Mark And Pete

Happy #Christmas everybody! Here's a funny festive feast of humour from your favourite friendly curmudgeons to ease you into the Yuletide season. Don't give up, keep the faith, have a giggle. Yours, Mark and Pete. Jingle Bells 7 by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Artist: http://incompetech.com/

Predictably, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla warned on Tuesday that people who don’t take the Covid-19 vaccine will become a “weak link” that allows the coronavirus to spread.Bourla, whose company is in late-stage testing for a potential inoculation, said he understands the public’s concerns about vaccines, which are being developed in record time. He said Pfizer will only request authorization from the Food and Drug Administration after data shows that its vaccine is safe and effective. But should you take the vaccine? Mark and Pete have the answers.

Online shopping has grown massively within the last ten years, with more and more consumers opting to update their homes, wardrobes and pick up gifts from the comfort of their own homes. This digital uprising has obviously had a huge impact on the lives of High Street shoppers and businesses alike. Departments stores such as the long established Debenhams are closing down, what comes next? Mark and Pete have the answers.

"I have never made any pretence of my opinion that the post coronavirus recession in the UK is going to be ghastly. However, events of the last few days have forced me to reconsider that opinion. I now think that calamitous may be a better description. I want to keep this blog to manageable scale so let me set out the short form of my reasoning.The UK was already forecast to run a deficit of £370 billion this year. The deficit for the following three years was forecast to exceed £100 billion each year by the Office for Budget Responsibility." How has the British Government created such a mess?

Archaeologists have discovered the remains of two men killed in the volcanic eruption that destroyed the ancient Roman city of Pompeii nearly 2,000 years ago.The find was made in a dig carried out during the coronavirus pandemic, the Italian culture ministry said.

The home secretary, Priti Patel, has avoided the sack despite a Cabinet Office inquiry reportedly uncovering evidence of bullying within the Home Office.Priti Patel broke the ministerial code, but was it justified? Mark and Pete have the answers. MARK AND PETE PODCAST EPISODE: markandpete.com Boris Johnson has said he continues to have "full confidence" in Priti Patel following a report concluding the home secretary had "unintentionally" breached the ministerial code in her behaviour towards civil servants.The report's author, Sir Alex Allen, has quit after the PM rejected his findings. Here is the summary of those findings that has been released by the government:The Ministerial Code says "ministers should be professional in their working relationships with the civil service and treat all those with whom they come into contact with consideration and respect. The inquiry concluded that Patel broke the ministerial code of conduct, but the prime minister, Boris Johnson, ignored the findings and ruled that she d

Australian researchers say the discovery of a two-million-year-old skull in South Africa throws more light on human evolution. Neo-Darwinian evolution is just a theory, on Mark and Pete we are strong believers in creation being by God.The skull was a male Paranthropus robustus, a "cousin species" to Homo erectus - a species thought to be direct ancestors of modern humans.The two species lived around the same time, but Paranthropus robustus died out earlier.Mark and Pete look at the reasons for disappearance of this species and what it has to teach us about the evolution of Homo Sapiens today.

The polls were inaccurate. Again.When we say “polls” here, we're not talking about the actual process of voting in an election, I am referring to very expensive surveys that ask about a thousand US adults who they will vote for. ournalists, supposedly chastened by a 2016 Trump win that they did not see coming, were going to be very cautious this time around. No more flailing New York Times needle. No more decimal places on FiveThirtyEight’s homepage - instead, a cartoon fox in glasses explaining to you what voters might do. And yet countless articles were still written over the past few months predicting that a Biden win was more likely than a Trump win, and so a lot of people are shouting online and offline because they have been caught by surprise. Because yet again, somehow, they trusted the polls. Why? What about EU polls, they didn't fair any better. What is the future of the polling industry, are pollsters history?

