How's it going with gas prices, Donny? Oh, and inflation? Any good news? Then there’s the war in Iran? Working out OK, troops home by Christmas? Looks like you’re still making America great again, though so far only China is cheering you on – can’t trust those commie bastards!

Goodness, look here! The gas prices in the US are up $1.32 on average since Donny’s ‘limited military adventure’ (© V. Putin, left) began at the end of February. Well! Who would have thought it! That’s a 44% rise, though not

50%, mark you, so the news is not all bad.

The excellent news for the White House is that it can take a short breath of relief in between explaining why although Donny apparently ‘aced’ the four ‘cognitive’ tests he has taken since January 20, 2025 – that’s 16 months ago – his doctors thought it necessary that he should be tested – FOUR times.

I was born on November 21, 1949, so I’m exactly three years, five months and seven days younger than Americas’ smart, savvy, wise, thoughtful, youthful and statesmanlike [delete as applicable] president, but on the question of cognitive tests, no one has so far thought it wise that I should take one (except, perhaps, my wife, but she has what is politely called ‘an agenda’).

These two illustrations (one above this text, the second below) outlining the startling – and for Donny embarrassing – sharp rise in gas prices were added to my previous post just now to flesh out a point I was making.

But I am posting them here separately as the 13 bods who have so far viewed that previous post since it was posted at about 5pm yesterday and 2am (British Summer Time) might miss it as they are unlikely to reflect ‘Do you know, that post I read earlier was so well written, so incisive, so wise that I think I’ll read it again!’

As for that cognitive test, one it isn’t just the White House that can breath a sigh of relief: all good Americans can console themselves that when their president is shown a picture of a horse, he can name it, when he is asked that the date is, he is spot on and when asked his name, he scores over 50%. Something to be proud of, at least, and than the Good Lord for small mercies.

(BTW The capital G and L are this confirmed atheist’s attempt to be polite, considerate, respectful, understanding and all the rest of the tiresome bullshit now demanded of those of a liberal-leaning:

You really do believe that frogs are uniting to organise the Second Coming for Jesus and hiring the Red Hot Chili Peppers for the occasion? Well, I am obliged to inform you that I disagree and think that is more than unlikely and doubt I shall change my mind but I certainly respect your right to hold unorthodox views though I must decline your kind invitation to debate the matter with you.

NB For an insight into how far ‘Middle America’ is falling into debt by living off their credit cards, take a look gat this in the Wall Street Journal.

The fairies at the bottom of the garden assure us that the stock market is soaring and all is well! Good news, eh? Back in the real world . . .

Here you go, from the respectable Wall Street Journal no less, so it must be true! Shame that it is more bullshit than anything you might might want to tell your dear old gran (though she’s seen a dick or two, don't kid yourself).

This is why the media all-too-often are not just not doing the job they piously proclaim they are doing, but are adding to the ever-growing stock of bullshit in the world. Mind, like God’s love, that stock is infinite, so no need to worry if you are worrying.

And speaking of bullshit, Donny has assured all those still willing to listen – not many now – that ‘an Iran deal is imminent’ and, presumably, will be announced at the same time he will reveal his new ‘health plan’.

‘Powering stocks’ (as in ‘powering the stock market’) gives many that warm ‘well, it’s not all bad then, is it?’ glow. This is followed by the – note, carefully worded – observation that the S&P500 is shooting ahead which ‘often means more good times ahead’.

The ‘more’ is dishonest: America is not in enjoying ‘good times’ and the outlook it looking ever bleaker: inflation is creeping up, groceries – especially fruit and vegetables largely imported from Mexico – are now almost 25% higher on average, energy prices have risen – gas up almost 35%, mortgages becoming dearer, no new jobs being created.

Crucially more Americans are using their credit card to pay for their weekly shopping and US consumer credit defaults are now as high as they were by the end of 2008. Remember 2008? Not a good year.

But the headline is worse: ‘The AI drive hits overdrive’ might also warm the cockles of many a cretin. 

But then the prices for tulips also ‘hit overdrive’ in The Netherlands in the 1630s, as did the South Sea Company stock price in the 1720s, the price of property in Japan in the 1980s and the stock price of innumerable Dot Com start-ups in the late 1990s.

Oh, and in the US in the mid-2000s buying up property to sell again soon was very attractive, especially as you and your goldfish could get a 100% mortgage just by asking, as prices just kept going up and up and up. That, if you recall, ended badly in 2008.

