I know you’re always there

Music to accompany today’s Mother’s Day post is from Genesis, copyright is not owned by me but by Genesis, Universal Music Group and the video is provided courtesy of YouTube. Apologies if it won’t play where you are but I hope you can find a version that will.

Today is the day when the clocks went forward in the UK, beginning British Summer Time, and it is also Mothering Sunday. If we need an excuse to celebrate the women in our lives then it is today.

My mum died in 1985, as many of you will already know. I still miss her a lot and my brothers also miss her but don’t know as much as I do about the life she had with my dad. I will always be grateful to her for teaching me that everyone is exactly the same if you look beneath the surface. She was the one solid rock that I have been built upon and I will never forget what she has taught me about people and life.

I grew up at a time when there was a lot of racist views in the media and in tv programming, the civil rights movement was dominating the US headlines alongside the war in Vietnam. The catholics in Northern Ireland were being stopped from taking any but the most menial jobs in the Province and the IRA were beginning to gain momentum once again. With this backdrop, and the fact that my dad’s family were superior whites, it’s a wonder I learned any lessons which were completely different to my surroundings but learn them I did at the feet of a woman who opened my eyes to so much pain, suffering and poverty around the planet.

Mum showed me, by her actions and words, that people are people and this was demonstrated by so many of my peers, The Beatles received a lot of press in the UK for insisting that wherever they played in the USA the audience was not segregated. This brought to light the Jim Crow policies which JFK was trying to remove before his assassination in 1963. Policies which should never have been created after the Civil War ended 100 years before were being chipped away by the Black Leaders in the USA, people like Dr. Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali and others brought the fight for civil rights to the attention of the remainder of the world.

When you consider how far we have still got to go in almost every country on this small rock to eliminate racism and bigotry it makes you wonder if the sacrifices made by those men and women of the 1960’s was really worth the effort. Then you remember that if they hadn’t started the ball rolling we would still be in the dark ages of American History which tRump is trying so desperately to recreate. I feel that his is the last hurrah of White Supremacy and Racism, I also hope that his brand of fascism never comes to fruition.

Back in the 1990’s, when he was supporting the Democrats, he said that he had no intention of ever running for the Presidency but, if he ever changed his mind he would have to run as a Republican because the Democrats would never buy into his brand so he would not stand a chance of being nominated by the party he was serving. In a world where ignorance and intolerance has been outlawed for so long he stood up and brought it back to the forefront in American politics and those bigots and racists came out of the woodwork to put forward their claim for White Supremacy. This has spread to all four corners of the globe across all seven seas and was the reason for the attack in Christchurch NZ a few weeks ago. Let no one mistake this for fascism because that is exactly what it is.

If we don’t stop this soon then tRump will declare the USA his, he will halt democracy (I’m just surprised he hasn’t done this already after losing the House of Representatives). All those opposing him will suddenly disappear and never be seen or heard from again. He has already gained support from at least one American News Agency and is getting support in the UK from a woman who should be ashamed of herself for aligning with such a disgraceful human being, he not only hates women but wants them to go back to being barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen. He hates blacks, Jews, LGBTQIA people and anyone who has the cheek to criticise his views openly.

He has been given the Mueller report and is being allowed to redact this before it will be shown to the American people, by his AG who is acting in his own interests and not in the interests of the American People. He has got to be stopped but there are far too many Americans who will back a lame duck rather than his opponent to stop him in 2020. What American voters have to realise in 2020 is that the only way to stop him will be to back whichever candidate the Democrats put forward. American politics are still dominated by two parties and GOP have been covering up tRumps crimes for so long that they can’t stop now because they are just as guilty as he is.

He was elected in 2016 because of the opposition being split 3 ways, there were 2 independents standing in most states but not in every state, so the Democrat (Mrs Clinton) did not generate enough votes in the College to be elected although she won the public vote over tRump. Why doesn’t America remove the College and just rely on the person winning the Public Vote to be elected as President, that is something only the Americans themselves can do.

I have seen examples of the hatred being spouted against AOC, Nancy Pelosi and other strong women in the House, there has also been a backlash against the likes of Adam Schiff who has been very vocal in calling out tRump (he’s a Republican by the way, in case you didn’t know) so the backlash against this criminal is beginning to gain momentum and the big question now is can it continue to gain force before 2020 so that someone in the GOP will stand against the sitting POTUS for nomination as a candidate and beat him.

