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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 ......

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"

The architect Rafael Viñoly passed away, he was the man who designed London's Walkie Talkie building. I'm told the funeral was very sad but the reception was fantastic

Meaningless statistics are 12% down today

Let's skip straight to the main news which is the Telegraph's horde of 100k secret WhatsApp messages. These were messages to and from Matt Hancock that Isabel Oakeshott (who was writing a biography on him) had access to and she decided to leak the entire thing to the press, to prevent what she calls a whietwash. That makes her about as trustworthy as a politician, maybe she should run for office next time. Her and Matt would get on like a house on fire if she weren't busy destroying what's left of his career and if he wasn't busy getting divorced to shack up with Gina Coladangelo Anyway, what do the messages reveal? Largely that behind the scenes the government's response to covid in 2020 and 2021 was as shambolic as Boris' appearance, but they largely they fit into two categories.

1) Policy errors. There were a number of major decisions made behind the scenes by a secret cabal of advisors that were so incoherant that I wonder if someone of them are now advising Prince Harry. Face masks were introduced in primary schools simply to avoid an argument with Nicola Sturgeon, and then later, care homes were being advised to stop testing in order to make it look like the case count was coming down down. There are lines in the conversation like “the death modelling you have been shown is already very wrong” Just before they decided as a group what week they should declare a new variant in order to get maximum political expediency out of things. All of this is on WhatsApp and it really does retain that social media tone, Matt and friends scheduling a lockdown reads the same as some friends of mine scheduling a boozy Friday night out, especially the bit where Matt is told that there's a photo doing the rounds of him snogging a work colleague after hours. The last politician to have had this little brains was Kennedy after they'd shot him

2) The 2nd part to come out of all this is the naked abuse of power. There's a bit where Matt is talking to George Osbourne, at that point the editor of the Evening Standard, and he offers lots of positive front page news but only in exchange for a full sit down interview. Simon Case, a senior civil servant, mocked travellers returning from exotic foreign holidays and then being forced spend weeks isolating in grubby quarantine hotels by the airport. There's an ominously authoritarian discussion where they actively discuss if it's possible to target Nigel Farage and use emergency powers to have him jailed after he posted a picture of him sipping a pint. Clearly it wasn't just the pint that was bitter. And then there's a discussion about schools reopening and Gavin Williamson laughing about how teachers "really do just hate work" before the pair of them hrow in a curse word and some emojis to make fun of them. Oh well, I guess if work was supposed to be fun the rich would keep more of it for themselves, isn't that right Matt, oh yes I forgot, he finally did get forced to resign and will be stepping down at the next election.

Shamima Begum lost her latest court challenge to regain a British passport. Some of defenders have gone to far as to say she contemplated suicide, to which the rest pointed out that we knew that, because she showed everyone the vest and explosives on a youtube video 5 years ago

Roald Dahl was in the news after the publishing company played the oldest scam in the book by cancelling his original books, waiting for tens of thousands of existing books to fly off the shelf, before reversing their decision. It would be a tragedy if words like stupid or dwarf are going to be banned, because I was looking forward to buying a biography on John Bercow

Joe Biden paid a surprise visit to Ukraine. Although given his ongoing cognitive decline, everything comes as a surprise to him these days.

Ed Sheeran has released a hot sauce. Just be glad it's that and he's not released a new song.

For now the race for head of the SNP continues and this week saw 3 runners and riders:

Kate Forbes is the current finance minister although she's been attacked by many of Nicola's friends, a lot, for being religious and opposing the worst machinations of the transgender movement. But the policy that they really dislike is her desire to have a major reshuffle after she wins which would see lots of people lose their cushy £100k salary and expense accounts.

The favourite to get the job is Humza Yousaf who is also notable in being a great example of SNP hypocrisy at play. Forbes is attacked for being a Christian but Yousaf is a Muslim so he has so far being given a free pass when it comes to these same issues. He skipped out on the debate and vote on gay marriage because the Mosque told him not to support it.

