Welcome

It was Children in Need weekend when millions tune in to watch the BBC show. As always, tuning in with particular interest, were the Metropolitan police, keen to make sure their shortlist is up to date, for which BBC stars to keep an extra close eye on. I remember when I was a kid and a policeman came into the school and gave a talk on drugs. Nobody could understand a word he said, because he was high as a kite.

Everton fans were seen wearing gloves and scarves, because it was -10 at Goodison ......

Earlier in the week I saw some protestors in London burning Israeli flags. Which was a pity given how much work the enslaved Chinese children put into manufacturing them. Oh wait, sorry, we're not supposed to criticise that particular human rights abuse, because there's money involved. There was also a protest in Scotland but the people there were too frugal to want to set fire to the newly acquired flags. I'm Scottish so I'm allowed to make that joke, like the one about how copper wire was invented when two canny Scots found a penny on the ground.

Talking about wars, it's Remembrance Sunday this weekend, I'm recording this on Saturday so I've not clue if it got interrupted by the Palestinian lot or the just stop oil brigade although it would be nice if the environmentalists sabotaged the cars of the Hamas supporters as they tried to drive into the capital. I'm also still waiting to see what the Just Stop Oil protestors response is to the carbon footprint of that war, you'd imagine they'd be all over it, an Israeli Merkava tank has a 1400 litres fuel tank and does just under 5mpg

Also in the news, Prince Harry spent more of his time hanging around with his lawyers, discussing how to go about suing more newspapers now that the supply of Netflix money has started to run dry. This time the grievance is about the Daily Mail bugging him. Although what goes around comes around, Prince Harry's been bugging people for years and don't get me started on that wife of his.

And talking about criminal activity, ITV have a crime drama out about the Yorkshire Ripper. I was watching it this week and there were some truly shocking scenes in it, like when you see cheap the cost of petrol was back then or what you could buy for a fiver. My local grocery store recently put a defibrillator up on the wall near the checkout, and I'm not surprised. If they put the cost of a dozen eggs up again they're going to need a second

Friends star Matthew Perry died and a lot of my friends were texting me poor taste jokes, and like the tv series, most of them were repeats.

The UN was in the news, in part over it's stance on Israel, but also because it also just appointed a new chair of its human rights council. The winning answer was Iran, which is like suggesting your elderly relative go get a health checkup from Harold Shipman.

There was a grisly story about a woman being horribly disabled after being hit by 2 trains on the London Underground. It's a pretty horrendous story if you read the details of what happened, although it's hardly the first time someone's lost an arm and a leg trying to buy a train ticket to London

The big story for many others, even as a distraction from the Israel stuff, was that Paul McCartney, I mean the Beatles, have a new song out, cobbled together out of some stuff John Lennon wrote in 1977. The song is called Now and Then which I 1initially thought was perhaps a sick reference to Jimmy "Now Then" Savile, 1977 was a very different time after all. As for the song, it's ok I guess, although a friend of mine thought it was a load of rubbish and told me whoever wrote it needs shooting. Personally I was surprised by it, I'd assumed that given the lineup it was going to be drum and song. That's a Beatles joke, because Ringo plays drums and Paul plays bass guitar. Oh well, I am going to most likely never listen to it again although I might go put on my copy of Rubber Soul or Abbey Road after this. For those more interested in a thorough review, you're welcome to look up the discussion on the One Show or Loose Women, which talked about the group with the sort of intellectual depth that I'd more commonly associate with Diane Abbott giving her nuanced and well informed opinions on how to solve the Middle East

Alternatively, and for a good laugh, I'd recommend music fans go look up the review in the Telegraph about the recent S Club 7 show in London. I'm always a big fan of scathing reviews and that one certainly didn't disappoint. Like that Paul McCartney cash grab.

