Jamie's 30-Minute Meals

Far from lecturing and patronising, Jamie Oliver is actually suggesting that good and healthy food should be accessible to everybody.

I like Jamie Oliver.

Britain's most recognised chef has taken so much stick over the last few years amidst accusations that he is "lecturing people" (quote: Health Minister Andrew Lansley over Jamie's School Dinners) and meddling with their eating habits.

And yet, in a media world where celebrities, chefs included, seem to be earning fame and plaudits by virtue of shouting the F-word (literally) or the C-word louder than the next person, Jamie Oliver deserves praise for keeping away from cheap shots and loud-mouthed gimmicks.

More than anything, however, Oliver deserves credit for dishing out tons of advice on how to make your own food without ever coming across as inaccessible or over-complicated. Which is no easy feat.

At first glance, some of the dishes included in his latest series Jamie's 30-Minute Meals may look extremely elaborate and offputting. And yet they're not. It's amazing how much you can do in less than thirty minutes and with the simplest of ingredients.

More, Oliver's programme is based on extreme realism.

Pre-packed artificial microwaveable ready meals have become such a tempting option for most (this blog included) because, after a long day at work, the last thing most people fancy is a gruelling cooking session or a supermarket quest for exotic ingredients.

Which is why, far from lecturing and patronising, Jamie Oliver is actually on a mission to make simple yet good and healthy food accessible to everybody and not just the wealthy.

Most importantly, he doesn't think -shock horror- that everything has to be made from scratch. What matters, like Oliver himself writes: "this kind of cooking is all about using every minute wisely, having fun and reclaiming your kitchen for the job it was meant for".

Steve Coogan 5 Jeremy Clarkstwit 0

Britain's top comedian slams Top Gear bullies.

You may have heard about the recent (minor) stir caused by Jeremy Clarkson the school bully and his two sidekicks Richard Hammond and James May with their latest round of embarrassingly lazy, xenophobic and unfunny comments.

After preying on the disabled and the blind (ha ha bet your sides are splitting), homosexuals and prostitutes, sweatshop workers and various nationalities that aren't the B-R-I-T-I-S-H (to be uttered in a proud, low-pitched tone), this time the three idiots decided to pick on the Mexicans.

However, the best answer to the current wave of testosterone-fuelled Clarksonite brand of bullying dressed up as "the-right-to-a-bit-of-fun" came from legendary comedian and Alan Partridge-creator Steve Coogan.

His article for today's Observer is just spot-on. Especially when he refers to "the regular defence you tend to hear – the tired line that it's 'just a laugh', a bit of 'harmless fun'" and to "the current "'postmodern' reaction to overzealous political correctness, [...] a licence for any halfwit to vent the prejudices they'd been keeping in the closet since Love Thy Neighbour was taken off the air".

Neanderthals

...More likely she wouldn't with someone like you, Mr Gray. Bargepole and all...

***UPDATE***
And guess who, dear Reader, is sticking by the two Neanderthals? The Daily Mail, of course, with a supremely condescending and patronising piece by Julie Welch.

Look at this dribble of goo in the guise of print:

"Right or wrong, most men – not arty leftie metrosexuals, but the vast majority of blokes – appreciate the game because it offers male-only companionship. Somewhere that isn’t complicated by the presence of women. They want a place where they can be neanderthal and boring, where they can swear, behave badly, let off steam and, yes, be sexist. There aren’t many places left for these emasculated men to simply behave like blokes. Football is one of the few areas of life left that allows them to".

So, according to Ms Condescending, if you don't form a pack with other men, hang around in caves, smash the place up and make monkey noises, you're an "arty leftie metrosexual". Like, if "the vast majority of women" don't just giggle and slog away in the kitchen and talk about make-up and gossip about the latest on Heat magazine they're all bitter lesbofeminists, right?

And since you're at it, Welch. Would you also include racist and homophobic slander as part of the legitimate right "to simply behave like a bloke", or is that too "censorship and criticism"?

The abolition of election campaigning

Why the government's NHS proposals have pushed bullshit politics to untenable levels.

The run-up to the general election. Those dreaded weeks when the country is bombarded with oily messages, grinning politicians hugging babies, kids, huskies, or anything immediately at hand.

Those useless televisual feasts where leaders nod to borderline-whiplash levels, the smarmy "I know what you mean" can be heard over and over, and Nick Clegg calls everyone by name without the slightest grasp that he may be 'overdoing it' a bit.

The quazillions spent on multicoloured placards, posters and assorted ads. The junk flowing through the letterbox, the tedious door-knocking, the bingeing on promises and proclaims.

Wouldn't it be a wonderful idea if all of the above was done away with?

There is now irrefutable evidence that election campaigns are not only useless and a waste of money, but also outright deceitful.

We had plenty of that when Labour was in power and we're having more of the same (except at a faster rate and even more barefaced) now.

