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Nicola Sturgeon passed her driving test which will come in useful now that she's no longer in power and thus can't employ someone to drive that motorhome. She passed first time although wouldn't say what score she got on it and how many minors they received. Coincidentally the same answer that Prince Andrew's office gave to a question.

A man died after setting himself on fire outside a Liverpool branch of McDonalds. In a tragic twist, the staff could have extinguished him but the McFlurry machi ......

The official portraits were released of the Coronation and seeing King Charles in a purple hat, he really looks more and more like his mother.

Following the coronation, Adjoa Andoh stirred up some controversy by pointing out that balcony had been "terribly white" There was no followup suggesting how to resolve that perceived issue though. Most of the royal's are already married and Prince Andrew remains one of the few remaining single royals. Except he's also in his 60s and the left surely aren't suggesting that he get married to a young African girl in her 20s and start siring children? I mean he'd be up for it but it's hardly a good look

One final word on the coronation must the the mention of the drone display that they put on at Windsor Castle, it certainly upstaged the efforts that Putin and Zelensky have put on. I guess that brings us onto the other story which is Eurovision and how it was supposed to be held in Ukraine but for political reasons was hosed in Liverpool. It's a real shame because according to the news, Ukraine has some huge open air arenas (these days) and because hosting Eurovision in the city the Beatles were from is disgraceful. It's like getting Noel Edmonds to host a show with a gunge tank and then filming it at the British Museum. the RMT union tried their best to protect the general public by holding a rail strike but in all honesty they really needed to get Zelenskyy to do a missile strike. As to the UK, we came second to last, which made me want to briefly check the news to see if we'd invaded Iraq again or something.

Josef Fritzl is writing a book and it's going to be curious to see if more people want to hand over their money to him, rather than read Prince Harry's diatribe. When asked about sales projections, one industry expert said Fritzl's book was going to be best cellar.

King Charles is apparently going to have to wait until next year to get his crown. It says a lot about the state of the country that even the King can't get a dentists appointment
According to the national statistics office, the number of heroin users is ‘shooting up’
Liverpool, the city that the Beatles came from, is going to host the Eurovision song contest next year, which is like letting Paris Hilton live in Albert Einstein's house.

This decision came after the ongoing war in Ukraine where the resistance fighters have managed to hold their own. Russia once had the 2nd most powerful army in the world and now they're reduced to having the 2nd most powerful army in Ukraine. Either way the place is less appealing to the television and media types who would normally be looking forward to a weekend's all expenses paid trip. It's one thing putting a blue and yellow flag on your social media feed but it's another one being reduced to staying at only a 2 star hotel because the Marriott doesnt have electricity.

This week saw Vladimir Putin turn 70 years old and he shares a birthday with Simon Cowell which puts some of those talent shows into perspective. Simon Cowell might make jokes at your expense but he's unlikely to order an assasination where the police declare that 26 gunshots imply a suicide. Vladimir Putin is the sort of who decides to go after left-wing opponents by sabotaging the left-hand wing of a passenger place that they're on.

But the war has taken a few turns in the past few weeks. The main bridge that connects Russia to Crimea was partially destroyed in a bomb attack. The Nord Stream pipeline was also attacked although in many respects this probably does more damage to Germany than anyone else. Many conspiracy theories suspect that the pipeline may have been attacked by the USA or China as part of a scheme to destabalise Europe and create a reliance on energy imports via other means. The Russian army has also been forced to open up new recruitment channels, releasing thousands of convicted crminals from prison and extending the draft to more civilians, who in return have tried to flee the country. The smart people of course would do well to just join the army, that way they get a free trip to the border and they only have to make it the last couple of miles themselves.

Throw in the lack of goods in the shop due to sanctions and it's all rather reminiscent of the soviet era. There's an old joke where a man walks into a shop in Soviet Russia. He asks the clerk, "Do you have any meat?" The clerk replies, "No, here we don't have any fish. The shop that doesn't have any meat is across the street." Actually, the better one would be would be where Stalin is attracted to a girl and grants her any wish she desires. She says she wants him to open up the border and Stalin replies, "of course, so we can have some alone time"

The war in Ukraine took a turn for worst this week with yet another atrocity, this time in the form of Bono showing up for a concert. Locals tried to explain they wanted the intervention of the UN, not U2 and it wouldn’t surprise me if some radio’d in for the Russians to bomb the concert. Also in music related news this week, Saturday saw Ukraine win the Eurovision song contest. Under the rules of the competition that means that next year’s event will possibly be hosted it its new capital city: Moscow.

Except it likely won’t, with Russia now having lost a third of its ground forces and put a performance so shoddy you half expect Geoffrey Boycott to be commentating on it.
The only way I could envisage the Russians making fewer mistakes if if they start showing up for work late. Here’s another one for you Q: What do you call a distracted Russian general in Ukraine? A:Preoccupied

Russia has also lost a huge slice of its senior generals and officers, both due to the war but also likely due to Vladimir Putin having them killed in retaliation for dragging him into the disarray. Six months ago the war looked like the equivalent of Manchester United taking on Accrington Stanley but I don’t know much about football and just looking in on things, United’s just lost 4-0 to Brighton on Saturday so maybe the analogy works.

What has been clear is that Putin is terminally ill, supposedly with leukaemia and will almost certainly be dead by the end of the year. This war was a way for him to immortalise himself forever, winning a glorious war before being cut down in his prime. Fast forward a few months and I doubt he’d be able to capture a branch of Poundland never mind Poland.

