Welcome

It's back to school, I'm back from holiday and it seems that even the school supplies shopping couldn't stop Wilko from going bust - they had with a balance sheet weaker than a LibDem handshake

The Edinburgh festival had some controversy this year but it also had some great jokes, like the one where Nicola Sturgeon talked about her new book and how her choosing to resign had nothing to be with her being arrested.

Vladimir Putin sacked one of his senior army officials and then a few days later ......

This week I thought we'd talk about the world of American companies dicovering that going woke makes you go broke. It was recently the 4th of July and for several decades the most popular beer in the US was Budweiser, until this year when it didn't even make the top 10. This is all due to that Dylan Mulvaney nonsense where they rebranded the blue collar beer to specifically appeal to men who are also keen to advertise their love for transvesticism. The irony really is that they could have appealed to both sets of people if they'd used an old pic of Eric Idle dressed up and stuck some Monty Python quotes on the tins. Nonetheless this stuff is all the rage right now and despite the company losing tens of billions of dollars in less than 6 months, this month also saw Unilever let the Ben & Jerry brand announce that Mount Rushmore was a disgrace and that huge swathes of the mid west should be handed over to native tribes, which I guess is easy seeing as how none of that tribal land is located in upstate Vermont (where Ben & Jerry live) or Palo Alto. It has the intellectual integrity of me deciding to boycott nicoise salad or refuse to purchase ladies shoes.

More recently Natwest decided to cash in on both The Ashes as well as diversity by putting up a billboard saying "Cricket has no boundaries" It literally has boundaries. That's how you score points! More scarily, there was the issue that Coutts bank is a subsidiary of Natwest and Nigel Farage had his bank account closed. The bank put out a press statement claiming he didn't have enough money in it although this turned out to be a complete fabrication after a dossier was leaked, revealing that they just didn't like his anti-EU politics. This is one of these stories where you really have to argue it by asking what if it was someone else, if Jeremy Corbyn for instance had his electricity cut off all winter because none of the energy companies wanted to have him listed as a customer due to his views on renationalising the grid.

Other examples in recent years have been Gillette dropping their tagline "The Best a Man Can Get" before the accountants realised that most of their customers had a y-chromosome, or perhaps the removal of the Uncle Ben's Rice branding, which I still think was over an argument with the writers of Spiderman: Uncle Ben being a major character in that story, and not actually asian the last time I checked. One of the leading causes of the recent Titanic accident was the decision by the company to get rid of former royal navy staff-members because they were all white blokes in their 50s with far too much knowledge about submarine safety and nowhere near enough knowledge of useful things like the plight of North African migrants.

And yet despite this woke smokescreen, a woke-screen, the attitude is entirely duplicitous. Disney might be putting out films with homosexual characters but they re-film and reedit scenes when the films are sold to anywhere outside of the US or Europe. The Apple CEO Tim Cook will go on record about the appalling attitude to LGBT people in China, but he'll also manufacture more than 95% of Apple products there whilst occasionally putting out some rainbow themed social media posts. At a national level the US is even worse, pushing one set of morals domestically and another overseas. A good case in point could be Joe Biden who has gone on from playing that Banjo player in Deliverance to being President. A few years ago he said that the US had to reduce its carbon footprint and went on record saying that Saudi Arabia would "pay the price" for its poor human rights record before begging them to increase oil production. Of course, in reality they sided with Russia, cut production, bumped prices and and Biden voted to "impose consequences" before China brokered a deal, involving Iran as well as numerous human rights abuses. More recently the Saudis bought out the PGA golf tour, leaving those on the left to wonder whether they preferred traditional golf tournaments organised by Donald Trump or those organised by a country where putting a rainbow bumper sticker on your car is literally punishable by execution. The situation is so beyond parody at this stage that I'm genuinely waiting to see the Saudi's use of crucification being spun as an olive branch to Christians and a demonstration of the kingdom's religious tolerance and modernisation. Certainly that would be far less ridiculous than say Disney releasing Mary Poppins where the nanny is white and therefore evil, or whatever nonsense the house of mouse next has planned. Currently there is a version of Snow White being made where the character named after her skin as white as snow is played by a Colombian and the 7 Dwarves look like a pride rally in New York and are regular size, apparently because Peter Dinklage didn't understand that the dwarves in the story were the magical species from German folklore and not people afflicted by dwarfism. Who would have thought that Pinnochio telling lies would turn out to be more honest than the corporation itself.

Tony Bennett died this week at the age of 96. It doesn't seem to give a cause of death although I'd head Crooner-virus suggested.

