Jan 22nd

Finance

George Bush has announced a financial rescue package to prevent the Us from tipping into a recession. As usual the thrust of the plan is to stop taxing rich people. Financial markets around the world reacted going “Aaah, Bush has noticed the economy and is doing something, sell! Sell! Sell!”

Interviewed about the crashing markets one trader said “Getting drunk won’t help because there’ll be more of the same tomorrow”, ironically highlighting how those working on minimum wage for the companies he trades feel.

Crime

And the case of John Hogan. This is the father who threw his young son off a hotel balcony before jumping off himself with his daughter– the son died, Hogan and his daughter survived. Yesterday the defence told the court that the murder of the young boy was – wait for it – his mother’s fault. Apparently poor innocent Mr Hogan was suffering psychosis and schitzophrenia and thought he was “taking them to heaven”. Meanwhile his wife “shouldn’t have told him she was leaving him” and caused the incident due to her lack of “emotional intelligence”.

Now firstly he thought he was “taking them to heaven” – can that mean anything other than “deliberately killing them”. Secondly I think packing up and leaving a guy like this shows a great deal of emotional intelligence.

The defence also accused her of insulting the accused’s family. Apparently she called them a “family of death” just because both his brothers have committed suicide, one of them after burning down his family home.

Just when you would think it was about time to leave the poor bereaved woman alone they accused her of sending “flirty” emails to an old school friend. Right, when did logging on to friends reunited constitute incitement to murder?

Health

A doctor who joked about putting leeches on a patients genitals is due to face a fitness-to-practice panel at the GMC. Now I’ve been working as a comic for about four years now and I’ll be honest I still never heard that joke. Doctor doctor, I’m here for my check-up. I’ll put some leeches on your genitals then. An Englishman, an Irishman and a Scotsman were putting leeches on their genitals. It is also alleged that he formed an inappropriate emotional bond with the patient. Yeah cos girls love a guy who jokes about putting leeches on their genitals. Have we entered some sort of wormhole here and ended up in a weird parrallel universe?

Entertainment

And the BBC reports Amy Winehouse has taken some crack. Of course she’s taken some crack – look at her!

Environment

Finally the environment and I’ve been told by a couple of listeners that I should do something about the floods, so I’ve got a jiffy cloth and I’m off to Yorkshire. Well before I go I’ll just tell you a little bit about the extreme weather. The Daily Express had about five pages on the subject and magically managed not to mention climate change once. As well as the floods, some areas had snow storms – a student in Newcastle commented “way-aye, as terrible, i’ve ‘ad to put a pair of socks on with me mini skirt and boob tube”.