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There's a new Pope and it seems the Trump Tariffs are so effective that even the pope is made in America. This came after 4 rounds of voting although at one point CNN wondered if Joe Biden might get elected to the role after a massive surge of votes mysteriously arrived at 1am.

There's a war brewing between India & Pakistan and this time it's not even about who owes who what money for match fixing in the cricket. Regardless of who is to blame though, the fighting will inevitably be put down to ......

Yet more depressing news this week after the death of Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts. Apparently Mick told Keith Richards that there'd be no Charlie on the next tour and Keith asked if smack would still be allowed? For now I guess I'm still working out how many drummers have to die until Ringo becomes the best 60s drummer alive, by default. And in the mean time a brand new hearse has been ordered and they’re waiting for someone to "Paint It Black”

Film aficionados might remember the song Paint It Black from Full Metal Jacket, Stanley Kubrik’s film about Vietnam but when it comes to depressing war stories then this week we’re still talking about the shambles that is the forced withdrawal from Afghanistan. If you need a pick-me-up and ever feel useless, just remember that it took 4 presidents and 20 years and trillions of dollars to replace the Taliban with the Taliban. The situation is a literal definition for missed opportunities, up there with the last season of Game of Thrones or choosing to name that railway HS2 rather than Trainy McTrain Face.

Never mind Game of Thrones, the only TV Show on offer now of course is “I’m an Afghan Translator Get Me Outa Here” as we’ve now reached the ghoulish stage of proceedings where those who helped keep the peace are now the first on the new government’s kill-list. A list that is admittedly shorter than it was last week, although sadly for sickening and avoidable reasons. This is a Kafkaesque situation whereby the beaurocracy that lined the pockets of civilian contractors was left behind, thus providing the Taliban with a state of the art database listing the names, addresses and accomplishments of everyone that helped maintain vaguely western ideals. Ideals like being able to go to school or read Harry Potter listen to the aforementioned Rolling Stones. Ironically they might like some of the Stones' songs, like Street Fighting Man, Sympathy for the Devil or Jumping Jack Flash grenade.

So how are the woke western media covering the story? They hate the army but presumably they also dislike the taliban's views on liberal feminism. Well the Guardian has a story about how female chefs are paid less than men, there’s someone talking about the gender politics in the movie Frozen and apparently Honda’s humanoid robot ASIMO is the colour white because of racism. That’s some real oppression for you isn’t it. There was recently a story about how it is apparently wrong to be helping girls in Afghanistan because doing so maintains a mindset of colonialism and it's referenced as “white saviour complex” The thing is that if I was a 12 yo girl living in the mountains of Afghanistan I’d be pretty keen for a saviour, of any colour white or otherwise, to come and save me round about now. But what would I know, I’m a bloke and I own a car so what do I know. Perhaps those civilians are screaming out of joy, like when Taylor Swift or Justin Timberlake take to the stage. Then Justin Timberlake could sing that song with the line, “Don't be so quick to, walk away” It’s sad that an 18 year old disco song makes more sense than anything coming out the white house.

Whilst I was away on holiday, the US decided to pull out of Afghanistan and the country collapsed faster than Diane Abbott getting into a deck chair. The Taliban are back in charge and they have lots of ideas for what to do with the place, like a much bigger and more violent version of one of those tv home makeover shows. Maybe they'll convert the spare bedroom into an arms depot and in the garden how about a water feature except instead of water it’s the blood of the innocent and the kids tree-house will double up as a gallows because contrary to the media’s suggestion, the place is far from a lawless wild west. Quite the opposite really, say what you want about Taliban the tend to be "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime", an expression first used by Tony Blair around the time he got the UK involved in the country. It’s just a shame that in that list of ‘causes of crime’ they also tend to include things or “owning a smartphone” or “being a woman” When it comes to the new government's policies I actually misread things and mistakenly thought they were being quite progressive when they said that, like many western countries, that they didn’t want drivers licenses to just have 2 gender options, albeit rather than adding options they want to restrict ownership back to men only.

Anyway, the regime change was quite swift owing to the former Afghan president fleeing the country “to avoid bloodshed.” Presumably his own. He’s currently living it up in the UAE having smuggled $160m out of the country’s treasury. I guess that’s something a lot of people aspire to doing though when they’re fired from a job. As for everybody else trying to flee the country, there were ghastly scenes broadcast on television with images of babies being thrown over barbed wire fences and people dying in the struggle to board what few planes there were. In many respects it reminded me of the last time I flew with Ryanair, albeit there’s not a Wetherspoons in Kabul. On viewing the scenes Harry and Meghan were “left speechless” which made for a pleasant change from their usual torrent of inane touchy feely rubbish.