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

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

In Palestine news it was Jeremy Corbyn's turn to spout off about the conflict, saying that the cause will never go away, conveniently forgetting that it absolutely will, for better or worse, if Israeli's use as much force as they're threatening. It's quite strange that Labour are seemingly more certain about their position about joining Hamas than they are the EU. This week saw a bit of a pause in the fighting as some American hostages were released and a number of lorries were allowed in with much needed supplies like food, water, and rockets. I joke but there was actually a story about how Hamas constructed thousands of rockets made from pipes donated by the EU who naively bought the story that they'd be used as part of a sanitation project and absolutely not for making weapons. Let's lighten the mood: Apparently the band Dire Straits are looking for an agent to represent them on a tour of the Middle East. They should check out Qatar George, he knows all the Kurds

There's also still that other war in Ukraine though, which this week saw a strange turn in events after rumour that Vladimir Putin had died of a heart attack and that yet another coup was under way. This was denied and we can presumably assume that it was one of his many body doubles that collapsed. It's quite a strange rabbit hole to go down, if you start looking up videos on Putin's body doubles, there was a similar story about North Korea until the country ran out of enough food to keep multiple Kim Jong Uns topped up. The Ukraine setup is all rather strange though, very few definitive sources of truth about what is actually going on or who's winning, especially when you see the photos of local militias sporting nazi symbology and talk about Ukraine receiving lots of high tech equipment yet seemingly not being able to do much with it. There was a fairly shocking interview this week where it also emerged that the government has been rounding up priests and bishops and throwing them all in jail on the off-chance that they're working for the Kremlin. Wait a minute, blaming Russia for everything? I can kind of see why Hilary Clinton likes that Zelensky guy.

Slight delay this week, was waiting for that cut on my hand to heal up a bit, but I was also waiting on the BBC to respond to the news so in turn they were waiting on Hamas to hand them their latest press release. In the end they mostly seemed to focus on that massive storm Babette, although it's nowhere near as devastating as the Hamas'ive storm brewing in southern Israel.

Angela Rayner made a comment about Israel didn't exist a hundred years ago, although most of us are more concerned about whether anything will exist in a hundreds days from now. So in response, President Biden arrived in the middle east in search of some answers to questions. Questions like "Where am I" "Who am I" and "Is President Obama here yet?" Amazing really, only a few years ago the left was calling Donald Trump an anti-semite yet now the same people are out on the streets calling for a 2nd holocaust.

One curious development this week was the discussion about whether a destroyed hospital had been blown up by Israel as an act of war, by Hamas wanting to then turn around and blame Israel to justify reprisals, or maybe it was by them but as a mistake. I did find it strange that on one hand you had the Israeli government saying that they had no advance warnings that Hamas would breach the border defences and kill 1300 people, yet this week they also said they knew categorically that Hamas bombed the hospital with a followup press release along the lines of "if you don't believe us, here's a recording of them talking about it"

Let's see where things go in the next week, maybe things will get better. I remember seeing a sign in a gymn once that read "Nothing is impossible" - although it presumably wasn't put up by someone who'd try to cancel their membership and stop the direct debits.

What else happened this week? Greta Thunberg was struggling to stay in the news now that her choice of environmental protesting seems a little bit old-fashioned compared to the angry crowds in London demanding WW3. She tried to get back in the limelight by having herself arrested again but barely made the headlines although given her stance on electricity she probably wants to ban limelights anyway.

A lighter story: there's new academic paper our concluding that those who skip breakfast are more predisposed to eat fattier unhealthy food later in the day. To basically they discovered that if you don't eat for a while, you'll start to feel really hungry. That's about useful as the study I came across saying that if you're feeling cold, you should go stand in the corner where it's 90 degrees.

And finally, Michael Caine has said that he's going to retire from acting. Not a lot of people know that.

Ok so let's talk about Israel and Gaza. The war is about a week old now, sort of like that lettuce at the back of my fridge, and the news media is talking a lot about how Gaza will soon be without medicine and fuel and food. Sounds to me like he shouldn't have squandered all his football earnings. No, of course this is the Gaza Strip which now looks worse than an English town centre on a Friday night at 2am

The actual reasons behind the conflict are often portrayed as highly complex and difficult to understand but they're really not. This is less like Oceans 11 and more like Jaws 11. I also take issue with people pushing a moral equivalence, that both sides are equally bad and just as much to blame for the current situation. The Palestinians have lived there a long time but the Jews have also lived in that are since the days of Rameses II so it's just as much their land too. Plus if you look at the outcomes each side is after then they couldn't be more different. If Hamas stopped fighting, there's be peace whereas if the Israelis disarmed then within a week there would be a genocide that made Rwanda look like Disney Land.

