This week in the news

POSTAL workers have staged a protest in Westminster as the row grows over plans to sell off 30 per cent of RoyalMail. There would have been more of them at the rally but most of them turned up late, got lost or went to the wrong address.

Gordon Brown wants to privatise the RoyalMail and sell them to a Dutch company. What a load of nonsense. Royal mail say the reason for their losses are that so many people now send emails. yes of course that's what it is. I mean I fondly remember the days when offers to enlarge your penis had a stamp on them. YES Royal Mail are losing millions, but I'd have thought the thousands of P45s being sent out every day would mean they're raking it in. RoyalMail are having to do this as they have £9billion missing from the pension fund. I look forward to the episode of Postman Pat where he's reduced to eating Jess the cat for breakfast.

BLUE PETER faces being axed because its audience figures have dropped dramatically. The trouble is that kids today are too busy with their own kids to watch Blue Peter. If they want to improve ratings, they need to feature items that include how to make hash brownies with real hash, how to dress old enough to buy cigarettes, and send your mum out of the room so you can watch internet porn.

A recent survey has shown that a lot of people still don't understand what's happened with the banking crisis. Here's a simplified version of what's happened. Imagine if you gave your mate a tenner and asked them to look after it for a week, then in a week's time you ask your mate for the tenner back, but instead he tells you he's bet it on Britain to win Eurovision, so instead he craps in your pocket and retires to Barbados.

Flight of the Con....morons.

British Airways staff are being asked to work for a month without pay. Have you seen those air stewardesses? Max Factor will go bankrupt. You thought that air stewardess hated you before? You can kiss that cushion goodbye. You'd be as well taking a pot noodle on flights. At least for that month the only 'bird strikes' on the runway will be malnourished staff beating them to death with clubs.

A cruise ship in the Caribbean has been quarantined after three people on board were found to have swine flu. There's worse places to find yourself quarantined than on a cruise ship, like anywhere else that's not a cruise ship.

I can't be the only one that suspects what's happened is someone has waited until the last day of their holiday and then started sneezing? This has led to many taking uneccessary time away from work, and records being take by the police who found out that a man dressed as his dead mother for six years to claim her state pension. Everyone was shocked. Especially his father. I'm so surprised no-one got at all suspicious, after all, British pensioners never last six years on a state pension.

And finally, they found oil under Mohammed Al Fayed's house. He took the oil company to court, and got £1000 in compensation. How did they ever think they would be able to keep it from him? He's obsessed with things happening in tunnels.

Voting over it's time to reveal who you think is the weakest link

Last week the BNP won two seats in the European elections. They haven't really thought this through. Now they'll be complaining about foreigners in Brussels - where they are foreigners. They'll have to start putting dogs**t through their own letter boxes.

The North of England is now represented in Europe by fascists, which should be interesting. I can't wait to see Manchester United turn up to the Champions League in brown shirts and jackboots.With half the team 'missing'.

The BNP promise they will "behave like proper parliamentarians". They've already submitted invoices for a giant swastika-shaped chandelier. Their leader Nick Griffin had to abandon a press conference after he was pelted by eggs. It should have been bricks.

According to a poll this week, Labour would do better at the next general election if they replaced Gordon Brown with Alan Johnson.

It also found that their fortunes would be improved if Brown was replaced by Jack Straw, David Miliband, Ed Balls or backbencher Jon Cruddas... Joanna Lumley, Esther Rantzen, Howard from the Halifax adverts, Paul Daniels, (but not Debbie McGee), or the former Motherwell stalwart John Philliben.

Indeed the survey finds that Brown's only chance of winning involves the Tories replacing David Cameron with the reanimated corpse of Hitler. Apparently the Tories would then fail to gain an overall majority, but still do quite well up North.

SuBo YoYo

Susan Boyle had a breakdown after the final of Britain's Got Talent and landed in The Priory. She's amazing. It takes most singers years before they end up there. At this rate, she'll be getting an MTV Lifetime Achievement Award by August. It seems Susan gets upset when she's parted from her cat Pebbles. Which is why she usually wears it on her head.

One of her neighbours said: "It's time for her to come home and get back to some normality." Isn't she's already depressed enough as it is? How is going back to West Lothian supposed to help her? Even the road signs going in say: "Welcome to West Lothian. Please remove your belt and laces." It's the only place in Britain where people list Samaritans in their friends and family phone calls.

The police were called to Susan Boyle's hotel room after she started acting strangely. What they didn't realise was that she was acting normally for someone from West Lothian.

Taking her out of West Lothian was just asking for trouble. It's like taking King Kong from the jungle to New York, but sticking him in a dress. After the show, Susan was admitted to The Priory in London. Doctors did think of treating her at a clinic nearer home, but there's only so much you can do for depression with leeches and a vinegar poultice.

Some people have suggested that people who are emotionally fragile should be stopped from going on Britain's Got Talent but if they did that there'd be no one to take part. So it's a great idea.

A book I won't be reading.

Official biographers of Kim Jong-il claim that his birth was foretold by a swallow, and heralded by the appearance of a double rainbow over the mountain and a new star in the heavens. Either it was his birth or the beginning of the Teletubbies.

I don't want to scaremonger but, a few weeks ago, every newspaper had at least four pages per day on Swine Flu panic when only eight people had the virus in this country. North Korea has threatened nuclear war and yet, in most papers, the most you'll hear about it is in a fun wordsearch puzzle on page 34. Can you find the words Kim Jong-il, radiation poisoning and armageddon?

Kim Jong-il has claimed that any sanctions against North Korea would be like "throwing a rotten egg at a rock". Which is actually one of Heston Blumenthal's nuclear holocaust recipes alongside "tenderising a dog with a brick" and "making your dead neighbour into nuggets with a shovel".

North Korea has few computers, almost no internet access outside the capital Pyongyang and teaches students about the web by showing them photocopied papers of monitor displays. Amazing really, but still too technical for many of the students at The University of the Highlands and Islands. They have the skull of a ram with the letters www scrawled into it with a sharp stick.

I love the idea of teaching the internet using bits of paper. I'm guessing they do email with an envelope. And Facebook? Pretty sure that's going to be a book.With a face drawn on it.

The week in tatters

This week's Britain's Got Talent produced some of the oddest sentences I have ever heard on television. "Anyone prepared to die on my show gets 10 out of 10", "We were told to wear less clothes, so we're wearing less clothes" and "Ladies and gentlemen, give a warm welcome to Piers Morgan!" The made-over Susan Boyle appeared on Sunday, blossoming from a dumpy woman into a dumpy woman with dyed hair. Items that Susan has touched are actually being sold on eBay - the whole town of Bathgate has apparently beaten all estimates by going for £23.

An elderly woman in London stored her mother's body in a freezer for up to 20 years. I don't understand why she kept mother in the freezer for 20 years, especially as she'd no longer be edible after two years. She had wanted her mum to have a more dignified resting place, but the binmen refused to take her. The lady said she lost weight through the stress, plus the fact that it can't have made going for a choc ice any easier. At least she got to rest in peas. Asked why she did it, she said she had no choice as the fridge was full.

The World Beard and Moustache Competition took place last weekend, and was won by a woman from my home town of Oxfordshire. The only news that beat this, was a piece featured in the tabloids about a 66-YEAR-OLD woman, who has become the oldest new mum in Britain after giving birth to a baby boy. I'm amazed she needed to have a caesarean section though, you'd think at 66 she would have needed some masking tape down there just to stop it falling out. She says the most important thing is that she is able to give the baby a normal, happy childhood. Which he will have. Right up until she dies. It's going to be unusual having someone in their seventies picking up a child from school who's not a paedophile.

Internet is child's play.

THE curriculum in primary schools is to be revamped so that children are familiar with blogging, podcasts, Wikipedia and Twitter. Aren't kids already familiar with all of those? The average primary school child is already more relaxed with computers than a Nasa scientist. Talk about putting a strain on the teachers, the only people qualified to teach children aged seven about how the internet works are children aged eight.

Another problem with this is that information technology is moving so quickly that, by the time children leave school, computer applications like Twitter will be as dead as the dodo. Although pupils won't have been taught what a dodo is. They'll be saying as dead as Myspace.

A COMPUTER scientist has invented a shoe that can be used as a phone. He says it could mean less people losing their phones. Fair enough but it'll probably mean a lot more people getting dog shit on their ear. There's a guy in my street who's been talking into his shoe for years. How is he supposed to look mental if everyone gets a shoe phone?