Sorry for the rant, especially since this post was going to be in praise of women everywhere, I did get sidetracked and for that I apologise profusely. I don’t want to dwell on our own troubles here in the UK but we have a stubborn bitch who is determined to take this country to the dogs in order to appease the vocal minority at the expense of the silent majority.

The love you take is equal to the love you make

Since this post is coming from my iPad there’s no music accompanying it. I don’t have a lot to say here, however, there’s a growing trend among the electorate in the UK who want to make the final decision between a bad deal and no deal Brexit, with the third option being remaining in the EU. It’s something our PM will ignore at her peril with so many within her own party fearing for their jobs if they go against the will of their constituents.

Her position was untenable before the call to revoke Article 50 was started, now with 5m signatures and counting, she will be an idiot to press ahead with her no deal agenda for Brexit. If we leave without any deal it won’t take very long to completely bankrupt the UK and lose the Scots and Irish from the union so that they can join the EU in their own right.

Who can say what the Welsh will do once the Nation starts being pulled apart because the latest polls show that they have also had enough of the lies, hatred and bigotry caused by the leavers in 2016. Seems that the minority, as usual, are louder, more violent and totally lacking in sanity by claiming that they hold the high ground since 38% who voted to leave Europe in 2016 is a resounding majority.

Instead of being my deliverance

Music to accompany this post is from my favourite Muslim, a man without whom my life would not be as rich. Copyright is owned by Cat Stevens, Island Records and Universal Music Group. Video courtesy of YouTube and apologies if it doesn’t play where you are then I can only apologise for that.

Here we are as Saturday Night turns into Sunday morning and the attacks in Christchurch last weekend have not led to any further attacks on our Muslim brothers and sisters. Thank you to everyone who helped to make that possible this week.

I always feel a sense of horror when I read of attacks against anyone while they are in a place of worship, not just because they happen there but they are targeting people who are trying to make sense of the madness by praying to their God. I may not believe in a Supreme Being but that doesn’t mean I don’t see good people all around me who do believe in one God or another. They are trying to get through life the same as everyone else and it is always a shame when someone comes along and takes their life away too soon.

I am no stranger to death, having almost died several times in my life and coming close to ending it myself a few more. Because of this I don’t believe that any divine being would sit back and watch as we try to hurt and kill each other every day. If there is one truth I have learned it is that every holy book that has ever been written, puts in plain language, that we should love one another. Every religion has its own set of rules and yet they amount to much the same across every religion on this planet. Jews and Christians have the 10 commandments, Islam has another set of rules, Buddhism, Sikhism and other religions have different rules laid out in their holy books yet the one thing every religion has in common is love.

If every religion states that the followers of said religion should love their neighbours why is there so much hate in the world? The reason comes down to people. A few radicalise the Qran, or the Bible, or Scripture, for their own agenda. They preach hatred, violence against others who don’t follow their faith and incite others to go out and kill innocents. I have seen throughout history that the ones preaching violence and hatred are not the ones doing the killing, why? They want to live to spread their lies and hatred across the planet to as many people as possible.

If they believe that war can be justified in this way then there is no hope for them. Everyone of us is capable of killing another human being given the right set of circumstances. Bravery isn’t being able to walk into the line of fear unafraid of being killed. Bravery is being scared to walk into the line of fire but doing it anyway. That is why we have police and armies to do this on our behalf and keep us safe. I have admiration for those who take up arms in order to protect others who seek to do harm. I do not want the day to come when all of the police in the UK are armed as a standard, unlike the US and many other countries on this planet we have special armed units who can be mobilised wherever they are needed.

In the modern world where our enemies hide in plain sight because they are too cowardly to wear a uniform and declare themselves enemy combatants, we are facing an ever growing danger of someone pulling a weapon on our police officers, soldiers, sailors and airmen, even when they are off duty so it will probably come to a time when every one of the policemen and women in the UK will be armed in order to protect them while on duty.

