2025 Remembered P - T

As we are at the fag end of 2025, it's that time when we look back at what has happened and remember the good, the bad and the Ugly of the last 12 months.  

P - Peace Prize - You can imagine the massive toddler sulk Donald Trump went into when it was announced that he hadn't won the Nobel Peace Prize, i imagine that bottom lip stuck out so far that Melania could have used it as a table but the tangerine tyrant must be wondering what he has to do next year in order to be rewarded for his peaceful intentions. Not enabling a genocide by Israel, bombing Iranian nuclear sites pre-emptively, sending in the military to snatch people off the streets in the US, pardoning 1,500 criminals who supported him, firing independent agency watchdogs, threatened numerous universities with sanctions, deporting immigrants accused of gang membership without due process and defying court orders, demanding the prosecution of the media, ignoring laws and deleting federal programs,  threatening to make Canada and Greenland American states and not blaming Ukraine for somehow getting themselves invaded would help i guess.
 
Q - Qualifications - On the face of it the government’s Business Secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, and the Chancellor Rachel Reeves are the perfect people to hold the position because he was a Solicitor according to his CV and she was an Economist at the Halifax Bank of Scotland. It then emerged that his claim was a mistake and he was a 'trainee solicitor’ because actually he jacked it in after only 10 months and she wasn't an Economist at all but worked in the Retail Section at the Halifax and both blamed typo's on their CV's and were happy to correct the mistake, so that's okay then.

R - Rugby World Cup - I was at Twickenham when the English Ladies won the Rugby World Cup against Canada and cheered when the other 81,000 in the crowd did because I know nothing about Rugby, but we won so Hurrah!!! This followed our ladies winning the European Football Championship so not a bad summer for the English ladies sports team.

S - Space Ladies - When I saw the picture of Katy Perry holding up the daisy in the Blue Origin penis shaped space ship I thought that picture is going to be iconic and it was a great picture but once they were back on Earth 11 minutes later it all went very wrong. Insights from Perry included feeling 'super-connected to love' and 'Space is going to finally be glam' and 'We are going to put the ‘ass’ in astronaut.' Another one said she prepared for the flight to the edge of Space by skydiving in Dubai 'to test out my hair to make sure that it was OK' which must have mortified real scientist and astronaut's but still, great picture though.

T - Tariffs - The 3rd Fattest President once said that the most beautiful word in the dictionary to him is tariff but then he did say that other countries would pay them which turned out to be nonsense because it cost the American consumers so it's not a great business plan but he went ahead and sprinkled Tariffs around and rather than the trade deals he expected to come rolling in, everyone else said right up your Fatso and stuck their own tariffs on America and boycotted their exports which led him to losing his bottle and earning the Nickname TACO, or Trump Always Chicken Out. He did promise a $2,000 dividend to all Americans as Tariffs were bringing in so much money therefore making them pay higher prices for the essentials and then giving them something to make up for him making them pay higher prices for the essential things but then he withdrew that idea anyway so they just got stuck with the paying higher prices bit. Economic genius this guy remember.

Our Year In Numbers

We do a lot in the 8,760 hours of the year, on average last year we:

Spoke 4.75 million words  
Took 2.4 million steps
Sent 24,000 text messages
Farted 7,200 times
Laughed 6,000 times  
Checked the time 5,475 times
Spent 3,467 hours spent sitting down
Washed our hands 3,285 times
Slept for 2,940 hours
Spent 2,920 hours online
Urinated 2,555 times
Coughed 2,455 times
Ate 1,625 times
Drank 1,500 times
Spent 1,450 hours on our phones
Listened to the radio for 1,066 hours
Watched TV for 1,022 hours     
Complained 1,016 times  
Defecated 730 times
Drank 500 hot drinks
Sneezed 450 times
Took 450 photos
Had 260 showers
Spent 243 hours reading a newspaper
Had sex 54 times
Cried 50 times (Female)
Ate 36 take outs
Watched 30 movies
Cries 13 times (Male)

Let's not delve too deeply into having sex 54 times and a woman crying 50 times shall we!! 

2025 Remembered K - O

As we are at the fag end of 2025, it's that time when we look back at what has happened and remember the good, the bad and the Ugly of the last 12 months.  

K - Keir Starmer - After the years of the awful Conservatives, those of us on the left all had high hopes for Keir Starmer and a long awaited Socialist agenda but what we got was us hoping that the Fat Lady is practising her scales and gargling with the Aquafresh because to say he has been a disappointment is an under statement. It hasn't gone unnoticed by his own Party who have been maneuvering behind him to work out who is best placed to replace him so it’s as good as over for the man who, for now at least, is the current Labour leader and Prime Minister.
 
