Burnham...

I've just come back from a week in the Welsh Mountains. A house full of Kids and grandkids.

Enjoyed myself so thoroughly and was distracted enough not to worry about the King of the North becoming PM. 

The first impression I get is he's a phenomenal talker. He can charm the birds out of the trees. How else can you explain the financial drain of the Northern Number 10 being pitched as a positive?

I man, how much is it going to cost to move the Prime Ministerial entourage up there once a week? Is that a justifiable cost in the current economic climate? Is that something a prudent Prime Minister would set up when the country is on it's knees and borrowing hand over fist? 

Of course not.

The financial stability of the country isn't something the Socialist elites worry themselves about. 

Burnham's plans involve more spending, more borrowing and divvying out backhanders to the mates that helped him into Downing Street. Not much different than a Tory to be honest.

I have provisionally named him Burnham the money-burner.

The Big Sugar Tax/Sweetener Scandal.

Did you know that most "regular" soft drinks not only have sugar in them, but that the sugar content is increasingly being reduced in favour of (I assume cheaper to buy) sweeteners. So you may think you are drinking a soft drink sweetened "just" by sugar, but you're actually drinking a drink with some sugar and then sweeteners and in some cases the "sugar" version doesn't even have any sugar in it and instead has a sweetener like Sucralose.

Read on..

I have a big issue with sweeteners. Not a mental issue, but a real, physical issue in that if I have a drink with sweeteners, all sorts of bad things happen with my body's glucose response. Basically I taste a sweet product and my body releases insulin to combat it, but there is no sugar for the insulin to process. 

And that's just on the "good" sweeteners, like sucralose and Stevia. The bad ones like Aspartamine are a big no-no.

Obviously during this long hot spell, I've been turning to my usual summer drink: Lager Shandy. 

I always ask for the full-fat version of lemonade when ordering in a pub, although that option seems to be increasingly impossible to get.

But now at home, I can't avoid the damn sweeteners.

If you look at any full -fat includes sugar soft drink, you'll find that someone has surreptitiously included sweeteners in the mix. 

So why am I paying sugar tax (because I have to) on a product where the sugar is being cut with sweeteners? Either I pay sugar tax (because it contains sugar and by contains sugar, I mean NO SWEETENERS), or if I'm being forced to take sweeteners, I shouldn't be paying sugar tax.

This led me down a huge rabbit hole last night, whilst trying to find a non-sweetener soft drink in Tesco.

Those of us that are sensitive to sweeteners have found out ALL the soft drinks in the supermarket (apart from the organic ones) have been adulterated with sweeteners. 

Call me a cynic, but it seems like a surefire way to make your body insulin resistant, by ramping up the amount in your body with nothing for it to do. Because your body tastes the sweetener and releases insulin to combat it. Do that several times over a lifetime....

Luckily for now, I've found a supplier of sweetener-free lemonade, albeit limited to 1 litre bottles. At least I should get a couple of pints of Shandy out of each bottle. 

I've yet to go back and do a thorough deep-dive. For instance are supermarkets charging more, or including sugar tax on non-diet soft drinks? Because of the sugar tax is required on products that supposedly contain no sugar. 

As an example, last night I found at least one lemonade that was non-diet or non-sweetener, that just had sucralose in it and no sugar. It was dearer then the diet option. So is this another case of supermarkets charging more for something that is basically the same product?

It bears some further scrutiny. Especially for parents of kids that are susceptible to issues caused by sweeteners. 

I'm not even going to go into the conspiracy that there's a like between artificial sweeteners and cancer. 

Civil War: When the Cold War goes Hot.

I've posted the odd blog for a couple of years about civil war. Even before David Betz was plastered all over social media. 

The thing is, although we are in a de-facto civil war at the moment, we are now at a point where a faction is trying to gain political supremacy through effective blasphemy laws that would go even further than "just" blasphemy.

A law forbidding the criticism of Islam gives Muslims carte blanche to do whatever they like, because to criticise a Muslim is to criticise Islam. The two are indivisible. 

We're now only a few steps away from a hot war. 

How will you know when a hot war has started?

It kind of already has. 

You'll know when agents of the state are openly attacked. Or to put it another way, the representatives of the state.

We've already had MPs killed and that wasn't warning enough, the government machine has continued on unabashed with it's anti-British, anti-working class, anti-freedom agenda.

The second stage will be the agencies of the state being openly attacked. For instance the Police. 

I'm not talking about people defending themselves against Police brutality. I'm talking about people openly seeking members of the Police and attacking them. Of setting traps for Police to attend and then attacking them. 

It's a widely held belief that the Police no longer exist to help. The modern Police are more like an occupying Army that a Police force. 

We've already had a couple of instances around the country of Police officers being attacked, but I predict over the next couple of years, that number will increase. The intelligence I'm getting points in that direction. Especially as the government seek to crack down on our freedoms.

The Police are more than likely to be the first in a series of state agents that are attacked. After the Police it'll be tax offices, job centres and the like. Local agencies of the state. Saves all that travel. 

Local means you can avoid being picked up easily on ANPR cameras. Like how the killer of Anne Widdecombe was found. Anne was another victim of the civil war. 

One thing I would say to anyone that starts a civil war: make sure you can end it. You need overwhelming force and capacity at your disposal. You don't go into a war for a draw. You go into it to win.

I would expect anyone that is contemplating such activity to have the numbers. You're up against not just the government, but their imported proxies. And the problem with numbers is security. The larger a force becomes, the harder it is not for someone to let slip what's gong on. Security, loyalty, they are absolutes and should be a primary focus. 

70,00 armed forces members is a easy figure to overwhelm. But the government proxies, the immigrants? They measure in the millions. That's a harder number to clash heads with. 

Force multipliers are the answer. Superior weapons are one such item. Like drones, of any type. When the government ban drone flying, or any radio controlled aerial activity, you'll know they have credible evidence a threat is imminent. 

What's that? They've done it in various areas already? Without any obvious or publicly stated reason? 

<Raises eyebrow>

Not hot yet, maybe warm then....