News in review

So I’ve been seeing this lady all over Facebook for the last couple of days. Essentially, bitching that she was forced to cover up by an airline hostess on her flight. And expressing how embarrassed and offended she was by this. 

Which to be honest I don't buy. First of all their was a similar case to this not that long ago. And like this one it was all over social media. Secondly this lady was trying really hard to make sure she mentioned her Instagram account as much as possible. 

And finally, she went to the papers, with it. I'm sorry if you were that horrified by the situation, the last thing you would want to do is relive it again, so that it can be spread all over the news and social media. 

But, what I found most shocking about the whole thing, is that this woman had her child with her. Why would anyone subject their kid to this? Because lets face it, what she was wearing, really wasn't appropriate. 

When I was a kid I would have been mortified to see my mother dressed like this. Especially when the way she is dressed, is drawing a lot of negative attention. This kid is going to be picked on mercilessly for this at school. And all for the sake of his mother getting a few more followers on Instagram. 

What happened to self respect ladies? leaving something to the imagination? flaunting what you've got in a more classy way? I don't get this need to mutilate your bodies and then bare all, for a few extra likes. 

And what message is it sending to young girls? We're essentially making them feel as if they are not good enough in their natural bodies. Making them believe they have to get boob jobs and butt implants and god knows what else, in order to be seen as beautiful. 

I think it's devastating and completely unrealistic. Have you seen the shape of some of these women, and they didn't achieve that naturally. Big butts rarely come with thin waists and big boobs, naturally. 

Oh and the claim this woman made too. It's not my fault I have big boobs. Well if you hadn't had a boob job it wouldn't be, but she's clearly had one and as someone who has naturally big boobs, which I don't see as a blessing but a curse, I can honestly say that I have never had a problem getting clothes that cover them up. Thank god! because no one needs to be seeing that shit, they'd be traumatised for life. 

And am I alone in thinking that she just looks trashy? Why would anyone want to do that to themselves? I just don't get it. 

If she wants to wear something like that at the beach, I mean I still don't get it, but fine, whatever, but it’s not flight attire and she knows it. 

And at no point do you see her, actually, wearing her face mask correctly either. Which just shows her lack of intelligence. If all her other choices hadn't already made that clear. 

I think we really have to ask ourselves, what the world is coming to, when we are making people like this famous, even if it is just Instagram famous. Surely, there are better people that we can promote, and encourage our kids to look at as worthy role models. 

Fire fighters, doctors, nurses, care workers, people doing something good for humanity, regular people and not a load of superficial, plastic people, who are about as far from real as it is possible to get. 

I don't have any daughters and women like this sometimes makes me glad of that, but for those of you who do, surely you want better for your kids than this. 

I have so much respect for young girls, when faced with all this managed to love themselves for who they are and not buy into it. It can't be easy in this day and age. 

What do you  think? feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments. 

Love and hugs all 

Joss xx 

News in review

Last night the UK sat with baited breath for Boris Johnson to appear on our screen, to reveal the truth about the rumors that we were going back into national lockdown. 

Originally he was mean to pop up our screens at 4pm but the time kept continuously changing until around 6:30pm/ 7pm, he finally appeared and after some long winded discussions on the why and wherefores, he announced, that on Thursday, the UK would go back into lockdown. 

There were however some differences this time. Schools, collages and such would remain open and construction workers would continue working. That last one was the one that really effected us. As Dan is a window fitter. 

This was not good news to us. How could we keep our family safe if he is having to go into other peoples homes, especially with my compromised immune system, due to my Crohn’s treatment. 

Nor can we isolate separately because if I have a seizure in the night, which seems to be when they most like to happen, no one will be there to know and if it goes on to long, no one will be there to call and ambulance. 

This is really worrying me now. It’s not as if people getting windows, doors and conservatories is an essential  thing. It’s ridiculous, but of course his boss will use that announcement to keep them all there. All I can hope is the general public has more sense and says they don’t want unnecessary people in their home. But we’ve already seen how selfish people can be. 

I also know that they cancelled cancer treatment last lockdown, but not if they cancelled the treatment for Crohn’s, so am worried they might stop my treatment and I’ll end up really poorly and in a lot of pain again.

Dan say’s he doesn’t think they will, because with Crohn’s, if they don’t treat it people will have bad flares and end up hospitalized. Putting even more strain on the NHS, but only time will tell I guess. 

And I do have an infusion booked during the lockdown period. 

The other this of course is how they will handle things after this lockdown, are they gonna let people flood to all corners of the Uk for holidays again, let the pubs be rammed with no one following the social distancing rules, or will they keep things better controlled?

One this is sure, 2020 can seriously not get any worse. 

So how about you? What do you think of the new lockdown? Are you worried, scared, concerned? Do you think they are doing the right thing or that they should have done something else? 