A new blood test can apparently diagnose Alzheimer's 30 years in advance, I guess if that’s the sort of thing you want to look forward too.
Parents in Wales are no longer entitled to smack. Which is good news of class-A drug users elsewhere.
Talking of which Taylor Hawkins from band the Foo Fighters has died. He was a drummer in Colombia so you can guess the rest of that story

This week there was a G20 conference to discuss the Ukraine situation and as expected it was about as useful as air conditioning on a motorbike. Russia which classes itself as a superpower is somehow managing to lose a war to a rag-tag collection of amateurs and even children who have been allowed to put down the x-box controllers in favour of actual military grade weapons. I saw a kid on the news who couldn't have been much over the age of 7, running around with an MP5 machine gun and I was fairly glad my son didn’t get any ideas of what he wants for Christmas. Mind you, it is a good example of how it may be relatively simple enough to beat standing armies but a determined populace and insurrection is always next to impossible to defeat. If Ukraine was an animal it would be a cat with 9 lives. Talking of which I remember years ago phoning a vet in order to get my elderly cat put down and the receptionist told me I'd have to book 9 appointments.

The one positive thing you can say about Vladimir is that he has at least been one of the most effective geography teachers in years with random folk down the pub now able to talk chapter and verse about cities that nobody had heard of 6 months ago although it might all be a waste of time he ends up leveling the place. Currently there's a solid possibility of that being the outcome, with huge stretches of no-mans-land in exchange for Russia annexing the Donbas region, all fairly similar to what played out in Cyprus 50 years ago. That is also outrageously ironic given how many Russian Oligarchs hold a Cypriot passport, in order to get EU citizenship. All in the meanwhile Western companies are facing demands not to sell their products in Russia. Curiously the tobacco industry are the latest to talk about pulling out of Russia, which makes you wonder whose side they're really on, the tobacco industry kills far more Russians every year than the Ukrainian army could ever dream of. Between that and McDonalds exiting Russia we may see the life expectancy jump 10 years, or it may all turn ugly, literally. Botox manufacturer AbbVie has decided to cease operations there after all. Perhaps that will be the twist of the screw that finally drags the shiny and suspiciously smooth skinned Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table...

Boat operator P&O have sacked 800 members of staff with immediate effect, which seems 'ferry' unfair.

Emma Watson used her BAFTA appearance to attack JK Rowling. If I were Rowling then I'd get set to work, writing a new Harry Potter film in which Hermione puts on a ton of weight, starts eating live snails

Fuel prices are still going up. I recently asked the wife if she wanted to go for a fancy dinner, with champagne and caviar and the like. She said she'd be happy just to go on a romantic drive up into the mountains and I pointed out I didn't have that kind of cash and if she'd seen the price of petrol

This is week 4 of the Ukraine crisis though and to be honest I'm running out of things to say about it. This week saw a strange turn of events as the traditionally left wing press started celebrating a group of New-Nazis who have been having success fighting the Russian troops. Clearly a case of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend"

The Russian economy is in freefall and if the invasion is supposed to harken back to the old USSR then certainly that's reflected in the shops with shortages and peopled queuing to buy food. Despite this, Vladimir Putin showed up in a $13k jacket to give a rally to hundreds of thousands of supporters in Moscow. I don't speak Russian so I'm not entirely sure what he said but clearly the crowd loved it, or were being paid to love it. Maybe some old classic jokes like "Knock knock. Who's there? The KGB, we've come to arrest your husband." There's also a cringeworthy video of Putin kicking about online performing 50s hit Blueberry Hill. Anyway, if you want to see him then I guess he's banned from Ticketmaster but he's planning a 2nd gig in Ukraine. Or at least that's what I think he meant when said he was going to bring the house down.

Contrastingly This last week saw the British Prime Minister fly to Saudi Arabia in order to cut a deal for cheap oil and gas. He got nothing out of it, in stark contrast to the public who had to stump up the money to pay for the flight at a time when fuel prices are at an all time high. Although I guess there wasn't any wine so maybe it all cancels out in the wash.

The actor and convicted liar Jussie Smollet has been sentenced to jail for that fictional attack he made up and reported in 2020 to gain publicity. Perhaps he will file file an appeal against the decision to lock him up in the same cell as his attacker

And Saudi Arabia just executed 81 people in one day. You’d think that would behead-line news.

But talking about oil-rich countries with grisly human rights records, the news is still dominated by the war in Ukraine. This week's events have seen Russian Oligarchs around the world having their assets frozen. It's not often I have much in common with Roman Abromavich but this week for the first time neither of us were able to withdraw a million quid from the bank, and neither of us are in control of a Premiere League football team. There was a strange angle to the sports teams side of things as a number of sponsors are distancing themselves from the clubs which is a fantastic win for the fans, being able to buy a football shirt that for once isn't also emblazoned by logos for other things.

The extension of cancel culture to commercial products and companies is an odd one and it is of course unsurprising to see it applied in farcical and nonsensical ways. The US has seen people trying to ban the sale of Vodka, despite only about 1% of it being imported and this is all after a number of people tried to make Chinese takeaways taboo following the coronavirus. First Chinese food and now vodka, I'm frankly terrified that Italy decides to invade somewhere, although I guess if they did then I might lose 2 stone.

So how is the war going though. All things considered, very badly. There are rumours that Russian reconnaissance drones have turned up in Croatia asking for asylums. Russia has a fantastic rail system and the ability to muster large amounts of equipment but apparently still don't know how to maintain a supply chain of more than about 80 miles and Kiev is about a hundred miles past the Russian border so watching them try to capture it is like watching my kids trying to get the ice cream out of the top of the freezer. This week a Ukrainian man out walking his dog found an abandoned 9K330 SAM missiles system in a nearby wood. He then, for real, updated the Wikipedia page, listing Ukraine as one of the countries who own that system now. Good luck buying missiles for it though, I suspect that's where the arms companies make all the money, and surface to air missiles are probably like a really expensive version of topping up the ink on your printer.

This week:
Australian cricket legend Shane Warne just passed away so perhaps it will be his ashes that the team will be playing for later this summer. Sorry, that's in poor taste, he must be spinning in his grave. "Spinning" (geddit?)
London is still looking for a new head of police after Cressida Dick's forced resignation. London of course has an ever increasing problem with knife crime and the government want a new commissioner to take a stab at it.