Sack MPs and get 600 Mumbai call centre guys to run UK

Well, what do I think about the expense claims?

Gordon Brown welcomed a "Lumley" of Gurkhas into Downing Street. He looked delighted having them there... a pleasant change mixing with a group of people who only want one house each. The Speaker of the House of Commons, Michael Martin, has resigned. He wants to spend more time with his houses. Did you see him try and worm his way out of it? He looked like someone was shovelling sausages down his throat till his was choking on them, and for once, not enjoying it. When the camera zoomed in on his swollen, vodka induced capillary burst face, I seriously thought he was having a stroke, even then the Clarkes surrounding him trying to help him would just be trying to force his pin number from him so they could get the money back he owes, or take claim of his £170,000 pension.

One Lib Dem MP has received death threats over his claims. He is said to be thrilled someone has noticed him at last. Only a handful of MPs have been shown to be not abusing the system. Animals and wives yes, but the system, no.

The MP Sir Hope Peter Viggers was forced to retire after spending £1645 on a "duck island". Looks like a great investment as he'll soon be living on it. He has now lost his job because of those ducks. I think the next time he rehouses them it may well be in a pancake with some hoisin sauce.

A new body will control Parliament finances. The government has set up OfParl. They should add F**k to the start. The Tories say only a new government in Westminster can save Britain. I agree. The Swedish one.

In any other profession they'd have been replaced years ago by an Indian call centre. I think that's how we should go at this. Sack all MPs and just have a team of 600 guys in Mumbai, working 24/7 running the country. "Press one to speak to your elected representative, press two to complain about the bins in your area, press three to declare war on Iran."

Feeling the heat.

Health chiefs are advising that all British homes should be painted white in order to cope with climate change.

Personally, I'm not sure how much difference reflecting the sun's heat is going to make to your house when it's 20 feet under water.

An Army test pilot is the first British astronaut. Tim Peake admits he's on the end of a very long waiting list to go into space. Which right now includes everyone on Earth. I can't wait to see a Brit up in space, grumbling about the weather. I just hope his spacesuit isn't supplied by the British Army. Solar radiation will make short work of a goldfish bowl taped to a bin bag.

Honour before greed

Story one on News At Ten last Wednesday was the latest revelation about high-spending, free-loading MPs. Story two was the coffins of four British soldiers returning from Afghanistan. It made for a stark juxtaposition.

On the one hand you have Government ministers and backbench MPs who have been squeezing every last penny out of a very generous allowance system to ensure their homes are equipped to a high standard. On the other, you have four brave young men laying down their lives in the service of this country. One a story of greed, the other a story of sacrifice. Two very different attitudes to public duty and serving this nation. What a contrast.

And it’s a contrast made starker still by news that urgent equipment needed by our troops on the front line in Afghanistan is still not getting through on time. Fewer than two-thirds of consignments – 57 per cent – reach our battle units on time. After eight years to get it right, that is surely not good enough. I spoke this week to a young officer who has just returned from Afghanistan and who told me they are still driving around in vehicles that offer inadequate protection. He lost men in a roadside bomb because better vehicles failed to arrive. They can equip their homes all right, but not our boys in the firing line.

HOLD ON TO YOUR HORSES.

Politicians are finally acting on the public outcry over their outrageous expense claims.

From now on, MPs are going to use a far fairer system of allowances, like the one used by President Ceausescu of Romania, just before he was marched from his golden palace and shot.

This has been a difficult subject to write jokes about when every time I try to exaggerate a punch line for comedic effect, an even more exaggerated expense claim is revealed.

I mean, what are they going to claim for next - a moat? Douglas Hogg was ridiculed for having a moat round his large mansion. To be fair, it is in the middle of a Sheffield Council Estate. Why does anyone need a moat cleaner? It's full of water. It kind of cleans itself. In his defence, the moat needed cleaning after the drawbridge broke under the weight of the chandelier being delivered.

In this country, let us not forget that a man's home is his castle. Although, in the case of many Conservative MPs, a man's castle is his second home.

Douglas Hogg claimed to have his moat cleaned and Michael Spicer claimed to trim the hedge around his helipad. They couldn't have made the Conservative Party look any more like aristocratic idiots unless they had claimed cash for "the lute player's fees to entertain the peacocks" and "a termination for scullery maid and third class ticket for her crossing to New Amsterdam".

Alex Salmond claimed £650 for curtains. To be fair, if his flat hadn't had curtains, we'd have paid out far more than that to his neighbours in compensation. Shadow ecology secretary Greg Barker has kept his green credentials through this scandal by keeping unused appliances and lights switched off in his second home. He has achieved this by not actually living there.

Many people have wondered why John Prescott needed to claim for two loo seats. Simple, one for each cheek. One MP claimed £135 to hire an electrician to "change the lightbulbs" in his house. Which, if nothing else, proves one thing: Politicians might be thieving b******s but they've got nothing on the real experts - tradesmen.

Ann Widdecombe has claimed the crackdown was going too far, saying: "It is becoming a competition that 'my shirt is hairier than yours'." If anyone is hairier, with or without a shirt, it's got to be Ann Widdecombe. If this expenses scandal gets any worse, they'll be digging a moat around Parliament.

Mr Hogg also paid £600 for someone to kill his moles. What was he killing them with? An Apache helicopter? The list of what MPs have claimed expenses for is incredible.

Tampons, horse manure, an ice cube tray, light bulbs and a chandelier. Coincidentally, those are the exact same items that Peter Andre has been offered in his divorce settlement.

Some MPs are still trying to justify the allowances system, saying that without it they would be forced to buy things using their salary. Last year, MPs were fighting against the disclosure of their second home expenses because they said it would be a risk to their security. It turns out it was a risk to the security of their overpaid jobs.

It was The Daily Telegraph that printed MPs' expense claims and its readers were furious. They have to pay for their own tennis courts, chandeliers and clean moats. One Tory showed she was still in touch with the public. Cheryl Gillian claimed £4.47 for cat food. Which is now the average British shopping list.

Oliver Letwin made a huge claim to have his "tennis courts modified". Judging by his multiple chins this means "fitted with a fridge". What I'd like to know is if MPs can claim for all those things, then what aren't they allowed to claim for? Chocolate fountains? Cream horns? Golden baths? Or are all those sexual practices allowed, too? The big news is the suspension of Elliott Morley. I think I'm with the general public when I say Elliott Who? Morley has been stripped of his role as international climate change envoy. Just as well, as his solution to climate change was for a second Earth about 100 miles away from the old one..

I.D cards

Id cards are to be made available from post offices. Fantastic! The queue in there already takes an hour and people are only buying stamps.

What's it going to be like when they're scanning irises and taking DNA swabs? The queue will be so long it will be quicker to have a letter delivered by passing it back along the line until it gets to your destination.

There are a lot of practicalities about the ID card scheme the Government don't seem have taken onboard. For example, how are they going to get fingerprints off people from Bicester? It's going to take at least a couple of hundred thousand years for their hooves to evolve that far.

Brings me out in a rasher

I'm not feeling as gloomy as usual this week as I've been able to get a whole train carriage to myself just by sneezing and wearing a sombrero. Gordon Brown says Britain is one of the best-prepared countries to handle a flu pandemic, which is especially reassuring after he said we were one of the bestprepared countries to handle the worldwide recession. The first confirmed case of swine flu in my area (Oxfordshire) was diagnosed this week. The good news is that Oxford people might have to wear face masks. Something I've been petitioning for many years.

Thousands of people have cancelled there holiday to Mexico to avoid catching the virus. If I'd spent any time at all in Mexico and all I came back with was swine flu, I'd be delighted. My doctor would be saying: "The good news, Mr McGowan, is you've got swine flu. The bad news is you've got gonorrhea, dysentery, hepatitis B, alcohol poisoning and you seem to have been shot in the spine." Most cases have occurred in villages containing massive pig farms. What are they moaning about? I would have thought having a blocked nose for them would feel like a two-week holiday.

The whole country is terrified they will be killed by this. The biggest killer in the UK is heart disease. And yet we're all sitting at home on our sofas eating KFC, too scared to go outside for some exercise in case we bump into a sneezing pig.

I'll say no more.