For all the industrial amounts of political gobbing off we heard last year, there was no mention from either the Tories of the Liberal Democrats that tuition fees were going to be hiked up; that VAT was going to be increased; that the NHS was going to end up mangled and "reorganised" from the top down; that sick and disabled people were going to suffer cuts of up to a third in their incomes; that child benefits would be touched; that the Education Maintenance Allowance for disadvantaged students was going to be scrapped at a stroke; that more measures were going to come in to make it easier to sack workers...and the list could go on for hours.

And make no mistake. For all the bullshit they will try to feed you, this has nothing to do with "compromise". It is crucial we understand that neither of the Coalition partners promised or even suggested any of the above. It is not as if the Tories or the LibDems are reluctantly taking on board what the other partner had advocated all along.

Far from it. Both Tories and Lib-Dems fervently denied they would have anything to do with each and every one of those policies and, in some of those cases, they actually campaigned against (i.e. VAT rise, tuition fees, etc).

The recent bill on the NHS is just taking the piss.

So here's the proposal.

Do away with election campaigning. Scrap it, ditch it, just knock it on the head. Give all that money to charity. On polling day people will cast their vote on the basis of what they've seen in practice over the lifetime of that parliament and after plenty of evidence of how MPs' decisions actually affected their lives.

That should be more then enough to make up their mind. Bullshit politics has now reached tipping point.

Cliches of 2011 #2

"You've GOT to own your own home".

This particularly simplistic cliche' shuns a series of complications.

For instance, in an ever unpredictable job market, what happens if your only hope of dodging the dole queue means moving from place to place?

Or, what do you do if you don't do your homework properly and you find yourself saddled with a structurally unsound home or with the family from hell living next door? If you were renting, you'd just tell the landlord and pack your bags. But if you bought it and don't have the extra dosh to sort it out, then you may be up shit creek. If not for the rest of your life, definitely for an awful long time.

But the most unpalatable truth is the one related to finances.

Of course, it's all very nice to own a house if you have the funds, but Britain's the place where an alarming number of people have fallen for the spell of "getting on the property ladder" and the illusion of "asset ownership" no matter how barely they can afford it.

The last 15 years have seen a ridicuous number of tv programmes turning home ownership into the nation's biggest fetish: Property Ladder, Location Location Location, Grand Designs, Homes Under the Hammer, One Year to Pay Off Your Mortgage, and god knows how many others. They all had one thing in common however: the notion that, yes, you too can own a house and point at it while hugging your smiling partner- that's what makes you a happy family. The ultimate dream. The be all and end all of existence.

One thing, however, is never mentioned: the simple fact that it's not your asset and it will not be until the final instalment thirty-plus years from now.

You can be paying back your mortgage religiously over decades, each and every month, easily in excess of hundreds of thousands of pounds of hard-earned cash. But if something goes tits up (i.e. you lose your job), that all goes down the drain and so does "your asset" - which means your home gets repossessed.

Did you know that in the last three years alone in excess of 120,000 families were kicked out of their "own assets" (details here, here and here)? Remember 120,000 is the number of homes repossessed, meaning that the average number of people affected since 2007, children included, may be knocking on half a million.

It's a national tragedy, but one that the media rarely talks about, perhaps because of its supremely depressing nature. Or, perhaps, because it may highlight the unpleasant story that lies behind the most inflated and speculative "industry" in the country, one where average house prices didn't double or triple, but quadrupled (QUADRUPLED), between 1995 and the pre-recession peaks of 2007.

Other cliches:
"Not everyone is obsessed with...";
"Why can't Britain cope with snow?...";
"Society benefits from extreme wealth at the top";
"There are jobs out there if you really want one";
"The Royal Family brings in tourism revenue";
"Iain Duncan Smith is a kind and honourable man".

Acronyms

WDPWLT? WIATA*? Are you wondering what this is all about? Join the club.

The need some people have to drop an acronym or two or three assuming the whole world will automatically understand them must be one of the most grating internet practices around.

Granted, I am slow when it comes to picking up online trends and trendy lingo. I'm still just about managing OTT and LOL and I can't even recall the last time I referred to it as "the British Broadcasting Corporation".

But what's all this. Why do people do it? Why would you want to write ISTM instead of "It seems to me", IMHO instead of "in my humble [or is it honest] opinion" or AAMOF to simply say "as a matter of fact", is something I will never grasp. Are we really in such a rush, or is it because it sounds more trendy, trim and "dude", you know?

I was reading an online debate the other day. It was about media coverage of last month's students protests and a certain journalist's habit of reporting demonstrations with patronising dollops of "oh my god those rallying children aren't they so young- won't you hand those brave young children a hot soup, poor little things?", when I kept stumbling upon people referring to the hospital-evoking MSM.

"Mainstream media", as it turns out. But I'm telling you, it took me a while to work it out. Or maybe I should say ITMAWTWIO...

Oh, well. Acronyms. They cause so much problems you don't even wanna go there.

*WDPWLT= Why Do People Write Like This; WIATA=What Is All This About

Eastenders cot death: too much too crass

Has the BBC soap joined the foul practice of exploiting bereavement for ratings?