Saying both sides are the same conjures memories of when President Trump said there were "very fine people on both sides" on that race riot although to his credit, the Middle East was a much safe place to be on his watch, Saudi Arabia even went so far as to recognise Israel as a state for the first time in 70 years. Except here we are now, thousands dead and apparently nobody in the region has any internet, so presumably Virgin Media got the contract to install it, a nice win for British Business #DespiteBrexit

The main thing I always think IS very important to do is differentiate between the Palestinians, and Hamas, which does seek a one-state solution albeit one where they are the one state and Israel has been wiped off the face of the earth in a show of fire and brimstone. As such it's interesting to note that for many years, Jerusalem actively bolstered it and fed it some support, in order to purposefully prevent a peaceful resolution or two state approach. On the other side of the coin it's not like the arabs are living it up: no Christmas, not television, no football, no beer, no hotdogs or bacon sarnies, no womens' rights or freedom of speech, not to mention being woken up every morning at 6am by some bloke wailing from the top of a tower. You can see why they're angry.

Which therefore brings us to the question of why people with those freedoms living it up at Harvard or London's Zone 1 are so uppity about it, if they're as well read as they claim to be on the situation. Personally, I think a lot of it just a social jolly, now that Ukraine has become a bit passé to talk about. Although I do find it amusing to see the people protesting about Israelis illegally taking over land, when they themselves showed up on a rubber dinghies from France a few weeks ago

A huge amount of bloodshed in Israel after an attack by Hamas led to brutal retaliation. Let's see how things unfold over the next week but like many around the world, I'm shaking my head and thinking about the tragic rise in petrol prices we're likely to see if it turns into a broader war in the region

Stevie Nicks from Fleetwood Mac is apparently going to get her own Barbie doll. I'm guessing she must be hard up for cash if she's only just gotten around to being able to afford one.

The government is looking to pass a law that will lead to the eventual ban on cigarette sales. The announcement met largely with apathy, although it will win lots of votes from people who are involved in the UK's tobacco smuggling industry, which is valued at £6bn per year. As someone who regularly flies between the UK and America, remember to drop your preferred brand in the comments and I'll see what I can do.

Here's a classic update of a joke. A Scotsman walks into a bar, alone, because the Englishman, Welshman and Irishman are still at the world cup. A 36-14 loss yesterday, see you in 4 years I guess.

A man was arrested after trying to kidnap and murder TV presenter Holly Willoughby. Authorities have put out a press statement reminding would-be criminals that James Corden is currently in England

And finally the HS2 project was back in the news with presenters trying desperately to not describe it as a train crash. It's almost certain that it will never reach Manchester and the SNP realise the game is up and it's too expensive to expand it to Glasgow. A government spokesperson was heard broadcasting in "Euston we have a problem"

Michael Gambon died this week, and so with two dead Dumbledores, it's not looking good for Jude Law

Europe's oldest shoe has apparently been found in Spain in a bat cave. Which is odd because I assumed Batman lived in America

Google turned 25 years old this week, which means that Leonardo DiCaprio has decided to look for a new web browser

The writers strike in Hollywood has come to an and which means they can get back to the job of destroying beloved characters and rewriting the classics. The Disney share price was trading below $80 this week, that's less than half of what it was only 2 years ago. I'm not sure if anyone here went to see this year's Little Mermaid remake or Indiana Jones 5, but I'm more likely to watch a youtube video of some paint drying because then at least I could click on the button to skip the ads at the beginning.

