I don't mind Mr Gervais's brand of offensive-but-I-didnt-mean-it-comedy ...

 ...but I find it difficult to accept him as Saint Francis of Assisi.

Keep your Pecker up!

It's a new week and with the Jury and alternates now selected the Bigly Trial of the 21st Century continues with Mr Pecker as the first witness.  Mr Pecker was an employee of the ironically titled New York Inquirer ... whose function it seems (like most of the media) was not to inquire to closely into the activities of the rich and powerful but instead to help facilitate getting Stormy Daniels et al to sign non-disclosure agreements saying they were not humped by Trump before the 2016 election.

Outside the court, Donald continues to bemoan that he is only on trial because the payments to Mr Cohen were listed as "legal fees" which was "because they were paid to lawyer" (I paraphrase) so it seems that Mr Sorry... President Trump admits to the payments ...the question then is do they collectively add up to a hidden Campaign Finance Contribution and thus "Election Interference".  I think whether the Jury will buy into that will be what the whole case hinges on.

Court broke early today for the Passover.  Luckily for Donald in his New York Fraud Trial dispute the Angel of Financial death did not pay a visit and Letitia James's action to get his $175m bond secured from US Arthur Daley Don Hankey overturned... failed.

Nonsense financial advice from Auntie Beeb

 

How to save money on your mortgage according to the BBC:

1 "If you still have some time on a low fixed-rate deal, you might be able to pay more now to save later."

HALF TRUTH - The most you can overpay is usually 10% a year

2 "Move to an interest-only mortgage. It can keep your monthly payments affordable although you won't be paying off the debt accrued when purchasing your house."

LIE - This is not a saving, it is actually more expensive than a normal Repayment mortgage as the interest is a function of the capital which never reduces.  You then hit retirement age and have to sell your house.  It's actually worse than renting.

"Extend the life of your mortgage. The typical mortgage term is 25 years, but 30 and even 40-year terms are now available."

Another LIE.  Extending the term of your mortgage is more expensive than paying it off early because you end up paying more interest.

Here endeth my financial advice.

War in Gaza takes a surreal turn...

Just when you think you've seen it all the IDF Recreate the Badger Parade from Harry Hill's Television Show....

Perhaps they're on their way to rescue Nana Hill from an underground Hamas base...?  Say what you like about the death of 40,000 Palestinians but everybody here looks very jolly.  But then people always do look jolly going to war.  After all, going is the easy bit.  It's coming back in one piece with your mental health that's hard.

I've done more research and I still don't know why they look like badgers.  If you want to apply your camouflage paint correctly, the IDF videos say...

The Bigly Jury Selection

A man burning himself to death outside the Manhattan courtroom seems to symbolise all that is wrong with King Maga and his cult.  To be fair the man also blamed Joe Biden and some hidden den of illuminati conspirators or something but he reminds me of Nikki Haley’s observation that “chaos” follows him.  Perhaps less chaos will result in the longer term as the walls close in on Donald.  

The jury is selected now and most of the alternates, the wheels of justice that seems to turn as slowly as the hour hand of a broken clock have speeded up suddenly of late as Judge Juan Merchan rattles through procedures like a fast-talking car salesman in a nineteen-fifties film comedy.  Perhaps someone has told him that whilst the establishment don’t want a former President convicted of a felony, if it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well it were done quickly.  One wonders if the Supreme Court are looking on in preparation of their next aural consideration of Donald’s claim of absolute Presidential immunity next week…  

Unable to take the stand because he’d be eviscerated in cross-examination it looks like Donald is going to have to sit there mute occasionally falling asleep and (according to at least one reporter) letting out the odd bigly fart.  Well, I suppose, if he can’t incite violence with his words cracking off a silent-but-violent eggy one is the last line of attack.  Talking of violence, he’s also up for a contempt hearing with the Judge next week for continually violating his gag order which he, of course, says is a violation of his rights by a lot.  They only attack him, because he fights for you.  He’s said it before and he’ll say it again… because it’s not a big lie unless you keep repeating it.

I’m not sure why I have become fixated with the trials of Donald Trump of late but I keep recalling his use on his first inauguration of the phrase “America First” which seemed to me a scary kind of dog whistle at the time – it being the name of the isolations/pro-fascist/appeasement movement before and during the Second World War fronted by Charles Lindbergh.  So history repeats itself – first as tragedy, then as a TV mini-series. I wonder who will play Trump.  Laurence Fox in a fat suit?

Meiselas: What I’m hearing from credible sources is that Donald Trump is actually farting in the courtroom… I’m hearing it from actual credible people that as he’s kind of falling asleep, he’s actually passing gas and that his lawyers are really struggling with the smell. pic.twitter.com/wa6F3iRDgX

— Acyn (@Acyn) April 19, 2024

My ex Conservative MP and ex Labour Party comrade wants to be my Liberal Democrat Councillor

To be divorced once is a misfortune.  To be divorced twice, thrown out of the Conservative Party and thrown out the Labour Party looks like carelessness.  Local joke Andrew Pelling now wants to be my local councillor.  Not so much the bottom of the barrel but the liquid that leaked out into the cellar soil.  