Similarly, buying and holding AI stock is very attractive because the price is continually rising – ‘hitting overdrive’. Traditionally, companies are seen as attractive, as in ‘profitable’, because they are earning money and passing much or some of it on to stockholders. To date, AI companies are not earning a sou, not a dime, penny, cent, fen or centavo – it’s all what they are expected to rake in.

Bollocks, say the cretins, we can wait! So they keep buying, pushing the price higher and so other cretins, worried they might lose out – so make that ‘other greedy cretins’ – also pile in and up goes the price even more.

‘You, matey,’ the cretins say (addressing me), ‘really don’t know what you are talking about! Just look at the stock market valuations of AI and tech companies! Look at them!’

Yes, dear hearts, look at them and try to understand what they are: NOT what you seem to think. A quoted companies ‘valuation’ is not the same as its ‘value’. It is simply the price of the company’s stock multiplied by the amount of the company’s stock. That’s it.

If 100 shares of ‘FillYourBoots.com’ are launched at 1p each, the stock valuation is £1. If a week later the price of each share shoots up to £10, FillYourBoots.com is now worth £10,000. Impressive, eh?

What assets does FillYourBoots.com have and how much has FillYourBoots.com earned in that week? Well, it has no assets at all and has earned nothing but don't quibble, don't be such a naysayer, don’t keep looking on the downside! Chill! Good times are on the way!

Thus I, the CEO, COO and CFF of FillYourBoots.com have managed to convince suckers that ‘good times are on the way’.

Word gets out that FillYourBoots.com looks like a winner – the proof: stocks have shot up in price tenfold! Imagine! Must be a good thing! Get in there!

So over the next week the price shoots up higher, and though some canny investors think they smell a rat sell up and cash in and walk off with a profit, less canny investors pile in further. And as there are more potential buyers than sellers, the price rises even further. Soon, with the price hitting £100 for each share, the valuation – though, note, not value – has hit £100,000.

I needn’t go on an labour the point as you grasped that point minutes ago and those who did not and will not have already left for a less challenging pastime. Anyway, isn’t the WSJ from which this headline comes talking about the S&P500 not just AI stocks? Well, yes it seems to but . . .

Overall, around ten AI and tech companies are grouped together as those whose stock is ‘hitting overdrive’ and two or three, e.g. Microsoft and Apple, do make a profit. But pertinently the AI companies do not.

The financial news they do release is misleading: certainly, the AI and tech companies have turnover and buy and sell, but simple analysis had shown that almost exclusively they trade with one another. Thus no ‘new’ money his being made – it is the same millions doing the rounds which looks impressive on a their balance sheet but de facto means fuck-all.

What is far worse and far more misleading is when, as here, the Wall Street Journal trumpets a soaring stock market, it is almost wholly the trading in the AI stocks which thriging: by ‘valuation’ these ten or so companies make up almost 40% and so their success makes the overall S&P500 look good.

Strip out the ‘gains’ – make that the spurious gains – made by the AI stock trading, and the rest of the S&P500 is barely limping along. It is what has been described as the ‘irrational exuberance’ of those soaking up AI stock bumping their prices ever higher which is skewing the picture.

The description ‘irrational exuberance’ was coined almost 30 years ago by former Fed Chair Alan Greenspan for the behaviour of those piling into any dot-com stock going and we know how that ended.

This is where the ‘P/E’ ratio is useful and gives broad-brush view of just how well a company is performing and whether it might be worth investing in. To establish it you just divide the price of a share by how much that share is earning. The rule of thumb is that the higher the P/E as in each share is earning pretty much fuck-all as are the AI companies, the more such a share should be avoided.

Certainly, there are wise-acres who insist – as always – that ‘this time it is different’. And to sound even more convincing the don’t put it in language most cretins are suckers for: this, they assure us, is a ‘paradigm shift’. More letters, certainly, but adds up to the same old bollocks: This Time It Is Different!

Well, it is your money, pal. Me, I’ll stick to backing the gee-gees – Kev down the pub passed on a dead cert which will start at 33/1 and make me a tidy sum. OK, he’s been wrong these past six or seven times but a broken clock is right at least twice a day.

Overall, the WSJ should know better and probably do, but with newspapers to sell who’s going to be that picky? It reminds me of advice all young reporters starting out are eventually given here in Old Blighty, but no doubt in Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, South Africa (thought the yanks are perhaps a little too precious to abide by it).