Gun and knife crime are on the rise, there are many organisations operating on our soil who use explosives to terrorise our communities and make our life difficult. I for one refuse to change my routine for them. If I see anyone being attacked and the odds are stacked against them, I will use my phone to call the police before I then wade in to offer assistance. There are a lot of others who will do the same, we are not heroes, just ordinary citizens who hate to see anyone being targeted because of their differences. Women and men, we overcome our fear and jump in to help whenever anyone is in danger. The only time I draw the line is when someone is drowning because I cannot swim and there’s no point in a rescuer having to rescue me as well as the person I was trying to save.

If life has taught me one thing it is how to overcome my natural fear of being injured, any time I have fought has not been to defeat someone else, it is to protect myself or others from harm. I have had a broken nose, had my scalp cut and head bashed in a few times but I will not back down when someone is threatened and fighting for survival.

On a less fractious note, I have spent the last few days listening to Tom Walker’s album, much to the annoyance of my wife, and it is exceptional. I cannot compare him to anyone else because his influences are there but he has followed his own muse and his sound is not like anyone else I know. His talent shines through the songs, some of which you will know if you listen to the radio, some you may not know but every song on the album is a gem waiting to be discovered.

I have also started watching Designated Survivor on Netflix because of the strength of the first episode when it was shown on Sky. I have watched the first 17 episodes of season 1 and it is going from strength to strength. Story lines are believable and the cast is so strong that you forget they are actors playing a part and become enthralled by their individual back stories. Keifer Sutherland has found another winner to bring to the small screen and I really hope this goes on and on.

You keep all your money in a big brown bag

Music to accompany this post is from The Beatles with a little known (or remembered ditty) from the Magical Mystery Tour album and it was the B-Side of All You Need Is Love. Copyright is owned, not by me, but by The Beatles/Apple Corps/EMI Music and the video is presented courtesy of YouTube. Apologies if it doesn’t play where you are.

I have noticed recently that some of our leaders have offered condolences to the victims families following the attacks by Australian Terrorists at 2 Christchurch Mosques on Friday. The same politicians who incite White Supremacists to rise up and strike against the “Muslim threat”.

There is no Muslim Threat to our way of life and these attacks are not justified by saying there is. Our Muslim population have as much right to live in our country as we do. They came to escape persecution and war at home, we welcomed them in and the majority want them here because they add so much to our environment. Our lives are enriched when we welcome brothers and sisters into our community because they were unwelcome in their own.

Inclusion doesn’t just mean being outraged at the terror attack but also getting to know the Muslims who are relocating here from the Middle East, Africa and anywhere else. Muslims following the Qoran are peaceful, law abiding tax payers. They want to live without the fear of violence and only idiots will not be able to see this. I have seen video on Twitter of a Muslim, wearing a blindfold in different parts of Amsterdam (I think) wearing a blindfold and asking people to hug him even though he is a Muslim.

A lot of people did just that, went up and gave him hugs, they didn’t necessarily know him but they cared enough about the Islamophobia which is running rampant across the planet just now. Can I just add that the majority of recent terror attacks around the world have been by home grown white extremists and they claim to be Christians. Christ said to love thy neighbour, that doesn’t mean shooting him to death at every opportunity so these people are no more Christian than the members of ISIL were Muslims.

Muslims are good people in the main, you get some bad apples just like some Jews are bad, some Christians are bad, some Brits are bad, some Arabs are bad. We are all unique so don’t daub everyone with the same brush you use to daub the bad apples.

On another note, closer to home, Nigel Farage decided to march for Brexit as Leave Means Leave (when 2 countries out of 4 voted to Remain in 2016) and discovered he has fewer followers now than he did in 2016. That’s why he and his followers are against a second referendum to decide whether we should leave without any kind of deal whatsoever. The majority would rather remain in the EU than bankrupt this country by leaving without any deal.

I have recently rediscovered that there are some fantastic sci-fi shows around at the moment, things like The Orville, Star Trek Discovery, The Gifted and other shows in similar veins. Some of these are being repeated and I am only just catching onto them, others I caught from the beginning and they continue to go from strength to strength.

Does anyone have a show that they recently discovered on a repeat showing or caught from the beginning? I think I have just about exhausted myself now so I will bid you a fond adieu for now and hope to catch you again real soon.