And Australian TV show Neighbours is to finally end after 37 years on air. The show's theme tune talks about how "everybody needs good neighbours" and that brings us onto this week's main story which is how Ukraine has a particularly bad set of neighbours, at least to it's north and east, let's hope that Romania has no plans to plant a leylandii bush along its Ukrainian border, blocking out the evening sun. This week saw further escalation of the conflict and for a scary couple of hours there were worries that a nuclear power plant being shelled might turn into something a dozen times worse than Chernobyl. Subsequent investigations have apparently ruled everything be ok, although I was frankly unsure whether it was a good thing or a bad thing that the plant got a "glowing report"

It is still quite remarkable how fast the situation has escalated. A few weeks ago there were "no plans to occupy Ukraine" and how they occupy half the country, it certainly shows that civil servants can do policy change and process paperwork when they really need to. Not in the UK though and Boris, give him some credit, has chosen to turn down the opportunity to get his name in the history books when it comes to this war, although he has been through the wars (metaphorically speaking) of late and he did of course remember to take the opportunity to use the bad news about a potential nuclear meltdown to cover up the shameful nepotism of him giving Gavin Williamson a knighthood. "Sir" ?! Maybe “sir”-iously bad at his job. Elsewhere, France and Germany have also stayed out of the Ukraine conflict, although Lufthansa have stopped flying passenger planes anywhere near the region there making many wonder if perhaps the Luftwaffe will be flying planes to Ukraine on the basis that they still have a lot of unfinished business in the region.

So what next then? Here's one way way to ratchet down the tension I thought of: maybe the Prime Minister could phone up the Kremlin and point out to Putin that he could save 350m per week by pulling out. Actually, you know perhaps not, if it was Boris told him that he'd probably believe it this time around...

The Russian Invasion of Ukraine finally kicked off this week with the troops rolling in to capture Chernobyl, which seemed somewhat of an odd place to want to capture, it's like if the Chinese launched a war against Japan and their first strategic target was weird island with the thousands of cats living on it. Anyway I guess it made sense in a way because it's not like anyone in NATO wants to risk bombing them there, it's bad enough when a drone accidentally hits a school or hospital, let alone striking and restarting a nuclear meltdown. And besides, the Russian military emblem is a two headed eagle so perhaps the military were hoping to see one of those birds in the wild.

Anyway, the newspapers got to work quickly, especially the people who write pun-based headlines for the tabloids. They were 'Russian' to get the jokes 'Putin' to the banner headlines. As to the other papers, The Times and the Telegraph have had some wonderful maps and the Sunday supplements have some cracking goulash recipes. The BBC of course has an article about African American haircuts and whether school dress codes are institutionally racist and I'm imagining that the Sunday Sport has a special report on Ukrainian asylum seekers, although all of the girls featured will be 18 yer old blonde bombshells.

Unfortunately though in the real world it's real bombshells at play and the mayor of Kiev told residents to stay safe by going into the Subway although how a 12" sandwich is supposed to help during a war is anyone's guess. That's the wrong type of sub! And what should the west's reaction be? It's quite a moral dilemma, millions could die but then a protracted war could push up the price of petrol by 20p/litre. Sanctions are of course going into effect and it has been suggested that Russia should be cut out of the SWIFT global bank transaction system, crippling their economy for years. Another response has been to ban Russia from being allowed to compete in the Eurovision Song Contest this year, especially after rumours that Vladimir was planning up to sing either "Don't Stop Me Now" or Boom-Bang-A-Bang. It's also been decided that the Champions League Final will not go ahead in St Petersburg as planned although we're all in trouble if they choose to play the match in the Sudetenland. There's also talk of removing access to western internet services like Amazon or Netflix (or as as it's called in Russia, "Njetflix") or possibly Twitter where as of the time of writing Vladimir Putin is still a free member. Steve Bannon and Donald Trump of course got banned from Twitter for being bad people but Vladimir Putin is literally trying to launch a 3rd world war and yet that's apparently ok. Talk about a war of words eh?

Arnold Schwarzenegger was involved in a nasty car accident, so presumably the police are looking to speak to Linda Hamilton or Robert Patrick
The Conservative Party has put in some paperwork with the Electoral Commission to rename itself “The Conservative Work Event”
Professional attention-seeker, conman and part-time magician Uri Gellar has claimed that an alien invasion is imminent, although perhaps he just doesn’t know how to spell “Russian”

Because this week’s main story has been the growing build up on the Ukrainian border with everybody itching for war, except those who live in Ukraine itself. They stand to do about as well in a war with Russia as Bermuda will do competing with Russia at the upcoming Winter Olympics. There were quite a few options for that metaphor, other competing sides include Eritrea, Trinidad, Togo and famously snow-free Saudi Arabia who were possibly only invited so that the Chinese hosts could boast about their comparatively clean human rights record.

Anyway, Russia has hundreds of thousands of troops mobilized and up against them are of course Ukraine's smaller and less well equipped army but also a population of 44m people who seem willing to arm themselves and fight an insurgency if the worst should happen. You also have the US, probably and perhaps other troops from the UK and anyone else who needs a distraction from home affair. Perhaps Emmanuel Macron will commit French troops if he thinks it will give him a boost in the polls, just as Boris is looking at it largely with an eye to causing a distraction from Partygate. I heard the expression “killing 2 birds with one stone” but this distraction would be more like the stone that killed the dinosaurs. Probably with similar global repercussions too. I saw snow falling the other day and after glancing up up I asked my neighbour if the bombs had started dropping in Kiev yet. The most interesting commentary on the whole question on what to do comes from America where both the right and left and split on the decision. The democrats spent 4 years complaining about Trump not standing up to Putin but also don’t want to spend the next decade grinding out an expensive war. On the right it’s the usual arguments of Imperial Exceptionalism vs telling countries in Europe that they should maybe spend a bit more on defense and stand up for themselves for once. There’s a lot to be said for how President Trump was only one in modern history to not drag the US into a war and if the US does end up sending thousands of troops to their death in Eastern Europe it will be interesting to see Trump on TV explaining how to left wing news commentators about how it never happened on his watch and how if they want to stop the war they should have voted for him.

