With Britain pledging soldiers to a multinational Ukraine force and allocating £200m to fund preparations for the possible deployment of troops, the question is what state is our armed forces actually in and are we up to the job?
And then we take Berl…er, Greenland at it transpires, and, as it melts, Santa’s headquarters, the North Pole, is increasingly becoming a major geopolitical flashpoint. Why exactly?
Christmas cards on the table, this is a rehash of last year’s festive film blog post, but there is a reason for it, in fact there’s two. The first is that there has now been an official poll by the British Board of Film Classification that has ruled, in my favour, confirming that Die Hard – the 1988 action movie starring Bruce Willis as an NYPD detective hoping to reconcile with his estranged wife on Christmas is NOT a Christmas movie.
With the party season entering full-swing I was delighted to see the dancefloor, at a weekend works-do, packed to the rafters with the yoof-of-today all having a whale of a time, partying like it was 1999 and waiving their hands like they just don’t care.
My true love sent to me, an adult advent calendar in a pear tree. In recent years I have ranted long and loud wrt material overconsumption and the consequences thereof. It would appear that we’ll splash the cash for any excuse, none more so on those once-special anniversary events such as Halloween, Valentines, Easter and especially, Christmas.
Last week I had the good fortune of travelling to St Mary’s stadium to watch my team, Preston North End, play a thrilling encounter against fellow Championship contenders, Southampton FC. The fact that we were in the opposition’s half on only three occasions gives the impression that quality football wasn’t really the winner here, but we managed to score on two of them and the afternoon ended with a comfortable three-points in the bag.
It will come as no surprise that I’m not a fan of celebrity this and celebrity that, but t’other week my disappointment of our celebrity culture hit a new all-time low. It wasn’t just the infantile questions on Romesh’s version of Anne Robinson’s once-brilliant quiz show but the fact that several so-called celebrities actually delighted in their lack of knowledge, they genuinely rejoiced in their stupidity and appeared to mock those who answered anything correctly.
Notwithstanding talk of orgies, toe-licking and Ghislaine’s favourite s*x toys, the most shocking revelation from Virginia Roberts Giuffre’s memoir is that she remained adamant that those in Epstein’s circle all knew exactly what was going on. He not only didn’t hide what was happening but took a certain glee in making people watch, and vicariously participate.
Imagine for one second being the White House aide that drew the short-straw and had to wake-up El Presidente last week to tell him he hadn’t won this year’s Nobel peace prize? Man alive what a job!
With Manchester’s shape-shifting Andy Burnham now positioning himself as Labour’s heir apparent it made me consider where did the so-called metro-mayors come from and what do they do exactly?