A slightly bigger story though in California was the passing of senator Dianne Feinstein. Some say she was a great woman and others tell the truth. She was 90 years old but unfortunately she wasn't the sort of nonagenarian like Warren Buffet who's still sharp as a tack. There's numerous videos of her online struggling to remain upright, understand what's going on and slurring through word salads of nonsense in a display that makes Joe Biden look like a young Burt Lancaster. Lancaster famously starred in From Here to Eternity and I think that's where half the senators see their career going on until. I mentioned Indiana Jones earlier, well Charles Grassley was in the senate before the first original Indiana Jones had even come out in the cinema. The setup makes the UK House of Lords look like a 6th form common room. Especially because Alan Sugar's in there and a lot of school IT equipment dates from back when he was flogging Amstrad computers down at Tandy

The US is currently close to a government shutdown due to being unable to pass a finance bill although with only 99 senators now at least it won't be a tied vote. Except maybe it will be 98 because the Democrats also have senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania who had a stroke last year, is unable to read properly and whose family recently tried to change the senate's dress code because he's unable to cope with buttons or dressing himself. The place is like Weekend at Bernies and the response from California Governor Newsom is to demand that the next California senator be a woman and also African American this time. So the public must only be given voting options that fit that criteria. Presumably he doesn't trust the voters but then I wouldn't trust the sort of people who chose to vote someone like him in as Governor. Newsom believes in free speech and if you disagree you'll be arrested. On the other hand, the UK is just as bad, like when Boris Johnson set strict criteria that to be in the house of Lords you had to lend him money and know how to decorate his flat for free.

The welsh government is going to introduce a mandatory 20mph speed limit, in response Chris Rea is release an updated version of one of his songs "Driving Home For Easter"

With all the strong winds I'm quite concerned about the caravan in my garden, because it wasn't there a few days ago.

Rupert Murdoch finally announced his retirement this week after a career lasting over 70 years. Highlights include the eradication of good UK government, the wholesale destruction of US bipartisanship, getting Sky Television to make sure there was no football or cricket on normal tv, and that time in the 80s he thought he'd bought the publishing rights to hitlers diaries. He was recently and briefly married to Jerry Hall though it makes you wonder if he thought Jerry Hall was a hall that the gerries kept those diaries in.

Russel Brand turned out to have been a bit dubious, who would have thought it? I've got neighbour whose dog acts like that, trying to get on anything that moves: it's a Jack Russel Brand. He's also facing second degree charges for crimes against comedy and acting. A number of people have come to his defence mind and said they'll stand by him, although that's largely because it's far safer than lying down. Apparently he was into swinging and £50 says that by the end of next month it will be from a tree at the end his garden by. If I were his lawyer I'd recommend calling all his accusers transphobic, that seems to get you out of trouble these days. Like how some said that that Lucy Letby was an incel. Wait, no, I misread that, she's "In a cell"

The government have announced that they are going to ban pet owners from importing Bully XL Dogs from America. If anyone's interested in getting one before the ban, I have a friend who's selling one, the advert says it loves kids, especially big juice fat ones.

Tony Blair made a statement about junk food and how it should be priced so the poor can't buy it. Making food expensive for the poor makes about as much sense as appointing someone like him a Middle East peace envoy.

This week's main news story was the slow train wreck that is Joe Biden and his son Hunter. For the last 6 years it was Donald Trump that the American left guaranteed and repeatedly failed to impeach and jail. But this week two major events happened [1] Trump's court case got pushed to 2024, possibly concluding long after next year's election [2] Biden's son will be facing a court case for illegal gun possession, illegal drug possession and a crime that the US views far more seriously, the illegal possession of lots of money he didn't pay taxes on.

Biden and cronies have spent the last 2 years prepping for him to run for a 2nd time although I know someone who was at a rally back in 2020 and Biden said on stage about he was going to be reelected to the senate, he didn't know where he was or what was going on, he clearly has significant cognitive issues and the only reason he's even in the white house is because he didn't marry Bill Clinton or Kill Epstein. There was a story a while back about him making a surprise visit to Ukraine but in all honesty a trip to the fridge would probably come as a surprise on a day to day basis. In the last month or two alone he's claimed to have spent 4 years teaching at the university of Pennsylvania which he didn't, that Russia had invaded Iraq, that there were 54 states in the union and that Nancy Pelosi had been in office during the great depression. There's a joke where Joe Biden walks into a bar and sees a young pretty lady sitting alone at a table, he walks up to her and asks "Hey there, do I come here often?"