GRRRRRR

Just when it looked like Gordon Brown couldn't get any more politically inept, he's found a way. Having spent hundreds of billions trying to prop up the economy, you'd think paying the comparatively tiny amount that it would cost to allow ex-Gurkhas to settle in the UK would be a political choice preferable to telling some war heroes and Joanna Lumley to piss off.

I mean, even ignoring justice, what was he thinking? Has he got a very early start the day after the next election and so wants to make sure the result is confirmed by midnight?

What's his next move going to be - changing his name by deed poll to Mussolini?

When the heartaches are Special K

For many years now, my palate has been trying to kill me. In the end, it's bound to succeed. But it won't look like murder - it'll be ascribed to something apparently innocent, like "heart disease", "type 2 diabetes" or "exhaustion due to lifting mince pies". In reality, it will have been slow poisoning.

Everything my mouth tells me about what foods do to my body is a lie. If it screams: "Yes! Devour! Consume! More of this please! This is the very stuff of life itself!", it means I'm eating a Stilton and streaky bacon sandwich, deep fried in goose fat and served in a bucket of double cream. If it's saying: "Oh no, there's something wrong here - you might want to spit this out. Are you sure this is even food?", it's because I'm struggling through a salad.

I do eat some fruit and vegetables, but out of grim duty because I believe the people who've told me it's necessary - I have come to recognise my taste buds' malevolent purpose - but without that "finish your greens" tutoring, I would happily eat three meals of carcinogenic cholesterol a day, because that's the only sort of grub that genuinely feels to me like nourishment.

At least I can ignore all those conflicting scientific reports, saying that blueberries are or aren't superfoods, salmon gives you or cures cancer, cheese enhances scepticism or wheat is a sign of intolerance. I say let's stand the scientists down. I can tell everyone exactly what foods are good or bad for them: I love the latter and think the former taste like shit. (Metaphorically - I can only assume, given that eating excrement is very bad for you, that to me it would be ambrosia.) It's a useful skill, I suppose. But I'm not letting my palate off the hook - it still means me harm, even if it hasn't mastered reverse psychology.

So I was interested by last week's news that breakfast cereals are delicious. I'd assumed the opposite: advertising vitamins, minerals and slow-release energy, they sounded as mouthwatering as a cream cracker-eating race and so I hadn't eaten any for years. But it seems the manufacturers were being modest.

A survey of 100 cereals by Which? found that 31 had more than four teaspoons of sugar in them per bowl and many contained more sugar than a helping of Tesco's dark chocolate fudge brownie ice cream, while 100g of Tesco Special Flakes have the same salt content as Walkers ready-salted crisps.

They sound like a delicious treat after all, I thought to myself, and so much more convenient than frying eggs and bacon. Just add milk and my indulgent delicacy is ready. So I went out and bought myself a variety pack, opened a nice bottle of wine and tucked in.

It's sludge. They all turn to sludge. They start off a bit crunchy, which is fine, but then they go soft and gooey - and not in a nice way like caramel or egg yolk, but more like slurry or milk after a summer in the sun. The taste isn't actually horrible - all that sugar and salt must help a bit - but it's throwing good after bad. Ludicrously tasty it isn't.

What is ludicrous is that something that has the advantages of delicious killer ingredients uses them to such little effect. It's the first time in years that eating something bad for me has failed to hit the spot. It was as depressing as KFC chips; this, I thought to myself, is no way to die.

No wonder the manufacturers had to pretend the cereals were healthy. And they certainly taste healthy enough for people to believe it. You don't feel you need to check the ingredients for dangerous goodies when there's a party in your mouth but no one's brought a bottle.

How did we become a nation of breakfast cereal eaters? Does the gruelling nature of consuming it appeal to a sort of neo-Christian urge to self-harm? Is it like mortification of the flesh - we assume it's virtuous because it's unpleasant?

If so, we've created a huge market for a weird product that isn't good for us and is nowhere near as nice as toast. Even toast with margarine and diabetic jam is like a night alone in a cake shop compared with a bowl of All-Bran. I was given All-Bran a few times as a child on the basis that it keeps you regular. Looking at it, I found that plausible.

Breakfast is often called "the most important meal of the day" but it must be the least important. No other meal would be given over to mass-manufactured dried and reconstituted shards of shit knows what that you have to moisten in order to be able to swallow. They don't sell lunch cereals that you add gravy to.

I would rather leave my early-morning hunger unsated than have it die such an inglorious death; to be suppressed, rather than assuaged, by sludgy brown flakes. I mean, "flakes" for goodness sake! It sounds like a dermatological symptom. You might as well call them scabs: "Kellogg's Bran-Scabs - never has so much sugar been so effectively suppressed by the bland illusion of roughage!"

There are breakfast cereals that don't contain loads of salt or sugar, but they taste even worse. People try to jazz them up with fruit or yoghurt. It never works - they'd be better off deep frying the stuff and serving it with a mayonnaise dip. Now there's a tasty delivery mechanism for riboflavin.

What a total prick.

ALISTAIR DARLING announced the rich will see their tax rates change. Yes, they will — when they bugger off to Switzerland.

The one bright spot in the Budget was when the Chancellor said: "I’m taking the necessary measures for Britain’s recovery." Unfortunately, the gun jammed when he tried to shoot himself in the head.

I couldn’t believe that in the current financial climate it took him 20 minutes to explain our Budget... how long does it take to say: We have three beans, we are going to eat one, plant one and attempt to trade the other for a magical harp?

Analysts expect that Britain won’t be able to balance the books until 2018, when at least two or three General Elections have passed and the British Civil War has ended. Duty on the average bottle of beer has gone up by two per cent, thereby putting an additional strain on Scottish parents as they’ll have to increase their kids’ pocket money. And two pence has been added to a litre of petrol. This will upset many rural types, making their favourite tipple unaffordable.

He has been criticised for allowing pubs to close, while trying to save the car industry. This is a silly move; the more drivers we have using pubs and then ploughing their cars into bus stops, the more demand for replacement cars. This will also help buoy the replacement limb industry and florists.

The Chancellor announced a 2billion package aimed at preventing school-leavers from joining the dole queue... he’s going to build a big fence around job centres to stop them getting in. The City has dismissed Darling’s predictions on the economy as overoptimistic. Coming from them, that’s interesting. They based their entire financial model on receiving a mortgage payment from an unemployed, one-eyed banjo player in Detroit.

Most Chancellors proudly hold the Budget box high for photographers, whereas Darling looked so embarrassed he used it more to cover his face like a paedophile getting into a police van. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d delivered the entire Budget speech holding a blue folder in front of his face.

The new supertax will affect people who earn over 150,000. It’s surely of no surprise that Alistair Darling earns 141,866 as a minister. The real surprise is he hasn’t introduced a tax for people who’s hair and eyebrows match.

They are taxing the rich to help pay for assistance for the unemployable.

So Labour have returned to their socialist principles. Tony Blair must be spinning in his four £9million homes. Darling is putting 150,000 young people into jobs in green technology. This should be successful. Brit teens are already experts at smashing streetlights and heating whole estates with one burning car.

DEMON..STRATION

It's been an interesting week or so in the land of law:

It’s been revealed thousands of policemen suffer post-traumatic stress disorder after witnessing so much violence and horrific injuries. Luckily, there’s a cure. Stop beating people up. The police said they now want to carry Tasers permanently. I can’t wait for the next demonstration in London. It’ll look like the video from Thriller.

Then of course cops were caught taking photos of each other sitting on the Queen’s throne while on duty at Buckingham Palace. It’s lucky the Queen didn’t catch them. As she’d have got a slap in the face and a baton to the legs.

Finally, a Japanese woman has been sentenced to death after four of her neighbours died when she served them a curry laced with arsenic. There are probably still British men who would complain it wasn’t hot enough. Arsenic curry? That’s a bit too bland for me. Can you do me a polonium vindaloo?

Ranting about rants...surely not!

In these troubled times, we all need something consoling to cling on to, something familiar, although not necessarily something good. There is nothing more comforting, for example, than a cold, particularly if you've got the time to indulge it, which, in unemployment-racked Britain, thousands more do every day.

It doesn't hurt - the symptoms are as cosy as they are uncomfortable - and it's an excellent justification to moan. You know exactly what's wrong with you and can feel sorry for yourself, safe in the knowledge that you don't deserve genuine pity and won't get any.

