In the news this week:
- The rock singer Meatloaf died, allegedly of covid, and if true then it would fitting that he was killed by a bat out of hell. I told that joke to a friend who responded by sining "you took the words right out of my mouth"
- There was also a terrorist siege at a synagogue in Texas. This was reported by the BBC as "A man from Leicester has been shot by police in Texas" and I thought that's from nearly 5000 miles away, he must be a heck of a good shot.
- Another article on the Beeb speculated about what would happen if the whole world went vegan. My answer is that I suspect we'd never hear the end of it.

To be honest most of the news this week has just been the ongoing fallout from last week's Party-gate story. Things are now in the secrecy stage where Conservative MPs may or may not be writing to Graham Brady, the chair of the 1922 committee which ultimately has the power to force a leadership election if 15% of MPs vote for one. Boris has managed to largely distance himself from the details of what went on which is remarkable, especially as even Fred West eventually admitted to having had people in his garden. Do MPs think that they stand to lose their seat at the next election though. That wouldn't be for another 2 years by which point many expect that things will be forgotten, the economy will be doing well again and they don't want to potentially gamble everything on Liz Truss or Rishi Sunak when Boris, love him or hate him has a knack for winning elections. He’s very much like Manchester City in that respect, including wearing the colour blue as well as having very murky finances that none of us are allowed to know about.

Talking about replacing leaders though, the US has also seen a scramble at the top and DCs worst kept secret is that senior people are trying to decide how best to replace Joe Biden, either at the next election or possibly beforehand if need be. The president gave one of the first to-camera pieces for weeks recently in which he seemed confused, suffering from serious cognitive decline and one point accidentally it would be ok if Russia made a minor incursion into Ukraine, before later retracting that and saying he meant something completely different but at this point it's a like a small child covered in chocolate claiming to not know where the chocolate cake went. I probably shouldn’t joke though because it’s a tragic situation, he should be a care home living out his last years in peace and quiet, not being dragged out in front of a rabid press once every 6 weeks and expected to make nuanced statements. President Trump said crazy stuff but he did it to troll his opponents, no rational person thought jokes on Twitter were anything other than that jokes and he knew there was a line in the sand when it came to green lighting a land war in Europe.

If Biden were to resign then that would leave Kamala Harris in charge, but for the past 12 months she’s done little other than exude incompetency and it’s hard to stress just how unfavourably she’s amongst the general public. as far as potential female presidents go, she's less popular than any other possible choice out there like Hilary Clinton or Elizabeth Warren, and that’s true even when you allow for fictional people like Medusa from Greek mythology. Crazy as it sounds, Hilary Clinton is right now actually considering a 4th run for the white house and there is a genuine chance the next election will be a literal rerun of Clinton vs Trump. Which at least makes forecasting the outcome easy because we already know how people will vote if given those two options.