Speak to me of summer

Music today is from Yes, the most truly positive prog rock group ever. Copyright is not owned by me, so apologies if the video doesn’t play where you are but that is down to YouTube. Song is copyright of Yes/Atlantic/Rhino.

It’s really very hard to understand why so many people don’t believe in Global Warming when all the signs are there. There are high winds, storms, hail and snow everywhere these days and no country or state in the USA can now guarantee perfect weather every day. Why is it so hard to understand that if Global Warming was not real the weather would not have changed so drastically in recent years? The planet and Mother Nature are trying to correct the imbalance.

Is that so hard to believe? The planet has undergone quite amazing shifts over the course of its history, including wiping out dominant species (Dinosaurs) when things have changed quickly. What makes us think the planet isn’t trying to wipe us out because we are a threat to its survival?

Going back to yesterdays vote regarding Brexit, the Government has been defeated again and the PM put forward a motion to remove No Deal Brexit from the table and then voted against it. She wants to cripple this country by taking us out of the EU at any cost. Leaving the EU will cost this nation jobs, money and leave a lot of citizens relying on benefits with too few paying into the pot.

Jeremy Corbyn wants to leave with an agreement, even though it is increasingly obvious to Labour Party Members and Congress that this is not in anyone’s interests. He is therefore unfit to lead the party into a General Election but he refuses to stand down. He is as guilty of chasing power as the PM is guilty of refusing to back down. I want to see an end to Tory mismanagement and tax relief to the 1% which means the NHS and Welfare System are strapped for cash. If they paid what they can afford instead of paying nothing, then this country could handle a no deal Brexit. However, because there will be so few jobs left IF we leave without a deal the 1% are taking their wealth and moving to Continental Europe in their droves (hard when you consider how few of them there are) but it is happening.

I want to see a second referendum with 3 options and a realisation that anyone eligible to vote who doesn’t bother to vote will be counted as a vote to Remain inside the EU. That will end the debate about only 52% of those voting to leave gives a mandate to leave. It would only have been a mandate if at least 2/3rds of those voting committed us to Brexit. Less than that is not a mandate it is a recommendation.

The majority of those eligible to vote yet didn’t vote obviously felt both sides were flawed and they didn’t have correct information at the time to make a decision either way. Now that the truth of the Leave campaign is known we deserve a final say on whether we leave with no deal or withdraw A50 and remain inside the EU with our veto intact and the right to use our own currency as well as the Euro.

Apologies to those of you who want to take the European out of Britain, you’re misinformed and wrong. We are stronger within the EU than we could be in the modern world without their backing. We have the right to veto any ruling we think is not in the interests of the British people and we have our own currency. Leaving will weaken the pound so much that instead of 2 and a bit dollars our pound will be worth around 50cents, when I was growing up there were $4 to the pound, £1 would buy an awful lot but now it doesn’t even buy the basics.

Minimum wage is not enforceable if people accept £1 an hour because there are no jobs, zero hour contracts will not be wiped out if there are no jobs and people on zero hour contracts have no recourse to benefits since they have a job which will pay them for working but not pay them for not working. This country has gone from taking care of the poorest in our society from the cradle to the grave to becoming a third world country in my lifetime. Harry Smith saw the country change from one where the poor had no rights to one where they were taken care of. It’s now going completely the other way and returning to the days when the poor had no recourse to food, shelter, health care or any reasonable right to live.

The Tories have been selling off the most profitable assets the people owned a stake in, with the profits from the sale going to them and their cronies and the form of tax cuts. This means that the wealthy now pay less tax than they should be paying and practically no national insurance (it’s the latter that is supposed to pay for the benefits and health services in the UK). Labour will re-nationalise these things to bring the profits back into the coffers of the many rather than the few. This is no bad thing.

Why can’t we just have the best of both worlds? Because the wealthy want to increase their wealth, which they have done with the help of every Tory Government since 1979. The poor are becoming more and more frustrated so the Tory Governments give them someone to focus their anger on, if you are working you are told there are many who don’t want to work and they are draining limited resources. That means that the poor are picking on those on benefits, some of whom would rather be working, some are too ill to work but lose their benefits because they are too ill.