Leave your thoughts in the comments. 

Love and hugs Joss xx

News in review

Well it’s been a while since I did one of these, but here we go. 

So let’s start with Trump.

Yep that big dumb ass, giant orange toddler, has caught COVID. Do you think he has started downing the bleach yet? And wasn’t he yelling his fav two words “fake news” at the start of all this. 

It seems almost karmic that he’s now fighting this virus for himself, and unlike when Boris caught it, I’ve no sympathy for the guy. Not when he’s probably got the best health professionals possible fighting to get him fit and healthy again, when god knows how many Americans can’t even afford to get the health care they need. 

Thank god we have the NHS in the UK, where everyone can get free treatment and every life matters. 

I still struggle to understand what America was thinking when they made that guy president. Which reminds me of a funny piece Jack Whitehall did regarding Trump. You’re only gonna get the general gist  of it here cause my memory is sketchy at the best of times but basically he said something like this, you Americans love to do everything bigger and better, even your stupid people, in the UK we keep our village idiots in the local parks yelling at pigeons, but in America you make them president. 

I used to think, when Trump first got elected president that he had to be smarter than he appears, because otherwise how could he be such a rich man. I thought maybe he just acts stupid to throw people off and get them to underestimate him, so he could crush them, but not anymore. Now I believe that his grandfather or whoever it was who run all those brothels was the smart one, and Trump just has loads of butt kissers with brains telling him what to do, and hoping the twat heeds it. Because there is no way that spoiled orange toddler could run a successful business all by himself.

The dude is messed up, if something isn’t going his way he yells fake news or some other bullshit and just believe if he yells it loud enough everyone will buy it, he uses his money and fame to bully his way to getting whatever he wants and doesn’t seem to care who he tramples in the process and he’s outlook on life is archaic. 

But although I can’t stand the guy I wouldn’t wish him dead, I wouldn’t wish that on anyone, but I do think it’s Karma at its best, that he’s now caught it. 

COVID UK

So COVID cases are rising in the UK, I can’t really say I’m surprised, I think they relaxed things way to fast after lockdown ended, but I also understand why. The government was under a lot of pressure, businesses were having to close down and people were getting pissed off of being stuck at home and doing a Trump and throwing their toys out of the pram. 

I think the people more than the government were at fault in this. Not those desperate to save their businesses, I can understand that, but those yelling conspiracy theory’s about COVID, just cause it was fucking up their social life. 

Well now it’s looking like it’s gonna fuck up Christmas, so I hope your all proud of yourselves! 

The problem is, the world has become such a selfish place. You look what we were asked to do because of

COVID and how much we all bitched and complained, compared to what our ancestors were asked to do during the war. What happened to our stiff upper lips and keep on keeping on attitudes? We’ve been spoiled that’s what. And the worlds turning into a bunch of self centred, stroppy toddler, trump wanna be’s. 

No one can see the bigger picture, it’s just me, myself and I, and it’s awful. We need to start giving a shit about everyone and the greater good and not just ourselves. 

Now, finding genuine people who care is tough, most of those who seemed to be being kind during COVID were really just out for likes on social media and you could see that by the way they had to post about their good deeds all over social media. 

The ones who were genuinely doing it out of the goodness of their heart weren’t rushing home to brag about it, they were just getting on with it. NHS staff, delivery drivers, supermarket workers, etc, many of who didn’t have a choice in it, they were just doing their job, and probably, never in a million years imagined those jobs would become so important. 

And the crap some of them had to put up with us horrendous, I’d like to think we’ve learned something and if a second full on lockdown happens, people will behave differently, but I’m not so sure. 

But I don’t think we can blame Boris or the government in this, they’ve had a shit deal, and they’ve done their best, while trying to please everyone and it’s been an incredibly difficult thing to juggle. 

I’m just grateful Teresa May wasn’t still running things, because if she had of been there wouldn’t have been anything done for the regular folks. She’d have said screw the poor let’s focus on helping the rich. She’d have probably have set the hunt on all us regular folk, turned wiping us out into a sport. After all she has no qualms about going after the weakest members of our society, disabled people. Fucking hate that woman. A wonderful, kind and caring man took his own life because of her changes to disability benefits and he wasn’t alone. Others were left without carers and with no family to step in, starved to death, in their own beds, frightened and alone. Didn’t see that making it into the news though did we. Bastards! Anywho moving on, cause if I get onto that topic we could be here for hours with me ranting away. 

Flooding and weather warnings. 

The uk is awash with weather warning and flooding at the moment, and hasn’t it been foul. Strong winds and rain. We shouldn’t be surprised though our weather just seems to get more and more fucked up every year. And it’s our fault I suppose, we’ve messed up our planet and continue to do so. 

