Looking for those cruise missiles - a visit to Greenham Common

It's said that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Well, the road to nuclear annihilation is paved with the same stuff most British roads are paved with.

Had the Cold War (maybe the First Cold War now?) ever gone hot, then 24 vehicles, each armed with four nuclear cruise missiles, would have come down this road and made their way to pre-planned launch sites in the Berkshire countryside, ready for orders to launch weapons on targets in the Soviet bloc.

Greenham Common is of one of the most well-known sites to British students of the Cold War period. This one-time RAF base played host to American nuclear bombers like the B-47 Stratojet, but is best remembered from being one of the two locations that hosted BGM-109G Gryphon cruise missiles in the 1980s.

(The other, RAF Molesworth, is still an active facility)

Known simply as Cruise to many or the GLCM (Ground Launched Cruise Missile or "glick-em"), the Gryphon was the Tomahawk's land-based cousin, developed and deployed as a response to the Soviet deployment of the RT-21M/SS-20 'Saber' intermediate-range ballistic missile, capable of nuking pretty much anywhere in Europe from well within the USSR in under 15 minutes.

While the Gryphon was by no means as fast as that, its ability to fly long distances at low altitudes using terrain matching systems to keep on course meant that the Soviet Union ended up seeing it as a potential first-strike weapon. They invested considerable amounts of time, money and energy looking for evidence of a planned US first strike.

The presence of the Gryphon at any rate was controversial to put it mildly. Anti-nuclear Peace Camps, eventually women-only were set up outside the entrances to Greenham Common to protest and disrupt operations on the site. 

This included breaking into the control tower and reading all the emergency situation documents and writing on the pages to confirm this. When base security didn't show up for five-and-a-half hours, the women started turning the lights on-and-off to get them to show up, because if they just left, the Ministry of Defence would deny it.

A "battle" between the USAF, the police and many locals on one side, with the protestors on the other ensued. Rocks were thrown, statements were cooked up, fences were cut and it became rather difficult for the missile unit to do any exercises outside the base because protestors kept turning up. In the event of an actual war, I suspect those women might have dealt with in a much more lethal way.

Eventually, the INF Treaty of 1987 saw the missiles removed in 1991 for destruction and the base closed shortly afterwards.

I think all the double entendres have been used here (Review: 'Star Trek' 3.23, "All Our Yesterdays")

I spent five years as a pupil librarian at school, but I never encountered one that acted like Mr Atoz.

This post contains spoilers for Strange New Worlds.

Capital Ring Section 2, Green Chain Section 8a/9/9a

Storm Floris mainly hit the north of the country, but its effects were definitely felt down in London yesterday as I did another long walk. Blustery wind for much of day and occasional rain; I gave serious consideration to going home early if things hadn't improved after lunch.

Ironically, I also did over 21,000 steps when I was at The Greatest Gathering in Derby on Saturday - post on that to follow.

Section 2 of the Capital Ring goes from Falconwood to Grove Park. Well, not exactly as the actual start points are next t a bridge over the A2 and somewhere called Marvels Lane, which is lacking in any Brie Larson.

As walks go, it didn't have many highlights - the area is very suburban in character.

This building is Conduit Head, which was part of an underground tunnel system designed to bring water to Eltham Palace, where Henry VIII grew up. Falling into mostly ruin in the 17th century, only the medieval hall survives with an Art Deco mansion from the 1930s surrounding it. English Heritage now run the place and charge a steep admission fee for entry - I skipped that as I didn't have time. Also doing some Taskmaster-related events if that's your jam that you need to place on a shelf without stepping out of a circle.

I went through Mottingham too, where W. G. Grace lived for thirty years. You know an area is posh when the houses have names.

The highlight of this particular section is King John Playing Fields, which has a spectacular view of nearly all the prominent structures of London.

A shame that it's not accessible by wheelchair - even the gate would be a bit of squeeze for larger people.

Also, this house either has a lot of genuine rubbish for collection or a fly tipper is really showing that they just don't care.

