This week

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This should have been in last week, but Brian Reade's genius reenactment of a typical phone call between a Premiership footballer and his agent cannot be missed. "Agent: Bad news, son, the higher-rate tax band is going up to 45p. Player: Meaning? Agent: You'll be £200k-ayear out-of-pocket soon. Player: Meaning? Agent: The new Baby Bentley will have to go". You can read it all in the Mirror. But just remember that no tax hike for the rich will take place until 2011.

More cheers for the Mirror. On Friday, Paul Routledge wrote that "Gordon Brown's inability to curb greedy power companies is his single greatest failure". The reference, of course, is to "the avaricious swine who say they 'have to' increase gas and electricity prices by 30 per cent – even though supply costs are falling".

So much knee-jerk gutter is still being written about the Baby P case that it's difficult to believe balanced articles do exist. However, Alasdair Palmer has penned an informed analysis in today's Telegraph. At last, someone wrote that social workers tend to follow "Government guidance that children should, if possible, be kept with their families". In many cases courts branded social workers "disgraceful" for removing children from their families. "The gaping definitional hole", Palmer writes, "is filled by social workers' own judgments and decisions on the matter. Those have ranged so widely that 'emotional abuse' has been taken to include both being too indulgent with your children and not being indulgent enough". Will The Sun take note?

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David Cameron. His article on the Mail on Sunday reeks to high heaven. Fair enough he talks of 'broken society', but his constant equation "5 million people on benefit" equals crime suggests he's not in good faith. And yet, considering why people are on benefit wouldn't take much of a logical leap, would it? Taking it out on the benefit system only is like blaming paracetamol for the pisshead's hangover.

Jon Gaunt. In The Sun (a.k.a. The "We-cannot-print-a-page-without-a-pair-of-tits-on-it" Gazette), the sacked presenter brands it a "Benefits R Us hell". So basically Karen Matthews is a crap mother because of benefits. But have The Sun and its sick 'columnists' forgotten that the actual inspiration for Matthews' kidnap plot was their morbid coverage of the McCann case?

Boy George. What a crap end to his career (which was already in tatters, anyway). The former Culture Club singer was found guilty for falsely imprisoning a male escort at his flat in East London and will be sentenced in January.