But thus ends America’s decades long involvement in the country and we can instead welcome in a war-mongering caliphate on side with the Russians and Chinese. Brought not to the world by President Trump but by sleepy Uncle Joe Biden who is senile enough the he probably thinks that Soviet Union is still trying to invade the place. There was an astonishing story about him this week when it was revealed that Osama Bin Laden personally intervened to prevent an attempted assassination attempt on him 10 years ago when he was still Vice President under Obama. This was on the logic that he was so profoundly incompetent that he would be an Al Qaeda asset if he got in the Oval Office. This last week he even gave an interview where he claimed his son had fought in Afghanistan (which he didn’t) and that he was in the Navy (which he wasn’t). That wouldn’t even make sense, the place is a landlocked country. I feel sorry for him really, he’s an elderly man who’s suffered two aneurisms, has a heart condition, clearly has dementia and is being abused by his handlers and the rest of the Democratic part. But we are where we are. Afghanistan will revert to being theocratic hellscape and tens of thousands of people will literally be put to the sword, but at least the cabinet that allowed it all to transpire was diverse. In a couple of months when ghastly footage comes out of girls being whipped to death for the crime of not covering their face. it might look painful but at least nobody’s feelings will be being hurt on Twitter

Happy Chinese new year, apparently it’s the Year of the Ox, not to be mistaken for the year of the pox, which was last year. One of my favourite stories from China this week was the communist party’s decision to ban the BBC due to its “Unfair, Untruthful Journalism” which kinda makes me wish that Boris took a leaf out of Beijing’s book: if the PM wants to sort out the thing with the French fishermen he could start treating the English Channel the way that they treat the China sea. Obviously don’t copy everything, the genocide thing is a bit out of whack and I’d rather make sure the pets on Blue Peter were never involved in a cookery segment on the show but I would like to see the UK sticking two fingers up to the green agenda and getting petrol back to 70p/litre like it is in Shanghai.

So what does the BBC have for us this week? Stories on the front page include articles like: “What is Slovenian cuisine”, “NASA’s pioneering black women” and an article on “Racial imposter Syndrome” so I’d have thought if it’s the BBC then they might have illustrated with a picture of David Dickenson in orange-face or that time when Doctor Who was an African lady. In all honesty the private sector isn’t much better when it comes to newsworthiness, the Mail’s website have a story about how Ben Affleck went out on a motorbike and Hugh Jackman apparently owns a wooly hat.

There is real news out there but it doesn't fit the narrative about how Britain would struggle without help from overseas and so we end up with a "news page" filled with social justice wokery and a relentless fetishization about Donald Trump. There's his constant ability to not pay taxes, the fact his wife isn’t divorcing him, he never did any of the bad things the BBC said he would, plus he got covid and despite it being 100% deadly he lived to laugh another day. Then we have his acquittal in the senate and his troll-like response that he might well run for office again. It's hilarious really, they really want him to be in jail for something but there’s just no darned evidence. This is what happens when a news organisation hires hires kids from college who have never been told that sometimes you don’t get your own way no matter how much you scream and shout. That only works if you’re Tom cruise and possibly for Brian Blessed if Gordon’s Alive.

Of course in the real world the story being shouted from the rafter should be that Britain has been taking off as a world-leader in both covid vaccination as well as research into the new variants. The EU had to back down on its threat to militarise the Irish border, after it realised that without Britain to co-opt, the EU doesn't actually have any military presence in northern ireland to use for such a thing. Bizarrely they chose to apologise with reference to how people make mistakes and that only the pope is infallible. That's an analogy that would struggle to go down well in Ulster unless it was perhaps in an episode of Father Ted with an inebriated chief Jean-Claude Juncker playing Father Jack. Back to covid though, it seems to be available in many different variations this year. Much like when you buy a car you can get classic base model, or you can opt for the 2021 update features and just like a car some versions of the vaccine include an improved transmission. Except unfortunately that’s a bad thing in the case of a virus. Although in the BBC worldview, big pharma can’t be trusted or relied upon to combat the new variants and we should stop trying, given in and join with the EU in relying on masks and capitulation and an inability to win. With that sort of attitude it’s no wonder the BBC love Wimbledon so much.

One of the more interesting stories to appear this week as been the news that the North Korean leader has died at the age of 36, a remarkable young age really though very much in line with North Korean life expectancy. It’s actually a rather strange story as it has been commonly reported except for the main tv networks which are waiting for the press release to drop before they decide to run the tape and finally get on with the macabre discussion of who will be taking on the new role as leader. Look forward to a few days of television anchors speaking to experts, former diplomats as well as perhaps a singer promoting a new album that walked into the wrong studio. Their opinion, based on utter guesswork, will probably be just about as accurate in the world of political fortune telling that has a track record littered with more failures than Henry VIII marriage councillor.

Running North Korea though, It’s a dangerous job and with the US ready to launch an attack at any point, the job is seen by many as a poison chalice. You could quite literal be passed a poisoned chalice at dinner by a rival member of your family. Assuming Kim has died though, who will be the next dear leader? Who are the possible Candidates?

1) Kim Yo-Kong, the supreme leader's sister is the front runner. She’ll probably get the job and she’ll probably spend the first week or so making a list of enemies she wants to disappear, and hundreds of officials will be murdered and thousands of civilians will die in labour camps. Despite this she will held up as a progressive bastion of feminism, Jeremy Corbym will blame the west, a Guardian article will say that Pritti Patel is worse and the BBC will attribute Kim Jong-Un's death to NHS underfunding.

2) A Military takeover. This one would be a bit more fun I guess from an audience perspective, a bit like watching a badly made remake of Scarface. I’m imagining some sort of scramble for power with bullets flying and presumably bounding of the hundreds of medals that those generals always have covering their chest that make them look like an armoured soldier from the shogunate era. Given the country's repeated failure to develop a ballistic missile it's not hard to imagine one of the top brass saying that if you want something done properly then do it yourself.