And so we are back to square one. With hospitalisations for Covid-19 rising again, it feels as if all the sacrifices we made have only pushed the problem into winter, just as the models predicted, and that we have to do it all again. It is as if lockdown is our natural state and the last two months have been a curious aberration. There is a sense that a government desperate to avoid history would rather be seen as trigger-happy than tardy.But this is not a carbon copy of March. We are in stronger position and, I hope, have learned a few things. To move forward, we must begin by accepting three facts.

Free school meals for children is a hotly talked about topic as the UK heads into the winter months and continues to battle coronavirus. Here's the lowdown on free school meals and what should happen about free meals when the school are closed. About 1.3m children in England will be able to claim free school meal vouchers in the summer holidays, after a campaign by footballer Marcus Rashford. But is that enough? Mark and Pete have the answers.

There is a move afoot to sanitize fairy tales, to remove sexist stereotypes from them. Mark and Pete in this special short episode argue that this is a mistake. This is at the heart of the culture war. It’s often said that fairy stories in their original pre-Disney form are far too brutal for kids. It was said back in 1812 when the Brothers Grimm (whose tales appear in the coloured fairy books, translated into English by Lang’s wife) released their first collection: Kinder und Hausmärchen — children’s and household tales. But to consider fairy tales unsuitable for youngsters is to misunderstand both children and the stories themselves.

The Church of England has invested in musical artists, some of which are very different from what you would expect! In a challenge to the church Mark and Pete argue that investment in business part of the future for the church!

Going to work in the post Covid new normal is different. Will coronavirus have made work clothes obsolete? Unless you were already working from home before the days of social distancing, you’ve probably had to adapt to remote meetings. Technology has enabled many companies to ensure business continuity, and video calling has been a crucial tool for that. What are the ramifications of this crucial shift? Mark and Pete have the answers.

Pensions are not all they seem. At any rate, the goalposts are moving. Men and women in the UK will have to wait until they are 66 to draw their state pension from Tuesday, after a decade of increases in the qualifying age for the benefit.Ten years ago, women could claim their state pension at 60 while men qualified at 65, but changes in recent years have brought both qualifying ages in line, and phased in increases for both sexes.The phased increase meant that someone born on 5 October 1954 reached state pension age on 6 September this year, while someone born a day later waited another month to qualify.

The group that sponsors the presidential debates said Wednesday that it will make format changes to the next two showdowns between President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden “to maintain order” in light of their fractious first showdown. What should the next debates look like? Is there a way to get something useful out of them? Mark and Pete have the answers.

Many police officers are "absolutely baffled" by the new COVID 19 regulation and they I think speak for all of us. What is going on? The lockdowns and other measures need to be done consistently to work but they are difficult to follow. Some might want to rebel but they are hampered by not really knowing what they are rebelling against. Mark and Pete have the answers.

If cash is on the way out, we are all in trouble - from all sides. Listen on to find out more and keep safe.Physical money has been with us for thousands of years for a reason. Cash is essentially untraceable, it’s easy to carry, it’s widely accepted and it’s reliable. If the power goes out, or there’s a blip in the electronic systems that make the online commerce world go round, cash is there. If someone wants to buy something without anybody tracing it back to her, cash is the way to do it. If someone wants to be certain that their form of payment will be accepted, cash is the best bet. Even with advances in technology, some of the aspects of cash simply aren’t reproducible with bits just yet. And yet there is a seeminglingly inevitable move, increased by fears over spreading the coronavirus that produces CoViD-19. Why is this? And what are the dangers of just using online backing as an alternative?

Mark and Pete come from different perspectives to give solutions to the worlds problems. And make fun of them. Here Pete breaks it down and invites you to subscribe.

Novak Djokovic has apologised for hitting a line judge with a ball at the US Open, saying he is "extremely sorry for creating her such stress".The world number one was disqualified from his fourth-round match against Spain's Pablo Carreno Busta. The Serb, 33, who had just had his serve broken, took a ball out of his pocket and hit it behind him, striking the woman in her throat. "This whole situation has left me really sad and empty," said Djokovic. Has the famous tennis player celebrity identified his dark nasty side? Do we all have one? What are other celebrities hiding? Mark and Pete have the answers.