In the news:
A British man died off the coast of Australia after being eaten by a great white shark. The family made a comment about how he “died doing what he enjoyed” which begs the question: what sort of person enjoys spending their free time being ripped apart by a shark

Angry complaints from environmentalist who claim that the COP conference has failed and that the world is burning, but then Greta Thunberg also said that the soon the world will be under water, so that takes care of the fire I guess, problem solved.

But if we are looking to bring on the apocalypse then look no further than Eastern Europe, specifically Belarus or perhaps Ukraine where Vladimir Putin has been rumoured to be looking to send in troops and grab himself a new country for Christmas in the way that you or I might go out and buy a new television or a car. Although I guess that Putin might end up with a fleet of new Citroen C4s if the army misunderstand his order to stock up with plenty of C4.

So what has been happening in that part of the world? Tensions between Belarus and Europe have been high for a long time, president Lukashenko is an old school autocrat with no regard for things like democracy or popular opinion. In many ways he would be the perfect politician to be working for the EU but instead they’ve been at loggerheads over a number of issues and things really escalated back in May when he forced a Ryanair flight in Belarusian airspace to land so that he could arrest a journalist. More recently he’d been facilitating thousands of refugees to travel into Europe. There are daily flights from Turkey to Belarus where the army then help you reach the Border with Poland. Again, you’d think the EU would love this guy, it’s pretty much the game that France has been playing with the English Channel. Anyway, people are now being murdered as they try to cross Westward and there are rumours of vigilante groups patrolling the forests at night. There are also threats to turn off the gas pipelines this winter and for the environmental campaigners that spend their spare time gluing themselves to the roads, death and human suffering pales into comparison to the idea of energy companies burning coal to make up the shortfall.

At this point though Vladimir Putin has very generously offered to take it upon himself to invade northern Ukraine and use it as a starting location to police things if they get more out of control. That’s like me ordering 3 or 4 cases of wine, just in case I need additional cardboard boxes to store Christmas decorations in. In response the Polish army is doubling the number of troops on standby and Joe Biden is probably looking forward to anything that might create a distraction from the rapidly escalating economic disaster he’s presiding over. As for the UK, it’s a very scary time indeed. The last time an aggressive army crossed over the Polish border, it started a world war, but if it happens again, this time Britain will be fighting on the same side as the Germans for once. Not even Nick Clegg was desperate to rejoin Europe if it meant doing it that way.

Most of this weekend’s news focused on the Duke of Edinburgh’s funeral at Windsor, there was a 41-gun salute, followed by a phone call from Emmanuel Macron saying that they surrendered, and a protest in America demanding a ban on assault-style ceremonial cannons. No sign of Meghan of course, although perhaps she’s claiming to have attended a secret private funeral a few days ago with just the Archbishop of Canterbury in attendance. I did personally wonder why there were so many people at the event although I later saw David Icke commenting that the Covid rules about family gatherings do not apply to lizards or shapeshifters. All things considered I found the more bizarre story to be the one about how Prince Andrew expected to be allowed to show up wearing an admiral’s uniform, as if the funeral was some kind of bespoke-tailored fancy dress occasion. Who would have thought that Phillip’s least embarrassing son would end up being the one that talked to trees? Personally speaking if I was the prime minister I would have stepped in and told Andrew to wear the outfit on condition that immediately afterwards he was flown out to Ukraine where a major naval skirmish may be about to kick off. She how dedicated to the cause he really is.

The situation in Ukraine is actually rather serious, but sadly that fact is no longer news, one of Ukraine’s biggest imports in recent years has been the Russian military and after Putin was criticized by NATO for annexing Sevastopol he was reported to have shrugged and said “Crimea River” Personally I’m just glad I wasn’t born there, mostly because I don’t speak a word of Russian, though also because it looks like Vladimir is itching to invade again. And why not, it’s an election year and there are seats in the Duma up for grabs so he needs to make sure everyone knows he’s got Russian interests at the forefront, rather than Russian assets in his bank account. In the meantime, Alexi Navalny, the opposition leader, is slowly dying in jail, although half the voters suspect him of being a CIA backed stooge anyway and there’s no conceivable way that Putin would actually lose. It’s a fairly depressing situation really but then wasn’t it always. It’s just a shame that we aren’t at least getting a new Tolstoy or Faberge or Shostakovich out of it. Say what you will about Stalin or the Tzars, at least we got some good music and books out of it all. As for these days the best we can hope for is whatever piece of music they enter into the Eurovision Song Contest next month. Personally speaking I’d rather sign up and join the military in Ukraine than sit through an evening of that. Given the shear scale of the Russian troop buildup on the border, at least the war looks like it will take less time to be over and done with, at least until another year. Just imagine if the BBC got Graham Norton to commentate on their News Chanel, I jest of course, they would never do that, because he’s white and over the age of 50.

Newspapers and magazines are always saying how you need to keep active in your old age I guess if Vladimir Putin wasn’t a former KGB autocrat he might enjoy a Sudoku puzzle or helping out at the village hall. But as it is he’s in charge of Russia and so this week saw the country’s opposition leader fall ill under mysterious circumstances and in Belarus his friend President Lukashenko remained in power despite huge protests, safe in the knowledge that Vladimir has his back, by which I mean Vladimir has some of his enemies under constant surveillance. When it comes to Vladimir he really doesn't seem to have as much in common with other 67 year olds, although he can probably recommend a good BnB if you fancy visiting Salisbury. I thought I heard someone saying he enjoys a crossword, it's actually "cross words" - the type you have shouting down the phone at someone in Ukraine. Which is a shame because if he won one of those thesauruses for doing the Telegraph crossword, he could hollow out the pages and use it to store a handgun.