("Fly tipping" is the British term for illegal dumping)

I'd decided that this section was too short for a day's walk and doing Section 3 to Crystal Palace would be far too long an addition. Therefore, I did some of the Green Chain after lunch, heading through Chinbrook Meadows and then Elmstead Woods before going to the station there.

Elmstead Woods, despite being surrounded by London is the sort of place where you could, where it not for the noise of traffic and aircraft, think you were on some alien planet. I found myself thinking of Blake's 7, although they never actually filmed there.

Anyway, I have another walking-related trip planned this week, with a connection to another popular franchise.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer #2

So, I just saw Buffy push Jayne Cobb  into a cremation oven ("Never Kill a Boy on the First Date", in case you're wondering) and it was a bit of weird feeling.

Buffy is one of those characters who manages to be annoying and endearing, sometimes in the same scene. She would try the patience of an awful lot of people who would still risk their lives for her and if she ever met the Doctor, they'd get on like a spaceship on fire. Having probably caused the fire in the first place.

(Ten would be the obvious choice based on mutual levels of banter, but it would be funnier to have her paired up with a more strait-laced incarnation like Five. Or someone socially awkward like Thirteen)

It's the sort of same reaction I got with Ellie from The Last of Us, who is basically Ellie the Zombie Slayer, only they don't call them that in that show.

She does seem to spend an awful lot of time in very short dresses, even at school. I can imagine her and Sydney Bristow snarking about each other's outfits in an Epic Rap Battles of History, but don't ask me to write that.

The times when stunt doubles are involved is fairly obvious, but perhaps I am just good at spotting those scenes.

I'm definitely having a lot of fun with this and the show stands up very well. Even if the Scoobies could do with mobile phones. Something that will need to be addressed in the new show with the "Scooby Twos" as I'm calling them.

Edit 2 August: That wasn't Adam Baldwin, even if it did look like him.

c2c gets nationalised

One of East London's railway operators, c2c (no official definition of that) is being brought back into public ownership as of Sunday 20 July.

I have to say it has been one of the better private operators. Frequent services, pleasant trains and an early adopter of Oyster/contactless; well it had to be due to sharing three stations with London Underground.

I don't know how quickly things will change visually; for one thing the Great British Railways legislation has yet to be introduced.

Does sticking a new vinyl on something make things automatically better? I doubt it. Public organisations can muck up just as much as private ones. Especially rail operators. 

But we shall see. I wonder if we'll get a new livery any time soon?

Not the most ultrasound episode (Review: 'Fringe' 1.16, "Unleashed")

Walter Bishop, bless his heart, is the kind of man who really needs a conservatorship or something like that. He may be a certified genius, but he's frankly certifiable in other ways as well, liable to be a danger to himself or others if carefully monitored by Astrid and/or Peter.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

So, with the revival currently working its way through the pilot stage, I have decided to watch the original series that is currently on Disney+ and ITVX here in the UK.

While I have seen the Kristy Swanson movie, Buffy was not something that I ever watched growing up. The fighting female of my formative years would be one Sydney Bristow of Alias as previously discussed on this blog... of course, when you realised their full names are Buffy Anne Summers and Sydney Anne Bristow, you can see that Abrams was clearly influenced by Joss Whedon in more than one regard.

I've watched the two-part series opener, "Welcome to the Hellmouth" and "Harvest". I'll definitely be watching some more, that's for certain.

At more than one point during this, I started wondering what show I was actually watching. In the climax of the first episode, Xander and Willow are in a mausoleum with a bunch of vampires closing in on them. Willow screams - a reasonable one, not the Full Victoria. Then Buffy enters with this line:

Well, this is nice. I-it's a little bare, but a dash of paint, a few throw pillows... call it home!

This is exactly the sort of line you can imagine one of the post-2005 Doctors from Doctor Who saying, maybe with some slight alterations. Now, I know that Russell T Davies was heavily inspired by Buffy when he brought back Doctor Who but I hadn't quite realised how much! There's even a bit at the end about how Sunnydale is going to rationalise a vampire attack at a nightclub or just forget it happened.

