Jack the Ripper walking tour

Who'd have thought that 120 years after some women were murdered in East London, over 100 people would give their Friday nights up to pay £7 to look around the streets these murders took place?

Well, apparently Jack the Ripper did. So did the London Walks company; wisely.

Granted, it may be the cheapest night out London has to offer: equal to the cost of a glass of wine at Her Majesty's Theatre, which we solemnly discovered the following evening. Or a glass of wine anywhere, actually.

Melodramatic Victorian murder mysteries may not be everyone's cup of tea but when you are standing in a dark lamp-lit square in London's East End and the cobbles you are standing on are the very cobbles that the victim's blood was spilt on and siphoned off all those years ago, even the most sober of cynics would move a little closer to their neighbour. Or all 99 of them.

The group (or our half, as we had to be split in two; it is so popular over 100 people came along) started at the literal and figurative City Wall, which is a literal wall and figuratively divides the City and the East End. Half a dozen ravens were nestled in its cracks, paying homage to the legend that when the ravens leave the Tower of London the monarchy will 'fall'. Whatever that means. I just thought it was curious seeing ravens in central London.

Over two hours we hammered the East End pavements from Tower Bridge up to Spitalfields market, stopping every block or so to be enveloped further in the narration of those nights in 1888. The streets were eerily quiet - no cars, no people, not even a beggar. It felt like any other place in the world but London. It felt timeless - with the buildings all in darkness we could have been in any year, especially because the restaurants and shops of Petticoat Lane, Aldgate and Spitalfields were all once warehouses, slaughter houses, doss-houses and matchstick factories built in the mid-1800s and not destroyed during the war. Even the UCL student halls are in a Victorian women's institute, where prostitutes and destitute women and their children could stay for the night and were then kicked out in the morning.

Buildings which catered for their tenants by hanging a rope from one end of the room to the other so vagrants, alcoholics and the ladies of the night could pay two pence and lean against the rope to sleep, are now worth up to a million pounds for a two bedroom flat in the same building.

The Ten Bells, the pub which opened in 1666 and was the drinking establishment of choice for all five victims is still going strong. It can't have changed much in the past 150 years; the walls are mosaiced and chipped, the floors are dirty; the toilets are abhorrent. A sensationalist mind like mine works overtime in a place like that; a place where women got drunk only to be gruesomely murdered hours later... they actually drank in there. What if 'Jack' did too, deciding on his next prostitute to lure and then dismember, from the corner?

Four of the prostitutes were in their 40s; the last victim and by far the most gruesome, Mary Kelly, was 21. Her body was so mutiliated she was unidentifiable; in the end detectives managed to find a small tattoo on a piece of skin, which her boyfriend then identified as being hers (she was found in her house so they already had a clue who she was). Between them, the five prostitutes had 21 children and had all been married at some point.

Suspects have included surgeons, doctors, even the Duke of Clarence (the angle the Jonny Depp film From Hell takes), as well as the classic Victorian accusation that the Jews did it. The murderer was never found, although there have been up to 140 suspects over the years.

A. N. Wilson says in his book The Victorians: "The gleeful way in which the murders are still made a subject of entertainment tells us more about the psychology of those who write or buy the books, or flock to the films, that about the nineteenth century."

But no murders have ever captured the country's attention so vividly; partly due to it being never solved, and also, I think, because the women were prostitutes. Nothing stirs up an image so exotic and removed from everyday life than gin-addled prostitutes staggering through gas-lit alleyways offering their bodies in dirty gowns so they can afford somewhere to sleep that night. In short, easy targets in a shoddy, ignored corner of London that was read about in fascinated disgust merely half a mile away in the townhouses of Bloomsbury over eggs and coffee.

It is a story that Dickens could quite easily have conjured up, but it was real. I guarantee that London Walks will never be out of business as long as the Ripper tour runs.

The problem with Topshop

There are few things I consider traumatic in my rather uneventful life. One of them is turning up late to something; be it a lunch or a university class. Another is when my phone/internet doesn't work for an unknown reason. And one more is: shopping at Topshop.

I am aware this makes me sound demented. Shopping elsewhere on the high street can be enjoyable and satisfying. But Topshop has in recent years become the noughties' mecca of The Fashionable Girl who wants to look like she has casually thrown on a bang up to the minute outfit that was actually very expensive and meticulously chosen.