Wonder if he'll ever make it back to the Tories... I would say no but these days ...

"Anyone can rat, but it takes a certain amount of ingenuity to re-rat." - Winston Churchill 

First they came for the Kippers

 

First they came for the Kippers

And I thought why are they in Europe exporting their hate?

I thought they told us they didn't want to politically integrate?

The Bigly Day Came

So Donald's 1st trial is finally upon us.  He shuffles for the cameras in the court vestibule complaining that the Judge won't let him go to his son's graduation.  This terrible Judge.  I think perhaps Donald might need to get used to not going places.  It will likely be his future for the next 6 weeks and  maybe even longer than that if convicted although opinion is divided as to whether he'll get a custodial sentence for this one.  The long tedious one about business records and hush money payments...

It seems a slight anticlimax now the trial has come.  For in a world where Iran, Israel and Gaza are at war whilst war in Ukraine rumbles on Donald's fate seems like small beer.  He doesn't even make the front page or the 2nd or 3rd.  Newsnight and Panorama skip it over.  No crowds are lining up round Manhattan to support him.  A few detractors shout slogans and wave banners.  Just as they did or didn't for his civil fraud trial.  This isn't January 6th - it's 6 weeks of legal process...The novelty of seeing a former President being ushered into judicial buildings has waned.  The pedestrian business of jury selection shuffles on.  Donald says nothing to avoid being held in contempt and even seems to be falling asleep.  As Orson Wells would have said - Something had happened. A thing which, years ago, had been the eagerest hope of many, many good citizens of the town, and now it had come at last; Donald J Trump was getting his comeuppance. He got it three times filled, and running over. But those who had so longed for it were not there to see it, and they never knew it. Those who were still living had forgotten all about it and all about him.  For such is the way with Justice and Vengeance, we often wish for them dearly only to be disappointed by their reality because when justice comes the perps disappear and new ones fill their vacuums.

It's hard too not to feel some sympathy for Trump.  All he wanted to do was pay off a porn star, the problem is he did it with company assets and that's a crime ... because within Donald's companies there is no clear line between the companies and himself.  Just as in the Classified Documents case Trump seems to not have been able to distinguish between the government's records and his own.  Just as there is no clear line for Trump between winning or losing elections by a lot.  Trump simply absorbs everything into himself and becomes more and more self absorbed ... by a lot.

Donald Tump Campaign Diary 2024

 

2023

April 8th Meet David CaMoron

April 9th Cheat at Golf

April 15th Go to Court to prove I didn't pay hush money

April 22nd Explain to SCOTUS why I'm an Absolute Monarch

June 1st Get Convicted of Election Interference

June 2nd Start Bigly Sentence

July 30th Go to Court to prove I did steal any documents

August 15th Get Convicted of stealing classified documents

September 1st Don't do any more trial because SCOTUS says I'm King

November 10th Win Election

December 1st Write book about My Struggle in prison

2024

January 21st Take Office

January 22nd Pardon Self

January 23rd Be dictator for a day <- should be done on 22nd but too busy so reschedule

January 24th Be dictator for another day

January 25th Be dictator for another day

January 26th Be dictator for another day

January 27th Be dictator for another day

January 28th Be dictator for another day

January 29th Be dictator for another day

January 30th Be dictator for another day

January 31th Be dictator for another day

Febuary Be dictator for a month

March Be dictator for another month

April Be dictator perpetually.

Your chances of not seeing Kojak when switching on ITV4 randomly are 1 in 4

 

Episodes were originally 50 minutes long with adverts taking them to 60.  Now they run over 65 minutes reducing the odds of seeing Telly and not an advert if you switch on the Telly randomly from 83% to 76%.  Who loves ya that much, baby?

Doctor Who Dies Another Day...

Today I have been cogitating on the similarities between the James Bond film Die Another Day and the Doctor Who story Enemy of the World.  On the one hand Enemy of the World is clearly a rip-off/homage to James Bond.  Both have plots driven by a Suncatcher device (in Die Another Day called “Icarus”).  Both involve hovercraft.  Both involve multiple identities Dr Who/Salamander and Graves/Moon.  Both involve the main villain dying after being ejected from a vehicle – the Tardis/a plane.  Maybe these similarities don’t all mean something – I won’t argue about that – but look at the number of them.  