There is nothing further away from the uncertainty and fear of worrying you may have a terminal illness than the gladdening pseudo-glumness that comes over you as the certainty of an incoming sniffle becomes apparent. "Oh no, a cold," you can say with a weary shake of the head. It's so different from how you might say: "Oh no, Aids."

Sometimes when people complain, it's because they like doing so, not because they're asking for a solution? When someone says they find it difficult following conversations at noisy parties, they want the response to be: "Oh, I'm the same!", not: "This is how you can get yourself a hearing aid." When I whinge about backache, it's because the whingeing seems to lessen the pain, not because I want the phone number of another sodding acupuncturist.

Familiarity is so heartening that it can cheer us up even when the familiar thing has horrendous connotations. Everyone was reassured when Winston Churchill was appointed first lord of the Admiralty in 1939, partly because they'd seen it before - he'd held the same post at the beginning of the First World War.

Like that went well! What kind of nutter perks up at the recurrence of something that, last time around, presaged the most murderous conflict in history? It's not even as if Churchill had done the job brilliantly the first time - he was responsible for the disastrous Gallipoli campaign. Surely no one was seriously buoyed by the thought that this new war might only be as bad as the last one?

With hindsight, we know that, had that been the case, tens of millions of lives would have been saved. But, in 1939, you'd have to be a severe pessimist to call that sort of speculation "realism".

Nevertheless, people were using their familiarity with a global war to make the prospect of another one less alarming: "It's just us and Germany and Churchill all over again," they felt better for thinking. "Bit of rationing, the odd zeppelin, every mother loses a son and we'll all come up smiling in four years' time, even if quite a few of us have developed stutters and get the shakes whenever a door slams."

Our fear of the future is so great that likening something to previous problems, however enormous, is far preferable to envisaging unprecedented ones. In other words, old problems are never as scary as new ones. Someone predicting that the credit crunch will be as bad as the Great Depression is something we can bravely take in. Saying it might be worse is a pant-wetter.

Of course our greatest moan, will always be the weather, and it seems that even with that, our days of moaning about the weather may be numbered; when it's 30 degrees in the shade in March, with the sea encroaching on Coventry, our nostalgia for bemoaning drizzle will be heartbreaking.

"There's nothing new under the sun", "'Twas ever thus", "Dear oh dear!" - these are the mantras of middle England and we need their calming effect now more than ever. So let's not focus on solving old problems that don't much matter or we'll be left with nothing to distract us from the insoluble new ones that do.

What are you worth?

I don't want to brag, but the other day I met an American, yes a real one. I shouldn't use his real name so we'll call him Brad. No wait, that's too stereotypical, let's call him Buddy.
Anyway, the reason I mention this is that within three minutes of meeting me Buddy had asked me how much money I earn:
Buddy: "What do you do?"
Me: "I'm a writer/manager of production"
Buddy: "Who do you work for?"
Me: "Various people"
Buddy: "How much do you make?"

I don't think I've ever felt more English. I mean, you don't ask a chap another chap how much a chap makes. The problem was I couldn't think of any reason why I was so reluctant to tell him. All he wanted was a handy way to place me, what was wrong with that. After all wouldn't the world be a better place if we could ask each other whatever we liked without offence:
How much do you earn?
What do you weigh?
Are you loved?
Who will miss you when you die?

Everyone says they hate small talk so why not abolish it and replace it with massive talk?
How much someone you have just met earns is one of the things that the game of polite conversation is designed to help you try and work out. Like 'how much sex are you getting?' and 'are you happy?'

You can't just ask those questions not because it's vulgar, but because it's too easy. You have to form these opinions yourself, you can't cut to the chase, drawing your own conclusions is the chase.

And on the other side we all have the right to present ourselves as we wish to be perceived, and the convention of not asking that particular question allows us to represent ourselves as worth more, or indeed less then the bold fact of what the market will bear! Because the subtext behind the question was:

"Look, I don't have time to make a judgment of my own, give me the bottom line, what has it been decided that you are worth?" And therefore when boiled down, are you any good? And you shouldn't have to answer that just because someone has asked you.

Strike it lucky.

Michael Barrymore is set to release a book in the coming weeks, which already is set to become a best seller in the world of 'celeb biography' as it's now known. It will of course be a best seller not because the 'my kind of people' star has any real life story that is so interesting it won't be bypassed to chapter seventeen, all we're interested in will be the infamous incident involving Stuart Lubbark.
In the book, Barrymore writes:
'You can call me a lousy entertainer, but you can't call me a killer'
Well that's fair comment I think. Somebody died at his house, in his swimming pool, at a party he was hosting. I think it only fair we say that he is a lousy entertainer. I mean I'm not Hyacinth Bucket, and I don't have a pool, but even on one of my wild entertaining parties, the police have just turned up to moan about the noise, never with a forensic team and sniffer dogs.

I tell you what offends me...

I was deeply offended by something on the BBC recently. It wasn't Clare Balding laying into a jockey's teeth, but this time with a cricket bat, or a repeat of Diana's funeral with an added laugh track. No, it was a new low.

It was Hazel Blears, the communities secretary, eliciting a round of applause on Any Questions for suggesting that Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand should pay the BBC's "Sachsgate" Ofcom fine. The rest of the panel bravely agreed with her.

"Well, you would be offended by that!" you may be thinking. "You work in media/radio. I don't suppose you like the idea of having to foot the bill if something you say appals the nation!" That's true, but we live in the era of the subjective offendee and my complaint is just as valid as those made about jokes involving dead dogs by viewers who say their dog has recently died.

As an insider, I can tell you that such opinions are deferred to by the post-Sachsgate BBC. Everything is scrutinised for potential offence by jumpy "compliance" staff who endure no professional setback if the comedy output ceases to be funny. They have the right to do this because they're ultimately responsible for what's broadcast - their organisation pays the Ofcom fine.

But it strikes me that, if I'm going to have to pay the fine, they no longer have the right to censor the content. And it's all academic anyway; if things continue as they are, TV comedies will only ever get fined for blandness.

Let me try to fake some objectivity and seriously address Blears's suggestion, which has since been reiterated by Jack Straw and Tessa Jowell. She says it's unjust that the fine comes out of the licence fee, paid for by everyone, so instead the wrongdoers should pay.

First, this idea of a net cost to the licence fee payer is nonsense; Ross was suspended for three months, saving the BBC £1.5m, and Brand resigned, saving it £200,000 a year. So the licence fee payer is well up on the deal and Ross and Brand have each taken a greater hit than the corporation will.

Second, Blears defines the wrong-doers as only Ross and Brand and gives the BBC's producers and executives no share of the blame. This is grossly unfair. The offending segment was pre-recorded. As a sick comedian myself, I genuinely understand how they could improvise something that offensive in that context. But I cannot understand why the station chose to broadcast it. So the then channel controller, among others, is at least as much at fault. But she's not as rich, so suggesting she pays a massive fine is a less applausey route for Blears to take.

I don't know whether the fine will hurt the BBC or whether it would particularly hurt Brand and Ross if they paid it, but how can she possibly think that the fallout from the whole business hasn't hurt that institution and those men?

The law requires that the BBC pay the fine rather than individuals. This is not a law that Blears, Straw or Jowell has ever queried before. But they're willing to come out against it for a short-term popularity boost for a beleaguered government - for an egg-cup sized bailer on the Titanic, for one round of applause.

That's what I really despise: the political opportunism. How long do these ministers imagine the friendships in the rabblerousing tabloids that they are so buying will last? And the price is high; they're supporting a campaign to associate the BBC, its comedians and producers - my whole profession - with all that is offensive, smug and self-serving; to encourage millions who are justifiably angry or afraid, who imagine a mugger in every hoodie, who fear for their jobs and houses or have lost both, to associate the causes of that fear and anger with entertainment and, of all things, the BBC.

The BBC is an institution of genius, one of the great achievements of the 20th century. It's famed for its news reporting, drama, comedy and documentaries; it provides the best radio stations and website on Earth. But there is a plot to destroy it; a plot to which Ross and Brand's childish remarks gave an unwitting but enormous boost; a plot led by people who say they support the BBC but not the licence fee, by people who find the word "fuck" more offensive than Holocaust denial. By its competitors.

Without the BBC, they'd make more money, even if the whole nation would be left comparatively uneducated, unentertained and uninformed. Their argument is the moral equivalent of private hospitals campaigning against the existence of the NHS. And last week, three members of a Labour government joined in.