Some of the clothes are just intimidating and clearly idiotic to wear should you be a size 10 or over. The dictated 'hot' item for the autumn, apparently, is a pair of sequinned high-waisted knickers. Each section of the display in Manchester's Arndale Topshop was adorned with an pair in the appropriate colour pallette. I assume you are to wear them with tights or bare legs. But I have never seen something so ludicrous projected on to the high street-shopping public. Obviously some idiosyncratic Topshop disciples who blindly prostitute their debit cards for whatever is projected onto them are going to buy them; people who would not buy the same item if it was in H&M and not Topshop.

I am not a fan of the current floral-pattern trend for fear I would look like a wipe-clean tablecloth in a steamy-windowed greasy spoon. Nor am I a sporter of the blazer; I left school four years ago and have had quite enough of them to last a lifetime. I know what suits me, but for some reason nothing that falls into said category is for sale in Topshop. The jeans are 'boyfriend'; the cardigans are cable-knit; the leggings are sequinned and £40; and all of it is poor quality.

But if you don't like florals, blazers, hipsters, or £40 leggings, there isn't much else to choose from. Skirts are bright purple and made of faux ostrich feathers. Tops are elastic bands covered in sequins and impossible to wear if you enjoy the odd red wine or a bag of mini cheddars. All in all, the lifestyle that Topshop exudes is preened, made-up, glamorous. Which is all very well, but there is nothing that you can 'throw on' or wear a couple of days in a row without it being noticeable. The clothes are not easy to accessorise as they are all statement pieces in themselves.

In the end, after an hour of picking up, putting back, dithering and withering looks from my boyfriend, I settled on an evening jacket that will endure the approaching season of friends' 21sts. At £60 I would not have bought it had I not been softening the blow with a giftcard and student discount.

Call me boring, but I am not so deluded to think that everything in Topshop is nice just because it is sold there. Topshop is its own enemy: nothing in the high street rivals it but that means it has to better itself every year, stocking weirder and more bizzare clothing that is automatically the accepted uniform of cool for that season.

Phillip Green's bottomless pockets are thanks to the scores of fanatics who embrace sequinned knickers. But the day I wear my knickers over my clothes will probably coincide with a breach of section 75 of the Mental Health Act.

Why Twitter is better than Facebook

I am not one to endorse things sporadically, but the merits of social networking site Twitter are far more rewarding than my other website of choice, Facebook. Myspace is not even worth typing; it is so over.
My prime reason for this statement is a very good one: celebrities are on Twitter, and celebrities can sometimes be generous.
My good friend simply happened to be 'tweeting' her praises to a singer who happened to be supporting Ne-Yo...who, incidentally, happened to have two spare tickets to the concert in Birmingham that very night. Ergo, after a few extra taps on the keyboard and a spot of brown-nosing, my friend was rewarded with those very tickets, free of charge!
And, on a much lower scale but equally as satisfying, I won a book of my choice tonight, thanks to tweeting! I joined @ChalkeAuthors because a friend is doing some freelance work for them, there was a competition asking punters to tweet which fictional character they would marry and why, I tweeted, or twat, Atticus Finch of To Kill a Mockingbird fame (if you must know - because he is loyal, honest and needs the love of a good woman... I am aware that this does not altogether separate his qualities from that of a dog, but I had 160 characters to work with)...and I've won a book!

Get twittering, tweeting, twatting - who knows what could be in it for you!?

The Proposal

The Proposal, starring Ryan Reynolds and Sandra Bullock, is unfunny, not interesting, predictable and, did I mention unfunny? Sobering? Frustrating? Because I cannot stress how not funny it is. It's annoying when you see a film that has the potential to be good, because this one really did. If they changed every intrinsic part of the film - i.e. cast an old, not generically attractive, actually believably demeaning and terrifying superbitch as Andrew Paxton's boss. Meryl Streep, perhaps. A Julie Cooper type.
Actually, after a prompted IMDB search, Sandra Bullock is forty-five. I didn't realise she was this old. So, if they were going to go for the older actress, why not go for someone who doesn't look mid-thirties?
I am not the biggest fan of the Bullock. Miss Congeniality bored me, and I don't know what the latter word of the film title means.
The Proposal is very much like Wedding Crashers, Failure to Launch, What Happens in Vegas, and every other expensive rom-com released in the past five years starring very famous people for no apparent reason other than for publicity purposes. The Proposal is not the best outlet for Bullock's comedienne attempt; perhaps her bedroom mirror may be more suitable.
Slapstick gags are plentiful: an eagle flying off with the family dog, then dropping the dog and swapping it for the mobile phone of the high maintenance career girl who's phone is, like, her life. Yes, an eagle. There is also the classic falling off a high-speed motor boat stunt whilst the driving companion chats obliviously. I cannot recall specifically seeing these scenes in previous films, but it felt like I had. It felt like I had seen the film before, and not only seen it, but wrote it, produced, directed, acted in it, and oversaw the whole production until it was released, I was that familiar with it.
That is the last time I see a high-budget rom com when it's at home.
Go and see The Hangover, it's really funny.