In any normal situation he would be in a nursing home with proper medical care; this would all be deeply upsetting were it not for the fact that he and his entire family are a gang of professional grifters who all deserve to be in jail. If his supporters say that only he can save democracy then they only way that is true would be if resigned and called for an open and fair election rather than using cronies to threaten people. The Hunter Biden legal case is genuinely quite astonishing, the government set up with a plea bargain where he would be completely exonerated for not only existing, but also future prosecutions, until a judge spotted the small-print. He now faces years of actual prosecution and eye-watering legal bills, and this time he can't even pay for it all with embezzled corporate funds or money from the Chinese government, y'know the things he's on trial for doing.

Perhaps this is all just part of a grand plan though, force Joe to issue a presidential pardon for everyone and thus resign in disgrace rather than making 2024 election be one that takes place almost exclusively in court rooms. I mean in the days of the founding fathers the town court house was a centre point of the community but it's not because Ben Franklin or Thomas Jefferson were facing charges for something. At least not by the American legal system, I'm sure King George felt differently about the whole treason stuff. I mean Donald Trump maybe did some shady business deals in New York but he never took over the city by raising an army and calling finders keepers.

Maybe I should finish with a joke, but then I thought that in honour of president Biden, I forgot the punchline.

There's the continuing fallout from the scandal about the failing construction of schools in England and Wales. Most of these buildings were of course constructed 2 decades ago when Bob The Builder was at the peak of his popularity; yet another sand instance of a previously popular BBC Children's entertainer being brought into disrepute

There was the G20 conference which was as usual a ridiculous and pointless talking shop although I guess it was nice for Emmanuel Macron to be treated in a respectable way, as compared to the Rugby World Cup where he was booed by a stadium of French voters. I say the G20 but China and Russia decided to stay home, sort of like when Robert Duvall didn't want to show up to the 3rd Godfather movie. Maybe Vladimir & Xi Jinping are too busy trying to sneak a horses head into Joe Biden's bedroom, or assassinate their political rivals. The conference made a meaningless declaration about "human suffering" in Ukraine without actually criticising Russia for starting the war, or the West who continue to send weapons to it. The one interesting thing to come out of it was Indian Prime Minister Modi using the name Bharat rather than India, raising 2 important questions: [1] whether they plan to copy Burma and rename the country [2] whether Sacha Baron Cohen has a Borat film in the works and whether India really wants a future where the 2 names get mixed up, with either hilarious or disturbingly racist results.

Talking about comedy characters, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un marked the 75th anniversary of the country's founding with a huge parade. There's some photos online depicting what looks like either a huge fireworks display, or possibly just a missile exploding on the launch pad.

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 Yevgeny Prigozhin died in a tragic air accident. Or you could also say that Vladimir fired one and flambéed the other.

There was the conclusion of Lucy Letby's ghastly court case and my conclusion was that the woman should have been strangled at birth. A friend told me a joke where Lucy gets cast into a desolate pit, filled with crying screaming people and a demon tells her "welcome to hell" and she replies, "thank goodness, I thought I'd been reinstated in an NHS hospital"

There was the Womens' World Cup, where they girls failed to win, proving conclusively that they're just as bad as the mens' team. Personally, I didn't actually realise the game was happening, in part because I'm Scottish but mostly because I don't watch the BBC

Mohamed Al-Fayed died, almost 26 years to the day after Princess Diana, Diana's name was famously an acronym for Died In A Nasty Accident, she'll be forever in our hears, windscreens and french roads

Michael Parkinson also died, although at least his family can now claim that over-50s life cover he spent the last couple decades banging on about. I'd quite like to imagine the scene where he goes through the pearly gates, meets up with Rod Hull and swings a punchy now that it's just the 2 of them.

A child at my kid's school self-identifies as a donkey, their initials are He and Haw

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