In the first of those Russia stories, the opposition leader Alexei Navalny had to flee to Germany after a being poisoned supposedly by a cup of tea. Obviously there are not a huge number of facts to go on at this stage, did Alexi for instance add the milk before or after the tea, did he add sugar, was the sugar bowl actually full of Ethylhexyl diphenyl phosphate? The 2006 Litvinenko killing also used a deadly cup of tea and it’s maybe a remnant from the communist days because there’s that old marxist joke about how proper tea is theft. Nonetheless, I’d like to know how you have to fill out a job aptitude test at school in order for it to recommend "Russian Opposition Leader" job as a line of work, given how dangerous it is. I mean I had one that asked me things like if enjoyed travelling but it never specified that the journey would involve being placed in a medically induced coma

Then as I said there’s also this nonsense in Belarus where President Lukashenko has been facing fierce protests after winning a recent election with 80% of the vote, enough for everyone to see that it was rigged, though strangely not as brazen as it could have been, like the 98% results that you often see. Perhaps the photocopier ran out of toner and it’s hard to buy any, what with sanctions. The one hilarious thing to come of this was when I put that story into google and the top result was an article from the Guardian about how the EU has decided to not recognise the election result, which implies that the EU ever recognises elections or referendum results for what they are. You look at their current negotiations with the UK where a red line for the EU seems to be continuing to own British fishing waters and getting the final say in UK tax changes, it all reminds be of Lord Nelson putting the telescope over his bad eye and saying “I see no ships” Just looking it and President Lukashenko has been in power since 1994 and that is a long time for anyone to remain in one job, perhaps he was inspired by that year’s big movie The Lion King. Another big film that year was Four Weddings and a Funeral. Or as it was released in Russia, “4 Funerals and another Funeral”

One of the shorter articles on Wikipedia, is the page listing Russian Presidents, it's only got 4 entries on it and two of them same guy. At the time of writing, there's the same number of Russian Presidents alive today as there are members of The Beatles.

Vladimir Putin is no Fool On The Hill though and he's very aware that he's running out of constitutional loopholes to keep him in power so he's decided to play the classic autocracy play of convincing people that he should be able to rewrite the constitution because you can trust him to not do anything too sneaky. It's not like he's an ex KGB spymaster or anything... Of course this is to all intents and purposes up there at the political level of erecting gold statues of yourself, redesigning the calendar, thinking that the public will forget about Brexit, or turning up to formal world events in a suit and leopard skin hat combo like that madman in Zaire who killed the Tutsis and spent the country's wealth to get Muhammad Ali to fight a boxing match there rather than do what everyone else does and just phone up the pay-per-view tv company with a credit card to hand.

Russia though is still currently technically a democracy though Putin has worked to the letter of the law rather than the intent. Years ago he spent two 4 year elected terms before he had to stand down, so he got his friend Dmitry Medvedev to be the figurehead for an interim 4 years before he could come back for 2 more consecutive terms although the one thing that Dmitry did was allow the term limits to be changed to 6 years, meaning that Vladimir could come back for 12 more years and so he'll be in office until 2024. That's the year that Highlander II: The Quickening is set in and much like that tv+film franchise, Vladimir wants more and more sequels so we get therefore we reach the question of how his constitutional rewrite will go and he assures us that we can trust him but I'd place more faith in someone electing Michael Barrymore to be a lifeguard. On the other hand, at least he knows at what level of contempt to hold those in Brussels which is more than can be said of most of the leaders the UK has seen over the past 19 years. And he's done more to put Salisbury on the international map than the English tourist board ever did.

There have been a lot of ludicrous scare stories in the press about how Brexit will lead to war, pestilence, the deaths of millions, Jimmy Savile coming back to life, all the iPhones being rounded up and other similarly sensationalist nonsense. To be honest I doubt anything could be worse than the current situation where Tony Blair is given air time and political debate is reduced to discussing how everything from healthcare or the price of a train ticket is as a result of Brexit, or sometimes a conspiracy involving Russia.

Well it seems that Vladimir Putin has been inspired by what he's read online and decided to literally plan for a "nuclear option" - and not the sort of nuclear option that Jeremy Corbyn often talks about, involving a strongly worded letter at a poetry workshop in Hampstead. I'm talking the sort of nuclear option where atomic weapons explode in a radioactive blast and the only people who end up surviving are the poor folk who'd already had to spend nearly an hour stuck on the broken down underground train that ultimately saved them. Be prepared for endless rants on post-apocalyptic Question Time about whether rich pensioners should qualify for the nuclear winter fuel allowance.

This week Russia announced that it's suspended its involvement in the IRNF Treaty designed to prevent weapons research, following moves by America to up its game. In all honesty very little has changed because both countries have been secretly developing new weapons for years anyway. To a large extent the US and Russia have been sitting on weapons systems designed in an era when there were 2 Germanies and vodka only came in one flavour: vodka. The admission from both sides that they're keeping their weapons up to date and not reliant upon punch cards is a bit like when the US was condemned by the left for formally recognising that the Israeli capital might actually be the city whin which the government is located and not Tel Aviv

Nuclear weapons are one of these topics where in the real world it comes down to facts vs feelings and anyone who tries to simplify it down to a good vs bad argument is almost certainly incorrect or attention seeking. But then we already know that thanks to nuclear physics, the world is divided into protons, neutrons, electrons and morons.

It's once again tropical storm season with Hurricane Florence crashing into America's east coast like Mel Gibson in the parking lot outside a liquor store. In addition to the loss of life and the economic impact of the storm, the property damage alone is estimated to be $170bn and you have to remember that that's just the initial quote the repairman gave. So bear that in mind when you look at the pictures of mobile homes and trailers which have been for whatever reason, remained firmly in place throughout the storm rather than moved out of harms way as the name would imply.

Anyway, just to add insult to injury, the people who live there will have to wait a few weeks to have electricity restored, only to finally turn on the television and have adverts for the November mid-term elections rammed down their faces for several more weeks. It's like hearing that a friend of yours has been moved out of intensive care only to discover he's been moved to the mortuary.

