Thursday Poll Day – Trump’s 28 point Plan for Ukraine

Today the media is dominated with discussion of Donald Trump’s 28-Point Peace Plan for Ukraine.

It seems tilted toward Russia if compared to the earlier 10-point plan offered by Zelenskyy. In as much as this was laid down initially it has worked as a kind of anchor in negotiation where everything that moves away from that is seen as tilted towards Russia, but that on the other hand is what was always going to happen. He is negotiating after all with Russia and his initial anchor reflects what for Zelenskyy’s view of Ukriane would be the best poutcome. It was always going to be that the final outcome wouldn’t be exactly what he wanted. Donald Trump has produced a plan some distance away from that, in reaction to which Zelenskyy has stated that Ukraine will have to choose between loss of dignity and loss of a key strategic partner. Continue reading “Thursday Poll Day – Trump’s 28 point Plan for Ukraine”

Monday Funday #1 The Pastor’s Son

A boy had just passed his driving license. He asked his father, who was a pastor, if they could have a chat about about him using the car.

The father said:

“I’ll make you a deal. Improve your grades, read the Bible a little, and get your hair cut — then we’ll talk about it.”

A month later the boy came back and asked again about him using the car. His father said:

“Son, I’m really proud of you. You’ve improved your grades, you’ve been reading the Bible diligently — but, here’s the thing,  you haven’t had your hair cut.”

The young man paused for a moment and replied:

“You know, Dad, I’ve been thinking. Samson had long hair. Moses had long hair. Noah had long hair. Even Jesus had long hair.”

His father answered:

“Yes, my son. Indeed they did. And, like yourself, they walked everywhere.”

Plan for the next quarter century

As we come to the close of 2025, it’s worth remembering that this marks the end of the first quarter of a century for our current era. As far as this blog is concerned, we don’t go back twenty years – our first post other than the “Hello World” one you get given at the outset, was on 1st November 2009, so that means that we have now completed 16 years, with the following profile of views and posts made.

Views Posts published
2009 486 47
2010 21,595 117
2011 45,391 119
2012 36,704 63
2013 41,626 23
2014 38,193 29
2015 44,725 16
2016 32,771 8
2017 27,200 110
2018 44,484 306
2019 33,040 155
2020 29,608 213
2021 16,340 215
2022 15,321 65
2023 10,794 3
2024 11,179 8
2025 10,708 14
460,165 1,511

All of which shows that the site has been negleted for a number of years and therefore the views came right down, but in any case in 2021 when I was posting most days of the year the views halved.

This is probably to do with the fact that the posts were at that time largely connected to the main project of getting my YouTube Channel all repurposed to here and properly tagged up and with the possibility for more discussion. Given that the YouTube material was older and older over time, and technologically lagged behind whta newer, fresher videographers were doing, and also after a while I stopped producing regular content on YouTube as I think I had come to an end of that time of life where I was regularly going to new places (and also I got a new hobby in 2016, namely Ingress, and also the camera I was using for the YT things wore out and I was unable to get a similar one to my liking) one can scarcely be surprised that this channel became less frequently viewed.

That having been said, many thanks to the loyal few who did still maintain a regular viewership, especially those who joined in with comments and discussion and sharing posts with their friends.

I have not given up the idea of putting all of the YT material here, and I will have to pick that up again, but I thought that for the next phase of this blog, to seek to bring it back to life, for 2026 and onwards I woud go for a different daily theme and I thnk I have sahred before the basic idea I have for the different days of the week.

1) Monday Funday – a growing collection of jokes. A light-hearted start to the working week for my viewers.

2) Tuesday Reviews Day – Product and place reviews, recommendations and unrecommendations, including some product links to Amazon which may help cover costs if people click on them. You will note that Google Ads have been taken off the site as there is too little editorial control over them and I think I would prefer to be developing the Amazon influencer side, so you’ll have started seeing soe Amazon ads also on the site. They go straight to the American site whereas I will also include Amazon.co.uk product links on the Tuesday Reviews.

3) Wednesday Essay Day – this is a day for new Essays about various topics, some of them are expected to have a philosophical or Spiritual dimension. The aim will be to work towards a collection of essays of a thought-provoking or enlightening character.

4) Thursday Polling Day – here we will be offering polls for your opinion, and/or maybe some commentary on the news items which are current. Instead of a poll, there could be a quiz, it’s the same software.

5) Friday AI day.  The format of the material here will be a converstaion with AI, in which I try to make sense of various topics using AI. The conversation will be shown in full excpet for the bits where te AI asks it’s continuation quastions of what I would like to do next, as these spoil the flow. These will also be tagged “Interviews with a VampAIre” if you want to access the whole collection.

6) Saturday Natterday – this is a day for Language related topics, and among the ideas for Saturday we have a collection of dictation or translation exercises that will grow, and possibly the beginnings of a collection of hymns in various language versions.

7) Sunday is the day in which I would continue to place the historical YT films in the original order tey appeared on the channel, for the simple reason that the project is half way though and I would like to finish it. Clearly there is no rush and at that tempo it may take twenty years to do it, but at least it will be done if God grants me to live that long.

SO I will be using schedulingin order to prepare the material ahead. Maybe time will fail me to keep all these days full of content. My rule will be that for 2025 I will start with the current week and then if I do mor in the same category, place them in the next week.

If you are more interested in one type of content than another, then please look out for the mail that will come to you as a subscriber on that particular day and ignore the others.

I hope that you’ll like this new approach and that you’ll like, comment and share your favourite items.