The Huw Edwards story seems to have fallen off the radar and yet he is still claiming a salary. If makes me wonder whether we've finally reached the point where bringing the BBC into disrepute is no longer achievable.

Vladimir Putin canceled a trip to South Africa after threats that he would be arrested for war crimes. I was looking at various photos on the web, and between Ukraine and UK Rain I'm not sure which is more depressing.

And talking of jailtime, I see that Ghislaine Maxwell was in the news, apparently her fellow prisoners gave her the nickname of Cruella de Vil. It seems a bit lazy to be honest because if I was going to name her after the villain from a kids' story I'd go with the Child Catcher.

There were 3 elections this week and the Conservatives lost Somerton and Selby, but retained Uxbridge. For weeks we were told that Labour would win that one because Boris Johnson is so hated by the public, yet the complete opposite seems to have been true. It seems that the tale of Boris's lockdown party really was Shakespearian, in that it was Much Ado About Nothing. It also seems that Boris' phone is not password secured and that he handed over the complete tranche of underrated messages to the Covid Inquiry. I actually had my own password issues this week after I went to set a new lock-screen password. I tried the word "fortnight" but it said it was too week

There's a story here about that post office scandal where an IT system led to hundreds of people losing their job and being wrongly investigated by the police. There's a quote here from one person saying "I lost absolutely everything" although I always assumed that was a requirement to get a job at the post office in the first place.

Interesting developments this week as the News at 10 turned into the No Huws at 10, before Hugh Edwards was back on the news but more as a story than a presenter. He was of course until quite recently a well respected news figure at the BBC, just recently leading the reporting on the death and funeral of Queen Elizabeth, but this week the only thing that died was his career after it turned out he'd been paying 10s of thousands of pounds for explicit photographs from a 17 year old. Photographs that he presumable saved in a folder titled "Nudes at 10"

Personally, I found the more interesting part of the story the speculation as for days nobody knew which "well known" BBC celebrity it was. There was suspense, intrigue, drama, mystery and exciting plot twists which is surprising given that it was the BBC. I was waiting to see if they'd made a new episode of "Who do you think you are" but called "Who do you think it is?" and in the end most of us were just disappointed it wasn't Garry Lineker. I was disappointed not to get on the radio because I wanted to call and request that they played "The Power of Love" by Huwy Edwards and the News but as things stand it's all gone quiet now, as he lurks in a hospital claiming to be depressed, although I would be to if I'd just lost a job paying half a million per year.

Anyway, what else was in the news? Well the teaching union called an end to strikes in England and Wales, mostly because it's July so the kids are off anyway. There was a twist in the Boris Johnson's phone story after he claimed he couldn't hand over WhatsApp messages because he's forgotten the iPhone lock-screen password. A common way to remember it is to have it be something memorable like one of your kids' birthdays but it's not like that would have helped Boris. And finally, the coroner released a report about how Lisa Marie Presley died of a bowel obstruction. I'm guessing then that the last thing she said to her doctor was "A little less constipation a little more action please..."

More whinging and whining at Harry's court case with talk about what damages he should receive. A friend of mine suggested he should have his nose damaged, his legs damaged and he even offered to do it personally round the back of the high court.

Madonna was gravely ill this week and is apparently "vomiting uncontrollably" which I assume is a synonym for saying she's working on a new album

The civil unrest situation in France has also been getting worse although the media has been complicit in playing down the violence. In one night there were 2000 cars burned, 500 buildings damaged, over 800 people arrested and nearly 250 police officers injured. The public library in Marseille was burned to the ground and the country is on the verge of anarchy with calls for the army to intervene, and so president Macron's response has been to ask Snapchat, Tiktok and Twitter to censor everything so nobody realises how bad things are. It's been a bad year from France really, this all coming not long after the bloodbath of last year's World Cup final where Argentina defended like it was 1982 but France defended like it was 1940.

But for a true demonstration of a situation going from bad to worse we have to look further East where Russian seemed like it was going to go through a full scale military coup, or as Vladimir Putin would have called it, a "Special military disagreement" For a few days it genuinely looked like the government could be overthrown, possibly leading to the disintegration of the country as a single state. This was after the Wagner mercenary ground marched on Moscow after months of disagreement. For those not following things closely, Russia is officially just maintaining peace operations parts of Ukraine it claims are Russian, whilst the Kremlin has cleverly outsourced all of the offensive nasty warcrime stuff to the private army run by Yevgeny Prigozhin. It allows Putin to legitimately claim that the atrocities are not being done by the Russian army. Anyway, in the end the coup was canceled, Prigozhin was paid off, pardoned and he's now living out his days in Belarus, if indeed he's living at all, which is rather questionable. Certainly, if I were him I'd be on the look out for cups of tea that have a taste of Polonium. At least this all answers the question though about whether Vladimir Putin is a modern day Hitler. After all, Hitler never changed his opinion on Wager.