Talking of mortuaries though, the 2 Salisbury Russian spies have been back on the news following an interview in which they denied poisoning Sergei and Yulia Skripal. I should add that the Skripals aren't actually dead, people forget that they survived, but I guess I'd keep my head down too if I were an former Russian double agent and Vladimir Putin was trying to kill me. Anyway, they decided to take a break from whatever spies do, spreading fake news, using Facebook to dismantle Western democracy, to do an interview for Russia Today - a news channel which is to unbiased objective journalism what Pot Noodles are to haute cuisine. Anyway, in the interview the two Russians deny everything and claim to have visited Salisbury on a whim, all the way from Russia, to see it's 123m cathedral spire. Well, when Thomas Becket was killed outside Canterbury cathedral in 1170, I'm sure Henry II had a similar excuse and it worked for him.

America has given us baseball, jazz and just as importantly (and depressingly) a culture in which top lawyers are treated like Babe Ruth and Louis Armstrong rolled into one and this past week saw more legal drama than a whole series of Perry Mason as the investigation into the 2016 election cracked up a notch.

Paul Manafort, the president's campaign chairman was found guilty on 8 counts consisting of tax fraud, bank fraud, hiding foreign bank accounts, and now faces 240 years in jail. That's a long time to be in prison, though if he uses some sort of magic sorcery to remain alive then all that money he's hidden overseas will np doubt have accrued enough interest for him to return more powerful than ever, no doubt to help participate in an election where one of the candidates is Hilary Clinton's brain in a glass jar, trying for one last shot at the Oval Office.

Joining him in prison will most likely be Michael Cohen, Mr Trump's personal lawyer, who pleaded guilty on Tuesday to eight criminal charges, including tax evasion, bank fraud, campaign finance violations as well as possibly worse of all, having made Stormy Daniels into a media celebrity, like a somehow more downmarket version of Katie Price. I was about to say Kardashian there, which would be somewhat ironic because the Kardashians father was actually the lawyer who defended OJ Simpson in the trial of last century. Anyway, he's hoping for lenient sentencing for being corporative so it might be 60 years, it might be 3 years, same sort of time frame as when you get locked into a bad phone contract.

Other faces now showing up on the news include David Pecker, head of the company that publishes the Trump favourite National Enquirer as well as Allen Weisselberg, The Trump Organization's finance boss, both of whom this week were granted immunity from prosecution in exchange for cooperating with Robert Mueller's office. Presumably the part of the office where Robert himself is sitting. Sitting I'm guessing and wondering to himself where all the Russian hackers are and why it's all just financial crimes. If it is a witch hunt then I guess it's one in which the witches get burnt at the stake for not paying capital gains after turning the lead into gold.

This week started off with a press conference between President Trump and Vladimir Putin in which Mr Trump fully exonerated the Russian president before saying that he in fact meant to say the opposite. Just like when Theresa May claimed that Brexit meant Brexit.

Since then, there's been talk about Vladimir Putin visiting the US, ideas thrown around about exchanging people for "questioning" and right now Sylvester Stallone is finishing up the 8th instalment in the Rocky franchise so maybe he'll make another film where he takes on the Russians again, either in a boxing ring, or like that one in Afghanistan with the mujahideen. There was a lot of horses in that one and Vladimir does like him some horses, I wonder if Sarah Jessica Parker is free?

Curiously, Mr Putin offered up the 12 Russian intelligence agents (who were recently indicted) in exchange for human rights activist Bill Browder who they wish to question. No doubt questions like "does this rag cloth smell like chloroform to you?" Or perhaps it'll be like that time that John Wilkes Booth asked President Lincoln to be quiet during the show.

Bill Browder for those out the know is a human rights advocate who was responsible for the Magnitsky act which froze Russian assets in the US. His lawyer and accountant was killed by the Kremlin for exposing a $230m tax fraud involving Russian officials and his chances of getting a fair trial are slimmer than the malnourished prisoners he'd be living with, were he to end up going overseas.

In the mean time though, all the Trump focus has since moved on, to a story about secret payments to an former Playboy model. The president did also just make some comments about taxing half a trillion dollars worth of Chinese imports, sounds pretty serious, but nowhere near as salacious so, nowadays at least, who cares.

This weekend Canada hosted the G7 conference, a political get-together with a level of expectation and excitement akin to watching the numbers on a microwave ticking down before your substandard dinner. These meetings are supposedly meant to help the worlds biggest economies sort out ideas, which is no doubt why they don't invite China or India to the big economies get-together. To add insult to injury, Germany gets invited twice, once as itself and once as its puppet the EU.

President Trump was first out of the blocks to get on the headlines, raising the question of why Russia wasn't at the summit. That was one of those G7 "thing's you're not supposed to ask" questions, he may as well been asking if a waitress was single or quizzing Theresa May with a series of questions predicated with the expression "never have I ever" with Emmanuel Macron standing by to pour a line of Sambuka shots.

Frankly it's a sound point though, unless you invite Russia to the table, any discussion to do with Asia, the Middle East, Energy or banking is essentially null and void. As worthless mind as all the other platitudes that will no doubt be given out across an expensively laden Canadian banqueting table, all as part of the grand game of distraction from the news back home.

This week Theresa May would have probably travelled to anywhere to escape the mess back at Westminster. There were threatened resignations over her inability to act decisively on Brexit and Jeremy Corbyn even outplayed her at Prime Ministers Questions. I imagine he probably celebrated by buying himself a new hedgerow to drag himself through for next week's back-to-normal disheveled appearance.

Theresa claims or believes that she has enough supporters to get by as is. Except the Flat Earth society claims to have supporters all over the globe and you can probably see a logical contradiction in that one too...

One of the problems with Syria is that we can either let President Assad remain in charge or we can force him out and let ISIS fill the power vacuum. It's like in the Star Wars prequels when Liam Neeson helped destroy that droid army but then he died and Jar-Jar Binks became a senator.