L  - Leo XIV - Christmas is usually the only time anyone pays any attention to Chimneys but all eyes were on the one in the Vatican in May after Pope Francis became an Ex-Pope and the race to the Vatican to become Gods mouthpiece was won by Robert Francis Prevost who changed his name to Pope Leo XIV and differentiated himself from the previous 13 Leo's by being American. Obviously only the Catholics were shaking their Rosary Beads excitedly at the news but not to worry if you are not Catholic because there are still plenty of other religions to choose and they will all tell you they are the right one and the rest are made up nonsense.

M - Maria Corina Machado - I was a huge fan of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez but not so much his replacement Nicolás Maduro and Maria Corina Machado isn't either because after the 2024 election that International Monitors said she won, Maduro declared himself the winner and Machado went into hiding and was awarded the 2025 Nobel Peace Peace for her pro-democracy efforts which would include urging America to forcibly remove Maduro and thanking them with substantial Oil contracts.  

N - Netyanhu - When is a Peace Agreement not a Peace Agreement? When Benjamin Netanyahu signs it. In 2025 the man who Joe Biden called 'a fucking liar' signed peace deals and then set about breaking them almost immediately by later moving the goalposts and so his Genocide against the Palestinians went on for which the International Criminal Court and International Court of Justice have issued arrest warrants against him for aiding and abetting War Crimes in Gaza which puts the Israeli leader in the same category as Vladmir Putin, Colonel Gaddafi, Radovan Karadžić , Saddam Hussein and the entire Khmer Rouge regime.

O - Online Safety Act -  In April, Ofcom announced measures to protect UK children online and proved a boon for Virtual Private Networks (VPN) providers because one of the rules introduced was users must prove their age to access porn online in the UK. Obviously not a big hit with users of porn sites and you can draw your own conclusion about Nigel Farage who was pretty much the only person to stand up and shout that he would reverse the Online Safety Bill which restricts what under 18's can access online as it 'restricts free speech'.
What Farage does in his own time on the Internet is up to him but you may want to think twice before shaking his hand...eeew.

FOAB 2025 Top Posts

My stats page shows there has been 478 Posts this year with most readers coming from Brazil, Singapore, United States, Norway and France but which posts make up the 2025 top 10?

At 10...  Capitalism's Crap which was a rant against not only the whole system but how it won't ever change all the time the people who most profit from it are making the rules.     
At 9... Why Would Anyone Choose Facism? which came at the start of 2025 after Elon Musk's double Nazi salute at Donald Trumps inauguration and had me wondering why anyone would want to be associated with the ideology and how the new American leader ticked almost every box for being a fascist.
At 8...Making Money which was inspired by the Terry Pratchett Book 'Making Money' when one of the character's asked a Mint Boss how much it cost to make the coins and which turned out to be each cost more than the face value of the coin.  
At 7... Time To Reverse Brexit which is exactly what it says on the tin and something I have been saying since we made the the god awful decision to leave the EU.
At 6...Generation Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz and this one was probably the shortest of the year and was basically me calling Gen Z boring for going to bed early.
At 5, 4 and 3 was some Special Guest Blogger posts with the donkey headed Egyptian God Set, the journalist Inga Arvad who was a victim of Hitler in an unusual way and then the Greek God Demeter who is to blame if you are a bit cold this winter.
At 2...Low Expectations From Putin Trump Summit was the second most read post and was how Trump likes to tell us he is a great negotiator but Russia's Putin and Israeli Netanyahu had both played Trump like a very fat piano and how these Peace talks in Alaska to end the Ukraine War would result in nothing, and they never so right to have low expectations then.
At 1 and the top Post for 2025 was Nice Kit, Shame About the Away Results and was published at the kick off of the Premier League Season and looked at the 20 teams away kits and the colours they picked and how Psychology says they will fare.

2025 Remembered....F - J

As we are at the fag end of 2025, it's that time when we look back at what has happened and remember the good, the bad and the Ugly of the last 12 months.   

F - Flags - The right wing poindexters found a new way to intimidate anyone not White English by cable tying flags to every available lamppost in England. Obviously not being that bright meant that many of the flags representing 'England' were the British Union Flag so maybe they were showing pride for the other home countries also. Who knows, not them obviously.
 
G - Gaza - As the genocide in Gaza continued, Israel said they always take all precautions to prevent civilian deaths but as the figures from a classified Israeli military intelligence database indicate 83% of Palestinians of the 65,000+ killed by Israeli forces in Gaza have been civilians, they are either not very good at it or are big fat liars because bombing hospitals, private homes and ordering civilians to refugee camps and them bombing them doesn't sound much like taking precautions at all.

H - Heard Island - In his boneheaded attempt to make Americans Poor Again, Donald Trump went around slapping tariffs down on everyone including the Australian Territory Heard Island in the Antarctic which has no humans, but plenty of penguins who now faced a 10% tariff on whatever it was they didn't export. The Australian Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, called it  'a bit strange' but the Penguins did start up a website with the byline 'We love fish and hate fascists'.

