony Blair who is still – against all decency and sense of moral fairness – platformed by straight-faced journos who clearly have selective and collective amnesia. Or, journalism school teaches them that if the mass murderer is a. one of their own b. a millionaire c. mates with Rupert Murdoch d. so personally delusional that he himself does not believe that being responsible for the illegal (ref; Chilcot Report) and entirely unnecessary deaths of untold, uncounted tens of thousands of innocent civilians matters, then he’s in the clear.

Tony Nosferatu has conveniently forgotten what we all learnt in political history 1.01 - that destabilised and ruined countries spew out fleeing desperate people by the thousand. Fear of that mass movement of the distressed, dispossessed and dislocated, feeds reactionary fascistic narratives as it has throughout history.

OR maybe – in the same way that the right-leaning media serve up Alex Salmond at any available opportunity – in a way they would not have done when he was actually leader of the SNP – ie in order to create discomfort for the current leader of that party – maybe the legacy media see Blair in this handy role for Starmer’s Labour. Nb. Starmer needs no help peeing into the tent. He’s doing fine on his own…

You have to hand it to them. Reminding the public that this scrawny old shit,  was the Labour leader who took us into the absolute disastrous invasion of Iraq while Starmer (40+k Palestinians deaths and counting – plus hostages and the spread of the conflict – still doesn’t seem to have a clear line on Gaza genocide, unlike the other 3 nations of the x4-naiton union) – is a real dooozie in terms of juxtaposition. Just what is it with Labour and feeling so entirely comfortable with the mass slaughter of brown people?

Or does Blair really just think it’s all about him plus his correct instinct that the legacy media do not care as long as they’ve got a rich white bloke to share his opinions.

His latest ‘I got it all right about Brexit cos I’m Tony’ tone – would be laughable if it weren’t so mad. Listen to anyone with two brain cells to rub together who wasn’t David Cameron and more interested in trying to keep his party together than doing what was right for Britain – and literally anyone could (and did) predict the horrors of Britain’s tortuous European exit.

Tell us something we don’t know Tone, like where you buried your conscience.

I’d rather read Lizz Truss’s appalling book cover to cover three times while sharing a taxi with the fascist frog-faced Farage and watching a video of Michael Gove cocaine dancing to the sound of  Jabob Rees-Mogg warbling about Brexit benefits in one ear and Boris Johnson  burbling about fatherhood and Peppa Pig than hear Tony Blair on any topic at all. Ever.

Call me squeamish - I just cannot stand war criminals.

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Thanks for reading as always. Some of you been sharing my political therapy with me for a dozen years now, thanks.

And please do also check out My BOOKS

Mend My Heart - a love song to Scotland (with the help of 'alien code'...)

 Though I'm not blogging again until after the summer, I said I'd post about any creative stuff.

This was a huge surprise as I'm not a musician. How it came about and the involvement of 'alien code' is explained in the blurb that accompanies the piece on bandcamp

Do check it out here - Mend My Heart