BBC News reports that "around 3,400 viewers have complained" about EastEnders' New Year storyline (first announced in November) in which Ronnie Branning turns into a baby snatcher upon discovering that her own newborn has died of cot death.

It is true that the original intention of drawing awareness on sudden infant death syndrome was commendable. But by drowning it out with industrial dollops of unnecessary sensationalism and unrealistic drama, the result was just a mish mash of morbid goo and crassness.

In a statement, the Foundation for the Study of Infant Deaths said: "Despite the continuing statement [...] by the BBC that 'FSID were consulted on the storyline...', FSID had no involvement in the planning or adoption of the specific 'baby-swap' plotline. The behaviour and actions of Ronnie Mitchell are in no way 'endorsed' by FSID as a typical, or even likely, reaction of a bereaved parent".

This blog has always believed that what sets Eastenders aside from a lot of its pappy televisual competitors is their knack for challenging storylines and social (though not narrative) realism.

Covering the tragedy of a cot death and its aftermath in order to raise awareness and promote infant health would have been admirable enough. But to introduce such an unfeasibly brutal development smacks of exploiting grief for the sake of jacking up TV ratings. Tactful, it was not.

Which is why extra credit goes to actress Samantha Womack for quitting over the distressing scenes.

UPDATE (7 Jan): OK, now the whole thing has turned into a witch hunt as usual, with the hyaenas from the Daily Fail landing on the carcass in search of bits to gnaw at. What the fuck has Womack's past lovelife got to do with anything?

Five reasons to be ashamed of Britain

Yesterday we wrote about five reasons that should make Britain proud. Now it's time to look at the glass half empty.

1) The tabloid press
This blog has said it repeatedly. The poisonous role played by tabloids in this country has no equivalent elsewhere in the world, not on such as a scale and certainly not on a daily basis. Perfectly reasonable debates are routinely hijacked, distorted or turned hysterical for the sake of printing the FATTEST headline.

These are people who stop at nothing, whether illegal phone tapping or the publication of outright defamatory lies no matter the consequences, in order to make more money.

The tabloid world is a neurotic one where they will rant against "elf'n'safety-gone-mad", but they'll also be at the top of the queue screaming about "lazy-council-failing-to-warn-of-slippery-road" if it fits their angle on that day. They will cry outrage about a beauty contest for 13 year olds but then publish the most appallingly risque' photos in the same piece.

And it's at least partly due to the tabloid press and headlines like "Afghan-born dole-scrounging lesbian dog mauls mother of two" that Britain's turned into a country of paedophile-obsessed finger-pointing hypocondriacs where celebrity culture, bullying and OTT sexualisation have all gone through the roof.

2) The cost of living
Someone needs to explain why British taxpayers have to pay such massive levels of council tax for third rate services (ie rubbish collected once a fortnight if you're lucky). Or why house prices are so much higher than elsewhere in the Western world. Or why rail fares are the most expensive in Europe while offering such a poxy, overcrowded service. Or why so many people have to resort to borrowing in order to pay their bills (UK consumers account for two-thirds of total credit card debt in the EU). And so forth. Quite simply, unless you're loaded, Britain is not a kind place to be.

3) Celebrity culture
Yes, they have Big Brother, X-Factor and various spin-offs in practically every other country. But what they don't have is such a colossal industry of gossip magazines a-la Heat and the tabloid press (see point 1) to offer the whole machine such a platform for publicity. In the last ten years or so, Britain has reached endemic levels of celebrity-obsession.

This may also explain why there's such a widespread desire to conform and fit in with certain pre-packed images and why nine females out of 10 in 2009-10 were wearing Ugg Boots. Look what Cheryl Cole is wearing! Doesn't she look great? And so can you! Hop to New Look, TopShop and Miss Selfridge and you too can look like her. Can't afford it? Just stick in on plastic. Gowon. Just this once.

4) The loutish Brit abroad
According to the Foreign Office, the number of Britons arrested while on holiday abroad is soaring. Worse, figures show that Britons top the league when it comes to twatty behaviour on foreign soil, whether it's drug-taking, binge-drinking, fights or sexual violence (see this report published by Time magazine).

And it really is embarrassing, because it then becomes easy for people abroad to tar all British holidaymakers with the same brush, even the many who have no intention of behaving like Attila the Hun by cutting and pasting English town centre-style street-vomiting and brawling across to the warm shores of Rhodes, Benidorm or the Algarve.

Why, however, so many British kids, low, middle and upper class, appear unable to control their repressed selves the moment they fly abroad in the summer remains an embarrassing mystery.

5) The state of national football teams
At the next world cup it'll have been 48 years since England managed their last (and only) World Cup. The most expensive League in the world, wages that should justify "top talent", all the build-ups and the talking-up and still FA happens when it's time to deliver.

As for Scotland and Northern Ireland, it feels impossible to believe that in the 1980s and 1990s they would regularly qualify for major tournaments. As for Wales, there's still hope in Gareth Bale.

Click here to read "Five reasons to be proud of Britain".