Maybe we could force Assad out and have an election in Syria, and the Russians definitely won't try to rig it with the hundreds of personal they have all over the country. If you've ever been to a carnival and watched a stallholder superglueing coconuts to the stands before opening for for business, that's basically an analogy for how Vladimir Putin would organize a free and fair Syrian election.

Nonetheless, this week saw the US, UK and France begin a bombing campaign, supposedly in retaliation to a chemical weapons attack but largely because there's lots of domestic problems at home and they all need a distraction. In the US former FBI director James Comes has been doing the rounds, with a primetime Sunday interview and presumably and appearance on an episode of Sesame Street brought to you by the letter "P"

In the UK, Theresa May always needs something new to keep people occupied when Brexit threatens to make its way onto the news agenda, and in France there'a a big walkout by the SNCF rail workers so they're distracting from a rail strike with a missile strike.

In reality the whole Syrian fight actually comes down to two rival plans to bring oil and gas into Europe via Syria, one American and one Russian. Unless you're a Momentum supporter in which case it's about Israel because of course ISIS are run by Mossad, Rupert Murdoch is personally in charge of dictating UK military policy and the Rothschilds were responsible for Ed Sheeran.

It's Easter weekend so maybe you're watching this before heading out to a church service or in many cases, the pub. Just be sure to look out for Russian spies because if you see someone lying in the street in the gutter outside Wetherspoons then it could be that it's in fact a former Russian businessman or outspoken critic of Vladimir Putin. I'm sure that nerve gas is a good excuse if you return home and you're met with questions about why it took 6 hours to go to the shops and why you're now stumbling around like Shane McGowan attempting to play hopscotch. I digress.

Anyway, the past week saw Russia and the West expelling each other's diplomats: 150 or so, from each side. There was even a mildly amusing incident when New Zealand promised to send all the spies and diplomats back to Moscow but there weren't any in the country at the time. It's a small place mind and more of a red wine drinking sort of a place at that. As for Mr Skripal, he remains in a critical but stable condition, his daughter Yulia's condition is said to be improving and Theresa May is probably concerned that someone, in this case a doctor, is using the term "stable" to refer to something other than Brexit for once.

This week marked the 1-year countdown to Brexit. Mrs May did a small tour around the UK, making generic speeches and invoking all the sparkle and excitement of a car going in for its annual service. If you were watching the news and accidentally reset your TV and had to sit through 5 minutes of it retuning all the channel listings, you didn't really miss a lot. Certainly you wouldn't have missed much about Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party's ongoing anti-semitism row, it's not as if the BBC or the like would want to run too many stories about their Messiah in the week leading up to Easter.

Finally, talking about not reporting the news one of the things that the press seem to me missing out in the Skripal case is the link between Sergei the man who was poisoned and Christopher Steele - the former British spy who compiled the dossier alleging that Trump colluded with Russia. Something to go look up now if you've got a spare half hour to waste on youtube and have some tinfoil to hand with which to construct a hat for yourself.

Big news in the world of diplomacy, bigger than Kim Jong Un's waistline even. It was announced that President Trump and Kim Jong Un are going to be meeting in person. This marks a big shift in diplomacy from both the North Koreans as well as the president who has spent the past year or so conducting international affairs via Twitter with all the dexterity of a drugged horse

The meeting itself could be a set-piece historic event like the Yalta Conference in 1945 when Franklin Roosevelt met with Stalin, or that time that Ronald Reagan met with Humphrey Bogart oh actually no wait that was when he was still an actor. Anyway, it's a first date of sorts though so perhaps the president will decline the usual offers from CNN or the BBC and get one of the reality show networks like Bravo to cover the event. If things go badly then it would certainly be better for everyone if it ended up with one of them throwing a glass of wine across the table, as compared to launching an thermonuclear strike.

If we're not comparing Trump to FDR then who? Kennedy dealt with the Cuban Missile Crisis and certainly Mr Trump wants to be perceived as a similarly new modern kind of president like Kennedy: a media savvy change from a presidential style of old. I don't know if Stormy Daniels a new albeit trashier version of Marilyn Monroe although certainly it wouldn't surprise many people if the the CIA turned out to already be looking to hire a "lone gunman"

In more cold-war-style news, the Russians have been busy too: Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia collapsed last weekend in Salisbury after being exposed to a nerve agent. There's 180 military investigators although obviously at the moment then anyone could be to blame (innocent until proven guilty after all!) which is presumably why the newspapers have to use the term "nerve agent" rather than "Russian agent" but the backstory is that in 2006 the former Russian military security colonel was convicted by the Russian government of passing secrets to MI6 and in 2010 he was then offered asylum in the UK. It sounds very hospitable for the British government really to do that although you have to remember that back then the government were dishing out passports and visas like confetti at a ticker tape parade. Anyway, the government never lies and you can definitely always trust what the spy agencies tell us so I suspect that we won't find out the real truth until things eventually get declassified in 50 years time. For now though, if you're a Russian dissident who's been passing on state secrets then try and stay safe!

Normally when there's a "Russia update" it's means bad news, just ask Napoleon. It's often the one of worst kind of updates you can get, just short of that update that pops up on your computer constantly demanding that you upgrade Adobe Flash.

So to this week's Russia update when Robert Mueller put out a report naming 13 Russians who supposedly set up a troll farm in order to sway the result of the 2016 election. My favourite part of the report was when it talks about the Russians financing the construction of a cage large enough to hold an actress portraying Hillary Clinton in a prison uniform. It makes it sound like an amateur theatre group but they actually had a budget of a million dollars a month and that's more than Trump was spending on hair products at the time. You'd think with that kind of money the Russians could just drive down to Wallmart if they needed to stock up on cages, presumably along with some computers, snacks from the food aisle, energy drinks and of course some humorous political bumper stickers to put on their truck before the drive back to their HQ.