Pretty much the only news story this week was the fate of the submersible that went to visit the Titanic on what turned out to be a more permanent trip than was advertised although they were depressingly spot on about the promise to leave customers breathless. Maybe I shouldn't make jokes, how could I sink so low, but then the BBC were getting in on the act too when they posted the story as "Breaking news" The sad part of it all is that if only there hadn't been any British taxpayers on board, the RNLI would probably have them rescued by now and living in a hotel in East Sussex

Anyway, responses have come in from around the world, Diane Abbott offered her condolences to the 38 people who lost their lives whilst the US navy decided to admit that they'd known for days but kept it secret, presumably so they could try to cover up the Hunter Biden story. The the families have said they're determined to find the bodies and wreckage, saying "We will look for you" with Celine Dion adding "Near Far Wherever you are"

The owner of the exploration company has kept rather quiet although I suspect he's busy spending a lot of time talking to lawyers. The actual craft appears to have been a death trap from the get go, there's talk about it largely getting away with its design by not having to pass any tests because it was operating in international waters. Things like how the controller was from an Xbox and how the strategy of what to do if anything went wrong seemed to be to put everything in a bag of rice and hope for the best. When you read about the description of the cramped inside of thing and it actually sounds not too dissimilar to a studio flat in east London, although at $250k it was obviously far more affordable. I mean at that price here's a business proposal if anyone wants to invest in a startup company with me. The business is that we con some fool into handing us a load of money and in exchange we let them swim in a volcano. If they somehow survive then we give them an iPhone & some Air Jordans and then we drop them off in Portland or Chicago.

Anyway, that's enough for this week, although I will say that if it had been me on that submarine, then this week I'd have been drawing a portfolio of rude pictures of Kate Winslet, just to cheer up the rescuers when they found my remains at the bottom of the sea.

Silvio Berlusconi passed away at the the age of 86. I saw a notice saying "Rest in Peace" and certainly the families of young Italian girls can now rest easy.

Ted Kaczynski also passed away, he was the Unabomber who killed and injured dozens of people before being arrested in the 90s. There's not expected to be many people at the funeral because invitations have been posted out but people are understandably worried about opening the packages.

Nicola Sturgeon still reeling from her visit from the police, leaving Humza Yousaf as the only SNP first minister to have not been arrested. There's no punchline there, it's just both hilarious and astonishing.

But of course the main story this week has been the ongoing saga surrounding Boris Johnson. I'm recording this on Father's Day and Boris is one of the few fathers who can teach his youngest kid numeracy by counting up all the fathers day cards. He was forced to step down as an MP so he could spent more time cheating on his family but much has been said about the hypocrisy of the whole situation. Kier Starmer had a beers+colleagues get-together but nothing's been said about that for months. Then it turned out that Bernard Jenkin, a prominent member of the Privileges Committee that took down Boris had been at an illegal drinks party in Westminster in December 2020, when London was in 'Tier 2' lockdown. It's quite a club he joins: Catherine Calderwood, Dominic Cummings, Neil Ferguson, Margaret Ferrier, Matt Hancock and don't forget about people who were responsible for reporting on that lockdown: people like Kay Burley and Beth Rigby. Maybe they should all hang out and have drinks next time a pandemic happens.

Supposedly Boris' case is different because what he did that was really wrong was that he "misled parliament" How is that a thing now, he's a politician, it's what they do. He's surely more likely to mislead people if he told the truth and people assumed he was lying. Think back 20 years to when Tony Blair and the whole cabinet went on about weapons of mass destruction, with the exception of a few people like Robin Cook who resigned over the issue. Peter Mandleson was sacked 3 times back then, misleading parliament was one of the few things he was actually good at.

As I said though, the facts matter less than the agenda, getting rid of Boris with the hope that they can maybe eventually convince the public to rejoin the EU. Whatever he did was bad and when Labour did the same it was ok or didn't matter. It's the same sort of like the hypocrisy that labour have around climate change where no matter what the government policy is, it's either wrong or not extreme enough. I mean the Tories already did their best by closing all the coal mines, given them some slack.

More climate hysteria as scientists say Cod might disappear within 20 years. Oh well, plenty more fish in the sea.