Five reasons to be proud of Britain

A number of things set this country aside for the better. These are a few alternative ones that springs to mind:

1) Animal welfare
If you've ever endured the sight of ladies (and some men too) proudly donning dead animals' fur elsewhere in the world, cherish the fact that in Britain the same practice is culturally frowned upon to say the least.

Sure, there's still a long way to go, but the fact that both the Queen and her royal guards still insist on wearing bearskin hats is further proof that the country is progressing faster than its rulers.

And this applies to foxhunting and various other cruel practices too. Even the opponents of the ban know that cruel power trips (because "sports" they're not) don't stand a chance as far as the country's public opinion is concerned.

2) Music
Yes, Britain may be suffering from a major trade deficit, but if there's one area where the export balance is firmly active, that's music. Just think of how many legendary bands and songs this country exported over the decades. No other country of similar size has ever produced such a number of music-inspired movements that have been so appreciated and copied around the world.

And anywhere you are in the world, if you turn on the radio, any moment, a singing voice from Basildon, Glasgow, Swansea, Manchester or elsewhere in the UK is likely to keep you company whatever it is that you're doing.

3) Drink driving
In several other countries too many people still see no wrong in taking a car after a night drinking, whereas in Britain even the nastiest geezer would not consider it. OK, maybe some still do, but in the public consciousness the practice is firmly and definitely considered taboo.

4) Food

"What are you talking about", I hear you say, "British culinary heritage pales in comparison with that of France, Spain, Italy, China, you name it". But at least most Britons are open-minded enough to adopt foreign dishes as part of their culture without any fear of food fascism or snotty superiority complexes seeping to the fore.

Few may satisfy the most demanding purists, but it's nice to know that most British towns and cities have a wide variety of international restaurants on offer. Oh, and ale. Overseas they don't know what they're missing. Not to mention the vegetarian "V" marked on the menu. That really is a rare sight abroad.

5) The Right-Wing
This will definitely piss off many readers. But when you look at the state of conservative or centre-right parties in other European countries, Australia or the US, it makes you feel a touch better about David Cameron and his lot.

Don't get me wrong. I think there are at least a thousand reasons not to ever vote Tory in this country, and I wouldn't even under torture, but they have come a long way.

When you look at Sarah Palin, Italy's Berlusconi or Spain's abhorrent Partido Popular and their appallingly bigoted superhomophobic proto-medieval brand of macho-conservatism, Britain's Tories come off best.

Click here to read "Five reasons to be ashamed of Britain".

The Coalition Isn't Working

Remember the famous Saatchi & Saatchi poster campaign from 1979? Growing dole queues, strikes, riots, more riots and uncollected rubbish. If it was re-written today, it would look exactly like this:

The public mauling of Chris Jefferies

How the concept of "innocent until proven guilty", one of the pillars of British democracy, is being butchered by the tabloid press.

By now you're all probably familiar with the fresh display of tabloid barbarism seen in the wake of the tragic murder of Jo Yeates.

In brief, in the 72 hours that sandwiched the arrest and then the release of suspect Chris Jefferies in connection with the murder, the media handed him some diabolical public guillotine for the sake of a few extra banknotes basted in lynchmob froth.

No-one, not even the police, knows whether Mr Jefferies has anything to do, or not, with the murder. In fact, no-one will know until a trial takes place.

But the fact that Mr Jefferies hasn't even been charged yet seems to have completely eluded the tabloids. They've already passed their verdict, dishing all the dirt they could dig up in order to destroy him.

The news massacre has been so mental and OTT that even Attorney General Dominic Grieve went on record expressing his concerns that the current coverage of the Jo Yeates murder may be in breach of the Contempt of Court Act as well as an impediment to the ongoing legal proceedings.

The following articles are a fine analysis of the public mauling of Chris Jefferies:

Mark Thompson ("The media need to stop these witchhunts") focuses on the astonishing collection of what he dubs "ridiculous nudge-nudge, wink-wink comments" and generally anything that will make Chris Jefferies look as weird as possible.

Jerry Hayes ("The hounding of Christopher Jeffries and anyone who is different") makes the excellent point that "[i]f [Mr Jefferies] is charged, British Justice assures him of a fair trial. But if he is not charged or acquitted, his life will never be the same again. He will be regarded as that strange, eccentric, blue rinsed loner, somehow connected with a death".

Finally, Enemies of Reason ("Chris Jefferies and trial by media") draws parallels with the character assassination and [the] targeting aspects of people's private lives" as already seen in "the trials by media undergone by Colin Stagg, Robert Murat, Barry George, the parents of Madeleine McCann and the first man to be accused of the Ipswich murders of 2006 (who was leater released without charge)".

2011- the predictions

Culture:

After the arrival of the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad, the saturated digital industry will come up with the iPoo, a new device that automatically updates your status on both Facebook and Twitter with a detailed report of your stools each time you go for a dump.

In the meantime, picking up on the trends of 2009 and 2010, conversations amongst friends will be even more centred around and dependent upon a hand-held digital device.