On the other hand, this conspiracy ultimately boils down to a dozen blokes posting bad things on facebook about Hilary Clinton. And it's worth noting that they started in 2014, two years before the election and for a long time they were mostly posting things in favour of Bernie Sanders who at the time was the more obvious "anti-Hilary" candidate in the race. Actually, forget what I said earlier, my favourite part of this whole thing is that the troll farm called itself the Internet Research Agency and they abbreviated that to the "IRA" implying that they were so incompetent that they couldn't use their internet superpowers to figure out that the name was already taken. Or perhaps the conspiracy is just a lot more far-reaching than I've imagined and that the Russians were also responsible for forcing Gerry Adams out of a job and installing Mary Lou McDonald in his place in order to make trouble for the British.

It's the end of December and the end of 2017 and it's possibly the end of the line if you're the sort of person who originally became a politician or a tv celebrity to get close to the young female interns. Of course I'm joking, Kevin Spacey got into show business for the young male interns, he's probably looking forward to 2018 because he thinks there's 2000 of them.

Talking about "end of the line" though, one of the stories I'm sure we'll see a lot more about in the future was this week's announcement that Israel is going to name a new subway station after president Trump. Perhaps the president thought that he'd improve his poll ratings amongst minorities by associating himself with an "Underground Railroad". Either way, at least the new station will give the Israelis somewhere to hide when the bombs start dropping. The bombs of course being those ones that everyone from Dwight Eisenhower to Obama and everyone inbetween has been selling to the region. Asking the US to mediate that peace process is like asking a mousetrap producer to intervene in the battle between Tom and Jerry

But for now, finish off that Christmas port and start planning for 2018. We'll have fresh Brexit news all year as well as the same old stale Brexit news, plus loads more Trump news now that Twitter have interceded and increased the character limit on his tweets. Plus the Russia stuff is going to keep on coming with the regularity of dysentery on a cheap cruise ship. The Fifa World Cup is being hosted by Russia this upcoming summer. I suppose most people wouldn't mind Russia rigging elections if they gave all the voters a Rolex watch and a briefcase full of money like they did with that election to decide which country would host the football tournament. As I'm sure Vladimir Putin has no doubt said many times before though, they've got the world by the balls.

The talk of a leadership challenge against Theresa May seems to have quietened off a bit, at least for this week, as the government made another move with a big piece of Brexit legislation. In response a senior civil servant tried to get your average lager drinking, white van driving bloke on the street onside by making a Brexit analogy involving a cricket ball and went on to say that Brexit was falling apart like “a chocolate orange” which seemed odd given that if you’re already doing the cricket thing, at least follow through and say things will fall apart like an England test match innings, or use the chocolate metaphor from the start as another meaningless nonsense term to describe the supposed ‘softness’ of the perceived Brexit.

Elsewhere, across the Atlantic, there’s been more Russia allegations, this time involving Donald Trump’s eldest son meeting with a lawyer from Moscow. A lawyer who was actually barred from entering the US until Attorney General - and friend of the Clintons - Loretta Lynch personally stepped in to allow him to enter the US in a sign that the top echelon of all the political world there is on a dodginess rating that places it somewhere between a used car salesman on a stag do and a newspaper editor who’s discovered that both his mistress and mortgage payments are late.

And in North Korea, they’ve been very keen to show off their new ICBM. It’s very difficult to get Visa entry into the country but they’ve advised journalists that they should visit the West Coast of America if they want a close up look. Not that I’m questioning their technical skills but I’m guessing it’s so that the journalists can get to Los Angeles in order to board a cruise ship bound for the sea of Japan were the rocket is scheduled to land, several seconds after it takes off.

In amongst all the poverty and despair and general horribleness endemic in today’s torrid world, the Hollywood elite in their ivory tower were rocked to the core last weekend when a competition for best movie went briefly and mildly astray and it was even suggested that Vladimir Putin, not content with supposedly rigging the US election also had firm views on cinema and in particular the hit musical La-La-Land. I guess that the KGB must have a lot of time on their hands these days if that’s the case. The film itself isn’t my cup of tea, but for a feared intelligence operation, hacking the Oscars is little more than a glorified form of posting anonymous comments on the Daily Mail’s website.

And talking of La-La-Land, Jeremy Corbyn has been dancing around the issue of whether last week’s bi election results are a sign for him to go. And the same is largely true in the UKIP camp following their loss in Stoke as well as comments made about the Hillsborough disaster. Of course Nigel Farage and Douglas Carswell, not content to sit back, have also been very keen to make sure that their disagreements are as visible and publicly embarrassing as possible. Still, there’s an old expression about “the tyranny of the status quo” and I imagine that nobody will resign, at least until the next inevitable bi-election happens and it’s all too late. On the other hand, there’s also that other old expression that “a week is a long time in politics” so perhaps this is the penultimate time I’ll be sketching Jeremy Corbyn which would be a shame. Oh yeah, and in America there’s been some more news about Jeff Sessions and Russia and yada-yada, it’s not really “news” now is it, so much as an ongoing damage limitation exercise…

A lot of people in America think that President Trump is some sort of Manchurian candidate, groomed by the KGB to have a buffoon in Washington so that the world turns to Vladimir Putin for relatively sensible world leadership. You’d think it would be easier for Putin to just buy a new shirt+tie and leave the horses alone? If there’s a grain of truth in it I certainly hope it’s not a grain of Polonium 210, that’s how they do things over there…

Contrast that to the UK where some people think that the Soviet Union loving fanboy Jeremy Corbyn is some kind of secret Conservative plant, groomed in order to keep the Labour party out of power. Certainly as a free market libertarian, I for one was very happy to see the leavers of power handed to his close circle of unelectable overgrown students with their social justice warrior, virtue tilting, privilege checking idiocy.

But that brings us to this week’s bi-election results in Stoke and Copeland, which show that while a stopped clock is right twice per day, Jezz will have to settle for once. It seems that the proletariat in the north of England have looked revolutionary politics in the eye and decided that the National Health Service is ok but that the complete overthrow of capitalism is taking it a bit too far. Still, at least Jeremy Corbyn has his own hair and that’s saying something these days…