3) If you fancy a flutter, Dennis Rodman is an long odds bet that you might want to put a fiver down on if you’re the sort of person who likes to bet on horses at 100-1. Stranger things have happened, remember when Leicester City won the premiere league or when Madonna was in charge of Argentina? At least I think that's what that film is about. Nonetheless, for reasons that I’ve never quite understood, or been bothered to research, Dennis Rodman is phenomenally popular in that country, well ahead of other celebrities like Tom Hanks or Lionel Messi. What’s strangest of all is that if you want a celebrity that can defend your country, the only answer would surely be to recruit Chuck Norris. Rumour has it that Chuck Norris once downed an enemy fighter plane by pointing at it with his finger and saying “bang”

4) Perhaps they will claim that he is still alive or that he’s ruling the country as some sort of ghost or spirit, like the bad guy in a poorly CGI’d movie. They have an weird cult for the ruling dynasty and I wouldn’t put it past them to do a Norman Bates and run the place with a Ouija board. I'm not sure if the North Korea's have an equivalent figure to Derek Acorah but I can imagine him going on stage, saying that the spirits felt very strong and asking if there's a Jong in the audience.

There's been quite a few stories about death in the news this week, first I read that the world's oldest man had died and I thought, "poor bloke, that must be the 3rd or 4th time that's happened to him in the last couple of years"

But the big story this week was the continuing escalation of the Coronavirus as it became the most viral thing to come out of Asia since that Gangnam Style youtube video a couple of years ago. The World Health Organisation upgraded the risk to "very high" and the number of countries affected has risen from "China" to "over 50" and if that term 'over 50' makes you think about Michael Parkinson trying to sell life insurance plans then you're in the right mode of thinking because there's now 20 reported cases in Britain, 57 in France, 63 in the US, entire areas of Northern Italy have now been put on lock down with 650 affected and 17 dead which as a comparison is more deaths than the Italian army achieved during WW2. There's also a case in Ireland apparently brought in by a Ryanair flight although it's not clear at this stage whether the company charged the passenger an additional €50 for having undeclared carry on.

Of course another reason this story is hitting the headlines is because it looks like this was the pin that popped the stock market bubble that's been overly set to burst for the past 2-3 years. The news media have a couple favourite cliches they like to drag out and by far and away the winners are the finance graphics. Stock footage of traders, meaningless charts, a piece done to camera whilst walking over that bridge with St Pauls and the city in the background. It almost makes me nostalgic thinking about it, but long story short the markets are dropping faster than the already heavily discounted prices of John Bercow's and David Cameron's books.

The term 'black swan' is often bandied about by economists but this is more a case of 'black death' as the ramifications of the plague are only just becoming apparent. Global supply chains apparently have a tendency to fail when the Chinese stop showing up for work apparently. The scary part I guess is that what with the propaganda, we still don't know the true scale of things in China. It's somewhat of a mystery, like one time when I got a Chinese fortune cookie after my meal, I opened it up and it simply said "that wasn't chicken"

This weekend the Chinese New Year and it's the year of the rat and to celebrate the Chinese have done what they do best, copied things from the West, and have taken the whole rat motif to a new level by having a plague, just like Europe did back in the 14th century with all the rats. Yes, it's not so much Kung Fu so much as Kung Flu, as the coronavirus looks set to kill upwards of a hundred thousand people which are the death numbers you more associate with factory workers at an iPhone factory and there are genuine fears that it could kill millions over the next month or two, a tragedy that would no doubt be blamed on Brexit, even if it happened in mainland China.

In any other week there'd be the Brexit bill or the ongoing Impeachment proceedings in the US to discuss. Presumably in a year's time the hard left will blame Chinese interference in the news cycle for President Trump being reelected which to many would be seen as a greater tragedy than for instance 100m people dying in a mass pandemic. In France though the story has been mentioned after a solitary person became ill proving that the media cares a lot less for thousands of yellow vests than it does for one yellow chest.

In China itself though it really is quite serious with a dozen cities on lockdown, the most well know of which being Wuhan, not to be mistaken for the Kingdom of Bhutan or indeed hiphop group the Wu-Tang Clan. It's a huge city, larger than London, and they are mobilising an army of builders as well as the actual army in order to construct a specialist hospital in just 6 days. Let's just hope they're buying any of the equipment from eBay sites in China because in my experience that takes more like 6-8 weeks.

Looking over the news I thought that the pop band "Flock of Seagulls" had died in a plane crash, but it turns out to have been been a plane downed in Russia after being struck by some birds. Makes a change from the government crashing a plane I suppose. Therefore this week we look further eastward to Hong Kong where protests have escalated faster than the number of lawsuits filed against Jeffrey Epstein.

This week there were shots of the the Hong Kong police firing pepper spray, certainly not the first time I've seen some Chinese over-seasoned and to use another cooking reference, the protests have boiled over, into the regular life. The airport was forced to close and there are now activists encouraging people to empty their bank account and therefore start a run on the Chinese banking system. In response the police have made sure to turn up to work extra early, to beat the crowds.

The citizens have for the past 10 weeks, been voicing concerns about the legal system, specifically a controversial extradition bill as well as general police brutality and corruption. To make it more complicated, they're also protesting about how they are not Chinese, all while speaking in Chinese and they chose to use the old British colonial flag to represent how they want to remain independent and not be a colony. So far, so confusing. Here's an idea, why doesn't the Queen ask for Hong Kong back and fly Meghan Markle out there to run it, then let the Chinese do everyone a favour.