Also in terms of further comments:

• Cordelia is a shallow, mean woman. If I didn't know about her later development, I'd be comparing her to Libby from Sabrina the Teenage Witch.
• How young everyone looks! Sarah Michelle Gellar was just 19 when she started doing this.
• Also, some very 90s fashion - and computers. The Internet is something that Giles is not overly familiar with.
• You get to see a bunch of people in this that you've seen in other things. The first guy to get killed was in CSI: New York. Darla's actor would later be in Defiance. I could go on.
• Also, I don't think Julie Benz's prosthetic fangs quite fit.

Anyway, I might do some more posts on this.

It's Mr Lava Lava (Review: 'Star Trek' 3.22, "The Savage Curtain")

I'd make a "four score" joke, but this is actually episode 77 of 79; TOS not quite reaching the 80 episode mark.

In any event, I got a feeling this was going to be a weird one just from the description on Netflix... 

Israel vs. Iran

It's been rather a long-time coming. I blogged out a playthrough of a game on this scenario that came out in 2010 and I ran an award-winning RP that had it happen in 2015.

In any event, the Israelis have decided that the best way to deal with someone you feel wants to kill you is to kill them first, hence they have launched this massive attack on Iran.

Things though are very different than they were in 2015. Syria is no longer under the reign of Assad. Saudi Arabia was on the brink of normalising relations with Israel before October 7 happened. Hezbollah and Hamas are a shadow of their former selves. While Israel's missile defence system is blunting Houthi attacks. They already damaged a lot of the Iranian air defence capability last year during their previous round.

Iran's options are now limited to trying to wreak havoc on the Straits of Hormuz, something the US and GCC will not stand for, even if Donald Trump is not really keen on major foreign wars - he's more a fan of beating on brown-skinned immigrants who aren't actually doing any real harm.

I feel sorry for the Iranian civilians who are likely to get caught this by virtue of being in the wrong place at the wrong time - or related to the wrong people. Also the conscripts who will be killed as a result of this.

Perhaps this could have been avoided, but Netanyahu wants his grand victory. 

Let's hope something better emerges out of all this.

Massive Dynamic Risk Assessment, or a lack thereof (Review: 'Fringe' 1.15, "Inner Child")

Stop me if you've heard this one before...

Frederick Forsyth 1938-2025

Frederick Forsyth is one of the authors that has definitely influenced me in my own writing, with a strong eye for technical detail and the sort of knowledge only gained from actual experience; he did stuff that quite literally risked his life in the name of research. Also, his stuff is a cracking good read; I re-read The Day of the Jackal when the TV series came out and it holds up very well.

(I have strong memories of following the Jackal's journey through a 1982 European road atlas I happen to have access to)

Definitely a legend in his profession - we will not see his like again, I'd say, at least not for a while.

Israel is seeking to ethnically cleanse Gaza

They may not want to kill all the Palestinians there, but they certainly want them to go somewhere else. That is a crime regardless of how many of them supported or support Hamas.

It is past time for targeted economic sanctions and a suspension of arms sales.

Cloud District Nine (Review: 'Star Trek' 3.21, "The Cloud Minders")

Only four episodes left of this to go. I'll likely move to a whole season review system for the other Trek shows once this is done - a paragraph for each episode, basically.

There has been some comments on science fiction being "woke" recently, with counterpoints that it has always been "woke", especially Star Trek. This is true, but sometimes the political element is more obvious than in other episodes. This one is a particular example.

Shave and a haircut, two naira! (Review: 'Doctor Who', "The Story & the Engine")

That would be a spectacularly cheap haircut considering the current exchange rate.

80 years since VE Day

I found myself wondering earlier this week if the people who fought Hitler should even have bothered, looking at the state of the world. Some people with distinctly fascist inclinations will celebrating the triumph over fascism, devoid of any sense of irony at their actions. It also definitely feels that we are seeing a return of beliefs we'd hoped were on the way out, especially among the young, where Holocaust denial and antisemitism are becoming unpleasantly common. 

We are seeing Israel now very much the abuser; they may not be the modern Nazis, but they are definitely not a beacon for good in this world and I would support their banning from Eurovision. Russia - well, there is something deeply rotten there - and I hope their war machine collapses first to avoid Ukraine having to make some deeply unpleasant choices. Then there is the electoral success of Reform in the UK.