But to spice up the entertainment, there's also Ash Regan whose main policy seams to be that she'd just declare Scottish independence, without even bothering with a referendum. Just like me self-declaring to be the King of Mars or any of these candidates declaring that they'll win the next election. The idea of not holding a public vote on the issue is an almost childishly naive idea one if it weren't vaguely dangerous. It certainly doesn't have any detail about what would happen if a chunk of the country simply refused to go along with it and Union flags remained flying in Inverness, Shetland declaring itself part of Norway, asking London to intervene and refusing to ship fuel south of Perth. On the other hand, perhaps the idea of not holding a vote is just a reflection that the SNP are finally maturing and finally realising that they're flogging a dead horse and voters will never vote for it. If we've learnt anything in the last 10 years it's that politicians holding a binding referendum to rubber stamp something generally works about as well as trying to baptise a cat. I'm not sure where Kate Forbes stands on animal baptisms.

Is it a bird is it a plane, is it a UFO or a Chinese spy balloon? Nope, it turns out it was a $100 project by the local Bottlecaps Balloon Brigade. The $100 balloons were shot down by Sidewinder Missiles that cost $400k apiece. and thus we can probably assume that the missile won't be the only one getting fired. Closer to home I here the MOD has developed a new missile called the civil servant, that doesn't work and can't be fired.

Talking about new vehicles, there's been the collapse of the electric vehicle firm BritishVolt with questions being asked about what went wrong. If you ask me it was probably how instead of getting in someone like James Dyson or Alan Sugar, the firm was headed up by former cricketer Ian "Beefy" Botham who with the best will in the world knows more about engineering a century at Edgbaston than car batteries. In other car news JaguarLandRover have released a new electric vehicle which I think should be called the Range Over

Concerns that Bruce Willis might be racist after he was overheard saying that he didn't recognise his own street any more.

But of course the big story this week was Nicola Sturgeon finally being forced to resign, although even today there's already talk on social media about demanding a 2nd resignation if this one doesn't work out. It is quite an achievement though that through her widespread incompetency across multiple government departments and scandals, she perhaps has done more than anyone to eradicate the possibility of the Scottish electorate voting for an independent SNP-led Scotland. Nonetheless her preferred pronouns are now was/were, and let's hope this lady is not for returning and that this is yet another nail in the coffin for the global trend towards wokery, that surely next sees Justin Trudeau kicked out of office. Given the tendencies of left wing politicians to embrace this garbage, I'm genuinely surprised hasn't let to Labour Mayor Andy Burnham trying to rename his city Themchester. Or possibly force supporters to sing songs in support of Themchester United. The Labour back benches have been remarkably silent on the downfall of sturgeon and her ridiculous campaign to enshrine it as a human right for a rapist to spent his prison sentence at a woman's prison. I did hear that Diane Abbott was described as non-binary, but then they explained it was because she's unable to count beyond 2.

The police arrested 15 people outside an asylum seeker's hostel after a protest turned violent. In a twist of irony, those protestors will now be getting a roof over their head, 3 meals per day and legal representation all courtesy of the British taxpayer

There's a few studies out showing that vaping leads to lowered testosterone in men, apparently one of the first symptoms is the desire to take up vaping.

A crime boss from Brentford was arrested in Thailand after spending 5 years on the run. The article mentions that he only had one leg so presumably a better expression would be on the hop.