Don’t let a couple of facts get in the way of a good story

It might not win you too many prizes for ethics and professional standards, but it sure does sell rather more copies of the rag you are working for (in the generic sense of ‘rag’ in that the winners have left ink and newsprint behind and are now all binary or digital or whatever the sodding word is. That’s it, ‘online’.

Piss-poor pay and an editor's conceit – I allow myself a well-earned rant. And what the fuck is happening to print circulations: from selling in the millions to just one or two now and then if the weather's good

The following is from my first draft of a review of Michael Leapman’s examination of Fleet Street and the British national newspaper industry after the Wapping dispute (look it up rather than me try to outline it here). In it I mention how substantially disparate were the wages national newspapers paid their reporters and sub-editors (US copy editors) and those paid to hacks in ‘the provinces’.

I have posted it separately (and as a blog entry) because did slow down and bloat the review rather. Here’s an example of how piss-poor wages in ‘the provinces’ were.

I married a woman in North Cornwall, south-west Britain in February 1996 and our first child was born six months later, but I carried on working on the nationals in London, commuting by train to spend four days a week subbing on the Daily Mail. With a second child on the way, I was under continual pressure to ‘work locally’ though I really did not relish the thought of working a local paper.

I was earning the annual equivalent of around £28,000 ($37,000, today about £51,000 / $76,000), though travelling costs other expenses of spending four days week soaked up some of that. But I finally gave in and I wrote to the Plymouth Herald, the city’s evening paper, asking whether they were looking for sub-editors. They were (and were always short-staffed) and took me on immediately, but could only pay me their top whack of £18,000.

Cynics might suggest I could have negotiated for more, but in this case – unusually, I have to say – the cynics might be wrong. As it turned out I was the best paid of the ‘down-table subs’.

I found out that two of my younger colleagues, both graduates of art college and about 23 years old (though untrained in any form of journalism – papers are not as particular as they like to make out and so much for the hoary bullshit the cited to justify shit wages that ‘journalism is a  vocation’) were on one-third of what I was getting – £6,000 / $8,000 (£11,000 / $14,500)!

Far worse and wholly typical ‘newspaper reasoning’, when they were fired, both had been promised that although they would start out on that very lowly £6,000, after six months their salary would be reviewed and presumably bumped up a little as no doubt the two twenty-something woman, hoped, expected and, frankly, will have been led to believed.

Their salary was reviewed by the Herald’s totally useless editor Rachael Campey, but she or possibly upstairs management had decided not to increase it. I’m pretty sure that was no reflection of the work of the two young women, just the standard provincial paper penny-pinching.

. . .

Campey and I did not get on. She had an extraordinary high opinion of herself and her abilities, and had been hired to edit the Evening Herald after she had edited the Exeter Express & Echo and raised its circulation a little. Her stint on the Herald was not as successful, and she was eventually sacked when circulation fell rather badly under her editorship.

Her conceit might be gauged from a memo she sent around reminding subs to check spelling in the dictionary even if they thought they knew a word. ‘Even I sometimes have to look up words,’ she wrote. The ‘even I’ did it for me.

Then a little later, when for some reason we were really down on numbers, she joined us on the subs’ desk as a ‘revise sub’ (a sub-editor who checks subbed stories before they are sent for typesetting).

NB later: That is not correct. working on Apple Macs (or, I suppose PCs on other newspapers though in those days Apple had the lead, the ‘typesetting’ – chosen font and size etc – was done by the sub: that was what ‘direct input’ was all about. 

The subbed and formatted copy was then output on sheets of bromide and then individual stories would be pasted onto a layout. This pasted-up page was then – don't know the technical term – converted into a photopolymer plate which was used for printing on a rotary press.

I had subbed a pretty typical local paper picture story about some guy who had built something or other – a cathedral, a battleship, some kind of bollocks – out of several tens of thousands a matchsticks. My headline – above or below a large piccy of the work of art so it was clear what the story was about – was something along the lines of ‘Strike a light! Mutley [or whatever part of Plymouth he lived in] man show’s how it’s done’.

That is just an indication of my heady, though pertinently I did use the colloquial phrase ‘strike a light’. Here’s how Collins Dictionary describes it . . .

When the story appeared in the paper a few hours later, Campey had revised it and changed the headline to ‘Don’t strike a light! Mutley . . .’ etc. I asked her why, for God’s sake!

Well, she explained, because the model was made of matches, it would go up in flames if you did strike a light – so better not!

Collapse of stout party as was once said: the woman – the editor – had less newspaper nous than a slow-witted hedgehog.