Bernie Ecclestone is in trouble with HMRC and having to deny a £400m tax fraud. In his defence the 92yo maybe paid that money to his 35yo wife fair in square when she handed him an invoice for marrying her.

More twists in the federal indictment against Donald Trump after it turn out that he stored boxes of government documents in his bathroom. I don't blame him trying to save money on toilet paper and at least there was a lock on the door, unlike Joe Biden who kept his illegal boxes of classified documents in a garage in Delaware

There was also the scandal of how the Red Cross raised half a billion dollars for earthquake relief in Haiti but most of the money went missing and they only built 6 houses. Personally I hope that they get found innocent though, and we get a brilliant new tropical series of Grand Designs later in the year. That show where couples spend £20k on fancy light switches, despite not being an MP.

Boris Johnson is standing down as an MP. I'm not sure whether he's holding an impromptu work event to celebrate

There was a story in the news about Sweden allowing Nato deployments in the country, as well as a counter offensive against Russia. At first I thought that meant that the counters will be worktops supplied from Ikea. Then I heard about a cabinet meeting and that pretty much confirmed the Ikea story.

A man was arrested for wearing a football shirt inscribed with "97 Not Enough" which is apparently a reference to the Hillsborough disaster. If he's after some free legal advice though, I'd say it was just a touching tribute to the passing of the Queen Elizabeth

A man fell into a giant vat of coffee, the coroner said it was instant

There was a terrible train crash in India that killed 120 people. I have a friend who works for the railway in the UK who said that there are controls in place that mean that sort of thing could never happen in Britain. Things like the staff being on strike. Or finding 120 people that can afford a ticket

Phillip Schofield's career has continued to go downhill after being kicked off of ITV for having an affair with a young member of staff. One magazine said the only place you'll see him now is on Dave. I don't know who Dave is but he's obviously moved on quickly.

There's renewed talk by senior government officials about covid maybe didn't come from that wet market after all. The FBI said that there's a good possibility that it came from a leak. This is the first time that I've heard someone say that covid started in Wales although it depressingly wouldn't be the worse policy idea to come about as a result of Mark Drakeford

Harry and Meghan have redefined irony put out a press statement saying that they're going to stop putting out press statements, and books and tv shows. There's currently a legal challenge to Prince Harry's US Green card due the fact that his book reveals that he lied on the question about whether he'd used drugs before. It's a bit of a family tradition though, like when his great uncle Edward VIII had to answer that thing on the visa form about whether he'd ever supported the nazis. Personally I'm waiting for them to make an epic 3 hour movie about themselves, just because it's too good not to use the name "Gone With The Windsors"

It's the end of the football for the year when the country finally gets to decide which Manchester team they hate the most. I recently bought a new TV to watch the Premiere League next year but there's no Leeds in it

This week I thought we'd take a deep dive into the world of electric vehicles because whilst people have lost interest in the coronavirus, the 'car owner virus' for electric vehicles seems to have infected a large swathe of the population and it too is being heavily pushed by the government and the BBC, plus it was also designed in America but manufactured largely in China.

Owning an electric car these days offers the buyer the sort of dinner party bragging rights that used to only be attained by going on a safari holiday or joining an exclusive golf club. Ironically golf clubs were probably most peoples' introduction to electric vehicles but the vehicles being put out by the likes of BMW are quite different from the electric golf cart although just like a golf course, people are still very concerned about the range. If you hear a golfing buddy claim he can just about drive 300, he's not talking about yards.

The range of electric vehicles is something that few people are even concerned with, until that one trip when they suddenly realise that they were lied to. The advertised range is with a completely empty car, not one with luggage and kids, or the climate control turned on, or a journey that isn't a flat straight line. Battery performance drops by a third in sub-zero temperatures and we can talk about fast charging but good luck when you discover you're third in line and it will take 2 hours to charge your volts-wagon until you're back on the road. For me though the platform killing fault is that these batteries, like the ones in your phone, only last around a thousand charging cycles except my iPhone battery costs about £100 whereas a car battery costs closer to £20k. The people that love electric cars live in a world where it is normal to buy a brand new car every 2-3 years, whereas most normal people are used to buying second hand cars and riding them into the ground. There are thousands of people being coerced into buying a car that is supposedly cheap and yet are going to be unable to either use them or replace them in a couple of years and I honestly don't think the ruling classes have any idea what they're going to face in a number of years when public resentment to this grand con comes to a boil. I was actually given a pamphlet about anger management the other day, and I lost it.

