Sod's Law

I can see it being a very close horse race between him, Biden and Trump with all three passing away in the next ten years (does anyone honestly think Trump will hit ninety?). Bush Jr. living into the 2040s would not surprise me on the other hand. Obama will probably go in the same decade.

Is there any microorganism which hasn't had a go at this man's lungs... erm, lung... this past year?

Not exactly getting my hopes up as I haven't done that well this year. I used to be run a dead pool in my office before the pandemic but all of my selections had an inconvenient habit of dying the very year after I dropped them from my list.

Communication has been his biggest problem so far. He's reasonably competent so far compared with what we had before, but he's clearly not a natural communicator and struggles with his PR. It's good to be honest with people about the extent of the problems and what needs to be done to put the country back on track, but he needs to be better at showing the public the light at the end of the tunnel and what it looks like, give them a more detailed sense of the long term vision, especially when certain sections of the population are being asked to make sacrifices. As things stand, he doesn't have a good shield against the 'incumbent syndrome' suffered by every world leader these days: any bad thing that happens in his term will be blamed on him, even if it's not his fault. More charismatic leaders tend to be more skilled at deflecting blame for everything.

This is the terrifying thing. The way I see it, at best he has locked-in syndrome and can't move or communicate with the outside world at all. He might have been living a nightmare for many years and have no way of expressing himself.

If it turns out he's actually never left his house in all this time (with lots of hospital equipment keeping his body alive), signs are pointing towards a Terri Schiavo type situation here. I would have guessed before that his condition was very similar to Jimmy's, but at least Jimmy was able to be wheeled into the garden to watch his birthday flyby.

First time playing this year, and this year has been so uneventful for me that I lost track of half of the deadpools I'm entered in and who I selected last year. Going to try again this year but it's harder than I expected.

Aung San Suu Kyi Billy Connolly Brigette Bardot Buzz Aldrin Chuck Horner George Hamilton (actor) Giorgio Moroder Guntis Ulmanis James Whale John Astin John Carpenter Johnny Mathis Jimmy Carter Judi Dench Larry Niven Milos Zemen Norman Tebbit Paul Hogan Paul Verhoeven Prunella Scales Rod Argent Salman (Saudi king) Ursula Andress (joker) Valentina Tereshkova Vanessa Redgrave SUBS Camilla, Queen Catherine, Princess of Wales Dick Cheney Egon Krenz Jorge Ben

He has the same birthday as me separated by 68 years. I really hope he makes it to 100.

And I can think of a few dodgy individuals currently in the House of Lords who deserve to have the ermine torn from their shoulders and burned in front of their eyes.

What happens after Assad potentially gets the Mussolini treatment will be even more interesting that the event itself. Syrian really can't let itself fall into the situation Libya had to suffer after the death of Gaddafi.

Oh damn, now the forum Mystic Meg has rendered his verdict, her goose is definitely cooked...

I still think it's a weird constitutional anomaly that the Scottish MPs can vote on a bill which doesn't affect their country at all, especially on such an emotive one. And they can't vote on a piece of legislation which only affects their country.

I'm satisfied but also surprised as I would have bet good money that this bill would be defeated. I could never understand why we put animals with terminal illnesses and injuries down so they don't suffer but we won't do the same with human beings in an even worse state who are capable of giving consent in a way an animal couldn't.

After all the furore around her selection, I give her maybe an 80% chance that she will not serve the whole of her parliamentary term in this government, and that's being generous as she doesn't seem like the type who will go quietly. Her health is only going to get worse and her absences more frequent. It's not good for constituents to be represented by an MP who is too spent by their own health to work meaningfully for them. I saw this locally as Dennis Skinner was frequently missing with illness in his last year as an MP and before the 2019 election, it was as though he was already a lame duck waiting to be shown the door to the retirement home.