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

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

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

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

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