The protestors have also made references to how they need a Martin Luther King figure and that's probably the one thing that Beijing would be keen to go along with, even going so far as to help organise a motel for the leader to stay and presumably later be assassinated at under mysterious circumstances. On a more ominously violent note, a photo emerged in recent days of a sports stadium brimming with military equipment in a way that I've only ever seen done with toys on a child's bedroom floor. For all the Chinese claim to dislike the Japanese, it certainly does has a copycat feeling of December 1941 to it.

This week I thought we'd look at what's been going on in Asia, because while many would like to equate the Brecon and Radnorshire bi-election as something monumental, pivotal, professizing the end times, it says a lot when the Liberal Democrats consider it an achievement to retake one of their long-held seats from a incumbent criminal. It's like boasting about putting on weight or writing in your CV that your key skills involve knowing how to do the Macarena.

In contrast, the Far East however saw couple of genuinely important developments this week. President Trump decided to ratchet up the trade war with a further 10% tariff on $300bn of Chinese products, everything from smartphones to those golden cat toys that wave at you. This is the latest in a series of these moves and the Chinese will find it hard to retaliate seeing as how the bulk of American goods purchased in China are likely counterfeits that were manufactured in China. What they might do however, is start getting more aggressive in the South Sea and a lot less helpful with North Korea

Which brings us onto the next story in which North Korea performed a number of rocket tests. In a strange twist, France and Germany have called on North Korea to engage in "meaningful" talks with the US - presumably a comment designed to annoy the British #irony #brexit And so we once go down the route of North Korea wondering if the only way to get attention is to threaten to kill people, and whether Kim Jong Un sees himself as the nation's father figure or an angsty teenager. Although by "father figure" he could just be referring to his expanding waistline.

Russia too is in on the rocketry game, the US just pulled out of a non-proliferation treaty due to Russia's flagrant disregard for it. It's unclear of course where the US will go to from here, unlike the last time around, there's a world shortage of german rocket scientists suspiciously keen to move overseas.

Finally, the other story which I thought would get more attention is that Japan is back at the whale hunting game. I don't know whether that means the next Star Trek remake will be modern version of that one where Kirk and Spock travel back in time to rescue a whale but certainly I thought it would be getting a lot more coverage than it has done, given the environment outrage stuff of late. A question I have though, is if whales are so intelligent why do they swim near Japan?

This week I thought we'd take a break from Theresa May to discuss Huawei, the Chinese company with a name that people disagree on how to pronounce. A bit like when people disagree on whether it's "envelope" of 'on' velope or how about even something as simple as the letter H. If you want to reduce the cost of healthcare, I'd ban access to anyone who pronounces it the "en haich ess"

Anyway, Huawei, not to be mistaken for Hawaii. The company is supposedly independent of the Chinese government and has complete freedom, but so does a child who's given the choice between a red apple or a green apple (or straight to bed). And talking of Apples, the mobile phone industry is the heart of this upcoming technological and financial battle of 5G phone rollout: who has it, who profits from it, and who's intelligence services get to spy on it. For those struggling to keep up, the Chinese would like to have access to everything, and the US would like those rights to remain in California, and occasionally Langley Virgnia. The US has in the past couple of weeks made it pretty clear where it stands with the whole 'trading with China' issue and so if you're a tech company, you should avoid using Huawei products in much the same way that you or I avoid watching anything beyond first 5 seconds of a YouTube advert or anything beyond the penultimate season of Game of Thrones.

But speaking as someone who was too lazy to cook dinner earlier, sometimes buying in Chinese is irresistible, That's why the US Commerce Department just put Huawei on its Entity List, meaning American companies would need to obtain licenses to sell it critical components for its products and that could make it hard for Huawei to get the parts its needs. They've also told intelligence partners like the UK that they can do what they want but if they do, as has been suggested, allow Huawei into the UK then the CIA will cease sharing intelligence secrets with MI6. That means if the British government wants to learn about weapons facilities in Iran, they'll have to make time to tune in to live round the clock news broadcasts where John Bolton goes on tv and pushes for full scale regime change in Tehran, making W Bush seem lightweight and indecisive.

And all for the want of marginally faster internet when you're trying to get Netflix in the countryside. It's a complicated world we live in I guess, and makes you long for a quasi-romantic long since passed era when spies used to share briefcases in the park and the briefcases were actually just really large early mobile phones because Huawei hadn't started selling smartphones.

Sometimes discussions about economics are nuanced and complex, just imagine the difficulty trying of trying to discuss the fishing industry’s net worth or the construction industry’s aggregate demand. Sometimes they say the point of studying PPE (politics philosophy and economics) is that at least when you’re unemployed you’ll be able to discuss in depth the reasons why.

Well the world of economics is back in the news now with President Trump proceeding with a wide range of import tariffs on Chinese products. Friday saw the level of existing tariffs rise from 10 to 25% and Saturday saw the tariffs imposed on all remaining imports, not just those previously announced. For consumers, it will be a bit like when the health inspector forces your Chinese takeaway to close, or at least stop serving seafood, and when it reopens a few weeks later the old owner’s brother has raised the prices. Except in this case the money will go straight to the government and you won’t get any fortune cookies for filing a tax return on a regular basis.

In terms of impact, some manufacturing will return to the US, though other industries with complex logistics chains will have no alternative but to pass on the costs and continue buying from overseas, at least for years to come. A tax rise for all intents and purposes, equivalent to a 10% sales tax by the time the goods are being paid for at the checkout. I say checkout, even with 10% price increases, it's still better than having your online purchases stolen from your doorstep, although if you're trying to get rid of an old mattress or broken television and the council are wanting a week's wages to remove it, why not put it in an amazon box and let the thieves do it for free?