Around that time, I was tactless enough in private conversation with another older sub – I was then 46 – to describe Ms Campey as an amateur, a slight that was overheard by some snitch or other and passed back to her. I know this because a little later she threw it back in my face as in ‘you think we are amateurs’.

But Campey certainly was an amateur: a month or two after I left and returned to working in London, she was sacked because circulation had cratered so badly. She then eventually became ‘a deputy news editor’ on The Times in London, impressive on the face of it, but her position was certainly not as grand as that might sound and I don’t doubt after being booted out of the Herald top spot, she was on her uppers.

A friend who was working on The Times at the time told me Campey’s ‘deputy news editor’ gig consisted of admin duties, organising reporters’ rotas, holiday cover and hiring casuals. Eventually, she got a second chance and landed the job of editing the Yorkshire Post, then and possible now a highly respected provincial morning newspaper. That also ended unhappily and did her rep no favours at all.

She resigned after just a year and a half in the job soon after a motion of no confidence in by editorial staff who were members of the paper’s National Union of Journalism chapel was passed unanimously. She later moved on to be an ‘associate editor’ (which usually means very little and is a title usually a sop to salve feelings) of the very short-lived weekly the North-West Enquirer. That packed up barely a few months in. 

NB A taste of some of the bull that hacks can come out with is this from the Enquirer’s editor, quoted in the UK Press Gazette in the run-up to the paper’s launch in spring 2007:

‘[Waterhouse] told Press Gazette in December “The paper will be editorially led and stand or fall on the quality of its reporting and of its whole editorial”.’

This begs the obvious question: in which universe is a newspaper not ‘editorially led and does not stand or fall on the quality of its reporting and of its whole editorial’?

. . .

Finally, let me tackle the obvious question: is the above a hissy fit? Make your own mind up. Campey treated me like dirt and was a sodding amateur, so I’m not just not here best friend but don’t want to be. I began on a three-month contract, but when that came to an end, she had to offer me a new three-month stint as someone was leaving.

What got to me that, although I was certainly not the best sub in London, I did learn a little about standards and how high standards all-round tend to encourage everyone to try to raise their own. When I got to the Herald, I tried to write good headlines and not make do with the usual boring shit and stale puns. But when your work – my work – sat side-by-side be a crock of crap, it was more than a little dispiriting.

So life on the Herald was a chore (not least that every now and then some sub or other was obliged to hang one for 90 minutes after the end of their sting at 5.30 to wait for the Press Association weather report. This was unpaid, but we had no choice in the matter.

It all had a happy ending, however. When my six months were up and I was cast adrift, I had a call from the chief-sub of the Daily Mail features desk to come back and work shifts in London. I did, for the next 18 years.

The Herald – it has to be said like all other provincial papers at the time – knew every trick in the book to chisel and pare, always at the staff’s expense. At some point long before, the paper had negotiated reducing the hour-long lunch-break to just 30 minutes for an extra pound or to. That arrangement carried on, though the ‘extra’ dosh in our pockets by then amounted to zilch of fuck-all.

The Express & Echo was demoted from appearing daily to a weekly in September 2011. The Herald is still a daily print circulationg is pitiful: when I worked there for six months in 1999, it was around 15/16,000 a day.

In 2023 it had plummeted to just 3,872 copies, though, like all local paper groups, it has an online presence.

What we don’t know and sure as hell will not find out is how much it earns from online advertising. Speaking or circulation, it has collapsed all-round. When I joined the Birmingham Evening  Mail as a trainee sub in January

1980, it was selling more than a quarter of a million copies every day and proud it was – though just – the top-selling provincial evening paper.

Now? Take a look (right). (ABC is the Audit Bureau of Circulation.)

What is Melanie Knauss so afraid off? Might it be what here once long-time friend Amanda Ungaro knows from her past? Might well be. Collapse of the Trump regime began on April 9 when Melania opened her big mouth.

Who is Amanda Ungaro? Like thousands around the world, but especially in the United States, I had no idea until about four day ago when one Melania Knauss inadvertently brought her to global attention.

Why ‘global’ attention? Well, Mel baby is better known to the world as Mrs Donald Trump, and surely her nonce of a husband no longer needs introduction.

For non-British readers, excluding Aussies and Kiwis, I should explain that a ‘nonce’ is our slang for a paedophile (or, as Donny is a Yank, I’ll make that pedofile) as in ‘a kiddie fiddler’, ‘a child molester, that kind of delightful thing.