Cheryl Cole will give at least one teary-eyed television interview.

The weather:

Of course, the summer will be lined with hysterical articles about heatwaves, sizzling Britain and the hottest summer since last summer, while next winter it'll all be the coldest year since before Christ and where's-the-bleedin-grit.

The BBC:

2010 panned out with Britain's state TV starring a chief political editor who's a proud Former president of the Oxford University Conservative Association and National Chairman of the Young Conservatives; interviewers mauling anti-government demonstrators (see here); openly homophobic news coverage and taxpayer-funded racist comedies. And still the loonie righties allege that the BBC is a nest of biased "lefties". Like Goebbels once said, "a lie repeated thousands of times becomes a truth". Expect more of the same in 2011.

Expect news coverage to grind to a total halt for the whole of April and May 2011 and feelgood cliches that William and Kate "look lovely together" to reach saturation point.

The Daily Mail:

"Britain's moral guardians" will abort their second attempt at stoking mass hypochondria over the so-called "swine flu". After their unprecedented scaremongering fiasco of 2009 and their more timid recent efforts at the end of 2010, they'll just put the issue aside for a while again, waiting for a new virus to beef up their SCARY headlines.

Jan Moir will write at least one article on the subject of how she's so fed up with this world of celebrities therefore let's be obsessed about them. Needless to say, the contradiction will be lost upon her.

"Reports" bewailing anorexia and "those glossy magazine cover lines screaming at us at this time of year to detox" (see this) will sit right next to those announcing that "January is the prime-time for exchanging weight loss tips" (see this or this).

The Daily Express:

Headlines such as BRAVE PRINCE WILLIAM PLUCKS SPLINTER OUT or HAIRLOSS FIRM WANTS PRINCE WILLIAM AS SPOKESMAN will increase in the wake of the royal wedding, occasionally interspersed with rants about "the bureaucratic grip of the European Union".

The Sun:

EXCLUSIVE stories that Ed Balls, Dave Miliband and Alan Johnson are plotting against Ed Miliband will see the light of day almost as often as pictures of Sun babes.

Puns based on the words "Red" and "Ed" (see this for instance) will plunge new depths. Of course, Murdoch's hired guns will no doubt believe that they're being hilarious.

More articles about the "sexualisation of society" and the "pornification of our kids" (see this or this) will keep sandwiching Page Three. In the meantime, the concepts of "ridicule" and "hypocrisy" will still elude The Sun's newsroom.

Immigration:
Have you noticed how, until May 6 2010, the tabloids kept kicking and screaming as if the whole British landmass was about to sink under the weight of immigration? Then the Tories got in and the burning issue magically turned into a puny footnote. While David Cameron's at the helm, more of the same tame approach is guaranteed.

The Euro:
In line with every year since 2001, Europe's common currency will be declared "soon dead" by Telegraph editorials and Daily Mail headlines on a fortnightly basis.

Politics:
The Right - With news rolling in of hundreds of thousands of workers losing their jobs as the cuts start taking their toll, George Osborne and David Cameron will just put their favourite CD on, press the button that says REPEAT A-B and play "the cuts are fair", "tough decisions to rescue our public finances" and "we didn’t come into politics to make cuts" on a loop. Or perhaps they'll just get Danny Alexander to memorize and recite the poem in front of mummy and daddy.

The Left - In the meantime, the Opposition will offer valuable alternatives in the guise of tons of articles dissecting strategies while dissing and knocking fellow leftist groups. All done, of course, in the "spirit of unity". Oh, and don't forget the regular-as-clockwork rumours that Alan Johnson and Dave Miliband are plotting against Ed.

The LibDems - An opinion poll published in July 2011 will indicate that the party's 57 MPs, their close family and staff at LibDemVoice are the only people left in the country still willing to vote for the Coalition's junior partners.

Football:
Robbie Keane will move to at least three different clubs, including a brief loan spell at another London club that will last no longer than three months.

Aston Villa to face relegation.

Manchester United will net another Premier League, while in Europe the Champions League will be an all-Spanish affair with either Real Madrid or Barcelona FC to win it. Either way, the top football tosser of the year will be Jose Mourinho.

Stay placid

Forget the tabloids. Here's the cavalry of "maverick" newspaper columnists coming to the rescue of government and corporate tax avoiders to brand protesters as the real enemy from within.

It is was only two years ago that Britain's newspapers were - almost in unison - kicking and screaming histerically at the super-rich and their corrupt Westminster mates "whose excesses dragged the country to the edge of bankruptcy".

Comments such as "never again are we going to be taken for a ride", "lessons-need-learning", and "why should the little people clean up the mess left by the powerful" were the order of the day in every newspaper.

And so it happens that, within less than 24 months, it's no longer the fault of the casino bankers, the corporate tax dodgers and their lapdog politicians.

In fact, they're not even the real powers that be. They're the defenseless victims, the "grown-ups", those actually in need of constant rescuing from the threat of "self-righteous" and "red-faced" "intoxicated anarchists" with "pumped-up rage" that "will achieve nothing" but inconveniencing "ordinary shoppers".