Let's just run with the idea though, if Spiderman bought a Tesla he'd quickly discover that with great power comes not great responsibility, but great electricity bills and these things are not cheap to run either. The cars charge a lot, and that's before you charge them a lot. You won't have a petrol bill but they do cost around £20 to 'fill up' (so to speak) when you plug them in and that charging infrastructure is going to cost you thousands to have installed at your house, most people will see that cost as part of a monthly loan repayment that more than cancels out the cost of visiting a petrol station once per week. We could talk about the lack of electricians to install the home charging infrastructure but that's the least of concerns, the UK doesn't have close to the sort of spare electrical capacity to replace 30m petrol cars with electric equivalents, most of which are expected to charge when much lauded solar power is producing nothing, because it's night. Generating capacity, like the quality of Radio 4, has been declining for years and we're already at the precipitous stage where the government is only managing to keep the lights on by granting emergency permissions for coal power stations to remain open for years beyond the legally binding net-zero targets.

I could talk about the batteries themselves and millions of children enslaved in the cobalt mines of the Congo. I read a report about the human trafficking and modern slavery industry is right now going through a transformation as it pivots from Asia towards Africa, where millions of people will be required to work in the next decade to sustain the move towards green energy but according to the car industry they're not responsible for the battery manufacturing, that's all outsourced, it's not their problem and the government is as liable to claim they're made out of rainbows, unicorn fur and whatever magical stuff it is that Keith Richards must be snorting in order to somehow remain alive.

It's all just another part of the grand lie though. You've been lied to about the cost, the green credentials, the range, the lifespan, the economics, the ability of the grid to cope with them. But hey, it's all fine because the car can connect to your phone with an app, and it comes with additional features like as a self driving mode although the owners tend to more often talk about the built in virtual signals. Personally the tech puts me even more off, imagine missing a payment on a self driving car and then it drives itself back to the dealership until you pay a reactivation fee. Or it listens into your conversation and reports you to the police because you don't agree with what a left wing gender activist was trying to teach your child. My one hope is that, just with so many things, the tech industry make a mess of it all. I remember there was talk for a while that Apple has partnered with Tesla to make a new car, but they were having trouble installing windows.

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.

More developments in the SNP money scandal, police apparently seized a number of items including a wheelbarrow, presumably the one used to move the piles of from the office, into Nicola Sturgeon's garden shed. From what I can gather speaking to folk, 50% of people in Scotland think the story is an important issue, 50% of people are bored hearing about it and 10% of people are unsure. Those numbers don't add up to 100% because the maths was done by Nicola's husband.

Plenty of destruction first at the local election ballot boxes, and there was also an assassination attempt against Vladimir Putin after a drone attacked the Kremlin. Russian authorities were quick to blame Ukraine whilst many in the west accused Russia of doing it themselves as an excuse to escalate the war and assassinate Zelensky. This of course makes a change from the BBC trying to blame the assassination attempt on climate change although the Ukraine situation is quite unsettling with the Russians openly threatening to use nuclear weapons. If Kyiv got a nuking it would be very different to London getting its new king.

And talking of which, this was the weekend that King Charles finally got a new hat. By which I mean a very very old hat. There's been months of waiting, it reminds me of when I was a kid and I saved up the tokens on the back of the breakfast cereal box and then posted them off and waited for the toy to arrive. I was vaguely hoping that the ceremony would have included a portion where Charles pointed at Prince Andrew singing I'm the king of the castle and you're the dirty wee rascal. But as such it all went off ass you'd expect, a bit like a wedding really, except Charles and Camilla's wedding had Steven Fry to give a speech, it seems a bit of a missed opportunity really. Afterwards they drove off and in a touching tribute to Diana, neither the king or queen were wearing a seat belt in the royal coach. As for now, the last stage to implement is the new coinage with Charles' face replacing that of the queen's. Some people probably won't like the new coins, but those are people who don't like change.

Another US bank is on the verge of collapse, this time it's First Republic Bank and here's a joke for you Q: What do dubious woke financial institutions have in common with the Eiffel Tower? A: They're both Paris Sites

Only a week to go until the coronation and the household cavalry are practicing a new ceremonial duty. In preparation of Prince Harry possibly showing up they're preparing for the changing of the locks

I heard that a member of the royal family had died, turns out it was the TV show the Royale Family, it was Peter Marin who played Joe

Jerry Springer passed away and I'm imagining the funeral director asking whether the family will want a graveyard or a crematorium as the family fist-pump the air chanting Bury Bury Bury

Two members of the labour party walk into a bar and the barman asks why the long face? And they say it's because Dianne Abbot was talking to the media again. The MP claimed that Jewish people have never experienced This begs the question about whether she knows about how many people were killed during the holocaust, to which the answer is "no" because she's famously unable to count

Sotheby's is going to be auctioning off £7m of Freddie Mercury's personal belongings, if the auctioneer is looking for material, there's probably a joke in there about the Queen song Hammer To Fall

Nicola Sturgeon is learning to drive, part of which must be learning how to successfully perform a U-turn. Talking about driving and Scotland, I've always thought it stange how so many F1 drivers are named after Scottish place names. Lewis Hamilton, Johnny Dumfries, Stirling Moss, and Ayr Town Center.