Anyway, the tariffs, they're expected to bring in anywhere from $100-300bn at a time when the budget could do with some balancing. Bizarrely though, those on the left who are calling for higher taxes are the first to criticise these taxes because of course they would, anything the President does must be wrong. In many respects, if President Trump wants to leave a long lasting legacy, then he should make sure that when he leaves office he writes a book demanding action on climate change, gender rights and an open border policy, thus making every last one of them toxic for any left wing politician to advocate for.

Earlier this week I was wondering if Elton John liked Lettuce, then I realised that he was more of a rocket man. Well someone else who likes rockets is Kim Jong Un after satellite images this week revealed that the oversized dictator decided to rebuild the rocket launch site that had previously been destroyed.

Talks between the US and North Korea broke down recently so the communists decided to mark the occasion by rebuilding some rockets which will also almost certainly break down and fall into the sea of Japan.

Specifically reports came out that North Korea's main rocket launch site at Sohae had been rebuilt. However, this is a facility that has only been used for rocket tests, not missile tests and it’s been suggested that perhaps they want to launch a satellite rather than a bomb. But then we live in an age when Elon Musk put a car into space so who knows, watching a list of ongoing space projects has become like the prize conveyer belt on the Generation Game although I guess that reference wouldn't make sense in a country like North Korea where making a fool of yourself using a potters wheel is followed by a visit from the state police rather than humorous facial expressions from either Larry Grayson or Bruce Forsyth depending on how old you are. It's strange isn't it to think that Brucey grew up in an era when North Korea was a bastion of free market capitalism?

I once objected to some Jehovah’s Witnesses building a Kingdom Hall locally because there were bound to be knock on effects. Reddit? But this is a good example of knock on effects in the real world. The US decided that it wouldn’t trade oil with North Korea unless they completely gave up the bomb research and also the slave labour camps. And the knock on effect is that the North Koreans decided to walk away and go back to normal because they think no deal is better than a bad deal. I wonder if there’s some kind of lesson to be learnt there.

There was an especially high level of filler in the news this week, yet more articles about Brexit not to mention a selection of social and environmental stories that are about as newsworthy as if Fiona Bruce hosted a debate over whether to add the milk before or after the teabag. Yet in the mean time the world actually came pretty close to starting World War 3 this week when military tensions between India and Pakistan rose higher than an estimate for Jeff Bezos’ divorce bill.

The way that India and Pakistan were acting, you’d think that one of their cricketers had been tampering with the ball but in actual fact an Indian fighter jet crossed into Pakistan to attack militants who'd killed 40 Indian troops in a suicide attack. That's the official story although I don't personally understand how you kill people who've already been involved in a suicide bombing, at least not successfully. Cut to the chase and Pakistan shot down the jet and detained the pilot, later returning him as the situation was de-escalated. From what I read, India and Pakistan did both asked for Britain's help during the crisis but were disappointed when the UK interpreted this as a request for diplomatic assistance rather than a request for BAE systems to send a boat full of high-tech weaponry to help them settle the issue once and for all. That whole angle is especially confusing as I imagine that Theresa May would frankly jump at the chance to utilise nuclear was as a distraction from events back home.

In the mean time of course, Kashmir remains a fantastic Led Zeppelin track but it's also an unresolved and unending attritional conflict, like sticking a humidifier and a dehumidifier in the same room. And certainly while the peaceniks would like both sides to disband their nuclear weapons, the only way that's likely to happen any time soon is if they throw them away attached to the top of an dozen ICBMs. The first two world wars were of course mostly set in Western Europe, unless you watch the US directors cut where there's a bunch of extra scenes set in Japan. But most people expect the 3rd war in the franchise to have a new location, possibly Southern Asia. Except that like most film franchises it's all about the Chinese market and you only need to see the war machines they're building in the South China Sea to see that they've profoundly misunderstood the Hollywood hashtag of #meetoo

The world cup has kicked off, or at least the ball has been kicked, the cup itself remains safely in the cabinet, much like David Davis in spite of his threats to the contrary. The football tournament though, that's being held in Russia over the next couple of weeks. If you're an England fan it's not long to wait until that moment when they fail to win and Gareth Southgate is forced to inevitably resign over his sole responsibility for England failing to be the best team in the entire world, no doubt accompanies by tabloid headlines about the team being Putin their place. Mind you, I keep saying world but the USA aren't in the tournament, nor are the Italians, the Dutch or Chile, China, India. Scotland haven't even qualified for the tournament since France 98, although I guess that at least shows a strong level of consistency, something that many teams, notably England, lack.

Anyway, if football's your thing then all your top footballing stars are there on the telly for you to gaze at. But back to the world of politics, it's not just Luis Suarez who's biting off more than he can chew. Today saw the news that the US is going ahead and imposing tariffs of 25% on Chinese exports accusing Beijing of intellectual copyright theft. In retaliation the Chinese said they'd do likewise with anti-US rate increases of 25%.

For something going down in price though, compare and contrast to the Labour Party's Jezfest music+politics festival this weekend where ticket prices have been slashed by around 70% after people discovered you could apply for free ones if you asked nicely. For once I actually agree with some of the socialists on this one: they're complaining and saying that it's not right for some people to just get given things for free when others have had to work to pay for them.