Seriously. Forget the tabloids. You read Britain's newspapers these days and it's as if the actual culprits behind the world's ills were students, anti-tax avoidance protesters and, of course, evil Julian Assange and his supporters.

Look at the amount of columnists who, for all their maverick posturing, toss-arguing, straw clutching and verbal meandering, always - invariably - end up as guardian dogs of the status quo.

What follows is a quick selection of "quality" newspaper articles from the last ten days.

The morning of the tuition fees vote in the Commons, the Independent's Steve Richards didn't feel the need to analyse, dissect or criticise the government's new tuition fees politicy. He didn't even say if he agreed or not. No. His energies were all spared for the protests which "have a whiff of urgent glamour", and "will have made no practical difference whatsoever". Basically, years of broadsheets lecturing on "generation apathy" and look who's apathetic now.

That still wasn't quite as lame as Howard Jacobson who, a couple of days later, boasted in the same paper: "I am temperamentally averse to demonstrations [...]. Any more than five human beings believing the same thing and congregating to say so are bound to be on a course that will lead to trouble. We are safe only when we act individually".

Or Toby Young in the Telegraph. "The student protesters are morally indistinguishable from the merchant bankers", he spouted. Are they really? Except that you'd be hard pressed if you could spot a single article where the same Mr Young uttered a word against the bankers. He'd rather go for the soft target, would he not, whether it's students on tuition fees or the spontaneous movement whose only request is that the superrich too don't get preferential treatment when it comes to tax in the age of "we're-all-in-this-together".

Because what they're doing is, "they're hurting ordinary shoppers [...], the poorest and most vulnerable", says Young. Who then follows with the predictable dollop of whataboutery: "why don’t [the protesters] patrol the streets of their home towns giving food and blankets to the homeless [instead]?".

Then there's Christina Patterson back at the Independent, as we already discussed on Saturday. Her particular targets, the celebrity supporters of Wikileaks and their "delicious sense of self-righteousness". Says she.

Nothing, however, as the supreme pontificating coming from Mary Ann Sieghart who, after three or four paragraphs of logical swirls, eventually brands all demonstrators as "anarchists". Whether Wikileaks, the students or the anti-tax avoidance protesters, they're all "intoxicated by a spirit of anarchy" - cue "a bunch of students in balaclavas [...] who go round smashing windows" - but no, she's not tarring them all with the same brush.

All that intellectual energy and all that newspaper ink to simply say: young people, we liked you more when you just watched Big Brother or the X-Factor. Now keep your head down again and stay supine.

Also on the subject: "Stay stupid".

Cliches of 2010 #6

"Why can't Britain cope with snow while other countries can?"

Because it's not true. Bad weather regularly disrupts travel and normal services in a number of countries, not just Little England.

You hear it time and again, each and every winter, when heavy snowfall is met by headlines like chaos, BIG FREEZE or COLDEST [month] SINCE RECORD BEGAN.

Or, if not "since record began", then maybe the coldest for 20/50/90 years, or since 1962, depending on the article you read. Or, perhaps, even, "AA's busiest night for breakdowns in 25 years" - anything as long as it's a superlative sentence.

And the panicky headlines are invariably accompanied by the usual "Why can't Britain cope with snow?" and "why do we grind to a halt at the first snowflake and other countries don't"? Google those words and you'll find the very same question cropping up dozens of times and not just from this uber-cold 2010 or 2009, but all the time.

And yet it wouldn't take much to clock that weather-related self-flagellation is complete nonsense.

While it's obviously true that the weather is being incredibly disruptive, similar levels of chaos (and casualties, in some cases) are reported across France, the Netherlands, Germany and Scandinavia as well as throughout Spain, Italy and also Eastern Europe.

Last year was a similar picture, with a nasty cold snap forcing airports to shut, not just in the UK, but also in other countries like Germany, Switzerland, Spain and Northern Italy, etc.

Why some people want to believe that whatever happens on their doorstep is only happening to them and them alone remains one of the mysteries of Clicheland.

PREVIOUS CLICHES:
#5 "Students should engage in the democratic vote...".
#4 "Society benefits from extreme wealth at the top".
#3 "There are jobs out there if you really want one".
#2 "The Royal Family brings in tourism revenue".
#1 "Iain Duncan Smith is a kind and honourable man"

Stay stupid

Nothing seems to irk the country's hacks more than a celebrity expressing a political opinion.

We binge on hundreds of celebrities, some more worthless than others, while we laugh at their imperfections, dimpled thighs and sweaty armpits as sported by Heat, the Sun or the Daily Mail.

We love to remark on how thick, shallow and uneducated they are. We sneered at Jade Goody's "pig ignorance", laughed at Paris Hilton's dumb quotes and we frowned at how detached from the real world the superrich and the superfamous are.

But then the moment a celebrity displays the tiniest existence of grey stuff between their ears, for some reason, we go apeshit and we scoff and pour scorn at them.