Burt Burt Bacharach passed away and apparently at the time he was writing a charity single for the Turkish earthquake, "Rooftops keep falling on my head" It would have been going up a song by a corrupt local building inspector "Walk on by"

I read that cows kill more people that sharks. That came as a surprise to me, I wasn't aware that cows killed *any* sharks

Garry Glitter was released from prison after serving 8 years for his horrendous crimes. I was glad to see that even multinational companies like Unilever are changing up their packaging try to keep him on the straight and narrow this time with everything from washing powder to packs of bin bags carrying a warning message "keep away from young children"

More mystery balloons over Northwestern America. All we know right now is that they're not German because then they'd be red and there would be 99 of them

The US shot down a Chinese weather balloon that had drifted off course, presumably the guidance system was designed by someone called Wong Wei

Health news with talk about a pakora ban. Wait not, they're talking about the fashion designer Paco Rabanne. He's dead.

Locksmith found dead and police are looking for a key witness

The Welsh Rugby Union has decided to ban the Tom Jones song "Delilah" from matches, to which the fans started of course started singing "why why why". Tom Jones was asked if having his songs banned was a common occurrence, to which he replied "It's Not Unusual"

Let's talk about Wales actually, or specifically Mark Drakeford's handling of the place.

There was recently a story about the vast sums of taxpayers money being poured into the loss-making Cardiff Airport. In 2013 the airport was nationalised at a cost of £52m and the place has since written off a subsequent £40m of taxpayer loans, last year alone the first minister wrote a cheque for £8.9m yet it still went on to rack up a loss of £3m. These finances put the place vaguely in line with the nearby football club and if there was a league table of devolution leaders, Drakeford would be fairly low placed too. He isn't as slick as Rishi, as populist as Boris, as furious as Nicola Sturgeon, he's not all over the internet like Sadiq Khan. Instead he's mostly spent his years in power testing out the sort of policies that rarely go any further than an argument at a student union. The welsh government have trialed a standard 20mph speed limit, a 4 day week, a universal income trial and at this stage you may as well hand everyone vouchers to Wetherspoons because that might win you some votes and if it doesn't work at somehow creating jobs then just blame the English, all while potential voters "liquidise the assets"

All of these policies of course end in failure followed by blaming Westminster, for instance this last week it was singled out for not providing enough money to end the nursing strike, despite the fact that Drakeford has the power to raise income tax and pay for it himself, if he thought that people indeed wanted higher taxes to pay for more government. I'd say there's light at the end of the tunnel except the Welsh nationalists have been keen to embrace the sort of green policies that mean that light at the end of the tunnel has had to be turned off due to the soaring price of energy. One of the most asinine policies was during 2020 when the welsh government decided to allow Tesco to open up but only for non-food sales, with taped off and secured areas preventing people risking their life by purchasing dangerous things like shoes or cutlery. Schools meanwhile were closed constantly because it was easier to give teachers a paid year off work then have to deal with their trade union. Drakeford is at best, disinterested, keen to bask in the glories of devolution and grievance politics but without wanting to actually take any responsibility for the omnishambles left in his wake. In a historical context it's a tragedy, people like Nye Bevan, Lloyd George and Roy Jenkins set the national agenda, whiles Drakeford leaves a legacy of whinging and incompetence, Wales has historically done far better and I'd argue that voters deserve far better but then voters also get the politicians they deserve, and vote for. A good analogy for the economy is Cardiff itself: a quasi ghost-town, 9 in 10 of the civil servants working from home, with literally millions of square feet of government offices sat empty but with the lights and heating on from 9-5.

All of this is of course utterly indefensible but his defenders claim that it works both ways and that Wales taxpayers subsidised CrossRail and HS2. I don't personally blame them though, I'd be keen to get a railway built if it meant I could escape or be able to commute to and fro to England. Although my only experience with the Welsh railway system is watching Ivor the Engine which I would hope was out of date by now. Although now I'm thinking about defunct kids tv shows, perhaps Drakeford could pass a bill to get the Wombles to run the bin lorries, or maybe Mr Ben could visit that costume shop and have a stint at being a competent first minister, he couldn't do any worse than the incumbent.

It was Chinese New Year as well as Burns Night. I had a friend who combined the two events into a Chinese Burns Night and I didn't want to go but he twisted my arm

A man was killed by one of those mechanical telescopic urinals in London. Engineers are searching for clues and say they have nothing to go on.

