Mar 5th

Education

And we start with the news that hundreds of thousands of families have just found out if their children have gotten in to the schools of their choice. Of course the politicians seem to spend all day debating how they can make sure parents get “the right to choose” but for me that rather obviates the real question: why do we have schools which parents will happily move house and open a court case to get their kids away from? And of course these schools end up full of the kids whose parents can’t be bothered to find a good school for them. So to add to the misery of knowing your parent’s don’t give a stuff about you, you end up at a school even paedophiles would think twice about going to.

Crime

A nurse who murdered four elderly patients has been ordered to spend at least 30 years in prison. The BBC coverage was quite cautious – describing him as “evil” in inverted commas. I think once you’ve murdered four, you’re pretty definitely evil. He killed the four women by giving them an overdose of insulin and was caught out when a particularly bright doctor noticed that they weren’t diabetic.

Karl Taylor is also facing a minimum 30 years in jail after he murdered Kate Beagley after meeting her for a date. His defence team actually had the nerve to argue that she “became hysterical and threw her throat against his knife more than 30 times, thus technically committing suicide”. Now there are times in my life when things have gone wrong for me emotionally and I’ll not deny that I’ve been hysterical. I might have shouted angrily, stamped my feet, or even slapped someone who was pissing me off. I have to say I’ve never been quite hysterical enough to attack a knife with my neck. How stupid do they think jurors are? Your honour he sucked the bullet out of my handgun with his magnetic force field.

Arts

Culture Minister Margaret Hodge has said the proms are not inclusive enough and attract too narrow a section of society. Yeah, they’re the proms, they’re classical music concert, what did you want, the Royal Philharmonic singing Bob the Builder, Can He Fix It? This is yet another part of the on-going search for some defining icon of Britishness which the racists in power can then use as an excuse to deport anyone who isn’t caucasian. Instead Herr Hodge of the Gestapo praised Coronation Street as an icon of a common culture. Well I must say when I watch northerners arguing in a grubby pub in a street with a higher murder rate than Beirut, it does make me proud to be British. Well it would do but of course I don’t watch Coronation Street cos it’s rubbish. David Cameron said he thought the proms were a great symbol of Britishness because of all the flag-waving. This of course means he’s talking about the last night of the proms which is basically a concert for those stupid enough to enjoy Coronation Street but too inbred to have the opposable thumbs required to operate a remote control. Personally I seldom bond so closely with my fellow Brits as when we’re engaged in a heated debate slagging off both groups.

Crime

A judge in Japan has thrown out a conviction for destruction of property against model Serena Kozakura after she demonstrated that her boobs were too big for her to have crawled through the hole in the door used by the alleged intruder. Well I can’t help thinking the possibly the real issue was that after the evidence had been presented the judge was in no fit state to make important decisions.

Economy

Some good, if long overdue and too incremental to make much real difference, news, the minimum wage is to rise 3.8% to £5.73 an hour in October. This will mean that those working full time on minimum wage will continue to be able to afford free food and walking to work.

Travel

Transport Secretary Ruth Kelly has admitted that concerns about privacy, fairness and enforcement for her road charging scheme could not yet be satisfactorily answered. The programme plans to launch hugely expensive satellites to track every single car in the UK , every single minute of every day and charge them for using the roads. Satellite and surveillance equipment makers are unbelievably in favour of the scheme. Everybody else in the country with half a brain has noticed that if you want to charge people for using the roads, you can just raise the tax on petrol. This has the added advantage of taxing those who use a lot of petrol more and those with more efficient vehicles less. Ms Kelly said, "People legitimately raised concerns about privacy, fairness and how any scheme would be enforced. We don't have all the answers to those questions yet. We can't introduce this without having answers to those questions.” I’m thinking she meant “Come on boys, everyone can see these proposals are completely stupid so you’re gonna have to bribe me hard if you want them through...”. Watch this space though, sometime in the next few weeks we’re going to hear “Tonight’s headlines and Jordan has gotten her boobs out, as this detailed footage shows ... and we’re all getting road charging whether we like it or not ... and in London three men with beards have been arrested and accused of trying to blow up the whole country with a big dirty/nuclear/chemical* (*delete as appropriate) weapon. The men are expected to be held for three days and then let go after we admit we’ve got no evidence and only arrested them so people wouldn’t think the met were doing nothing about terrorism.”

Mar 3rd

Crime

A Labour MP has suggested that in the wake of the Ipswich murders brothel and prostitute visitors should be forced to leave a DNA sample. Which is odd because if there’s one thing I imagine most guys leave after visiting a prostitute, I’d say it was a teaspoonful-sized DNA sample.

Other political pundits have suggested the solution which would actually work – criminalising men who pay for sex. You see most prostitutes don’t actually want to be prostitutes. Hence why these kinds of jobs aren’t normally discussed at school parent’s evenings and careers fairs. “Well Mrs Jones, Jessica hasn’t got very good grades in her mock GCSEs but she does have a really nice pair of tits so we think a vocational program may be a good idea to help get her onto the streets and earning a decent wage. She could do a six-month apprenticeship, following an experienced sex worker and making notes, then eventually look to set up her own offices. What do you think? Well yeah being a child care assistant is another option...” So a law telling women they’re not allowed to work as prostitutes doesn’t have any effect because they’re all doing it under duress. They not going to turn round and go “well I really do want that crack and my passport back but since i heard about the early-day motion in parliament, i’m starting to reconsider...”

On the other hand guys who visit prostitutes have a fair amount of control over the matter. If they have a burning and uncontrollable urge to let off some sexual steam but don’t want to visit a sex worker they can simply pop down to Blockbusters and get the Hollyoaks box set out.

Entertainment

A British chef who works as a TV presenter in the US has been fired from his job after elements of his CV turned out to have been falsified. Robert Irvine was a presenter on Dinner: Impossible, a show where chefs have to make meals in difficult circumstances, like after they’ve run out of hummus and pitted olives. Seriously if you’re making a show called Dinner: Impossible and it’s not film in a refugee camp in Darfur, it’s bullshit isn’t it?

Anyway what’s great about the story is the scale of the lies Irvine got away with. He said he had a castle in Scotland, he said he had cooked for US presidents in the White House, he said he was a friend of Prince Charles and that he made the wedding cake for Charles and Diana’s wedding, including icing illustrations of their family histories onto the sides of the cake. He then insisted on being introduced as Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order, which everyone knows is a character in Star Trek. And the thing is he made five series of his TV show before anyone started to smell a rat. Irvine has come out and apologised for his false statements, I’d be out there laughing my socks off going “You guys fell for all that? Is there some sort of post-humus Jeremy Beadle award for best long-running prank”.

Politics

David Cameron has said he would build an extra 5,000 prison places. Which would be enough to accommodate about half of the members of his own party convicted of fraud, money-laundering and fox hunting. He also said he wanted charities to do more to get prisoners off of drugs. Yeah great, that’s the trouble in this country – charities not working hard enough. I think you might find that before they can do any more work charities need some money.

International News

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said the presence of foreign forces in Iraq is a humiliation and an insult to the region. The he said that only regional forces should be in Iraq, for example Iranian forces. Mmmm. What an interesting example. So just for example, he thinks his own troops should be running Iran, with who as their leader? Could it be – for example – him?!