Whether it's Eric Cantona making a stand against the banks, Colin Firth criticising the government over tuition fees, or Jemima Khan defending Wikileaks, the media predators just won't let them get away with it. Go back to your pampered world. Stay thick, stay shallow and stay supine, is the warning. [Incidentally, note how the toss-arguers always invariably end up siding with the powers that be].

Jan Moir kicked off the proceedings yesterday with an extremely bitchy swipe at "darling Jemima. She was pictured looking particularly fabulous at an earlier Assange hearing; standing on the court steps with her blonde hair flying and her big liberal heart beating fit to burst", wrote the right-wing columnist.

Today is the turn of the Independent to pull her up on her quote that she shouldn't be called a "socialite". How dare she say she isn't. Oh the scorn, the tutting, the disdain.

Christina Patterson goes even further. In one of the most convoluted opinion columns in living memory, she insinuates that "the very beautiful, and very rich, and very famous for her famous boyfriends, Jemima Khan", may not be genuinely interested in "the cause of freedom of speech".

"It's also possible that [Jemima Khan and Bianca Jagger] did the calculations before making the deal", sentenced Patterson. "On the one side: beauty, money, glamour. On the other: 'rock star' looks, a delicious sense of self-righteousness, and the aphrodisiac of massive, world-leader-embarrassing power".

Damned if they do, damned if they don't. Here's the message to every celebrity: show an interest in something and the papers will pick you to pieces.

A 1p tax on text messages?

Almost 100 billion SMSs were sent last year in Britain alone. If it's true that the deficit matters, then do your maths.

In an interview in today's Guardian, union leader Bob Crowe mentions in passing that he'd "put a 1 pence tax on every text message that's sent in Britain", arguing that "[the measure] would nearly wipe out half the deficit".

Crowe may be a little over optimistic on the figures, but the idea is certainly spot on.

Last year, 96.8 billion text messages were sent across Britain, an increase of 23% on 2008 - and that's without counting 600 million picture messages on top.

The Office for National Statistics said that "[t]he current budget (excluding financial interventions) showed a deficit of £7.1 billion in October 2010".

A significant portion of that money could be recovered in one fell swoop, as it's highly unlikely an extra 1p per text would impact significantly on the billions of SMSs being sent each day. It'd be certainly infinitely less intrusive than many of the austerity measures this government is taking.

If it's true that Britain's financial emergency can warrant half a million people being made redundant and cuts to the tune of £330m in councils like Birmingham, then what is an extra 1p per text or picture message if it can rake in (at the very worst) over £1bn in just a year?

Tabloids, baying mobs and Charlie Gilmour

Aware that public sympathy is not on their side, the coalition and their media need all the red herrings they can get hold of.

It's that time of the year again when Britain needs its fix of collective hysteria.

Like two years ago when BLOOD OF A SOCIAL WORKER became the backdrop to our lives, and last summer when the phantom PC BAN ON THE ENGLISH FLAG provoked widespread rage, the baying mob is back - whipped up by the country's tabloids - pitchfork and torches, gnashers grinding and white foam building up at the corner of the mouth.

Like foreigners and single mums, social workers and PC councils, 21-year-old Charlie Gilmour is already learning what it means to be the target of tabloid-inspired scapegoating and witch-hunt in this country.

Within hours of the Sun and the Daily Mail revealing his name and personal information, the bloke who was photographed swinging like a fool from the Union Jack at the Cenotaph became the focus of cyber lynchmobs baying for his blood.

Look at the succession of Facebook groups that sprung up like mushrooms.

Jail Charlie Gilmour, Never employ Charlie Gilmour, Charlie Gilmour is a Cnut! (sic), CHARLIE GILMOUR WANTS SHOOTING, Prosecute and imprison Charlie Gilmour!, I hope Charlie Gilmour dies slowly very soon, Charlie Gilmour - Vilest brat in Britain!, Charlie Gilmour is a disgrace to his country JAIL HIM!, Charlie Gilmour needs to be fucking hung.

And that's without counting the hate-filled comments and calls for "revenge" on the tabloids' websites: displays of pure loathing scary enough to make the Wicker Man look like In The Night Garden.

Overnight this Charlie Gilmour turned into the most hated man in Britain, an "evil man" who should die a slow death, be hung, shot and devoured alive by a pack of rottweilers with advanced rabies.

And why? Because he swung from the Cenotaph. An incredibly idiotic thing to do, if you ask me. An ignorant and disrespectful act. One that, if anything, gave ammunitions to those who already hate demonstrators by default.

But, seriously, have we really lost our minds that we can get so worked up to the point of readily dispensing death wishes so publicly and light-heartedly?

What is it with this country that some people get more exercised by symbols than they do when political and corporate abuse vandalises their lives on a regular basis?

Why is it that people can go nuts - literally - over a rich kid swinging from a flag and not even blink when stories pile up of unwarranted police violence against protesters? Where's the outrage when a disabled demonstrator is pulled from his wheelchair and dragged around by the police not once, but twice?