Little Italy

"The big boot of Italy, kicking little Sicily". What they don't mention is Sardinia, the serene observer, detached from the fashion (the boot), the violence (the kicking) and the tourism.

Having not known where Sardinia was before my boyfriend and I showed an interest in the Italian island for our summer holiday (I assumed from the phonetics it was near to Tunisia), I can inform you it is below Corsica, north-west of Sicily, and uncomfortably near to Africa. I say uncomfortably near just because of the intense influx of Looky-Looky men on every aspect of our holiday, proffering their wares at the worst of times. And by the worst of times, I mean at a pivotal point in my book on the beach, or when the waiter is taking our order at a rustic restaurant, which requires 100% concentration and no distractions because of the bullet-proof language barrier (Southern Sardinians not being used to many tourists).

We stayed in Cagliari - the capital of the island - a pleasant, lively but laid-back harbour town on the Southern coast. The people are friendly, the buses are free (well, not really, but we easily avoided paying for any) and the food is SUBLIME.

Our first day was indefinitely a matter of trial and error. Trial - walking from the hotel to the 'beach', or what looked like and technically should have been on the map, it was where the buildings stopped and the sea started. Error - after forty minutes walking ending up standing in silence overlooking industrial rigs, cranes and ships, seagulls shrieking overhead. Resolution - walking into a pizzeria and enquiring where the nearest beach was. Italian waiter sucks in his breath, processing our staggered English voiced in Italian accents, and directed us to the bus stop. Bus was free, beach was near, everything was fine.

Trial number 2 - asking at the reception of the T Hotel for a restaurant reccommendation and confidently leaving the hotel hand-in-hand, 70 euros between us, Cagliari is our oyster and we will hopefully be eating them soon.... Error - being entirely unprepared for a unique cuisine experience. At 4 Mori restaurant they serve whatever seafood is fresh, there is no menu. Baby octopus, buttery prawns in crunchy celery, mussels, tomatoes with tuna, calamari, snails (ew, my one no-go), and many more compulsary starters followed by a big steaming bowl of spaghetti with mussels and crab each...we had died and gone to King Trident's grand underwater feast. However, being forced to decline (in our best and clearest English) a fish course, dessert and a plate of biscottis to finish, we were presented with the folded bill by the beaming, red-faced, round-bellied host. It was more money than we had. Quite a lot more. After downing our (thank God) complimentary extremely strong alcoholic drink post bill-presenting, and more than a little red-faced, we remembered Matthew had his debit card handy and made a swift exit. MAJOR error.

Every night post-4 Mori 100 euros nestled reassuringly in our wallets. But was never needed - no bill ever came close. Cagliari is very good value for money and you get what you pay for. When you pay 4euros for a bottle of house wine, you get drunk. When you pay 11euros for a parasol and two sunbeds on Poetto beach, you don't get a tan because it's too hot to venture from under the parasol. When you pay 75euros for a Renault Clio for 24 hours, you get a full tank of petrol and a memorable day out, namely an hour's venture south to Chia where there are apparently the most beautiful beaches on the whole island. And I do not disagree - the sky was so blue we could see Africa and the sea was so clear we could see the tiny fish eating Matthew's leg hairs.

Why do so many people venture to overpriced, overtoured, overpopular Italy when there is a quieter, cheaper version just to the West? I have never been to Italy, and obviously want to go, but I would consider Sardinia as a great 'warm up'. This is not an insult. It is not overwhelming, you do not feel compelled to go go go every day, and it is quite acceptable to order an authentic pizzeria takeaway and buy a 3euro bottle of wine and eat and drink in the bath (nowhere, not even restaurants, open on Sundays).

Maybe the big boot of Italy was kicking little Sicily because it is jealous of Sardinia.

Alice in Burtonland

I am so excited for the new Alice in Wonderland movie by Tim Burton. Although it is not out until March next year, and also the girl who plays Alice is Australian and a brunette, I am very excited to see my favourite book & film of all time appear at a cinema near me.