Anyway, for now I've got some money down on Germany to win the world cup and no money down for the north London socialism festival if either of those things are of interest then enjoy the weekend.

Breaking news as the Korean Peninsula might be prepared to break out into all-out full-scale peace. Recently a book fell on my head and I only had my shelf to blame, but the the blame for the inability to agree to a peace deal for the past 60 years? Well that's long and complicated and largely above the pay grade of our current generation of politicians. Most recently, President Trump has been keen to sort out a peace deal as a grand plot twist to his real life reality tv series. Actually, when it comes to President Trump and Kim Jong Un there's more of a "will they won't they?" thing akin to Ross and Rachael from Friends. A show that was presumably syndicated in Pyongyang under the title "Our Enemies"

Anyway, "what's been going on?" you ask. Well a few weeks back Kim said that he was ready to denuclearize and give peace a chance, then after everyone agreed it emerged that his nuclear site had blown itself up and that was why he was suddenly coming to the table. Then both Mike Pence and John Bolton mentioned Lybia and even people with as little knowledge of the outside world as North Korea are aware that after Lybia gave up its weapons, the Americans organised for Colonel Gaddafi to be executed as part of a populist uprising.

Going back to that tv show analogy, it's a bit like if Trump made jokey references The Walking Dead or if Kim asked President Trump if he enjoyed that House Of Cards episode where Kevin Spacey is shot.

Where are we now then? Well North Korea is no longer a proper threat and they'd quite like to go back to where they were a few years ago, with access to oil and food and medicine. South Korea would probably quite like access to some of the North's slave labour manufacturing and logging production so with any luck the situation will revert to where it was 30 years ago, when America still had a popular screen entertainer as president.

On Saturday morning the world awoke to the news that North Korea had promised to give up its nuclear testing and missile launches. And I'm guessing Kim Jong Un woke up with an absolute stinker of a hangover and vaguely remembered making promises the previous night that he maybe regretted the morning after the night before. For him, I imagine phoning up Donald Trump at midnight is his equivalent of phoning an ex-girlfriend 10 minutes before the pub closes.

Maybe I'm being disingenuous and this was all a result of weeks of diplomacy, strategic use of twitter, a grand combination of Chinese economic intervention, John Bolton bringing fresh ideas to the diplomatic table maybe some more tweets from president Trump, some nudging from the Russians and some additional twitter diplomacy with Fox & Friends of course being kept in the loop at all times.;

Or perhaps it's just that the North Koreans's have finally figured out that Uranium is pretty expensive and that they've had to decide between Kim's taste for nuclear weapons and his taste for, well, anything on a plate, he's not fussy. He prefers chocolate cake to uranium yellowcake and I'd make some joke about the type of "rocket" that's green, leafy and makes up a salad except he's more the sort of chap that orders a dozen fried crispy wontons for a starter. I suppose I'd do the same mind if I lived right next to China.

It's only when North Korea returns to the news though that you realise how lucky we have it in the west. The UK government recently lost the paperwork for the Windrush generation and as a result they'll likely receive compensation. In North Korea the government is somewhat more strict about people having the correct documentation and their definition of a 'labour camp' makes the uk Labour Party's summer camp discussing Brexit policy look quite appealing in comparison. Well I don't know, 10 years in the frozen tundra vs 10 days listening to Emily Thornberry devising a coherent foreign policy. And you know I still prefer Kim's fondness for fried chicken compared to Jeremy Corbyn's veganism.

Big news in the world of diplomacy, bigger than Kim Jong Un's waistline even. It was announced that President Trump and Kim Jong Un are going to be meeting in person. This marks a big shift in diplomacy from both the North Koreans as well as the president who has spent the past year or so conducting international affairs via Twitter with all the dexterity of a drugged horse

The meeting itself could be a set-piece historic event like the Yalta Conference in 1945 when Franklin Roosevelt met with Stalin, or that time that Ronald Reagan met with Humphrey Bogart oh actually no wait that was when he was still an actor. Anyway, it's a first date of sorts though so perhaps the president will decline the usual offers from CNN or the BBC and get one of the reality show networks like Bravo to cover the event. If things go badly then it would certainly be better for everyone if it ended up with one of them throwing a glass of wine across the table, as compared to launching an thermonuclear strike.

If we're not comparing Trump to FDR then who? Kennedy dealt with the Cuban Missile Crisis and certainly Mr Trump wants to be perceived as a similarly new modern kind of president like Kennedy: a media savvy change from a presidential style of old. I don't know if Stormy Daniels a new albeit trashier version of Marilyn Monroe although certainly it wouldn't surprise many people if the the CIA turned out to already be looking to hire a "lone gunman"

In more cold-war-style news, the Russians have been busy too: Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia collapsed last weekend in Salisbury after being exposed to a nerve agent. There's 180 military investigators although obviously at the moment then anyone could be to blame (innocent until proven guilty after all!) which is presumably why the newspapers have to use the term "nerve agent" rather than "Russian agent" but the backstory is that in 2006 the former Russian military security colonel was convicted by the Russian government of passing secrets to MI6 and in 2010 he was then offered asylum in the UK. It sounds very hospitable for the British government really to do that although you have to remember that back then the government were dishing out passports and visas like confetti at a ticker tape parade. Anyway, the government never lies and you can definitely always trust what the spy agencies tell us so I suspect that we won't find out the real truth until things eventually get declassified in 50 years time. For now though, if you're a Russian dissident who's been passing on state secrets then try and stay safe!