It's not like we even saved Poland by declaring war in 1939 - it still ended up losing a sixth of its population and became a communist state for over forty years; countries that appeased Hitler or quickly acquiesced actually fared better in many regards.

Yet, what would have happened if we had left Hitler to carry in 1939? He would have probably gone after the Soviet Union eventually, with a plan to basically destroy the Slavic peoples in the name of living space. Perhaps the Soviet Union would have stopped him, but it would have been at an even bigger price and then likely left Europe in an even worse state than it was in 1945.

Resistance against evil is not an easy choice. Sometimes you have to take difficult decisions and pick your battles carefully to avoid hurting the people you are trying to protect. Bullies don't always run away when someone stands up against them, sometimes they will go after you or others as a gesture to keep people afraid and protect their fragile egos. It will definitely not be stress-free either.

Even defeating Hitler required the deaths of millions of Allied soldiers and the destruction of many of Germany's urban areas, with the survivors on all sides carrying the horror to the end of their days.

What gives me hope is that we are not going gently into the good night with democracy; there is considerable pushback against Trump, whose popularity has slumped. Poland chucked out its authoritarian-inclined government and Hungary might well do the same. Canada and Australia have definitely rejected Trumpism. Reform will hopefully prove themselves an utter clown show in local government and hurt their general election chances.

However, the fight will not be easy and it may well get bloody. I just hope the fight is short and as painless as possible, because while war might be necessary, it should be a last resort. 

We can also not defeat these people by stooping to their level, be it by fake news or outright murder. We can and must offer a better way, because otherwise we're just replacing one bad system with another. Let us persuade with love, not hate, as Jesus did.

To those who have gone on and those who are left, thank you for your sacrifice. Hopefully we can still honour you.

Woke? Most definitely. That's a good thing too. (Review: 'Doctor Who', "Lucky Day")

I was tempted to call Ruby Sunday a Wish.com Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but that's really not fair.

Not quite a damp Squid (Review: 'Genius Game' 1.1)

Don't mind me, I'm just here for David Tennant...

Well? That was rather good (Review: 'Doctor Who', "The Well")

In case you're wondering, which you probably aren't, I do these posts after I've watched the show, but before I've had the time to go on the forums and discuss the show in further depth.

I get the feeling this one will be quite popular though.

Pope Francis 1936-2025

I think the main thing that will stand out for me about the late Pope, who died this morning, is his humility. He lived in the papal guest house, not the palace. His coffin will be a simple one, not the three-layered one of his predecessors. He very much shunned the grandeur that many of his predecessors had, continuing the practice of John Paul II.

He was a passionate advocate for the poor and downtrodden. I imagine he would have dressed down the US Vice-President himself about the treatment of undocumented migrants if he had been able to do so.

He could have gone further on some issues like contraception, but he has very much changed the Catholic Church for the better.

I hope that one day he will be known as Pope Francis I, with others taking the Francis regnal name.

Rest in Peace.

Easter 2025

I was thinking about Pontius Pilate when doing my nightly Bible reading a couple of days. How he was basically a morally corrupt politician, willing to murder an innocent man to maintain his popularity and prevent problems that could bring down the wrath of his superiors on him.

Unfortunately, we have plenty of Pilates in the modern world. I can think of one leader of a major state in the Western Hemisphere that I could arguably apply that label to, not to mention one in the Eastern Hemisphere. I think it will be obvious which ones I am talking about.

Jesus was crucified as it was politically convenient to remove someone who challenged the wealth and power of those at the top of society. But that was not the end of the story and he rose again to clear the way for us to go to heaven.

One day he will return and all the Pilates will be held to account. Presidents and Kings should be warned of this, because one day there will be justice for all.

Happy Easter!

Getting a bit cartoonish (Review: 'Doctor Who', "Lux")

 Keeping this one short and sweet. Partly like a certain character in this. Partly.

Well, at least she's not LINDA (Review: 'Doctor Who', "The Robot Revolution")

I realised that I didn't actually do a review for "Joy to the World". Not that it really matters.