Burton has still not decided to drop his winning combination of his wife, Helena Bonham Carter and Mr Jonathan Depp, and why would he? They were the key ingredients in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory; made Sweeney Todd a feast; and I didn't see The Corpse Bride but I'm sure they managed to help sell a 3d cartoon about a graveyard.

Depp is unrecognisable as the Mad Hatter. Yellow eyes, white skin and Chuckie-esque hair render him both terrifying and laughable. The Mad Hatter is seen in the book and the 1951 cartoon (as that is the only actually successful film version out of 23) as quite lovable; dozy, insane and slightly sinister, like an uncle who has been shunted into a care home, but Depp will take this character to a whole new level.

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was first published in 1865 by Lewis Carroll, and I cannot recall a children's book that has acheived such longevity. You would think what with Victorian morals and standards, children being seen but not heard, that the successing generations of children would have lost all interest and discarded Alice under Harry Potter and Bob the Builder. But over time Alice has captivated adults as well, not in a sinewy, sweet way, but in its alleged hidden meaning littered throughout the book: that it's based on the hallucinatory effects of drugs and alcohol.

The caterpillar openly smokes a hookah; the Mad Hatter seems to get madder and madder as he carries on drinking, celebrating his Un-birthday 364 days a year. The Queen of hearts and her subjects could be literally taken as a personified pack of cards - the universal symbol of gambling - especially considering how violent they are and so intent on not letting Alice leave. On top of these, various mind-boggling visions and distortions occur when Alice (always voluntarily) drinks unmarked bottles and eats little cakes.

We must remember, however, that there were no drugs laws at the time Carroll wrote the book, so any light-hearted references would not have been considered inappropriate at the time. Opium, cocaine, and laudanum (a painkiller that contained opium) were used for medicinal purposes, and could be obtained from a pharmacist.

I think Burton will explore this side of Alice in Wonderland, which is certainly not for children at all. Obviously this will go over their heads, but it will make a very interesting, and not at all childish, film that will probably make a lot of money and ergo a prostitution of Alice merchandise, which will obviously be the best thing ever.

Everything comes at a Price

It couldn't be more far-removed from my life, but I would imagine being a high-profile celebrity can be as rewarding as it is soul-draining. I'm not talking about Julia Roberts, George Clooney et al, I'm talking about the kind of disposable, snap-happy chaps that radiate fake tan, failed livelihoods and a low-budget perfume from the pages of Now!, Star and Heat.
You know what they say - don't bite the hand that feeds you. Jade Goody literally sold her dying body to OK! magazine and was devoured by Britain in a pantomime-style finale before the curtains were drawn on her final performance. Then her family asked for privacy, and they were ignored.
The latest celebrity that is preparing to brace herself for the not-so-fabulous side of fame, aka the stomach-churning drop in the rollercoaster to use a tired metaphor, is Katie Price. I would say Peter Andre, but let's face it, he's never been as famous as his estranged wife and never will be.
She gave us her boobs, her kid's births, birthday parties, theme park trips, holidays, wedding vow renewals...and now her life has taken the most interesting turn of all, she wants privacy and has boarded a private jet to god-knows-where.
It doesn't work like that. Needless to say, despite such a heart-breaking time in her life, the public will be a little bit suspicious about all this. Remember the OK! cover earlier this year that featured a picture of her crying, her makeup running down her face, wedding-ring-less, above a headline that read "I caught Pete cheating"? Her fans grasped hold of the magazine as if it was her ring-less hand and hurried to buy it to devour the pages in concern at home...the worst has happened...what an awful thing! Only to get to the interview page and be greeted with confusing pictures of Katie and Peter happily cavorting on a bed with a blow-up doll. So, Pete had 'cheated' on his wife........with a blow-up doll. At a photoshoot. Great, yeah, fool me once, shame on you. But fool me twice, shame on me. If this divorce turns out to be a publicity stunt of the same design, people will not be best pleased.
If it turns out they are getting divorced so they can get re-married, or if they get back together by the end of the week, then a plague on both your houses!

2009: The society of segregation

Nothing increases my blood pressure like a good old-fashioned immigration story. That, and the contestants on Paris Hilton's British Best Friend.

This recent 'fray' shall we call it, regarding the muslim extremists' hate parade in Luton when the homecoming troops landed on British soil, has pissed off everyone in the country I think. Well, apart from New Labour fat cats who think the answer to this debaucle is to plough more money into ridiculous "Preventing Violent Extremism" schemes. Not that this corner of society has a problem taking money off Britain.