There was a survey in America showing people believe the US Supreme Court is less trustworthy than organised religion. As compared to the UK where most people the British Supreme Court is less trustworthy than organised crime.

It was the London Marathon and I managed a personal best, I watched it for nearly 14 minutes before turning it off. When I lived in London I used to look forward to the Marathon every year, you could go out in the afternoon dressed in running gear and random people would buy you a beer

Meanwhile there was an environmental protest at the snooker, which hadn't seen that much powder since Jimmy White stopped playing. I don't get what they were actually portesting, perhaps a misunderstanding about what the Spider is? I think they they should give it a rest, or a break.

The UK Deputy PM Dominic Raab has resgisned, in order to spend more time terrorising his family

There's a bizarre story about 11 Indonesian fishermen being rescued from a tiny island after being stranded for six days without food. Fisherman. At sea. No Food. I don't think we're going to make it as a species

And of course there was the test of the government's new emergency system although at a score of 6-1 it came a little bit too late for Tottenham.

It's 4 years since the fire at Notre Dame. The police still don't know who started it although they have a hunch

Arnold Schwarzenegger posted a video of him filling in potholes. That's fairly physically demanding work at his age, I imagine that afterwards he said "Ahh...me back!"

There's also been more revelations about the SNP and the seized Campervan. This was the £100k motorhome seized from Peter Murrell's mother, the SNP claim they purchased it to use as a battle bus and that she was just looking after it for a bit. It's pretty much the same as that running joke in Father Ted where he repeatedly claims that stolen money was just resting in his account. Typically when I think of Scottish people with criminal records it would be Sheena Easton or maybe Lulu with that Eurovision song. But now it turns out that the auditors have quit, they can't get their accounts signed off and there's a fairly solid chance the party won't be able to claim any short money funding from Westminster next year. All while Humza Yousaf watches on, a good indication of how useless he is would be that he was almost certainly aware what was going on with the money and still thought he'd like to be leader of the party when it all went south, supposedly tens of thousands of party members have quite in the last couple weeks and Alex Salmond is probably laughing harder than the time he got to go back stage and meet Billy Connely.

The next domino to fall for the SNP is likely to be the transgender woke policies and for a sign of things to come it's worth looking to America. This week the brewer Anheuser-Busch lost $6bn after a consumer backlash against a new marketing campaign that saw cans of Bud Lite feature Dylan Mulvaney, a transgender activist. This is a blue collar beer, popular at BBQs and Football games, being fronted by a young man who spent the last 2 years identifying as a girl and making tic-tok videos about it. The only possible cultural similarity is that Bud Lite is dishwater that self-identifies as a premium lager. The company saw beer sales collapse after a consumer boycott combined by people not wanting to be seen with rainbow-branded cans that they them a participant, willing or otherwise, in that culture war. A lot of people just want a beer, not politics. In response the company put out a statement about how the marketing manager who imposed the campaign just wanted the company to be inclusive. The truth is that they likely just did it for bragging rights amongst their liberal social circle with no comprehension of how wildly unpopular the campaign would be with normal people. Which brings things just about full circle with the SNP.

The band S-Club 7 are going to be named S-Club 6 after the death of band-member. As a double whammy for fans, the ticket prices for the upcoming reunion are going to have to go up due to it being 14% less rubbish.

Garry Lineker is saying that Alan Hansen left Match of the Day because of the nerves. Yeah Garry, you getting on them

But let's talk about the main story this week. Older viewers might remember that episode of Porridge where Fletcher writes a cleverly worded letter to his missus, and the police end up wasting their time digging the garden up for nothing. Well it seems that Ronnie Barker must have been married to Nicola Sturgeon because this week showed the police show up at the Casa Del Sturgeon to arrest her husband Peter Murrell. Peter was the SNP’s chief executive and is alleged to have misappropriated or lost half a million pounds that had been set aside for a future referendum. The implication is either that he pocketed it, or that it got spent without him noticing how or when. If it's the latter then that just means that he's utterly incompetent at his job and given the SNPs track record at this sort of thing, I think we now all know what happened. If he has half a million quid in his bank account then I'm a vegan.