This may well be the last season of Doctor Who we get for a good while; Disney has yet to make a decision on funding further seasons and even if they greenlight more episodes, it will be unlikely we'll get anything before 2027.

Spoilers after the cut.

It's all Greco-Roman to me (Review: 'O'Dessa', 2025)

I would like to apologise to the people on the District Line at my out-loud reaction to one particular moment in this movie. Sorry for the audible reaction. I will try not to do it again.

20 years since the return of Doctor Who

I am pretty sure that I did not imagine, when I sat down to watch "Rose" a few days after it aired (I was on holiday at the time) that the show would still be going 20 years later, with I believe 188 episodes having aired since then, not counting Children in Need stuff.

It's been through some good times, it's been through some bad times. We've got a critical new season ahead of us that will probably make the difference between the show carrying on for a few more years and a quick end; Disney will want some good ratings for their money.

But at least we have it. At the moment, many of us really need some form of distraction from the darkness seemingly coming back in much of the world.

Happy anniversary!

Capital Ring Section 1

 

Having completed the London Loop last year (see my previous posts), I am now moving onto the Capital Ring, another "circular" footpath that covers inner London.

This has a lot more tower blocks and a lot fewer cows, but the views can still be very good on a clear day - I did this on Thursday 20 March, the first warm day we've had all year.

I've also made an investment in my walking; as easy access to various bits of equipment is handy in this, I acquired an old crime scene investigator vest from a military surplus place near where I live. It also has an inbuilt hood, although I didn't need it.

Section 1 starts from the southern end of the Woolwich foot tunnel, then after a while beside the Thames, heads south/south-east, going through three parks, Woolwich Common and four woods stopping just over the A2.

Counting the station links, it's about 7.2 miles, although I might have done a bit more due to wrong turnings.

Much of the route is on pavement or properly surfaced paths, although it gets bit more unsurfaced near the end. Even for a Thursday, there were plenty of people about, including dog walkers; you're definitely not in the sticks like with much of the London Loop. There's even a somewhat pongy industrial estate once you come off the river; I don't know how many of those I'll encounter on my way.

One notable area on the walk is Severndroog Castle, a Gothic "folly" on Shooter's Hill, built in memory of a British admiral of the East India Company who won a victory for them against the Maratha Navy in 1756. There is a viewing platform, but it's only open on Sundays.

It took 3 hours and 21 minutes to do the lot, including a break for lunch at a small café in Charlton Park. Pretty easy going, the good weather helping even if it meant I got a bit sweaty... which is kind of the point, as I am doing this to help keep myself in trim.

I might do Section 2 on Good Friday or Easter Monday; other things depending. But I will definitely be doing it.

Don't mind me, I'm just here for Jemma Simmons (Review: 'Mystery Island', 2023)

Well, there are worse ways to keep your SAG-AFTRA health insurance.

Gaza: Here we go again

There are sensible solutions to the Israel-Palestine situation. Unfortunately, there are few sensible people on any position of political power in the region.

It is clear that Israel never intended to proceed to stage two of the ceasefire; withdrawing from Gaza is a security gamble for them and in any event, Netanyahu is completely opposed to any Palestinian state. So is the US, with Donald Trump's crime against humanity that would be the Gaza Plan being seemingly official policy for both that country and Israel. Israel has also blocked all aid to Gaza, itself a war crime. Soon hunger is going to become a serious problem for that territory and you can hardly put bread in a rocket, can you? Israel cannot ultimately defeat the Palestinians without a huge number of deaths, some of which will be on its own side and becoming a pariah state.

Hamas is refusing to release the hostages because it is using them as leverage to prevent further Israeli attacks... which is causing further Israeli attacks. They seem to bent on fighting a war that is frankly unwinnable and they should never have started in the first place. They're not firing rockets at this stage - one wonders how many they actually have left.

The Palestinian Authority is worse than useless - not trusted by either Hamas or Israel.

So, the hostages remain in place. Possibly only 24 are alive. How many will survive this next stage? Indeed, how many Gazans will be alive?

In which Hippies cancel Star Trek (Review: 'Star Trek' 3.20, "The Way to Eden")

There is a character in this episode called Tongo. He might as well be called Torgo, as this is arguably the most riffable episode of Star Trek I've yet come across.