I don't think that those ministers really want to damage or destroy the BBC, but they're willing to risk it on the outside chance of saving their political skins. I, for one, find that very difficult to forgive. But then I'm easily offended.

M40 M42 M6 G20

"So, darling, how's your week looking?"

"So-so. I've got a meeting on Thursday."

"Oh, that's a bore. Where is it?"

"London."

"London!?"

"I know. Got to go to London for a meeting."

"What's it about?"

"Er ... everything, really. It's a meeting about everything. We need to sort everything out, so we've got a meeting about it."

"That might run on."

"Yeah."

This is the sort of conversation I imagine the world's leaders and their spouses having in the run-up to the G20 summit.

"Can I come?"

"What, to the meeting?"

"No, to London. I thought I might come along with you and just, you know, hang out."

"Why?"

"Oh I don't know. There might be a dinner."

"A dinner?"

"Yeah, they might do a dinner for all the wives and Angela Merkel's husband. Dame Kelly Holmes and JK Rowling might be there."

"That doesn't sound very likely."

"I bet there'll be a dinner. Naomi Campbell and Martha Lane Fox might be there. Come on, you never ask me along to anything."

"Haven't you got things of your own you need to be doing?"

"As is still the convention with politicians' wives, I totally don't."

And so the wives and Angela Merkel's husband start making plans while the husbands and Angela Merkel make mollifying phone calls to their mistresses and whoever Angela Merkel might be having an affair with. Let's say it's Jacqui Smith's husband - we know he likes fun.

"It might be a chance for us to spend a bit of time alone together," continues the wife or Angela Merkel's husband.

"Right."

"What?"

"A hundred other people are coming."

"A hundred other people?"

"Yeah, I'm bringing a hundred people from the office. To help out."

"Doesn't that constitute an invasion? Are we invading Britain now?"

"Everyone's doing it. Obama's bringing five times that."

"What do you need them all for?"

"Loads of things. You know, photocopying, erm ... "

With an entourage of 500, there is no way the American president will have had to do any of his own photocopying last week. Any suggestion that he might photocopy something himself, get his own coffee, brush his own teeth, or even shake his own cock after a wee, will have been met with dismay by the army of support staff and servants feverishly competing for the right to cater to one of his finite number of every needs.

Like a medieval king on a progress, the president is using this retinue to demonstrate his power. "America is still the mightiest country on Earth," he is asserting.

It's a worrying sign that he feels the need to. The US has been going through a bit of a bad patch. He obviously feels that now is not the time to skimp on prestige.

Back when it was the only country with nuclear weapons, an American president could have come to a summit on his own, or with a girlfriend to get off with during the boring bits. If he'd wanted any photocopying done, he'd have got another world leader to do it. But these days, the Americans are reduced to a ludicrous attempt to outnumber the Chinese.

Which must have made for a frustrating few days for his attendants. Riding a wave of presidential cachet and buoyed up by the self-importance that only an Air Force One napkin can give you, they arrive at London's already fully staffed American embassy with very little to do.

Suddenly, they're in a world where securing a meeting with Alastair Darling is a coup. Some of them probably settled for George Osborne, poor sods. But then I suppose it beats standing around watching footage of a window being broken on the news, and taking it in turns to replace toner cartridges.

An apparently healthy man, Obama travelled with six doctors. I hope, for his own sake, that doctor number six brought a book.

But then, after all the razzmatazz, the dinners, the meeting the Queen, the jostling of the entourages, the group photograph, the breaking of the window of that bank, 20 people walk into a room to have a meeting. A meeting about how everything's going wrong and is there any way of stopping it?

How does that work? How do they refrain, as soon as the doors close, from pissing themselves laughing?

"What the hell do those guys out there think we're going to do!?" I imagine them giggling hysterically. "There's an asteroid heading towards the planet and we haven't even got Superman's phone number!"

Does this make them insincere? Are they, as the writer and diplomat Harold Nicolson wrote of the delegates at the Congress of Vienna, "mere hucksters in the diplomatic market, bartering the happiness of millions with a scented smile"?

I don't think so - there won't have been much smiling and I can't vouch for their breath. And they're not evil. It's worse than that - they're just a bunch of people having a meeting.

That's what it's come to. Our only hope of saving the world is that a meeting goes well.

A meeting - something that anyone sensible hates and avoids, where nothing ever gets achieved, where the most boring person talks the longest, that runs on for hours and prevents people from getting on with their actual jobs - that's what we're relying on.

The same process by which bypasses are approved and the admin of church fetes discussed. Item one: economic implosion, item two: environmental catastrophe, item three: parking.

In case anyone's wondering, no I don't have a better suggestion. And presumably most of what is agreed at summits is sorted out behind the scenes beforehand. Obama's fourth doctor has a quiet drink with Medvedev's third IT support guy, who knows a bit of maths, and they hammer out the details. It's probably better that way.

"How was your meeting, darling?"

"Long and pointless. I didn't really need to be there."

"What's Nicolas Sarkozy like?"

"His own way."

"No, I mean, as a person."

"Well, remember what you said after meeting Naomi Campbell?"

"Yes, sorry, I really hate that word."

"OK, but he's a massive one."

“And at once the cock crew”

"And the winner is.................."

Yes, that sound means we have been betrayed and let down by so many people in whom we had placed our trust regarding the choice to elect Vincent Nichols as elect Archbishop of Westminster. The news was leaked last night, and was broke officially this morning, leaving fans of Vincent elated, and, (let’s call them) ‘non-supporters’ of him devastated and distraught by the decision.

I always felt like Vincent should change his name to Luke Warm. I think if any pet name could be attributed to Vin, it would be that, Luke Warm. No one can ever really say they have had any sort of run in with Vincent himself, because he is too cool for a run in, he is far too cool for that. His press secretary Peter Jennings on the other hand, has had so many run-ins with journalists it would be fair to say that between and other journalists and Jennings, there is actually less tension in the Middle East. But before Peter is put out to pasture he gave a few short sharp lashes of his over active tongue by laying into fellow journalist Jonathan Wynne-Jones that he was a 'total shit' for reporting the letters sent by two English bishops complaining that his boss Vin Nichols would be a divisive choice for Westminster. Obviously Peter Jennings hadn’t seen or heard any of the comments I had made on several blogs regarding Vincent as a choice for Westminster. If he had I imagine I would take ‘total shit’ as a compliment, possibly even a chat up line.

Vincent Nichols has come across in nearly everything I have ever seen or heard about him as a man who fights off his image as someone who struggles with priestly humility and opts for ambition. His rise in the Church has been regular and methodical, and I imagine (with very little need for imagination), that eventually he will become a Cardinal, thus making his journey in the Church a first class Virgin flight to easy street.

Don’t for one minute think I am unable to recognise what Vincent has to offer anywhere he is asked to go, he is, after all an incredibly able man, but it is his choices, that have shown him what he truly is, far more than his abilities. The liberal elves he has surrounded himself with has made flack taking a whole lot easier when things have gone wrong, so know doubt his report card is gleaming white, but he is never far from tree when a rather bad apple falls and rolls into the media spotlight.

Yet not for a second should we blame Vincent Nichols for his rise to level three on this video game. We should look towards the trendy inner circle that will have brushed under the carpet, the many dodgy statements and actions he has made in his time as Archbishop of Birmingham.

Two things strike me most about this whole incident, which after today I will never comment on again. Firstly, with Vincent Nichols about to take the big chair, we can expect the word ‘nice’ to come up regularly. A God who once had Mozart, Beethoven and Michelangelo on his side now has someone who will eventually reduce what little credibility the Church in this country to some sort of O.K sharing and tearing chirpy bright and most importantly NICE entity somewhat similar to Oscar Wilde’s opinion on dogs. Secondly, whoever (and I have a good idea) is to come to Birmingham, is clearly going to be worse, because if you can’t get the big things right, the smaller things are treated shoddily and with little effort or care.

