Jan 24th

Politics

An estimated 22,500 police joined a march in central London to protest over pay. Well initially only six showed up so they smashed a window, and another 20 arrived, then they started a riot and another 2,000 arrived. Finally a Brazilian guy in a puffa jacket shouted “Allah Akbar” and that brought every other met officer.

Imagine though being a petty criminal near Westminster yesterday? Like you’ve just nicked a £2 blouse out of Primark and you sprint round the corner to see 22,500 police officers marching your way.

Transport

A man who leads his girlfriend round with a dog collar has been prevented from boarding a bus in West Yorkshire. Dani Graves and his slave, sorry fiancé, are claiming discrimination, The bus company says the lead is a threat to passenger safety, which is bad news for anyone on the bus when the trainers from the local pit bull centre decide to take Rex out to the park.

The woman Tasha Maltby said the lead was her idea and previous boyfriends had called her a “weirdo” for suggesting it. And that’s news?! Try it now – go ask your partner if they wouldn’t mind leading you around on a dog lead. Then if they don’t call you a weirdo, call the press, and the police.

Asked about their relationship Mr Graves said “She’s kindof like a pet. I do everything for her. You wouldn’t expect your cat or dog to do the washing up or cleaning round the house”. True but you would expect your pet to shit in a sand box in the kitchen.

Seriously though I’m actually with the couple on this occasion, if they’re both genuinely consenting to the arrangement, what is it to us. The press seem obsessed with describing them as Goths and saying that they dress in black and all that. If having something round your neck was dangerous on buses then businessmen would have to take their ties off before boarding.

Health

Scientists say they are close to finding a way of transplanting a kidney without the need for drugs. Cos normally they’d want at least a dab of nose-candy before attempting a tricky procedure like that.

Environment

A new ship has been unveiled which is partly powered by a giant kite. If successful the owners of the MS Beluga SkySails plan to launch a sister fleet powered by yo-yos, diabolos and buzz lightyear.

Health

Fat people could be paid to lose weight under new government plans to tackle obesity. So if you’re short of cash, get down to the nearest all-you-can-eat place and load up now. The plans will offer vouchers for healthy food followed by cash prizes for those who succeed in losing weight. Great thinking because the real reason for obesity in this country is nothing to do with the rise of convenience food, the appalling way the public are treated by the food industry and the rise of the TV and playstation generation. But it turns out it’s just the lack of a financial incentive.

Other measures being proposed include so-called lunchbox police (which sounds like a dodgy chippendales tribute act) to check if children have been given a healthy lunch. Seems dumb to me, I know when I was at school the easy way to tell if kids have a healthy lunch is if they throw it away and go buy chocolate instead at the nearest newsagents.

They’re also suggesting kids have compulsory cookery lessons. They’ll only be able to make dough and instant mash of course because of the ban on knives in schools. And advising that schools give kids at least five hours of sport every week, which is actually more than the England football squad do.

Crime

A lot of coverage today of statements from Natasha Steel. In case you’re wondering who that is – she’s been listed almost everywhere as Natasha Hogan because it seems only natural for the papers to assume that she would want to keep the name of her ex husband after he murdered her son and had his defence team try to tell her it was her fault. She’s got bigger things to be upset about at the moment though as her ex-husband has been essentially let off after throwing both of her children off a 50ft balcony. John Hogan’s lawyers described him as “the best Dad [his son] could have had”, which just doesn’t ring true for me. I’ve never been in a branch of Clinton Cards and seen a mug that read “World’s best Dad, hey thanks for throwing me off a balcony to my death.”.

Fashion

The burlesque artist Dita Von Teese has been announced as the new Wonderbra model. Amazing how much coverage this issue need really...

Personally I find the woman who essentially takes her kit off for money and then claims it’s somehow liberating to take slightly less of your clothes off in a middle class cocktail lounge, extremely annoying. At least the women who work at Spearmint Rhino can legitimately claim they need the money and don’t have any choice. She legitimises an industry that’s exploiting women all over the world.

Also I’ve never seen her in a bra, she’s forever showing us all how she doesn’t really need one. Is the new range going to include nipple tassles?

And remember wonderbra’s are basically padded bras. They’re designed to make boobs look bigger – so here’s the message from Wonderbra – are you the most successful stripper in England? Sorry still not good enough, you need a padded bra.

Jan 23rd

Science

One thousand people are to have their complete genome mapped as part of a major new study. The first volunteer will be Jade Goody. The lead scientist says she has been deliberately chosen to save time since they have already mapped the code for the fruit fly.

Health

Ministers have told the food industry that labelling is the key to tackling obesity. Really? You don’t think it’s getting people to eat less crap? I mean I don’t know many fat people who are there going “I don’t understand how I’ve gotten so heavy, I guess I must have misunderstood the label on that rich chocolate truffle gateaux – I thought it counted as one of my five-a-day”. The best way to use labelling to combat obesity is to make the labels on all food over 100cals weigh 20kgs. Then carrying the food home would burn of the energy.

Now I agree that food labelling is terrible. These days if your food wasn’t made on farm equivalent of a Guantanamo bay isolation cell there’ll be a special label to tell you so. But if it was, then they just, aaah, won’t mention it.

Politics

George Bush has spoken at an anti-abortion rally in the US. His words clearly had a big impact with two thirds of those who saw him saying they now believed abortion should be compulsory. What he said at the rally was “You’re here because you know all life deserves to be protected. I’m proud to be standing with you.” What he meant was “I’m going to need a lot more cannon fodder for my illegal wars”. He went on to say “America [can do] better than this” which is exactly what most Americans have been thinking since the day he took office. He went on, “We will continue to work for a culture of life”, then he popped out, authorised a few executions, did an oil trade with king Abdullah and told his defence officials to stop wasting all that money on body armour for the troops in Iraq. When he got back he decided to bamboozle the crowd with science, this time saying “Each unborn child is a separate individual with his or her own genetic code”. Sure but a bacon sandwich has it’s own genetic code. And if you’re definite right to life on the basis of unique genes then it’d be ok to kill one of each set of identical twins. Although if you’ve seen as many horror films as I have, you might be up for that – why do they never cast the twins as the nice ones?

Lifestyle

A survey whose results were released today says more people are comfortable with the idea of pre-marital sex than ever before. The survey conducted by Brad Pitt and Abi Titmuss revealed 70% of the population had “no objection” compared to only 48% in 1984 when John Prescott conducted the survey.

A disgusting 30% of the population described themselves as prejudiced against other races, amazingly the same percentage as ticked the box for “I read the Daily Mail”. The authors of the report (that’s Brad and Abi, pay attention) say they put this down to the reaction to Sept 11^th the reaction of the press that is.

Papers

Daily Express headlines today include “Girl Attacked by Frenzied Knifeman” as though most knife attacks are very casual affairs with breaks for tea and muted applause for particularly complicated artistic stabs.

Then on page 34 their headline screams “We’re Breeding A Generation Of Teenage Killers”. Which is interesting, and ironic, because if anyone is trying to engender a culture of poverty and panic, it is the Express. Also if that’s true – if we are building a secret murderous child-army, surely that’s big enough for the front page. Instead the front page says Britain’s Muslims are Too Extreme. I’d love to have seen them out on the streets surveying people “Would you like your local Muslims (a) Very extreme, (b) quite extreme or (c) not extreme at all?”

The story behind it is that Iraq’s deputy prime minister visited a Mosque in the UK and said that the preaching and books used were shocking and “would be illegal in Iraq”. And Iraq has such a better track record on law and order than the UK. We should definitely follow their example.