That means it's awful in a funny way. Well, somewhat.

Our Very Disturbed Man Flint (Review: 'Star Trek' 3.19, "Requiem for Methuselah")

You can tell the episode has a messed up concept when Spock needs to step and erase someone's memory.

Three years of war between Ukraine and Russia

It feels longer in a way to me. I imagine it must feel like an entirety for those involved in one war or the other, including the refugees that I know are in my area.

I don't think anyone wants this war to go on; Ukraine just wants a peace that will keep its country secure in the long-term, because it seems that Putin wants at the least a client state and at most to end Ukrainian independence. They might want to do a mineral deal, but not at the price of becoming an American vassal.

Trump has done vast damage to European security in his first month in office. It appears that we will now have to defend Europe from Russia largely on our own, with implications for public spending in other areas, not to mention taxation.

In any event, it seems Putin is not willing to compromise on anything meaningful and produce a peace deal that Ukraine should accept, so I guess the suffering will continue on both sides for a while longer sadly. Many more people will die or suffer life-changing injuries because one man wants to recreate an empire, regardless of cost.

I just wish more people would accept that, on both far-right and far-left.

The name's Bond. Amazon Bond.

So, Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli have handed over the reigns of the Bond franchise to Amazon after 30 years in charge of it.

To be frank, it wasn't in a great place. The last film was in 2021 and only because it was delayed in release a year because of Covid.

The reaction to this change has been one of concern. Mainly about it turning into the MCU or the Star Wars franchise with oversaturation. Along with a lot of jokes. Even I've done a few and I'll do a lot more.

A lot will depend on the creative personnel. There are a lot of Bond fans in the business; some of them actually very good creatives. What we need is a highly competent head honcho with good ideas and a keen eye for picking talent. The studio needs to give them a decent enough rope, but not too much - a director can go too far and this is not a charity.

Of course, we need a good Bond. A sort of Brosnan-type is my personal preference for the character; humour and darkness in the right mix.

As for spin-offs, I'm fine with one or two, but let's not overdo it, shall we?

Anyway, it's the end of an era in more ways than one. Bond has a new boss and he'll have to adjust to that reality.

If nothing else, it will be interesting to watch.

Totes-a-Mazzy letdown (Review: 'A Sacrifice', 2024)

Don't mind me, I'm just here for the... What the actual... Get your hands off her, you [expletive deleted]!

This review contains spoilers for this film and all four seasons of Stranger Things aired to date. When Sadie Sink leads a movie, some things are inevitable.

In a rather fun coincidence, the trailer for O'Dessa dropped on the same day I started watching this.

It's Agent Dunham, you creepy pervert! (Review: 'Fringe' 1.14, "Ability")

So, I kind of forgot this person was in this... and of course, they are a really good actor to boot.

1, 2, 3, 4 - Trump declares a trade war

This is one of the stupidest things Trump has done and that is saying something.

The reason we don't take American food is because of the lower standards they have there. Improve those and maybe there wouldn't be such a trade deficit.

This is going to hurt an awful lot of people at the end of the day. For no good reason at all.

Death by Stupidity Squad (Review: 'Star Trek: Section 31')

Alternative titles are "Let's Hire Hitler", "I'd happily kill all of these except the haughty Starfleet brunette", "Alias but in the Star Trek universe and awful" and "There are better ways to spend a commute".

80 years since the liberation of Auschwitz

As someone who works in administration, the people I deal with are often just characters on a screen. I usually don't see their faces, I don't hear their voices.

People administered the Holocaust. They put together the transport lists, they ordered the Zyklon-B, they paid the invoices from the various companies that built the architecture of mass murder. They could distance themselves from it in a way.

However, there were clerks in the camps as well. People who typed up the death certificates with false causes of death so the Nazis could claim the estates of their victims. They would have heard, seen and smelt what was going on. Alcohol abuse was extensive, being used as a coping mechanism and fuelling violence itself.

But they were of course not the real victims in all this. They, mostly, got to survive and live out their lives, unpunished for their actions for many decades, if it all in this world.