The main reaction to the arrest has been the demand that the SNPs leadership election should be rerun now that people know that a Humza Yousaf claim to be a continuity Sturgeon candidate might not be a good thing after all. Plus that election was that classic result 52-48% and that means they need to rerun the election indefinitely. People should be careful asking for change though, I recently asked Alexa to change the TV and 2 hours later a delivery driver showed up to swap it for a 60" OLED display. There's also the angle that if Humza temporarily steps down then all the backbenchers get to roll the dice again at getting themselves a cushy cabinet job although there are other job openings out there this week. I have a friend who's a careers advisor and a kid recently came in and said he wants a temporary position where he gets paid a ton of money for achieving nothing. His interview as interim manager of Chelsea is this coming Wednesday.

Climate change activists threaten to glue themselves to the Grand National racetrack in order to disrupt or prevent the horse race. It does make you wonder if they know where glue comes from.

Oscar Pistorious looks set to get released early on parole, apparently he's unlikely to jump bail. And physically unable. Roses are red, violets are glorious, never creep up on Oscar Pistorious

There was another high school shooting in the US. Apparently the leading cause of death there in under 16 year olds is guns, although in China it's protesting, so it could be worse

A lot of the protesting being threatened though has been over the upcoming indictment of Donald J Trump, or as he may soon be know, Donal Jail Trump. This is the latest of multiple attempts to charge him with something, anything, no matter how trivial, in order to prevent him running and likely winning an election next year, going by the latest polling and the increasing incompetence of a Biden administration which has been shown to have been up to far worse than Trump was, albeit without police action ever being countenanced. A few years ago, they were going to prove that he was a paid employee of the Russian government and that didn't turn out to be true, although we know how that the Bidden family was, and possibly still is, being paid by the Chinese government. Trump was impeached over allegations of corruption with Ukraine, although there's an actual recording of Biden making identical comments to the Ukrainian government during the Obama era, so they dropped it. Then they wanted to arrest him over holding classified documents at Mar-a-Lago and they were *this* close but then it emerged that Biden had been keeping boxes of classified documents at his house in Delaware and had been doing so for over a decade, there's even a family photograph of him in front of his garage with everything clearly stacked up behind him, the way that you or I would keep the Christmas decorations. A lot of his supporters, struggling to defend him, say "at least he's not Trump" but that line is increasingly dubious now, and at least the economy wasn't collapsing on Trump's watch and Eurasia was under control

It remains to be seen whether Trump will comply with any of it of course. The Florida governor actually stated that the state will refuse to cooperate with any federal arrest, one which supposedly doesn't have strong enough evidence to find him guilty. The idea is get him in court, stretch it out and keep him off the campaign trail for as long as possible and with the US legal system and lengthy appeals process, that could be years. On the other hand, there would be zero risk of him being put put in handcuffs if he and Stormy Daniels hadn't been using handcuffs several years ago

The clocks are going back this weekend, which means that commuters on Southern Rail might be lucky enough to see the trains turn up 20 minutes early. Unfortunately it's a busy weekend for staff at Windsor Castle where gardening team will have to rotate all the sundials by 15 degrees

There was the inquiry into Partygate, setting out to determine whether Boris was suitable to manage a party, whether it be the the Conservative Party or that other one with all the wine

Anger in cheshire after a woman was buried at the wrong grave. I can't blame the husband for being angry at the gravedigger, I bet he lost the plot

Somewhere else that lost the plot this week was France and Paris especially where it's just been a constant orgy of destruction with protestors taking to the streets to protest the government. I saw a baker being interviewed and he said that his mother's sister was very angry, something about a cross aunt. Officially, the protesting is about the government's decision to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64 but in reality there's a lot of other things going on here, from how much the sanitation workers get paid to the price of fuel and then you have the farmers enviously seeing what just happened across the border in Holland where there Farmer–Citizen Movement managed to somehow go from one seat to becoming the largest party in the upper chamber.

But back to France. Charles de Gaulle said "How can anyone govern a nation that has two hundred and forty-six different kinds of cheese?" The answer in this case is a little part of the French Constitution, 49 subsection 3, which gives the President almost absolute power to push through laws unless the parliament votes to dissolve the assembly in protest. It's the power that De Gaulle himself designed for handling the Algerian crisis in the 60s and in this case they weren't keen to bring down the government over what would a common sense issue in most countries. Although it is of course not the same as other countries. They eat snails, for instance, largely I think due to a misunderstanding about it not being fast food. And the started building the Eiffel Tower but seemingly never finished it because the last time I visited, it looked like it still had a huge metal scaffolding around it. You also have its history as a hotbed of multiple revolutions although I was once told that you should never joke about French history because it is nothing to Lafayette. You can keep these jokes by the way, they're french and therefore royalty free. As to the protestors, best of luck to them I guess but if they don't like President Macron, they should maybe have not voted him in, twice. One other piece of advice I'll give out is that if you get arrested and want to escape, try shouting angrily in German, that seems to work from what I hear.