Easy to keep a divided poor under your control than a united poor working to get the rich to pay their fair share towards the welfare state. The rich are contributing to the Tory coffers to keep them in power so they never have to worry about the working classes demanding more pay for the profits their work is generating. As long as we have a Tory Government then the working class will be downtrodden and have their rights eroded.

We need a Labour Government, but one committed to the policies passed by the Labour Party which need a strong leader to accept these if they go against his principles. Jeremy Corbyn is not a strong enough leader to accept Policy decisions which go against his ideals. He was silent during the referendum in 2016 because he could not give voice to the arguments for Remain when he was going to vote for Brexit. We need, and deserve, a leader of the Labour Party who will back policy decisions even if these go against every thing he wants to see. Then, and only then, can we get someone in power who will see policy decisions through to the end.

I have never considered becoming a counsellor or ambassador until recently, however, when I looked into it there is no way I can commit to a 5 year time scale in order to become qualified. I have a lot to offer and would like to share my experiences with others so if anyone has any knowledge of how I can become a lay ambassador for those with issues to face them and find a way to overcome them, please let me know how.

Twisting Your mind (Part 2)

Once the move had finished I restarted the laptop and it still didn’t work. I then went into the settings and tweaked a few things and bang! It works again.

Thanks to those who wrote comments telling me how you resolved similar issues. I’m so pleased that there are so many good people on here.

Twisting your mind and smashing your dreams

Music to accompany this post is from Metallica, the first album of theirs I had heard played for me by a lovely woman I met at the hotel in Los Angeles where I was staying (she was the bell-hop bus driver for the hotel). Her name is Carla Simon and her boyfriend was another good friend to myself and 2nd wife, Jason Noriega. Having lost touch with them I have no idea if they are still in LA or have moved to Texas where they were talking of going. Anyway, they introduced me to Metallica and this track is for them as much as anyone. Copyright is not owned by me but is owned by Metallica and their record label. Video is once again courtesy of YouTube and apologies if it doesn’t play where you are.

News today about the dumpster leading the Free World, he turned up in a disaster zone, took out a load of Bibles and started signing these and issuing them to survivors. Someone who for decades has been practising every single one of the 7 deadly sins, signing bibles, has to make you question religion. Every religion has been hijacked by some to further their press for power, increase their wealth but this is someone trying to claim he wrote the bible when he has not been around long enough to make that claim, Methusalah hadn’t been around long enough to make that claim.

Anyhoo, changing the subject because I swore to stay away from him during Lent but so far only managed 3 days. Enough of my woes though, I also heard some good news yesterday, someone I follow on Twitter announced he only has 2 months left until he goes to the Caribbean to get married. His name is Matt and his husband to be is also called Matt. I really needed to hear some good news when I read about the closeness of his wedding. May I take the time to share with you my best wishes to the happy couple for a long and happy married life.

For those regular readers of this blog you know I do sometimes flit from topic to topic to try and get everything down that I am thinking of, I received an email from my dad’s email yesterday saying he had accidentally deleted my last email and wanted me to resend it, however, I had been having issues with my laptop and had to put windows back onto it meaning I lost a multitude of files, games, apps and software that I am having trouble locating now. This makes me want to scream, but that wouldn’t get the software back onto my laptop. Oh well, back to the drawing board.

Changing the subject again, I would like to know how many of my colleagues here, dear reader, have had issues with software not working as it is supposed to. I bought and installed dBpoweramp music converter and it was working fine before. I have reinstalled it and it was working up until my laptop was restarted to finish off the latest update to Windows 10, now it is still on the laptop but it doesn’t give me any of the options from the right click menu to convert a file or to edit the id tag. Not sure whether or not to try this again, i.e. Restarting the laptop once the current task has finished to change the attributes of a huge folder.

There is only a few hours left to go, approximately 7 according to the timer. So watch this space as I will update you after trying the restart.

Going back to my problems, I sent my old phone off to what I thought would be a reputable company (WeBuyAnyPhone.com) but they still say they haven’t received it and the compensation I got from the Post Office to cover my loss was £256 less than they offered. Has anyone else encountered problems with this company? Would love to hear from you if you have.