This story in the Mail details the community behind the protest, where only one white household resides in the entire Bury Park area where the extremist group hails from. Alfred and Doreen Harrop, who are in their eighties, have had bricks thrown through their windows and their car vandalised by extremists who wish Bury Park to be a Muslim-only community. A Muslim-only community! Pardon us for breathing.

Home Office grants have been handed to Luton's main mosque in the sum of £200,000, with £400,000 set aside for the future. Almost all of the fanatic extremists, according to the Muslim leader at the mosque, are on the dole or claiming benefits of some kind.

Is it a coincidence, then, that the muslim extremist party in Luton is only 35-strong? That is little more headcount than that of a group of pubescent chavs lurking in front of Tesco on a Friday night. Amongst the frustration and despair I feel at this issue, I can also sift out what is unmistakedly sympathy at how pathetic they are. Desperately trying to be taken seriously and to intimidate, the irony is that they depend on the state they despise so much. They have no qualms combing their beards, putting on their hijab, and strolling along to the post office to collect their dole.

They will probably defend this as "taking advantage" of gullable, generous Britain. Of getting what they are owed. But in reality it just shows they are lazy. How can they be taken seriously by their peers and respected in muslim society whose name they blacken when they are revelling in the nanny state?

Extremist muslims are like children who spend their days terrorising smaller children and running riot, stamping on insects and stealing from the corner shop, who then go back to their mums for tea.

To avoid sounding like a low-life numpty: if you don't like it here, travel the short distance to Luton airport and get the next plane out. I'm sure taxpayers wouldn't mind too much the Luton looters using their money to leave Britain, if anything.

There is plenty of political unrest in the Northwest frontier of Pakistan they can get involved in. Plenty of girls' schools to burn down and barbers to murder for shaving men's beards. Or is that too scary?

I think the Luton extremists like to be extreme from the safety of their armchairs.

The Young Victoria

Having a deep-rooted obsession with the Victorian era that bypasses all my other obsessions, such as my extreme disgust and hatred of wooden spoons (because the thought of them being wet and rubbing on my clothes makes me want to be sick), I know that one day I might not hate wooden spoons, but I will always love the Victorian era.

With this in mind, obviously I was going to watch The Young Victoria on the night it came out. The only person who shoulders my obsession wholeheartedly is my mum. She drove me to Derbyshire to see Chatsworth, patiently waited for me to finish trying on the replica costume dresses in the V&A museum, and didn't tell me it might have repercussions on my friendships when I rented Mrs Beeton's book of household remedies from the library for show and tell in primary school, when other people took cool stuff in.

Naturally, she took me to see the film. I'm not going to review it because it wasn't fantastic but wasn't boring, and I don't really know what to comment on apart from the generic Emily and Rupert as Victoria and Albert were good, blah blah. This is just a gesture of my feelings towards Victoria, which are very favourable indeed.

She became Queen at 18. She refused to sign a Regency Order, which basically meant that if the King died before his niece, Victoria, turned 18 she couldn't become Queen until she was 25 and would co-represent the country alongside her mother, the Duchess of Kent. The monarchy would be relatively desolved and men behind the scenes would run the country behind the facade of Victoria and the elderly Victoria. Everyone was pressuring her to sign this order since she was a young teenager; at one point her mother's advisor actually tried to force her signature using her own limp hand when she was ill in bed.

She slept in the same room as her mother until she was 18, and wasn't allowed to walk down the stairs without holding someone's hand until she was Queen.

She took cocaine for her period pains, had nine children because she loved sex so much and didn't know about contraception, (her son Alfred was suspected of being Jack the Ripper), and she and Albert had a gold plaque made for the end of their bed commemerating the date they first slept together.

Because she loved her husband so much, when he died of typhoid aged 42 after 20 years of marriage, she dressed in mourning every single day for the rest of her life, which some might say is emo, but someone who is so revered in public perception has little room to express themselves: it was business as usual as soon as the love of her life died. She had a clay mould made of Albert's hand and was rumoured to sleep clutching it every night, and she insisted the servants lay out his clothes, shaving brush, and flannel every morning after he died.

Victoria was percepted as cold, austere and uninterested in her people or her country. This was very untrue: she was passionate about making life for the working classes better and did a lot of work for the improverished East End, building schools and hospitals for the 'gutter children' of the future.

Her famously coined phrase "we are not amused" was, in fact, a valid comment, and not a snobby remark. She said it at a public event commemerating soldiers in the Civil War, when an ex-soldier who lost his leg in battle was walking up the street hobbling on a stick, and some people in the crowd were sniggering at his misfortune.