"How dare you insult your country", writes the Sun. Fair enough. But where are the cries of disservice to the reputation of British democracy and where's the bile when the police are caught lying through their teeth in order to cover up some of their most thuggish behaviour?

And why does the baying mob get so incensed by the fact that Charlie's dad (Pink Floyd's David Gilmour) is so rich, but then they don't mind that they themselves will lose jobs, struggle with cuts and much higher living costs courtesy of a government where 18 out of 23 members of the cabinet are millionaires and aristocrats? No outrage there? Where's the scorn poured at "privileged boys who will not be hit by the crisis" when you really need it?

Charlie Gilmour would've done an infinitely better job if he'd stayed at home. But there's no law that makes joining protesters who are less well-off than you a crime. And, come to think of it, no legal cap on protesters' income either.

The Coalition and their mates in the media know public sympathy is not on their side. In their desperate quest for red herrings to shift the focus of the discussion from what really matters, they need all the Charlie Gilmours they can get hold of.

Nothing, at the end of the day, is more threatening to a government than peaceful mass demonstrations.

Britain's sexual apartheid

Why marriage discrimination is both pointless and illegal.

Imagine a return to a world where people of different ethnic background or religion were only allowed to travel on separate buses or were treated in different hospital wards.

Imagine a government justifying itself by saying that, well, those people are still offered travelling facilities and can still be treated if they're sick, overlooking the simple fact that different means and separate channels can only suggest inferior status before the law.

The thing is, that world is with us in today's Britain.

Except that the victims of discrimination are not ethnic or religious minorities, but sexual ones.

If you are gay or lesbian and you wish to get married, the law actively prevents you from doing so. You are offered something different called "civil partnerships" - but the law keeps it as the exclusive preserve of same-sex couples.

The Equal Love campaign, launched last month by the human rights organisation Outrage!, is trying to put an end to this pointless and unjustified discrimination.

When last month a number of same sex-couples applied for civil marriages in London, Northampton, Hampshire and Greenwich, they were all turned away by Register Office staff.

But if more evidence was needed about the absurdity of Britain's sexual apartheid, a number of heterosexual couples were also rejected when they too applied for "civil partnerships". The current law doesn't let them. One bus if you're straight, another if you're not.

Civil Partnerships were brought in by the Labour government in 2004. Although an admirable step in the right direction, especially if compared to the previous regime of total prohibition, the current law is still discriminating on the ground of sexual orientation - a blatant breach of the Human Rights Act.

Yet a number of countries around the world have ended sexual apartheid. Canada, Sweden, Belgium, Argentina, Spain, Norway and the Netherlands are only some of the places where the law doesn't meddle with marriage and sexual preferences.

In an opinion poll published last year by the Times, 61% of the British public agree that gay people should have an equal right to get married, not just civil partnerships, further demonstration that the current two-tier regime is absolutely pointless.

Two out of three party leaders have also come out in favour of an end to the discrimination. Both Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg have openly said they would vote in favour of a change in legislation.

As for the other one, still nowt. Could it be David Cameron's mark of respect for his Party's history of endless anti-gay discrimination?

Click here to find out more about the Equal Love campaign.

On Julian Assange

If the tons of information that are being put online are "little more than a mish-mash of gossip and rumours" (Littlejohn, Daily Mail), "a storm in a teacup" (The Corner Pub), "ridiculous" (the Russian government), "a collection of little substance" (Benedict Brogan, the Telegraph), or even "WikiYawn" (Michael Peck), why then is Julian Assange suddenly the most wanted man in the world, international arrest warrant and all?

UPDATE (12:02pm)- "Wikileaks founder Julian Assange arrested in London" (BBC News).

Smiths, I still love you

Twenty-three years after their demise, Morrissey and Johnny Marr join forces to lash out at the Tory government.

The news that both Johnny Marr and Morrissey expressed their dislike of the Coalition government has added some extra warmth to my day.

It may make little difference, but it's good to know that some "rockstars" or famous people are not 100% cocooned in their own comfortable bubble, haven't totally given up on using their brain cells and are still aware of the crap that goes on in the real world.

Johnny Marr kicked off the proceedings the other day when he rebuked David Cameron's professed admiration for The Smiths. In a twitter message, the guitarist quipped: "David Cameron, stop saying that you like The Smiths, no you don't. I forbid you to like it."

And as the wider media picked up on his remark, another one came this morning :"Nick Clegg, hand over your iPod".

Most unexpected, Marr's former bandmate Morrissey called a truce on their long-standing feud in order to publicly back his words.

"I would like to, if I may, offer support to Johnny Marr who has spoken out to the media this week against David Cameron", said the singer in a written statement at true-to-you.net, articulating his concerns at David Cameron's love for hunting and his pledge to stage a Parliamentary vote on repealing the foxhunting ban next year.

"I must report that David Cameron hunts and shoots and kills stags – apparently for pleasure", added Morrissey. "It was not for such people that either Meat is Murder or The Queen is Dead were recorded; in fact, they were made as a reaction against such violence".

I guess The Smiths were always my favourite band for a reason.