I - Iran - Israel have said that Iran have been weeks away from having a nuclear missile for decades and have long wanted to attack the nuclear facilities but now they have a dumb-ass in the White House they went ahead and did it and America joined in and sent B2 bombers to do what Trump said 'obliterated' the nuclear capability and set back Iran's nuclear program 'decades' although the American intelligence people later said just resulted in a bit of a sweep up because they had moved all the nuclear material out beforehand.

J - Jeffrey Epstein - The Files were going to be released and were waiting on a desk to be signed off but then once someone whispered in Trump's weirdly orange ear that his name runs through them they were dismissed as both not existing and a hoax and then he went out of his way to try and persuade his follow Republicans to not vote to release the things which he said didn't exist anyway which they ignored and got them released anyway but heavily redacted but in such a poor way that they can be read still anyway and there we see the man who has been found guilty of sex offences and admitted he grabbed women's genitals and has been accused by up to 30 women of other sexual offences, firmly embedded in them.

2025 Remembered: A-E

As we are at the fag end of 2025, it's that time when we look back at what has happened and remember the good, the bad and the Ugly of the last 12 months.  

A - Andrew -  Began the year as a Prince and a Duke and living in a mansion rent free but ended the year scribbling both titles off his stationary and hiring a removal van as the disgraced Royal was cut adrift from his Family as yet more sordid revelations came out about the perverts close friendship with notorious sex offenders and he became plain old Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor.     

B - Bondi Beach - Horrific scenes with 15 dead and scores injured at a terror attack on a Jewish Hanukkah event at the Sydney beach but amidst the horror a real hero emerged as video's circulated of fruit shop owner, Ahmed al Ahmed, running up to one of the two attackers from behind and grabbing the shotgun from his hands before being shot in the arm and hand by the other terrorist and undoubtedly stopping the death toll raising even further.

C - Comet 3I/ATLAS -  Speculation was on on whether it was either a massive ball of ice careening around the Milky Way for the last few billion of years and entered our Solar System or if it was an alien space ship with hostile intent making the long trip to observe us funny looking humans but the vast majority of the scientific community said all the evidence pointed to it being a comet which is less exciting but it's gone now so we will never know if it was an alien on a sight seeing trip.

D - Denmark - America, being run by a deranged crackpot at the moment, want to take Greenland from the European nation but Denmark make the counter offer of buying California which they ignored but they did send some representatives to test the water of whether the Greenlander's fancied joining the United States and were disappointed to discover that were unable to find anyone pleased to welcome them and rather than tasting Greenland culture and seeing the welcoming faces of the locals, faced angry locals protesting and instead made a whistle-stop tour of an American Military Facility and then swiftly danced out again before they got dinged on the head by a snowball.

E - Eurovision - The largest Song Contest on the Planet isn't quite so large next year after the European Broadcasting Union fudged a vote on whether to allow Israel to compete and Spain, Netherlands, Ireland, Iceland and Slovenia pulled out of the 2026 Event in protest and the host nation, Austria, said they will not drown out the expected booing of the Israeli competitor in the hall or stop protests as happened last year.

Waiting...

It must have been about 10 years ago when there was a story i became aware of being investigated by a couple of Journalists at a newspaper which involved a couple of members of the Trump family and Jeffrey Epstein and it was massive, really explosive and i know that the Newspaper involved was very nervous about it but what happened anyway was someone got wind of it and the relevant threats were made and the story was dropped, cremated and the ashes buried so deep that nobody would find them.
With all these Epstein files now being released and even more being discovered, and Trump obviously wishing they would go away because his name runs incriminatingly through them like a stick of Brighton Rock, i am just waiting for news that confirms that what the two journalists were onto was not only correct but would have been completely justified in telling the World.
There are things coming to light which the fat orange sex pest is going to press hard to label as fake such as the raping of a minor and the abortion story which come with testimony and witness accounts and i just hope that the American media grow a backbone and when he tries to shut them down by calling them Piggy or to ridicule them as bad people, one of them replies: 'You think i'm bad? You were hanging around with a sex trafficker and pedophile for decades and have been found guilty of sexual assault and multiple charges of fraud so i'm not as bad as you, fatso'.        
Anyway, within the troves and terabytes of data just waiting to be plowed through, i'm hopeful that this certain story will come to light but it hasn't yet but if it does, its going to be HUGE.