Ok, I'm done. Basically, I love Victoria and all things Victorian VERY much. Thank you for humouring me if you've got this far.

The Staceys @ The Oscars

Best Dressed Stacey goes to Anne Hathaway, who looked like a beautiful mermaid. From Spain.

Worst dressed Stacey is awarded to Reese Witherspoon.
It looks like her chiffon monstrosity was coloured with-a-spoon. I am not the biggest fan of electric blue, and the weird strap things look like she has landed on the stage straight from her paragliding lesson.
Then there is the concealed sequinney detail, which is neither here nor there. Just......no, Reese.

Most boring Stacey: it's yours Angelina.
Come on, AJ. We know you are a pillar of society, an example to A-Z listers great and small, and that you probably didn't have time to take calls from designers offering you their exquisite creations because you were busy being busty barmaid to Knox and Vivienne whilst entertaining your other four dependants and the squirrels and deer....but that dress? It's so boring! Elegant, but boring. Even a diamond necklace would have spruced it up a bit, that you could have got for free.

Button looks nice though.

Cutest Stacey is for the little slum puppies from Slumdog Millionaire!
Awwww.

Goody gum drops

The Victorian Freak Show is not a thing of the past, it seems.

People are obsessed with freaky things: people's pains, plights and predicaments will always make the front page and schadenfreude is the only German thing British people love.

But has Jade Goody crossed the line into sickeningly controversial territory? Or has the British public? If the line is a literal one at the end of a contract then Jade has not only crossed the line with a ballpoint pen (don't worry, Julie), but has indeed signed, sealed and delivered her soul to OK! magazine. "World exclusive! Jade's first bald photos!" Excuse me, but I would feel a little ashamed forking over approximately £2.50 at the till for this.

Despite writing this, I am not sure how I feel about this entire I've Got Cancer And I'm Milking Every Penny From It saga. I knew someone who died from cancer, and the last thing I can imagine ever happening at that time would be her husband agreeing to a melancholia-themed photoshoot complete with sad faces in an expensive outfit and describing his melancholia, complete with captions of where to buy the expensive outfit. Especially if he had just come out of prison. Jack Tweed should be keeping a low profile at the bedside of his fiance who has been given eight weeks to live, not galavanting to the OK! offices in London to cross another line for a hefty figure.

Degradation is not the word, it's just........................strange. Very, very, strange. The media-consumers have been stirred by this in different ways - some will think it is disgraceful that someone could publicise such a tragic disease and some will just weep with sorrow. I am sitting on the fence, looking at the weeping people and empathising with them, maybe welling up a little bit, but then the jostling, heckling crowd behind me turn my head the opposite way. I am torn! And I don't want to think about it too much, because it's weird.

The thing I don't like about it is, I guess, that it makes cancer seem a bit unimportant. That nothing is personal or traumatic enough not to sell to a magazine - "it's ok if you get it because look what I'm doing, I can appear in a pantomime and make a documentary and do interviews all at the same time, I'm being strong, I'm not letting it beat me." All well and good, Jade, but please don't belittle such an awful illness. Not everyone can make money from it. Not everyone even makes it.

So, please, Jade, turn the cameras off, shut the door, get married, be happy for as long as you can. Keep this one bit of your life precious. Because the British public will mourn you if you die in private or not.

No inspiration/not inspired

So, in today's news a 13 year old boy has become a father, and apparently someone in Berlin has been cured of HIV. Last month a woman had a litter of eight children in five minutes.
It seems everything that could have happened has now happened.

The grandfather of the child who's father will be in sixth form (or not) when she starts primary school said "I hope he will be a good dad."
Of course he won't! He didn't even know what financial means when he was asked how he would provide for his child! When the baby is crying for a rusk and the cupboard is bare, will little Alfie Patten look up from playing Mario Cart on the Wii? Well, probably - for enough time to look at Maisie Roxanne and mutter an obscenity then text his friend "Wuu2 am bord."

Apparently this has triggered a debate over 'broken Britain'. Britain is already FULLY broken, into tiny little pieces, that if played in a PowerPoint slideshow would incorporate figures of banks, golliwogs, unhappy faces walking out of a factory, and Gordon Brown dressed as a sinister Robin Hood carrying out his motto. The only good thing that has happened in the past few months is Peaches Geldof moving to America. As it is, they say rats are the first to leave a burning ship.