For little by little is seems to be becoming clear that Donny also did a little part-time kiddie-fiddling in his time, though – and this is not a mitigating factor – not on the scale of his one-time best friend in the world, Jeffrey Epstein.

For the record Donny now likes to pretend he barely knew Epstein. Yes, Donny, sure, Donny, and bears don’t shit in the woods.

The word ‘nonce’ began life as the acronym N.O.N.C.E said to have originiated in Her Majesty’s Clink Wakefield where it appeared alongside the names in lists of various kinds of several inmates banged up for convicted of sex offences, primarily against children.

It stood for ‘Not On Normal Courtyard Exercise’ as in ‘keep these men away from other prisoners as they are likely to have the living shit beaten out of them’.

A recent victim of prisoner retribution was Ian Huntley who had been locked up in HMP Frankland in 2003 and serving two life sentences for the murder of two ten-year-old schoolgirls in Cambridgeshire UK. He had his head stoved in by another prisoner with a metal bar and died nine days later.

As for Ungaro, who she is and why she is relevant, it all kicked off on Thursday, April, 9 in the White House, when out of the blues Melania called a press conference to rail against ‘lies being told about her that were circulating on the internet.’

Her address to the media was brief, lasting barely five minutes, and it left everyone who attended, everyone who watched the live coverage and swiftly every sodding interest analysts and pundit under 

sun baffled. It could be summed up: ‘What the fuck is she talking about?’ and ‘why exactly did she think something is important enough to call a special press conference.’

No one had heard any ‘lies’ about Melania, and many of the claims made about her which she might like to pretend are ‘lies’ were not new – that her ‘modelling’ in New York thirty years ago included not a little soft porn and that her green card permit was obtained illegally. So, frankly, nothing to see here so move along, please.

No, these were new lies – but what were they and who was spreading them? And was Mel perhaps protesting too much and thereby adding credibility to claims about to be made? If her intention was to damp down speculation, it

failed completely: holding her speech and addressing the media might be likened to inviting a gaggle of alkies to a well-stocked bar but insisting they should not drink a drop. Good luck with that, Mel.

It would seem you didn’t think this through rather as hubby Donny didn’t think through his plan to attack Iran and now doesn’t know how to exit the whole sorry mess. (The current clichéd phrase is that ‘he doesn’t have an off-ramp’.)

Mel’s speech was, surprise, surprise larded with untruths: she insisted it wasn’t Jeffrey Epstein who had introduced her to Donald at New York’s Kit Kat club but it was a chance meeting. That ‘explanation’ would hold a lot more water if Mel herself hadn’t previously provided other explanations.

A long-time Trump friend, Paul Zampolli, claimed it was he who introduced Mel to Donny, so who knows the truth, though frankly in most maters involving Donald Trump ‘the truth’ is a very moveable feast.

Brazilian Ungaro enters the scene and Mel’s life after she was flown from Paris where she had been working to the US aboard what is now referred to as Epstein’s ‘Lolita express’. She was sixteen at the time and began a modelling career in New York.

In 2002 she met Zampolli who was then still running his own modelling agency, ID Model Management, and they eventually married and has a son. By all accounts the Zampollis – Paulo and

 

From left: Paulo Zampolli, Melania Knauss aka Mrs Melania Trump, Donny and the lass who might be causing all this very entertaining fuss, the former Mrs Paulo Zampollia aka Amanda Ungaro

Amanda – were thicks as thieves with the Trumps – Donald and Mel who he married in 2005 once he had got shot of his second wife Marla Maples – and the inevitable Jeffrey Epstein.

Mel is now very keen to play down here friendship and closeness to Amanda but it seems it was a close on for many years. At Donny’s inauguration dinner in Amanda sat at Melania’s table and they socialised, both in New York and Palm Beach. Amanda also claims Mel sent her son annual birthday greetings – though that’s not quite as significant – and once even had them delivered by the secret service – though that is.

It all went pair-shaped when Zampolli and Amanda separated in 2003 and are still battling in court for custody of their son. Amanda remarried but last year ICE agents arrested Amanda and kept here in a detention centre for three months before deporting here to her native Brazil. And those most recent episodes seem to be the root cause which have led to Amanda spitting blood and threatening to reveal the dirt on Melania.

What might it be? Was Mel also moonlighting as a top-dollar call girl? Who knows, but it has to be ‘juicy’ for ‘the first lady’ to be shitting bricks in public.

Hold this space . . .

Is anyone home in the White House? The lights are on but it seems empty there. Think about it - do you really want to waste American lives for nothing but an old man's fantastical pipe-dreams?