Sir Michael Caine turned 90 and 'not a lot of people knoww that
I received an email asking me to spell "maps" backwards but it turned out to be spam

The big story this week though was the collapse of the US financial firm Silicon Valley Bank, which in turn has set of a chain of donimos around the world that threaten to destroy the lifestyles of some executives who'd hoped to retire in their 50s but whose share certificates may now as well have pictures of that Dogecoin dog on it. They could barely run a bath, let alone a business, I've seen candidates on the Apprentice make a better job at selling food down the market.

There have since been a series of accusations about what specifically went wrong, most of which center on the fact that the management was obsessed with diversity rather than competance, to the extent that the board of directors only had one member with previous banking experience. For those of you with a goode technical understanding of the markets, the entire business was geared around using short term lending facilities to cover long term investments and when rates went up, everything fell apart because the operation was backed by 10 year treasury bills paying less than 2%.

Who was running things then? Mostly people who'd make political donations to the democrats which is why President Biden has since stepped in and guarenteed everyone's money, not just the first $250k that the Federal Reserve would normally cover. In this case, a $250k limit would only be enough to cover 3% of the deposit capital, such is their customer base. Make no mistake, this is one of the largest transfers of wealth from poor people to wealthy people in US history, up there with the time that George Lucas convinced everyone to pay $10/time to watch Jar Jar Binks costar in not one but 3 terrible movies. Harry and Meghan have all their money parked there at SVB and they will be bailed out by working class people in a way that even King Charles would find a bit unseemly

The UK assets of the bank? Well those were picked up by HSBC for the nominal cost of £1. I believe that figure came about because it's all the banks treasurer had on him after he'd already handed over a twenty pound note at Starbucks on the way to the meeting. But it is a reminder that the contageon from this is global and there were other banks making the same terrible financial decisions. One of those is Credit Suisse which is large enough that its collapse could do the unthinkable and destroy the Swiss banking system. And I find that a terrfying prospect though largely because I'm a huge fan of that swiss chocolate money you get at Christmas time.

Mystic Meg passed away and all across the lands, people commented "She didn't see that coming" When asked about the funeral arrangements, the family said that a lady in black serving drinks might be there and the names John or Alice may be attending too-ooo-oo.

Saudi Arabia and Iran have restored diplomatic ties. Although I won't "beheading" to either of those places any time soon. I remember reading about a man out there who was caught stealing hand disinfectant. Although I guess on the plus side he won't need hand disinfectant any more.

Talking about places with terrible human rights records, Xi Jinping was re-elected President of China with 2952 votes.
EU fanatic Guy Verhofstadt tweeted about it's an autocracy although failed to mention how many people had voted for EU President Ursula Von Der Leyen. I'm guessing Rishi Sunak is smart enough to keep his mouth shut.

Gary Lineker Was sacked from Match Of The Day this week after a tweet in which he compared the government's immigration policy to those of Nazi Germany. Right on cue, the internet went into meltdown with left wing activists resembling that old crisp advert of Garry's, where Paul Gascoigne is crying, if you remember it. In a sign of solidarity, Garry's co-hosts like Alan Shearer and Ian Wright, have opted to stand back too so in all honesty the show might actually be watchable for the first time in years. Perhaps if they need a big household name, the BBC could draft in David Cameron who is famously on record as being a huge footy fan, especially if it's West Ham playing, or Aston Villa, depending on which staffer wrote his briefing that morning.

Many comparisons have been made to Jeremy Clarkson, though not by those Lineker fans who were very silent when he was forced out for making right wing rather than left wing comments. It's actually worse that that though because a year ago there were demands by those people to sack him after he tweeted a sexist joke about England footballer Chloe Kelly during the woman's world cup. Impartiality apparently only works one way. For me the one funny part of it all is that debate is solidifying the concept that Garry Lineker was a BBC employee and this is at a time when he's been in a court battle with the taxman over whether he is self employed, or an employee who should have been paying income tax for several years; On the line, £5m. As Mystic Meg would have said, "Someone in HMRC will be lucky tonight too-ooo-oo"