Santa's Snacks

Christmas Eve is the busiest night of the year for Father Christmas and he appreciates the treats children leave for him and the reindeer and the snacks are much more varied across the globe.
Some kids in other countries often feel he needs something a bit stronger to keep out the cold out as he whizzes around and it is rather chilly flying through the night sky, after all and his first call is in Australia and New Zealand where and obviously in Australia it's a beer and a Rum fruitcake so if Santa gets the presents mixed up a  little, remember Australia is one of the first places he visits and that's a lot of beer and Rum cake.
After Australasia he makes his way to Asia and then Africa where in Nigeria and other parts of West Africa, a Christmas meal of dough and stew awaits him and then he hits Europe.
In the Nordic countries like Denmark and Sweden, children leave out a special rice pudding called risengrød for him and here in England and Ireland it's mince pies left out with a carrot for the reindeer.  
Italy and France give out a glass of wine and carrots for his donkey but in Germany he may go hungry as German children don’t leave food at all, but they write and decorate letters for him and leave them on their windowsills for him to read.
Then he pops across the Atlantic to North America and the waiting Milk and Cookies before visiting South America and El Salvador where kids also leave letters, while in Argentina water is left out for  Santa’s animals but his round belly gets filled upo again in Chile where he will find a Christmas fruitcake and a coffee so he has the energy to keep going throughout the night.
Then it is back home to rest, detox and start planning for next year.

Banned!!!

Wow, those Gun Nuts can hold a grudge. I used to run an annual feature here where i would advertise the annual Christmas photo shoot of Santa and high powered guns at the Scotts Dale Gun Club, you know those wholesome family photo's of Mum, Dad and their children grinning inanely as they stand behind Santa holding a huge weapon.
Obviously being American i even threw in a bit of religion that nothing says peace and goodwill to all men quite like an AK47, the gun baby Jesus himself would ask for and even gave them a free byline, 'Putting the fun back into fundamentalist Christian' but were they grateful? Hell no, they banned me from visiting their website.
Scotts Dale did stop doing the Photo shoot back in 2018 when they began receiving negative media attention and they disappointingly decided that peace and goodwill to all men means not selling high-powered weapon of death that can blow a big hole in another person (or themselves) at Christmas and maybe, you know, instead of a semi-automatic weapon, as used by Americas most devastating mass killers, buy your relatives a pair of slippers or a pair of pyjamas instead.
I was reminded of the Gun Clubs annual Photo Shoot today and wondered if 1) They had restarted doing them and 2) If i was still banned after all these years and the answer to 2 meant that i never did find out about 1 so I have no idea if gun toting parents believe that the greatest gift they can give their child this year is to indoctrinate him or her into the world of automatic weaponry before they are able to walk
Anyway, if you are in Arizona and find yourself in desperate need of an AK47, grenade launcher or assault rifles for those last minute stocking fillers, pop down to the Scottsdale Gun Club, 14860 N Northsight Blvd, Scottsdale, AZ 85260, United States where you will be greeted by friendly staff who can guide you and offer advice on their Family Firearms Safety Course for introducing firearms into the home which is a slip of paper with the words 'INTRODUCING FIREARMS INTO YOUR HOME!!! ARE YOU FECKING MAD!!!'
You can also visit the website at https://scottsdalegunclub.com/ or at least you can if you are not an English Blogger taking the piss out of American bat shit mad gun nuttery.

Ye Olde Christmas

There is much to do before the 25th December which means many of us turn into a Yuleshard (Someone who leaves Christmas preparations to the last possible moment) such as all the cooking, buying presents and just in case people drop by unexpectedly, a quick bout of Scurryfunging (Hastily tidying the house).
Obviously all that has to wait until the Pourboire (Money set aside specifically for drink) has been spent although due to the cost of Christmas, many decide to be Bummocks (brew for specifically Christmas) to save a few quid .
Not that it is a thing where I live on the South Coast where it can be very Blenky (Snow sparingly) but if i woke up in December to a Ningiud landscape (Snow Covered) and cold enough to get Clinkerbell's (Icicle's), I would be Meggling (walk through snow) and Hogamdog (roll a snowball in the snow) to make snowmen with although i understand some people don't like those conditions and prefer to Hiemate (Stay somewhere warm) wrapped up in Mufflements (Warm clothes) but that's up to them, they are denying themselves a good old 'Apolausticism'  (Enjoying yourself).
To me Christmas is more about the build up rather than the day itself but that isn't to say I'm not happy to see someone 'Doniferous' (Carrying a gift) and although i won't partake of Bubbly-jock (Turkey) due to being Vegetarian, i fill up on Vegetables instead and can still get the Crapulence (feeling full) and spend the afternoon on the sofa waiting for the Overquat (uncomfortable feeling having overeaten) to pass while the rest of the family Crawmass (Picking through remnants of a festive meal).  
Once all the commotion of the day is over I do like to sit outside, look at the Yulestarn (Bright Christmas star) and have a nice Nog (Strong, dark beer) with the family and promise not to be so Yuleshardy next year.