The Nazis and their allies reduced people to creatures with numbers, exploited until they were of no further use and then killed. Indeed, many of those in Auschwitz-Birkenau never even got the numbers survivors still bear to this day, being gassed on arrival, cremated and then used as fertiliser.

It is still hard to believe even when you've been to two concentration camps and a cargo facility used to ship people to the camps, now memorials. If you've not been at all, then it is sadly easy to see it as fiction.

We're seeing a worrying rise in Holocaust misunderstanding and denial among younger people. We're also seeing the same rise in alt-right views, demonstrated by Donald Trump's recent election. I suspect those two are linked and it remains important to continue educating people, even when the survivors are all gone.

We need to remember that people are more than just a label a politician might stick on them for the sake of election. They have their dreams, their hopes, their fears, their foibles.

If we forget that, then that is the start of a very nasty road.

Never again.

An Officer and No Gentlemen (Review: 'Star Trek' 3.18, "The Lights of Zetar")

One has to remember that while Star Trek could be remarkably progressive, it was a product of the 1960s and so could be very much of its time. A time when women could be paid less than men and viewed as the "weaker sex".

People, the prosecution presents Exhibit A.

Gaza ceasefire

Five days before Donald Trump becomes President, in a move reminiscent of the ending of the Iranian hostage crisis in 1981, a ceasefire agreement has been reached.

15 months of war has resulted in a victory for neither side, but the Palestinians have lost far more. Hamas is a decimated force with much of its structure dead, seriously injured or captured. Hezbollah has gone the same way. The fall of the Assad regime has eliminated a major weapons supply route for both forces and Iran is much weakened.

Israel has badly damaged its international reputation. While it may not have sought to commit genocide, it has clearly committed war crimes in its quest to destroy Hamas and it is likely that only pressure from the international community stopped it from doing far more.

Palestinian extremism has become ingrained in their society by nearly 80 years of conflict and Israel isn't a great deal better; this war has probably hardened attitudes on both sides.

Unless some cooler heads enter the scene, there may well be another throw-down in a few years and I can't see that ending any better for the Palestinians if they're stupid enough to try that.

Of course, it could resume sooner if this ceasefire doesn't hold. The Palestinians should not give the extremists in the Israeli political world a chance to say "told you so".

In any event, a lot of people have suffered and died. For rather little. Thus is often the case for war.

'Fringe' 1.13, "The Transformation"

In this episode, another passenger aircraft gets destroyed by a piece of crazy science gone wrong as a man literally turns into a beast while in the toilet. Insert joke about EasyJet here.

The Return of Donald Trump

I could go a full analysis of all the various factors that led to Trump's narrow win in November, which shouldn't really have been the surprise that it was.

However, it's probably best to keep things fairly brief as others will have done far more than this. There are two main reasons for Harris losing.

Firstly, she was basically an unpopular incumbent in an economy many felt was performing poorly and so they voted for a change of government. Something happening in a good many countries at the moment. It is quite possible that if Trump mucks up the economy with his tariffs etc. that the Democrats will sweep back in come 2028.

Secondly, the left in general has become quite seriously out of touch with ordinary voters. Some frankly view anyone who would vote for Trump as beneath contempt, deserving of the pain that is about to come their way. They will not even associate with them socially, which means that they are rather unlikely to convert them or even present them with an alternative to the right-wing distortions that Elon Musk is happily amplifying right now. Also, they don't really look like "working class" people anymore. Who is the most working-class person in the government right now? Probably Angela Rayner.

Trumpism may collapse from its own internal contradictions, but the left needs to get its act together. It is no longer guaranteed the Latino vote or the working class vote; the black vote is better for them, but that could go with the right Republican candidate.

There is a decent chance, as two other politicians observed the other day - and it's happened in other countries with Thatcher and Merkel - that the first Madame President will be of the elephant persuasion rather than the donkey.

2025 Plans

My blog last year totalled a respectable 47 posts - not my biggest number, but not my smallest. Most of those were reviews of one form or another.

I'll definitely be doing more of those, but I also plan to cover some other stuff - it's going to be a rather "interesting" year, I'd say.