More trouble in the NHS as Midwives are going to go on strike. Maybe next time they can at least give everyone nine months warning

The last of those, the NHS struggles are of course the latest in a series of things that is portrayed by the BBC as being uniquely British and almost certainly due to the Brexit vote, something that happened nearly 7 years and 4 prime ministers ago. If you actually look at what's happening over the water, France has a ban on sales of paracetamol (blaming a Chinese export ban) and Germany is facing shortages in painkillers, antibiotics and heart medication. Curiously the main solution being proposed there is to get the private sector more heavily involved in the German healthcare system, and that would probably go down as well with the BBC as having to report on the fact that the French doctors are also going on strike. They're more likely ask Jim Davidson to come back to the UK and host Question Time
Canada and the US are also restricted the availability of cold and flu medicine, blaming international problems to do with supply chains. They don't have a strike to contend with although I did see a story about terrorists being ready to strike at any time and I wondered when they'd decided to form a trade union. It's unclear if Unison or GMB have ever reached out to the likes of British terrorists although I can imagine Bob Crow going for a curry to meat potential applicants.
But NHS reporting, in part it's due to laziness, it's far easier to take a press release by someone agitating for a pay rise than it would be to investigate complex issues, especially when they don't do anything to advance a preconceived agenda. I'm honestly surprised they haven't claimed that climate change is all due to the British Empire inventing climate change, though I could easily see Nicola Sturgeon trying to apologise for giving the world people like James Watt or Adam Smith. Demanding money from London so she could pay reparations to the third world like some sort of demented 6yo.

The talking down and apologising for history is the latest tactic of Remainers, Rejoiners and others. A serious of increasingly desperate attempts to find downsides to Brexit and ignore the effects of lockdowns and state mismanagement and to dishonestly claim that global issues only affected the UK. The unfortunate thing is that it's not even that difficult to find problems in the NHS to report on, state funded homeopathy is a good example, although to give credit where it's due, I think less evidence there is that homeopathy works, the more effective it is.

Alec Baldwin is going to be charged with involuntary manslaughter over the accident on his films-set last year. In response his lawyer has come out all guns blazing, except in his case it's just a metaphor.

Rishi Sunak was fined by the police for not wearing a seatbelt, even Jimmy Saville was better behaved than that. Admittedly it does mean he will stay true to his word about helping with the government finances, in so much as he's going to be contributing £100 to the coffers. This puts him about twenty quid ahead of Nadhim Zahawi, the former Chancellor who is (of course) under investigation by HMRC. Astonishing really, although if you're going to be out of office in 2 years anyway then what's the point in maintaining a charade of decency.

Ukrainian president Zelensky was pleading with Western governments for some tanks. I'm not sure if the MOD has any spare tanks but I do know a bunch of ambulances sat around doing nothing if he's interested in any of those. Junior Doctors are apparently going to be going on strike soon although that does mean you might be able to see a senior doctor.

Maybe the largest story this week was the downfall of New Zealand Prime Minister Ardern who this week decided to jump before she was shoved as a number of grossly shortsighted policy chickens have come home to roost. Much of this started with a covid lockdown policy that went beyond punitive to bordering farcical, especially when it failed to prevent covid entering the country, all while peoples lives and businesses went to the wall. Just one example was Charlotte Bellis, who was in the Middle East when she found out she was pregnant. She was then banned from entering New Zealand and ended up travelling to Afghanistan because it was the only country she had a visa for. To clarify, this was a pregnant unmarried woman and she was treated better by the country run by the Taliban than President Ardern.