It's the end of December and the end of 2017 and it's possibly the end of the line if you're the sort of person who originally became a politician or a tv celebrity to get close to the young female interns. Of course I'm joking, Kevin Spacey got into show business for the young male interns, he's probably looking forward to 2018 because he thinks there's 2000 of them.

Talking about "end of the line" though, one of the stories I'm sure we'll see a lot more about in the future was this week's announcement that Israel is going to name a new subway station after president Trump. Perhaps the president thought that he'd improve his poll ratings amongst minorities by associating himself with an "Underground Railroad". Either way, at least the new station will give the Israelis somewhere to hide when the bombs start dropping. The bombs of course being those ones that everyone from Dwight Eisenhower to Obama and everyone inbetween has been selling to the region. Asking the US to mediate that peace process is like asking a mousetrap producer to intervene in the battle between Tom and Jerry

But for now, finish off that Christmas port and start planning for 2018. We'll have fresh Brexit news all year as well as the same old stale Brexit news, plus loads more Trump news now that Twitter have interceded and increased the character limit on his tweets. Plus the Russia stuff is going to keep on coming with the regularity of dysentery on a cheap cruise ship. The Fifa World Cup is being hosted by Russia this upcoming summer. I suppose most people wouldn't mind Russia rigging elections if they gave all the voters a Rolex watch and a briefcase full of money like they did with that election to decide which country would host the football tournament. As I'm sure Vladimir Putin has no doubt said many times before though, they've got the world by the balls.

This week President Trump has been off on a long trip to the Far East in order to bolster trade relationships, come up with a plan about how to deal with North Korea and of course to make a number of barnstorming speeches about how "crooked Hilary Clinton" failed to win any electoral college votes in that part of the world. The last big trip the president made was to Saudi Arabia in order to, amongst other things, finalise a multi-billion dollar weapons contracts and that part of the world has been getting along fine ever since, as long as you ignore facts, the news and passing conjecture, though you could likely say the same about Theresa May's cabinet.

The Saudi kingdom has been "cleaning house" for the past couple of weeks with an ongoing proxy war against Iran that this week led to the resignation of the Lebanese Prime Minister and the seizure of billions of dollars of assets. Numerous high ranking officials have been whisked away by the government in a classic purge from the Jo Stalin playbook. The Jo Stalin playbook of course should not be mistaken for the Jo DiMaggio playbook which strictly limits using a baseball bat to hit baseballs rather than political opponents. The latest purge though is Prince Bandar bin Sultan who is/was Saudi Arabia's most famous arms dealer, former ambassador to the US, and recent head of Saudi intelligence.

Back to Asia though, supposedly the Japanese love Trump, the Chinese love Trump, and don't forget that Trump really loves Trump. In all reality though, the Japanese would love any commander in chief offering them military support for free, and the Chinese will say literally say everything and anything if it means that Trump agrees to drop US opposition to formal recognition of China as a market economy under WTO rules. President Trump is also going to be doing a tour of Vietnam by the way. Oh well, he dodged that one about 50 years ago but better late than never I suppose...

Rather than focus on one main news story, this week we saw the launch of 4 new things so I thought we’d go through each of them one at a time:

Starting with #1, the Bank of England started handing out the new £10 note. Some journalists and campaigners were keen to point out that it’s first note produced in a while with a lady on it, while more observant commentators took the time to flip it over and look at the other side of the note where the Queen’s been sitting for the past 6 decades. But let’s just for once celebrate the sight of banknotes being rolled out in the city, rather than rolled up, into little tubes on a Friday night

Moving on, if you’re lucky enough to have hundreds of those new notes on you, you can get yourself the new iPhone. I was hoping they’d finally roll out changing the name of the phone’s charger to the “Apple Juice” but they basically brought out one the same thing as before but it’s got a better camera, a bigger screen and a price high point high enough that it puts the US debt ceiling debate into perspective.

Less glamorously we also go the launch of the Grenfell Tower enquiry. The iPhone costs hundreds of times more than a ten pound note and this public enquiry will no doubt cost tens of thousands of times more than the expensive iPhone. There’s been a lot of angry debate about what the scope of the enquiry should be, should it be limited to health and safety, public housing generally, the potential prosecution of ministers etc. In a unique twist of events though, it’s the first enquiry in a while where nobody’d been angrily demanding that the scope should be broadened to consider whether Tony Blair should be prosecuted for war crimes, so a first time for everything I guess…

Finally, as we’re talking about launches, you can’t mention the word “launch” without the words “North” and “Korea” not long behind it. There’s been a lot of differing opinions from various sections of the press about what’s going to happen with Kim Jong-Un and WW3. Never a newspaper to shy away from conspiracies, the Daily Express went with an article about how biblical prophecy and the dimensions of the Pyramids at Giza have calculated that the rapture is scheduled for the 23rd this month, so presumably if you want to visit the US or Northern Asia you might want to get a cheap flight in the next few days before it goes up in flames like the comment section on a Guardian article about Brexit.

It’s possibly just days until Doomsday and it’s a face-off between Trump and North Korea with everything on the line! It’s a standoff like in a card game in a James Bond film, except that in a bizarre twist, Sean Connery’s wig is the most realistic hairpiece present at the card game.