All the speculation, rumour and discussion over Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor’s successor has reduced this sorry affair into a soap opera, which has been watched by so many who were in fact hoping for some promise of change. I can say unequivocally that Vincent’s appointment to Westminster is a failure, because it has shown such a lack of imagination above everything else. Any dreams people had about someone with passion, fire, guts and imagination have been severely let down by this disappointing Luke Warm who is about to sit very comfortably indeed. It is so enraging to know that despite a desperate need for change and new blood in these angrily secular times, the big guns have fired with nothing more then a comedic joke flag fired that says BANG on it, in that cartoon like way. It seems little thought went into the last year in this pathetic unintelligent soap opera which real people have to live with in their real lives. The consequences of this decision was always going to be so complicated, so diverse, yet unlike any other situation, predicting the future is not a very difficult business indeed. Everything will continue to simmer and reduce in that Vincent like way, until it has all evaporated leaving nothing.

Good luck to Vincent, he wanted it so badly, and in the end, HE GOT IT.

The apprenctice and the kebab a modern day fairy story.

Not everyone is screwed by the credit crunch. Every cloud has a silver lining, every repossession requires the employment of several bailiffs, suicide attempts keep nurses in work and on each pile of rotting, bloated corpses is a swarm of plump rats.

Or, to put it another way: "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade!" Well, as any drinks manufacturer will tell you, you don't need lemons to make lemonade. Neither do you need meat to make a doner kebab-flavour Pot Noodle. Apparently this new addition to the Pot Noodle range is practically vegan.

Excellent! At last, vegans are being extended the same opportunities to get hooked on cheap microwave food as the rest of society. But lemon-free lemonade and meat-flavoured starchy string are exactly the sort of products that are selling at the moment. Everyone is blowing what little spare money they have on crap treats. McDonald's sales are rising; Pontin's is expanding; people are looking for the sensation of wasting money, on a budget.

Why piss away a fiver on a latte and an almond croissant when you'll get a similar buzz from a can of Tizer and a battered sausage and have change from two quid? Plus the taste of your treat is nostalgically reawakened every time you burp for the next 36 hours.

Budget foods are flying off supermarket shelves (that's genetically modified chicken for you), bookmakers are prospering - presumably because lots of unemployed bankers are trying to keep their hands in - and the number of people doing the pools has risen for the first time since the launch of the National Lottery, for which ticket sales have also increased. So we can expect brand new opera houses and art galleries to spring up everywhere, which is nice because they'll be somewhere for all the tramps to sleep.

There are green shoots all over the place, though most of them are green because they died so long ago they've gone mouldy. So, in that spirit of optimism, here is a businesses that has managed to buck the downward trend which I found in the papers this weekend.

Homeless Security plc

With factories closing, hundreds of disused sites need guarding around the clock. But while all this property is falling into disuse, thousands are being made homeless. "We just took those two wrongs and made a right!" says Homeless Security's managing director. "The simple fact is that if there's already a gang of homeless sleeping in a disused factory, another gang aren't going to move in. So, on behalf of the administrators called in to wind up failed companies, we source a bunch of relatively tidy tramps to keep the place occupied. They're as dependable as guard dogs and cheaper since the cider we pay them in costs less than Pedigree Chum."

A wonderful cellar come diner

Joseph Fritzl – obviously an awful case – OBVIOUSLY so I don’t want to seem glib – but… the other day in court he said two things that messed me up a bit. Here they are.

“Elizabeth exaggerated about the cellar”
“They always had plenty of food”

Ok. So what’s your point mate? That it was nice down there? That Elisabeth was somehow ungrateful for her life in a spacious coffin in which the “final word” of death would’ve been a welcome buzz? “That cellar was nice. It was warm – it was romantic – terrific mood lighting for the constant incestuous sex.” And as for this abundant delicious nosh he claims he was providing, I cant help but think it’d be scant consolation for the Grandkids who’d never seen daylight. “Oh no! Granddad/Dad is touching Mum/sister/cousin… again.” “Oh cheer up and have a hob-nob”

The long and winding road

This week was interesting, it was filled with such a range of emotions, I can only describe it by saying it felt like I was eating both sugar and salt at the same time. The fact is that may have been slightly easier at some point to swallow that very concoction. My mind has been revolving lately on the mind of journalism, because that is what is listed as 'my job', however that's not what I do, I am a commentator, that's all I do. I am discoursing my thoughts for you to read and enjoy or loathe and so on. The problem I have found this week, which has added to my rather bitter summary of the week, is that I have realised that writing, and so commentating, is possibly one of the most selfish professions one can enter. You start to believe that your emotional responses to the annoyances of life are of value and you start to get very lazy. You stop genuinely inspecting your own heart, and stop making rational, considered points. This is detrimental to only one person. The writer, me.

The case in point, thus the first cloud that loomed over me this week, regarded the soon to become vacant chair in the Diocese of Westminster, the saga which has been reduced to nothing more then a cheap (very cheap) soap opera here in the U.K. It has been reported that the most likely candidate for Westminster is somebody who I cannot stand, correction, despise. So this week on several news forums remarking on his possible election, I have been livid and thrown venomous tirades and tantrums, not thinking about what is typed on my beautiful white and translucent keys, but writing black and horror and pathetic words which are strung together with no more objection of purpose other then to blacken the forums of the blogs I have darkened. That sounds sinister, doesn’t it? Well it is, and it was. O.K I have a particular loathsome attitude against the candidate because he offended me nearly a year ago, and I have neither forgiven nor forgotten, but it brings me to the point which I am trying to make. In the end, it truly is our emotions that dominate us.

How many of you readers keep a diary? Do you ever read it back to yourself? I read mine once ever six months or so, and it amazes me, the style in which I write down my thoughts. My diary is either a place where argument and example and experience are reduced to considered points that is quite rational, and there is the subjective journey, where memory and experience of a different kind is used to forge a point I am trying make. The problem I find is, emotion is so much more easily accessed then reason.

After various decisions made positively last year, I decided that I would work on my emotions (sounds terribly American doesn’t it?). Still music fills me with so much emotion, that makes me happy, sad, sadder, there isn’t a song that hasn’t been written that fails to enhance or change my mood. Yet at the same time since the decline of the milkman’s whistle melody has It seems that young people attach themselves to their Ipods and listen to their rapular music whilst they smack themselves with heroin and knife each other in the gut. Yes, the milkman’s whistle which created routine and brought with it a sense of honour and comfort as well as community and cohesion, has faded, and so now if you want all of that back, you can go whistle for it.
There you have it you see? The article has written itself, I have gone off down sentimental alley and tied it together with a catchy nostalgic saying by writing ‘you can go whistle for it.’ This is what most diaries novels and weekly columns like the one I write, are full of. Nostalgic crap.

Yet my problem is anger. Writing with anger is possibly the easiest trap to fall into. It doesn’t even matter what it is, but a bit of fury can take you a long way. I have so much of it, against people who deserve it, possibly people who don’t, but it is destroying everyone around me. I have a friend who phoned me the other evening whose ear was practically bleeding down the phone as he spoke about the very topic I mentioned at the beginning of this article. I fear this person will only now ever mention safe topics in anxiety of having their remaining ear chewed of, or head removed. But it is so difficult isn’t it?

Yes, this week was difficult. So much erupted around me, and much like the volcano around Tonga, a lot of wildlife was destroyed in the process, but what good is writing about it, what good at all? The point is I can learn from it, as can you. What is so intriguing about this process of anger we build inside ourselves is that there seems to be a way for me to tell you how to sort it out, but not a way for me to tell me to sort it out! I wish I could give you an emotional Heimlich so you could cough up that fear and anxiety, but I can't. I wish I could forget all the pettiness and patheticness gone before and just get on with my life, yet somehow I can't. I wish things had have gone one way, I wish things could have gone the other, I wish I could know if some things would have made me different, but what’s the point of all this wishing?
We wake up everyday with a list of wishes a mile long and maybe we spend our lives trying to make those wishes come true, but just because we want them doesn't mean in the end, we need them to be happy.

Life after a cats death.

What happens when we die, it's a big question isn't it? According to a recent survey, the most common belief in the UK is in reincarnation. Do you believe in reincarnation? Apparently you do. It seems to be a 'nice' theory for most people, that way they can come back as a cat, and sit in front of the fire, and watch their widows or loved ones making love to other people who are young and trendy, once the grieving process has run its course. Anyway, I drift, the point is we have got it so wrong about reincarnation, it is such a daunting and petrifying thought if you think about it for what it literally is. We are being told the that the planet's falling apart. Right now, it's the children's problem. We reincarnate, it's our problem. Now where do you think you're going when your full sized aortic pump stops?

Butter ... still one of the biggest philosophies?