There's an old joke that if you leave alphabet soup on the stove for too long, it could spell disaster. Something else that spells disaster is making it next to impossible to enter a country that's highly reliant on international tourism. Today the borders may be open but the tourist industry will take years to recover, if it ever does and meanwhile the cost of living has gone through the roof, not helped by a green policy that makes the SNP seem vaguely sensible. One initiative to help the economy going was a policy "KiwiBuild" which aimed to construct 100k houses, of which only a thousand or so actually got built and all this is against a backdrop of a crimewave that has made New Zealand look more like New York (in the 1970s). The government made a huge deal about its ban on guns but it's done very little to put a stop or even put a pause to violent crime or theft, which has rather depressingly seen criminals increasingly target basic shops selling things like food.

Oh well, If I ever met the man who invented zero, I'd say "thanks for nothing"
Most New Zealanders feel exactly the same as their former Prime Minister.

A space launch in cornwall went wrong after an anomoly caused it to land in the sea. A government spokespeson was reported to say that they should have gotten Harry Kane to launch it. Whilst a North Koreak government spokesman said that the kingdom would retaliate by firing *two* rockets into the sea. A number of smug neurosurgeons looked at the dejected rocket scientists and commented that it was hardly brain surgery.

Lisa Marie Presley passed away at the age of 54. The family are reported to be All Shook Up.

68 people died in the Himalayas after a a plane crashed near the city of Pokhara in Nepal. I say 68 people although the number could be more after there were sightings of very large paw prints heading up into the mountains

Yet more grumblings from Prince Harry, talking about emotional baggage, I always thought that was an odd expression, I'd go for "griefcase" To play devil's advocate though, people are complaining about him constantly going on talk shows and interviews but if it was a choice of fly to New York to chat with Jimmy Fallon, or spend 3 days stuck in the house with Meghan I'd already be orderring the taxi. As to his next career move, I'd recommend a gig with an insurance company. you could get a no claims bonus guaranteed with Prince Harry Insurance, where it's always the other driver's fault.

It's a new year although that may be confusing to those who are only now just starting to receive their Christmas cards.

The new year celebrations in London included a long sequence of blue and yellow fireworks as a nod to the war in Ukraine. And I'm sure that the Ukrainian refugees watching from the banks of the Thames found the sounds of explosions and gunpowder very comforting.

Pope Francis gave a talk in which he implied that members of the mafia should be excommunicated from the catholic church, and on a completely unrelated note, the former Pope Benedict died very shortly afterwards. The grim reapear was later reported to have said he was going to see the new year in with a Benedictine

Vivian Westwood also passed away. What's that expression? About Fashionably late?

Rishi Sunak unveiled plans to make kids study maths until the age of 18. Presumably so that they can understand their byzantine gas bill calculations

Prince Harry's book has been released, in Spain at least, but the newspapers have all employed some bilingual journalists to report on all the juicy stories. There's, for instance, a section about a physical fight he had with Prince William, which would frankly have made for far better television than that rubbish on Netflix. Harry, by the way, did two tours of afghanistan and killed 25 people, yet it seems he had his lights punched out by a former retired air ambulance pilot. The book is called "Spare" although I'm waiting to see if James Hewitt releases one called "Harry and the half-blood prince" Or maybe they'll make it into a film and they can call it "When Harry met Salty'

Frosty the Snowflake
Was a bitter lefty soul
With an EU flag and a Waitrose bag
And obsessed with banning coal

Frosty the Snowflake
Was a fairytale they say
He was made of snow but the Guardian know
Say how he came to life one day

There must have been some magic
In that face-mask he still wore
for when he and his mate went to visit the Tate
he glued himself right to the floor

Oh, Frosty the Snowflake
Was alive as he could be
he campaigned for more tax and made regular attacks
at the lives of you and me

He went down to the streets of town
Right to the traffic cop;
who just stood right there as the public despaired
While Frosty hollered stop!

Frosty the Snowflake
had to fly to Martinique
but as he boarded the plane he was quick to explain
I'll be back again next week

Because Frosty the Snowflake
was not the same as you and I
he was a hypocrite ass who always flew first class
so the same rules don't apply.