In other crossover news I noticed the other day that Doctor Who turns up in the 1st episode of Chelmsford 123 – and then promptly goes away again… 

Private Shultz

Continuing my odyssey through old television series, this week I have been mostly watching Private Shultz (which Ava Alexis brought me the year before last but I’ve been too busy to watch) featuring a very young Michael Elphick and Ian Richardson as about three different characters…  This series is so old that Elphick looks positively youthful and slim … The supposed story of the Germans attempts to counterfeit bank of England notes (Operation Bernhard).  The part I particularly remember is episode 6 where they hunt for the lost canister of stolen money which is now inconveniently buried beneath a public lavatory.  There’s something really moving about the desperation and sheer greed of all the characters involved.  Early on in the story there’s a lot of double dealing but it’s the literal end scramble for money that is most memorable as it somehow summarises much of the pointlessness of many people’s existence.  

Shultz may be a genius but he has no ambition beyond the acquisition of wealth and neither really do many of his criminal associates.  One can see future shadows of Allo Allo in this as they all chase after the valuable McGuffin … Greed is a universal theme in drama but it's seldom explored as well as this.  Forging money and the consequences of it open a pandora's box here where almost everyone who might be tempted is tempted and at the same time people team up to try and get the cash but never stand by one another as they are allies of convenience.  A deeper theme under the surface is the ethics of using money as a weapon.  Is it a war crime?  And if it is what are the consequences of that?  We all rely on money as a glue to hold society together - without it we're all reliant on barter and its double coincidence of wants.  The idea of forging bank notes today seems positively quaint of course with money increasingly reduced to cards, numbers on computers and apple pay phones and watches.  A wave of a wrist and thousands swish between IP connections... Gone are the days when Arthur Daley was always "holding folding"...  Money is more ethereal than ever today but still as unreliable and prone to inflation...

Quite a dark element of the plot is the use of concentration camp labour – a brilliant performance by Cyril Shaps as Iphraim "Solly" Solikoff – who fortunately escape in the end … which seems to be what actually happened in real life.  This keeps things slightly upbeat and there is final redemption for Shultz in the form of former prostitute Bertha Freya (Billie Whitelaw) who sex works at Salon Kitty where the rooms are bugged to try and extract information from the disloyal - here Shultz entrapped the adulterous Professor Bodelschwingh (David Swift) to solve all the mathematical problems....  

Salon Kitty was also a real place and really bugged and used as an industrial honeytrap by the Nazis.  Indeed, it’s fun working out which bits of history have been woven in from where… so much of all this is forgotten history now.  But I haven’t forgotten anyway…

Not just yet…

Once all this seemed a long way away but with Sir Alex Younger ex of MI6 being wheeled out to warn us we need to introduce Sweedish style concription WWIII looks closer every day...

Warranty

That time of the year again when I force Vauxhall to fix my Corsa under it's now defunct 2010-2014 100,000 mile un-time-limited Lifetime Warranty deal and they look at me like I've got the Red Death as I patiently explain that the reason I paid them £16,000 in 2014 was I was well aware that it was the worst deal ever in motor retail history and it'd cost them more to deliver on than probably the car cost in the first place but that's tough... You have to keep fixing it now or get sued.

It has 60000 on the clock and does 2000 miles a year.  Sorry but you're stuck with me till 2044.

.

IDF identifies the person responsible for firing three targeted missiles at Kitchens without Borders aid convoy

 "It was an accident"

Again?

Mr Toad's Birthday

 

Lot of unused coat hangers.  One plate of an unidentifiable food substance.  Liz Truss and a few of her spads.  And a member of the bar staff proffering a single glass of white wine on a tray.  Not exactly heaving, is it?  

I seem to have upset some Zionists again...

Seem to have upset some more Zionists on twitter.  Whenever I pop back my timeline is full of responses which I have lost track of.  I can't even get angry about most of them - they are too absurd and deluded for words... for example

...how are you supposed to even cope with this level of deluded... although this was topped by the person who thought that you can't hold a nuclear power to account...

...and for blatant porkies "there's no carpet bombing"...

...somebody tell the Financial Times (here) a well known loony left publication...

Pear Shaped in Dystopia Series 2 Episode 1

 

Urban. decay

 

War is a coming...

Over on BBC iPlayer Ms Dooley is sent to watch the British Army train the Ukrainian conscript army to become fresh cannon fodder in their hopelessly undermanned war.  Possibly the most depressing section is where the recruits recall being asked if they are prepared to die for their country and unanimously saying "Yes".  I'd be saying "I'm not sure.  It sounds a bit inconvenient."

Meanwhile Donald Tusk of Poland is blowing very hard over the media that he's sure WWIII is coming probably quite soon.  Where did it all go wrong?  And where will it ever end?  I'm sure they're getting us ready for conscription...

Most of the poor souls going to fight in WWI style trenches and practicing sleeping in puddles think they have to go as if Putin takes over he'll simply exterminate everyone.  Perhaps but it all seems very hopeless... How many young men can they find?  One thing hasn't changed.  The front line troops are still mostly men.  Perhaps that's why they decided this documentary should be fronted by a pregnant lady...?