I went shopping today, apparently I just eat twenty-four hours a day. And that's when it was confirmed, we just have too much choice. This particular epiphany was experienced in the dairy section of the supermarket, how much choice do we have when it comes to butter? Just give me butter for goodness sake, that's all I want. I haven't got time for all this, I can't believe it's not butter, butter me up, butterlicious, fuck me this is like butter, the choice is overwhelming.
And what are they really on about? I can't believe it's not butter, this has been on sale now for what, twenty years? I am starting to conquer my disbelief personally. I think I they should rename it, I am prepared to accept in fact, this is actually not butter.

Have your misinformed bigoted or racist say about everything you don't like.

It's been a good week for transparency, which is bad news for people who get undressed with the light on. Last Tuesday, Gordon Brown said: "We have clearly got the balance wrong when online businesses have higher standards of transparency than the public services" and announced that, as a result, people are going to be able to comment online about GPs, hospitals, nurseries, schools and the police, just like they can on Amazon, eBay, and my top website - TripAdvisor.

I expect that'll sort everything out. The prime minister is deploying what he calls "the enormous democratising power of information". Well, you don't have to do much surfing to find books, CDs, YouTube clips, newspaper articles, restaurants and theatre shows that have all had the shit democratised out of them. He's invoking the collective wisdom of the nation to pass judgment on and improve our public services. Unfortunately, he'll mainly attract the same self-selecting bunch of inexplicably livid weirdos who infect the comment sections on all websites.

There are many perfectly reasonable remarks put online, and others that are only bland or harmlessly nonsensical, but if there's one thing the internet demonstrates it's that a lot of angry people can read. Their writing, on the other hand, needs work. If you're in any doubt, go to ifyoulikeitsomuchwhydontyougolivethere.com which provides a hilarious selection of the most illiterate, prejudiced and irate posts from the BBC's Have Your Say site. It not only makes me laugh, it makes me angry at what people write, thus providing a moment's insight into what it feels like to be a member of the incensed posting community.

I reckon I've got off pretty lightly from online comments (until now) but still, there's always someone who reads my blog and doesn't just disagree or dislike it but reacts as if I've stamped on their foot and punched their mother. It's like I've said the very thing they have been furiously expecting me to say their whole life. Like they're a teenager and I'm their maddening sibling who, with just a syllable out of place, can release a torrent of rage because they SO knew I was going to say that because that's EXACTLY the sort of CRAP that I ALWAYS SAY. To them, I typify a horrendously unfair world that's all wrong, but will never change because it's run by the likes of me and Gordon Brown and JK Rowling and Bono and Lulu, sitting at the top table guzzling money pie in hypocrisy sauce and laughing in their apoplectic faces.

Last Sunday, someone with the username Veganjules rabidly exhorted me to calm down about teenage spending. It was about as logical as screaming at someone to relax or they might set off a landmine. Then they called me a 'twat'.

So if I, as someone whose work doesn't really affect people's lives, am subjected to this online abuse, what are GPs, nurses, consultants, police and teachers in for? They're obliged to tell people things that they don't want to hear: to arrest them, give them homework, make them stop eating fried breakfasts, announce that their gran died on the table.

While scrutiny of these professions is vital, a single lay opinion is simply not as valid as a professional one in those contexts. This idea of a "democratising strategy" (of endorsing abuse) could have unfortunate consequences. Some things shouldn't be that democratic: "I'm afraid you've got terminal cancer." "No, doctor, I vote that I don't. I won't die." The only consolation for hospitals is that the patients they most fail won't be in a position to criticise.

Most people don't comment much online. They're not arrogant enough to think their opinions, or anger, are of general interest. But the convention of inviting comment from the benign many has put a metaphorical speakers' corner at the bottom of every web page for the poisonous few.

A friend of mine has come up with an idea to stem the tide of bile. He wants people to post, as a comment, on as many opinion-garnering web pages as possible, as often as they can be bothered, the phrase: "It just goes to show you can't be too careful!"

Give Me Shelter From Courtesy

Daniel Craig got it in the neck last week because a photograph appeared to show him failing to share his umbrella with his fiancée, Satsuki Mitchell. It was a pretty tenuous criticism as the picture wasn't clear: he wasn't hogging it, but then again she wasn't particularly under it. Maybe milliseconds later he'd swept her to safety. Then again perhaps he'd just murmured: 'Get out of my space, bitch. My undampened face is my fortune.' But then she might like the rain and hate being constricted under the clammy spans of a patriarchal society - Craig knows better than to make the patronising offer of shelter. After all, in the picture she's grinning. But maybe it's the brave grin of someone hiding pain, neglect: "I'm alright really!" she's begging us to think. "Deep down he cares!"

Whatever the truth of the situation, people seem very clear that James Bond wouldn't have got himself into it. Bond's far too gallant for that, they say - he knows how to treat a lady. I don't know where they get this idea from, as all we've seen James Bond do is shoot or have sex with people (sometimes the same people, although thankfully not in that order) and - in Quantum of Solace - mope about. The main thing about James Bond is that he doesn't give a shit what anyone thinks. He's a bit of a dick, really - not someone you'd want to end up next to at a dinner party - but he keeps saving the world, so, you know, fair enough.

But anyone looking at James Bond and thinking, 'That's what I call a real man' couldn't be more wrong. That's what you call a fictional man - he faces none of the predicaments with which real men like Daniel Craig have to cope. 'Go in there, kill the bad guys, save the girl and disable the nuke,' doesn't present a dilemma. You've just got to have a go and hope you're good enough. Even Craig's new 'Bond with emotions' never has to deal with anything as awkward as being seen to shelter but not condescendingly cosset a woman in rainy conditions. He's never been in an etiquette minefield, just an ordinary minefield. He has no idea what it's like to be a real man.

I do know what it's like; it's extremely tricky. We live in a society where all the old conventions of manners have been broken down but not quite destroyed - they're left hanging around in sharp bits like a kind of offence shrapnel. It gets embedded in anyone not as immune to other people's opinions as James Bond.

The clichéd example is the question of holding doors open: you know, are men supposed to hold doors open for women? Are women supposed to mind if they do? If encountering double doors in a corridor with a stranger of either gender following, what is the separating yardage below which you're expected to wait with the door open to avoid it slamming back in their face and above which, if you do wait, you look like an idiot and force the follower to break into a jog?

No new convention has evolved. I don't know anyone sensible who gives a damn whether they have to open doors for people or always have them opened by others. We don't care what the convention is - we're happy to expend whatever effort it asks of us - but we're desperate, crying out for a new consensus.

Greeting people causes the worst dilemmas. I actually worry about it in advance of social encounters. Who are you supposed to kiss (and how many times), who hug and whom shake hands with? I'm pretty repressed but I'll happily kiss, hug - and, indeed, squeeze on the arse - anyone who requires it of me if that will make the encounter pass off without incident. Equally I'm not offended, or surprised, if people would rather I didn't touch them at all. I don't care, I just want to know.

But none of us knows. So we end up doing mortifying dances of half-handshaking, half-kissing as one party backtracks from the unexpected kiss and the other is at pains to imply that of course a kiss would have been completely welcome. Will no one help us

Few governments have passed as many laws as this one and yet a quick Greetings Act, that would avoid millions of moments of embarrassment a year, that would save the nation's hearts from pumping thousands of gallons of blood into its faces, is too much trouble. How about this: if they've already met, women always kiss one another (both cheeks), men and women ditto, men shake hands unless they've met 12 times in which case they hug; people who haven't already met shake hands? Will that do? Can that be the law? Please?

All of the above is complicated by the fluctuating conventions of sexual attraction. I'm not talking about genuine sexual attraction, but the strange rule, from which the 'men kiss women but not one another' idea surely derives, that men are supposed to express mild sexual interest in all women. There's a general 'Aren't the ladies lovely?' presumption that's very rude not to go along with, but worse to be seen to overplay.

It must be implied that a man finds any woman attractive, but not that he's going to jump her. And how far he is allowed to go in adhering to this rule depends on many factors, primarily the man's age and his marital status. A happily married man of late middle-age can practically goose a woman and it carries no more force than a twentysomething complimenting her hair.

Now I know I'm coming across like a cold, irritable, hand-wringing weirdo - but people like me need rules or we have to think too much about things that don't really matter. Conventions of politeness oil the wheels of social interaction - they make things easy in the 99 per cent or more of occasions when people don't want to upset one another. Everyone knows what to do when they want to be rude, but wouldn't it help if we could sort out a system for the majority of times when we don't?

a Queen born by herself.