On yet another tack, does anyone feel that there is a conspiracy going on at the moment? It seems that we have become subjected to a lot of hatred, bigotry and victimisation for speaking out about the current spate of intolerance since 2016. However, the tide is turning and those bigots, racists and misogynists are about to get their come comeuppance. Thank you to all those, like me, who will never bow down in the face of adversity, who stand up for those who can’t stand up for themselves. Anyway, here we are at the end of this post, thank you for reading and if you have arrived at the destination I hope the journey was worthwhile.

Who can say where they’re blowing

Music to accompany today’s ramblings is from Roxy Music and is shared courtesy of EG Music, Universal Music and Island Records. Video is shared from Vevo courtesy of YouTube and apologies if it doesn’t play where you are.

Of course it is now Lent, the run up to Easter, and a time for Roman Catholics to fast. Others will give up chocolate, tv, cigarettes or something else during this period. Myself, I won’t be giving up anything, why? After all the cases involving clergy from the Catholic religion of rape of minors (both sexes) and them being found guilty I feel that any organised religion which stops its clergy from marrying and carrying on a normal sexual life has to be accountable when members of that clergy commit crimes against others. Especially when those others are children.

I was brought up a catholic but stopped going to church when I left home because I saw too many men (yes men, white males almost exclusively) behaving for an hour as though they were the most godlike creatures who existed on this planet. Once out of church though these men behaved like animals. Many went to the pub while their wives prepared and cooked dinner, some of them would be talking to women and arranging to meet up with them later on that same day for sex, even though they had wives and children at home.

I actually stopped going to church regularly before I left home apart from Easter, Christmas and during Lent and Advent I would go occasionally just to see if anything changed. At one point I was considering becoming a missionary for the church, until my eyes were opened to all the hatred and bigotry around me at school and at church. I believe that there is a purpose for us here but it is not to hate and lie and cheat. I learned that last lesson too late to save my first three marriages, however, I may be able to save this one.

I have studied different religions, although by no means all of the religions on the planet, and the one thing they have in common is to treat everyone around you with love, respect, and tolerance. Today there is not enough of this going around. I can not believe in any God who would allow his children to fight, kill and maim in his name when, in the old testament scriptures he supposedly attacked villages, nations and any manner of people for being ungodly. I also found out (around about 1974) that Adolf Hitler was a Catholic and he was never excommunicated by the church at any time. That says a lot about the church and the teachings of the Bible to me.

If God did exist then he got bored with us and went elsewhere to create worlds and people to inhabit them, or maybe he wasn’t immortal and has died in the intervening time since sending His son to earth to preach to His chosen people (the same Jews who have been persecuted for the last 4,000 years). What is the point of carrying on with any religion when wars have been fought to decide which God was real and which was fake? Wars which should never have been started but this country wanted to increase it’s land mass and wealth by killing another nation and taking control of its land and indigenous people for their own greed.

I think that those Native Americans and Native Australians and New Zealanders knew more about life, nature and the symbiosis with humans than we ever will hope to learn from any source. Instead of sitting down peacefully and talking with the Natives the Europeans killed them and very nearly wiped out every indigenous person in Australia, New Zealand and The Americas. They caught and enslaved massive numbers of Africans and shipped them to other countries where their dark skin wouldn’t feel the affects of the sun as much as the white skin did.

Why did all this happen? To spread civilisation across the world, however, who was more civilised? I think that civilisation isn’t measured by wealth, it’s measured by how much you help your fellow travellers, after all we are all on the same 365 and a bit day journey around our sun every year. If we ignore what is happening around us then we will perish just as those Natives did when we attacked them in order to wipe them out and make them civilised. To what end? We can never hope to repay those who remain for the losses we forced on them. African, Native American, Indian, Native Australian or Native New Zealander.

The hatred and bigotry is still running rife today and instead of forcing it underground and killing it off slowly it has resurfaced into everyday life, the big difference between now and the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries is that we have social media, twitter and facebook, so every injustice is being probed and prodded until we have made those perpetrating hatred and bigotry know that we are watching and we will not forgive without some recompense to those they persecute.

Anyway, dear reader, thank you for listening to me ramble on and I hope you take care, whatever you do, keep yourself safe, wherever you go, remain in the light and may your god go with you everywhere.