We’re pretty lucky, we get some flooding just outside of the village but nothing major. I feel for those who live in places that flood. It must be so frightening and devastating. 

What I struggle to understand though is why they keep allowing houses to be build on known flood plains. Surely that’s just asking for trouble and why they keep ripping up all the trees when building houses. Don’t they know thoughts trees help suck up water and can be the difference between places flooding and not flooding. Surely they should be planting lots of trees around new estates instead of ripping them up. 

But I guess trees take up precious building space and we can’t have that can we, plus it’s not their problem once they’ve sold the places is it. It’s that whole selfish thing again. 

I hope where ever you are that you stay safe and flood free this winter. And with 2020 being such a messed up year, I hope all of you are able to get through it relatively unscathed. Thing is, can we be sure 2020 is just a one off nightmare year, or is this just the start? Just a mere glimpse of what’s to come, because of our own stupidity and selfishness? Now that’s a scary thought. 

Well that’s it for today news in review. Please bare in mind this is merely my opinion and you are welcome to disagree, feel free to share your thoughts in the comments too. As usual apologies for any spelling or grammar mistakes, and any mixed up words. Joys or Crohn’s and brain fog I’m afraid. 

As always love and hugs too you all, and stay safe, and stay healthy, because the alternative sucks xx

News in review.

It's time for my weekly take on the news.

Each Monday I'll give you my take on the news that caught my attention in the past week, as well as asking your thoughts. 

First this week, new laws on e-cigarettes to be introduced across EU. 

As a current smoker of regular roll-ups and someone who has used e-cigarettes in the past, this news report really caught my attention.

I used e-cigarettes late in 2014 and was successful in quitting smoking at least for a while. 

I used nicotine free e-juices and could have stayed smoke-free if I'd been stronger and handled my life stresses a little better, but hey, no one's perfect,

I found the e-cigs very beneficial in helping me to quit. They gave me something to hold and the sense that I was smoking, which really did help. That said, I found them very harsh on my throat and developed a cough that took a few months to shift once I was done with them, which left me wondering how safe e-cigs really are and if perhaps not all the claims made about them were true. Especially as hubby experienced much the same with his own throat and chest, while using e-cigs.  

The reality is that there was very little in the way of testing done before these products were put on the market and on top of that, cheap vaporizers were and still are being sold all over the place, along with cheap juices. 

Like most people, I have no idea what is in any of it, but I was aware that it was seriously messing with my lungs and chest, far more noticeably and quickly than normal cigarettes ever had. 

Now, we all know that  regular cigarettes are dangerous to our health, but can we be sure that e-cigs are any better? I know I'm not. Which, is why  I was pleased to see that they plan to bring out new laws and regulations regarding e-cigs. And when you consider that they have already been banned in some parts of the EU, it makes you question why this didn't happen sooner. 

Now at present, there doesn't seem to be too much information about these new laws or how they will affect users, beyond the fact that they will now be health warnings connected to them and controls on how they are used. 

Although they have been dubbed as a helpful way to quit smoking, many who start using e-cigs never stop. Instead, turning their addiction from real tobacco to these and continuing to smoke them for years on end. 

Others, who were previously non-smokers jumped on the e-cig trend and turned it into a full-blown hobby, in which they collected many different flavours of juices, as well as the different brands of  vapouriser. 

A whole waves of websites, forums and YouTube channels have popped up that are dedicated to the e-cigarettes trend and I can't help but wonder if this is cigarette history repeating itself all over again, because didn't we once foolishly believe that  regular cigarettes were also safe. 

Adverts for cigarettes once contained doctors and dentists proclaiming their favourite brands. Some adds even had babies scrawled across them, something we wouldn't dream of today. 

Although ads for e-cigs have not been quite so prominent in the UK, they are still out there and in the early days of e-cigs many doctors were advocating them as a great way to quit smoking, a story that now seems to have changed.

Personally, I think the safest option when it comes to your body, is not to smoke at all, be it e-cigs or regular tobacco. To me, e-cigs just seem like a convenient way to keep pumping smoke and nicotine into our systems with little care for the effects, and as such, I think stricter regulations do need to be in place, especially as many, believing they are safe, smoke e-cigarettes around their children.

So, what are your thoughts? Do you think it's all just a big overreaction or like me, do you think we need to know more? 

I'd love to hear your opinion, so please leave a comment below. 

This next piece of news has me boiling, it involves the celebrity Boy George being appointed a judge on BBC's programme the voice. A role that will see him mentoring young people. 

Now in and of itself it all seems harmless enough until we remember that just a couple of years ago, Boy George served a disgustingly short 4-month sentence in prison, after handcuffing Audun Carlsen to a wall and beating him with a metal chain, all because Audun refused his sexual advances. Is this really a man who should be mentoring young people?