Who can fail to have been impressed by the spectacle of President Obama's inauguration now two months ago? I'll tell you who - the Queen. I bet she sat there watching it on an unpretentious four-by-three portable, while she sorted dog biscuits into separate Tupperwares, muttering: "It's bullshit, Philip! No carriages, no horses, no crown - it just looks like a bunch of businesspeople getting in and out of cars. It's as if the Rotary Club's taken over a whole country. And the new one's not even the son of one of the previous ones, unlike last time. I thought they were coming round to our way of thinking at last."

And she'd have a point. It might have been considerably grander than a new prime minister pulling up outside Number 10 and waving but, compared to the coronation, it looked like someone signing for their security pass and being shown where to hang their mug. And that's what comes of having an elected head of state. There's always got to be some fudge between the dignity and status of the office and the politician's desire to seem humbled by the occasion.

In fact, it's one of the most startling examples of politicians' self-belief that, as they assume offices of massive power for which they have striven, to the exclusion of all other activities, for decades, they'll still back their chances of coming across as humble. Now, there's an insight into the megalomaniac's mindset: "Not only can I get to be in charge of everything, I bet I can make people believe that I'm not really enjoying it so that, thanks to reverse psychology, they'll want me to stay in power longer!"

Whereas the Queen didn't have to pretend she wasn't enjoying the coronation; from the little bits of grainy footage I've seen, it's hilariously evident. A poor, terrified slip of a girl, the fluttering eye of a storm of pageantry, hesitantly mewing her lines, while thousands of incredibly important people in fancy dress behave as if she's the Almighty made flesh. That's what I call a show.

I don't envy the Americans their political system. I envy them their success, money, inner belief that everything isn't doomed to failure, attitude to breakfast, and teeth, but not their constitution. The fact that their figurehead and political leader is the same person gives them a terrible dilemma, especially when it was George W Bush. The man's clearly a prick (he says he'll wait for the judgment of history but, if the jury's out, it's only because they're deciding between personable incompetent and evil moron) but even his political enemies were squeamish about calling him one.

They had to respect the dignity of the office and couldn't come to terms with the American people having bestowed it on someone who can't string a sentence together and would only make the world worse if he could. To completely let rip in slagging off Bush would have caused collateral damage to national prestige, not only by undermining the office of president but, more important, by openly admitting how far America is from being the classless meritocracy it claims.

We in Britain have no illusions about being a classless meritocracy and it's therefore thoroughly appropriate that our head of state should be chosen by a method dominated by class and utterly and openly devoid of regard for merit. Separated from the nitty-gritty of politics and power, our monarchy can be a focus for both national pride and self-loathing, the latter being much more archetypally British than the former. A harmless little old lady dutifully going about various tasks she finds stressful seems about right for our national figurehead - neither better nor worse than we deserve.

Don't mistake me for a republican. I genuinely like this system. It means the most powerful man in the country still has to kowtow to someone (other than the president of the United States). It encourages tourism. The royal family, while nominally our betters, are in fact our captives and an interesting and profitable focus for media attention. It's as unfair as life; the royals can't escape and if you want to become royal, you basically can't. It's a more or less functional arrangement that no one would ever have had the wit to devise deliberately.

Which is why Liberal Democrat MP Evan Harris's attempt to fiddle with it is so enervating. He wants to change the Act of Settlement whereby Catholics can't marry the sovereign and end the discrimination against female heirs to the throne. He thinks this will make the monarchy more fair. I suppose it will, in the same way that throwing some bread into the Grand Canyon will make it more a sandwich.

The monarchy is overwhelmingly, gloriously, intentionally unfair - that's the point. The defining unfairness is that you have to be a member of that family to be king or queen; fringe unfairnesses like their not being able to marry Catholics or men having priority in the line of succession are irrelevant in that context. And what's so fair about primogeniture, which Harris is not planning to touch, or the sovereign having to be Anglican, which is also apparently fine? He wants to spend parliamentary time, mid-credit crunch, on a law aimed primarily at helping Princesses Anne and Michael of Kent.

When will people get the message? If you want a fair system, have a republic, elect a president and live with some arsehole like David Cameron giving a speech every Christmas Day afternoon, bitter in the knowledge that you asked for it. Otherwise, we should stick with what we've got, rather than trying to tinker. No abdicating, no skipping Charles, no changing weird ancient laws. We get who we get because we'd rather live with the inadequacies of a random ancient structure than the inadequacies of one designed by Brown and Cameron.

The monarchy's not perfect, but it's also not harmful, powerful or, and this is the clincher, our fault. The inevitable imperfections of anything we replaced it with would be.

New cyber moan just around the bend.

When Carol Thatcher said that a black tennis player looked a bit like a cartoon designed to ridicule his ethnicity, she probably thought that was exactly the kind of banal remark The One Show thrives on. Clearly no one has ever told her it's a touchy area. Maybe she had an unusual upbringing. But the real victim of her merciless dismissal is the British public who have been denied their now traditional week of recreational outrage while the BBC vacillates and disappoints. We've had to fall back on other topics of conversation.

"I don't know how many times I've cleaned my windscreen today!" a taxi driver said to me last week. I didn't either. I felt if anyone would, it'd be him. I didn't really understand why he needed to know; it's not like taking heart pills or getting married, events you ought to keep count of for your health and self-respect. My feeling was he could let that particular quest for remembrance go and get on with his life. What I said was: "Yeah!"

Because I think he meant he'd cleaned his windscreen (not got out and cleaned it, but pressed the button that makes the bonnet do a little upwards wee for the wipers to deal with) a lot of times that day. Many more times than usual.

What he meant was: "I see there's rain!" He was joining in with the national frenzy of rain-noticing and chaos-lamenting. "It's shameful! Look at us! They wouldn't bat an eyelid in Moscow, yet here it's got to the point where cab drivers have lost count, have actually lost count, of the number of times they've cleaned their windscreen just in one morning."

Remember when it snowed? As one member of the public, interviewed on television outside a large, snow-covered London railway terminus, commented: "It's like a third world country!" Except a third world country's most pressing problem doesn't usually disappear of its own accord if you wait a few days.

I'm not criticising this man. He was just trying to reach out to another human and got me instead. People don't form bonds by exchanging controversial or scintillating remarks. We reassure each other by sharing observations of the obvious: death is sad, rain is here, Carol Thatcher should be sacked - oh, she has been! I mean, Carol Thatcher should be reinstated. Those are the things everyone really wants to discuss, not Gaza. Not that I'm in the habit of bringing up Gaza with taxi drivers, or only if I'm trying to lighten the mood by getting us off the congestion charge.

Sunshine seems to lighten the mood. Somebody once told me it's because its reflective qualities alleviate the past midwinter light deprivation. But that's exactly the sort of neat explanation that usually turns out to be bullshit - or a ploy to sell those expensive alarm clocks that pretend to be a gently emerging dawn. Take that view to its logical conclusion and I'll be persuaded to spend 20 minutes every day with my head in the freezer, shining a torch around, because snow is exactly the same.

No, people like any abnormal weather conditions because they're something to talk about. They relieve the monotony. As our parents told us when we were little: "You wouldn't like it if we had it all the time!" (Which, along with: "Don't eat it all at once" and: "It'll all end in tears", is from a genre of wisdom for which the phrase "Fuck off!" was invented.) They're a shared and completely safe topic of conversation.

And when people have finished luxuriating in having noticed it, they can start talking about both what a nightmare and how ridiculous it all is. A nightmare, because everything's ground to a halt, and ridiculous because it shouldn't have done. This is where I start to isolate myself by saying things like: "What would be ridiculous is if Britain were as well prepared for snow as countries that experience it every year. That would involve having thousands of gritters and snow ploughs on expensive stand-by through years of mild drizzly winters." This, I've come to realise, is missing the point. People enjoy the complaining - they don't really give a damn about gritting budgets and my mentioning them is just as curmudgeonly as saying: "That'll only melt" to some children who are building a snowman.

My view is that thousands of man-hours spent pissing around on Facebook may have been irretrievably lost and costing us thousands in overtime etc, but it gives the dawn of the new cyber moan - which is just around the corner tut tut!

CMcG