But back to the latest threat, this time to nuke the remote US territory of Guam. They say that they want to create hell in the Pacific and I think that’s dreadful because Lee Marvin starred in a move called “Hell in the Pacific” and it was amazing and I don’t want to bring his good name into disrepute. But cut to the chase, essentially it’s a scary time to live in Guam and I like World War 2 movies the same way that Radio 4 likes liberal sociology professors.

Of course it’s not just Guam, If you live in North Korea it’s a pretty scary time too, albeit for entirely domestic reasons. Here’s a great North Korean joke for y’all: Why did they chicken cross the road? And the answer is: he didn’t. There are no chickens. The government ate all the chickens and soon you will be forced to die in a war procreated by the apparatus of the state.

Yeah I know, it loses something in translation I suppose. Say what you will about American foreign policy, at least it’s country that gave us folk like Louis CK, Seinfeld, Richard Pryor Chris Rock and Tina Fey, not to mention Al Gore and his latest film, go see it, it’s hilarious, I’m joking of course.

North Korea is very much like a petulant attention seeking child and this week they got annoyed that we’d been paying too much attention to the other children, I mean countries, mostly the rolling human tragedy unfolding in Venezuela. Of course, if North Korea was a badly behaved child in the back of a car I suppose they might have shouted some swear words, but that’s more of an Anthony Scaramucci thing. He was sacked this week, forced to go after just 10 days, I’ve had milk that lasted longer than some of the people in the White House.

But back to North Korea, they’re not actually a metaphorical child, they’re a dangerous country with a military and a missile programme so they decided to tell the world that they’re soon going to be able to launch a nuclear weapon at New York. And that’s pretty worrying because, as the song says: if you you can make it there you can make it anywhere. Let’s just hope that the US responds to the threat in a calm and rational way. With regards to that economic collapse I mentioned underway in Venezuela, President Trump has decided to throw, economic sanctions in the ring so who knows. Perhaps China will be cajoled into dealing with it in exchange for Trump hotel loyalty points or something.

Of course, I should add that none of this really matters in the real world because I just looked at the BBCs front page and they’re actually leading with a different news story about making washing machines marginally more eco-friendly. Top investigative journalism there chaps. The Daily Mail in contrast is leading with photos of Cristiano Ronaldo's pregnant wife and the Daily Sport is, well it’s not family friendly really so I’ll stop here why not.

The talk of a leadership challenge against Theresa May seems to have quietened off a bit, at least for this week, as the government made another move with a big piece of Brexit legislation. In response a senior civil servant tried to get your average lager drinking, white van driving bloke on the street onside by making a Brexit analogy involving a cricket ball and went on to say that Brexit was falling apart like “a chocolate orange” which seemed odd given that if you’re already doing the cricket thing, at least follow through and say things will fall apart like an England test match innings, or use the chocolate metaphor from the start as another meaningless nonsense term to describe the supposed ‘softness’ of the perceived Brexit.

Elsewhere, across the Atlantic, there’s been more Russia allegations, this time involving Donald Trump’s eldest son meeting with a lawyer from Moscow. A lawyer who was actually barred from entering the US until Attorney General - and friend of the Clintons - Loretta Lynch personally stepped in to allow him to enter the US in a sign that the top echelon of all the political world there is on a dodginess rating that places it somewhere between a used car salesman on a stag do and a newspaper editor who’s discovered that both his mistress and mortgage payments are late.

And in North Korea, they’ve been very keen to show off their new ICBM. It’s very difficult to get Visa entry into the country but they’ve advised journalists that they should visit the West Coast of America if they want a close up look. Not that I’m questioning their technical skills but I’m guessing it’s so that the journalists can get to Los Angeles in order to board a cruise ship bound for the sea of Japan were the rocket is scheduled to land, several seconds after it takes off.

There was utterly shocking news this week when a politician actually did something he’d promised to when running for office. Nick Clegg said it was madness and that he should have done the exact opposite of what he promised like you’re supposed to. Just look at David Cameron – he promised a referendum to get Britain out of the EU and when he managed to accidentally deliver on Brexit he resigned in shame and left politics.

Agree with Paris or not (and we’ll get to that later) President Trump is entitled to do whatever he wants, largely because President Obama signed up in the first place by making sure that it was clearly defined as an executive decision that didn’t need approval by the congress or senate or anyone else. And Mr Trump has a mandate to sign whatever he wants because he won the electoral college and those who mention the popular vote should maybe fix that by looking to scrap it rather than going on Facebook like a teenager angry at the result of the X-Factor. This is like when people tried to fix Boko Haram by going on Facebook, and sure Nigeria is still signed up to the Paris Treaty but the kidnappings are still a thing and Trump is more of a Twitter person anyway. Seriously though, the electoral collage is a ridiculous and antiquated system, even more so than the US’s insistence on clinging onto chequebooks and thinking that putting Nicolas Cage in a movie will draw in a crowd.

Back to the Paris Accords though, it was a crummy treaty anyway. According to the UN’s own numbers, following through with it would cost $100 trillion and achieve less than 1% of the emissions cuts the UN claims are supposedly needed anyway. That’s before we get to the questions of why CO2 levels were 10 times higher during the last ice age, why temperatures have been rising on Mars where they don’t have any humans producing CO2 or why the US taxpayer should be paying for new power stations in South East Asia, rather than China or India. If you thing climate change is real and man made and fixable then there are far better ways to go about it like putting money into geoengineering or building thorium reactors. At the very least please don’t try to goad President Trump – a man who famously collects towers – by naming your treaty after Paris, the city famous for having one of the best towers there is.