What's more, the BBC only recently fired Jeremy Clarkson for what can only be described as a far more trivial offence, in which he hit out at a producer on the popular show top gear. 

Mixed messages anyone? 

Why do we continue to support and in some cases worship people who commit horrific crimes, simply because they are famous? 

In my opinion, Boy George should have faced a much greater sentence and had his career destroyed for life, due to his actions. He certainly should not be working with young people, as a musical mentor. 

What happens if one of these young people attempts to say "No!" to a sexual advance from Boy George? What makes this even worse, to my mind, is that Boy George never attempted to apologise to Audun for the brutal attack nor showed any remorse for his actions. 

I just cannot believe this is being allowed to happen and think it says a lot about today's society, but what do you think? Leave your thoughts in the comments below. 

This next news report really freaked me out, mainly because it affects the county I was born in and where a large number of my family still lives,  Kent.

By all accounts, there is a doomed warship hidden beneath the water, in the Thames estuary off sheerness in Kent, that has enough bombs on board to wipe  Kent off the map entirely and it's been there since 1944 when it sank. 

The American ship known as The SS Richard Montgomery, and now dubbed the doomsday boat, is packed with so many bombs that it could, in fact, trigger the biggest non-nuclear blast ever, has now, by all accounts, become a terrorist threat. 

What gets me with this news report is that surely by putting it in the paper they are in fact advertising that it is there to the very terrorists they are worried might use it as a weapon, in the perfect case of "if they didn't know before, they do now!" Great work British media.

I've never heard of this ship before, so I'm going to assume that there was a good possibility that terrorist wouldn't either, but you have to love how The Sun, whilst claiming a fear that terrorist will not only discover the ship and its deadly cargo but use it for a terrorist attack then go and openly advertise it's existence. 

It's a huge concern for me too, as the majority of my family still resides in Kent. All I can say on this one is that I seriously hope Terrorists are as dumb as the British media. 

So are the newspapers just scaremongering, trying to make new's happen or just out and out dumb? Let me know your thoughts below. 

Well, that's it from me for this week's in the news. There were lots of stories that grabbed my attention, far too many for me to write about them all, but if you've spotted some news that you think's worthy of discussion, feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments below. 

Love and hugs

Joss xx

New year new blog

The last few weeks I've really been brainstorming where I want my blog to go.

Over the years, I've had a habit of letting my blog jump around all over the place with no real structure. 

This is something I really want to change. 

It's impossible to appeal to everyone all the time. There are those who love learning new things and exploring new topics, but who find endless book reviews tedious. Likewise, there are people who prefer reading blogs that deal with real life, be it world news or just others lives, to which they feel they can relate in some way. 

With my blog post coming pretty much at random most of the time, I think I'm making it all a little too confusing. So my plan for 2016 is to try and add a little structure. 

Now to be clear I don't want to be too rigid with this, because I'm a spontaneous person and when I feel the need to blog about life, concerns or the day to day joys, I'm gonna do it, but  life has a way of at times becoming incredibly mundane and as a result during these periods I can sometimes end up with nothing but book reviews up on my blog. 

So the plan is to create three scheduled posts a week. 

On Mondays I'll do an in the news post, where I look back at what world news caught my attention in the week just gone and discuss my thoughts and feelings around it, hopefully helping to give you, the readers a bit more insight into me as a person while also creating an opening for further discussion. Which might also give me some insight into you.

Because what are blogs for if not to share, discuss and get to know each other. 

Mid-week, I'll be diving into my book reviews. I love reading and also sharing my thoughts and feelings about what I am reading with others. 

Thanks to Net galley, I get the opportunity to read a lot of books before they are even released, in return I am asked to give honest reviews. My blog is a great way for me to do this, but I know that to some, excessive book reviews on a blog can feel a bit like the person doing the reviews is somehow getting compensated for doing nothing but good reviews. 

By grouping all my reviews into one post, I hope that people will see that my reviews are honest, that if I dislike a book, I'll say not only that I dislike it, but why. 

It will also mean that my blog is not just book review after book review all the time. 

Then finally, for the weekly basis, I would like to dedicate Friday's to posting a general post about my week, what I've been up to, what's been playing on my mind and so on and so forth. 

By providing this regular content along with the more spontaneous posts, I hope that my blog will be not only varied and regularly updated, but that it will allow readers to be more easily able to check out what interests them and ignore the rest. 

So that's the plan for my blog in 2016, only time will tell if this schedule works for me and my readers or not. 

My biggest goal; however, is to get some discussion going, so that I can actually get to know all of you better. 

So here's to 2016 and a new way of blogging. 

What are your plans for 2016? If you blog are you planning to make any changes or do you already feel you have a schedule that works well for you and if so what? I'd love to hear your thoughts on the above questions, as well as your opinion on my new schedule plan. 

Happy new year to you all

Love and hugs

Joss xx