Raised my voice in anger

When I know I never should. Music to accompany todays’ wanderings and spiritual awakenings is from Freddie Mercury and the original Queen (how could it be anything else with Brian, Roger and John?) video is courtesy of YouTube and the recording is copyright of Queenonline.com and EMI Music.

Why have I chosen this track today? I’m not sure, unless it was to emphasise the latest whopper uttered by the current incumbent nincompoop of the White House, “I never helped Kushner or my daughter to get security clearance!” The people responsible for vetting before awarding anyone security clearance told the media that “Donald tRump told them to speed the security clearance through for both Ivanka and Jared because they had nothing to hide and it was taking too long.”

If that isn’t helping then I don’t know what he thinks would be helping. Of course some of us would call it tampering with due process. When is a duck not a duck? Surely, if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck and looks like a duck we can argue that it is a duck. If tRump held meetings in Russia and America talking about Trump Towers Moscow isn’t that collusion with Russia? We don’t know what he discussed in those meetings he had, the meetings Donald Jr had with the Oligarchs, so we have to surmise they have not been made public because they contain damaging information against their legality.

If someone is innocent they ask for investigations to be conducted in order to clear their name, they do not call these investigations a witch hunt, or try to say others are guilty of what they are accused of. We are seeing someone who is becoming more worried and more unhinged every day with every new revelation into his private life. He is still refusing to release his tax returns so must have a lot to hide there. If the IRS are still auditing him 4 years after the start of the audit he must have a lot of hidden wealth coming to light. I don’t know if it is true, but I have heard most audits are completed within a month. Audits of criminals are the ones which take longer since they hide things offshore which have to be painstakingly discovered.

Going back to our own shores (I live in the UK, we are a small block of land in an ocean but we are not an island). Brexiteer, and supreme idiot, Boris Johnson, is now worried that Theresa May will remove no deal from the table and therefore force the UK to ask the EU to withdraw Article 50. Why will this worry him? Because it will mean that the UK remains within the EU so the will of 51.5% of those who voted (approximately 70% of those eligible to vote) will have been ignored. He was the one asking in 2016 that a vote of less than 55% in favour either way should be declared unbinding.

I think we should have tabled that referendum better and said that anyone not voting would be taken to agree with the status quo and remain. How can anyone believe that less than 50% of those eligible to vote should be given the right to decide for the (remaining) silent majority?

I wonder if anyone knows whether 741741 works in the UK to put vulnerable people in touch with a counsellor? If it doesn’t what is the UK’s equivalent number? I am asking because someone tweeted that number in response to a tweet against homophobia and LGBT+ youth. I have made no secret on here or in my personal life that I support everyone to be who they are, regardless. I would just like to know if someone who feels suicidal in the UK, can they contact, say the Samaritans, on a short dialling code from a UK mobile?

I have always felt that we are all unique, no one has the right to call people out as drug dealers, murderers or rapists just because of their country of origin, or has the right to call them non-conformists just because they don’t follow the “normal” white ideals. I think everyone has the same basic human rights and should be allowed to identify however they want to identify, love who they want without prejudice or fear. I may not identify as gay, lesbian (wrong sex anyway for that one), trans, cis, but I have loved men as well as women and see nothing wrong with that, as love is love. I may not have kissed many men but I have kissed a few. I may not have been to bed with many men (that’s because I prefer women as bed partners) but if we try to stop anyone from being themselves we lose more than we gain.

How many parents have remained proud of their sons when they have brought a man home and introduced him as their partner? Or daughters who have brought another woman home and declared that this is their partner? I think a few would want to keep this hushed up, I would remain deeply proud of my child no matter what. I will fight for everyone’s right to live life freely without prejudice, no matter whether that prejudice is against their religion, skin colour or who they love, how they identify or how they dress.

If it wasn’t for those, like me, who have stood up to those idiots who think it is ok to slag people off and call them less than human then we would still live in the dark ages. The world is a much brighter and healthier place when we embrace diversity and inclusion. There is no one who is more full of joy and beauty than someone in love. All love is valid, all love is beautiful, and everyone in love shines with a glow that refuses to be silenced. Remember as you go about your day, without someone to love and be loved in return the days are grey and meaningless.