One week left....then its Gordon a go-go!

Watched PMQs yesterday...Bit of a mixed bag for the venerable Ming....one quick question about the inequality of private equity fat cats and the issue's all over the morning papers (yes, I know it was raised last week)...is the city quacking in its boots?

However the revelation that Papa Gordon attempted to woo ex Liberal leader Paddy Ashdown into his new cabinet has made the current incumbent look like a bit of a twit...

Back to the Commons, I was very taken with Mr Blair's red and gold striped tie...which some quick tv viewer thought might refer to the possible Lib/Lab coalition on the cards....or not. The honorable Tony did his usual pantomine of praising Gordon and understanding everyone's views....he failed, however, to answer the primary question put to him by the leader of the opposition. Not once, not twice but three times Mr Blair shrugged off Lord Falconer's ill-fated quote that the early release of thousands of British prisoners would be "seriously wrong". Can't take that one back now buddy.....All Mr Blair could do was apologise for the miscalculation over places...What's new...?

Got home in the evening to sit down with a beer and watch Newsnight (if you're having a bad day just think, "at least I'm not on Newsnight")...Which included a Labour MP and a Tory MP talking about private equity. The transatlantic Tory was prickly, methinks he has his fingers in a couple of ventures. The Labour MP, Angela Eagle, put on a brave face but looked close to tears. I'd probably be the same if I was in her position, charged with trying to crack open a bunch of uncooperative, self assured city bankers, she looked at a complete loss...("What did I do to be treated so by my masters...?"). Especially when asked about a possible coalition government under Brown, though whether she was tight lipped out of ignorance, fear or indignation we'll never know...

I don't know what to make of this bid for liberal involvement...What is Gordon playing at? In doing so he manages to annoy his commrades and offend the liberals...Oh, right. It looks good with the masses and stops the Tories muscling in on middle England...No, really, I love the theory of a coalition government, it might even work. But not in today's political climate, everybody's in the middle of a re-brand, we can't go about mixing mesages now can we....

Speaking of which, the Tories really need to pull their socks up and start solidifying policy. I quite like Dave's shadow cabinet (Willett's, Osborne and Hague seem to know their stuff) but what's the overall message? Political devolution, welfare reform and social improvement, all lovely sentiments but how I say, how?! Oh, they've suggested implementing "health miles" - yes, the Conservatives, not Labour. If you're overweight, smoke, drink too much etc...and cut down on your chosen vice you could then be rewarded with discount veg, gym membership etc...Labour ban, the Tories incentivise...I'm getting my carrots and sticks in a real muddle...

So after that blurb of hot air I leave you with a nice anonymous quote I just remembered...

"Define politics? Sure - 'poli' - many, 'tics' - blood sucking parasites".

Virtual Insanity

I don't dare call myself a gamer...I quite like running round and shooting stuff on the TV screen for a bit but I have no patience (to be honest I'm a poor shot. Bizarrely, I get better after a drink though). When I was younger I'd spend hours holed up on the PC, lost in Quake, Doom and Lara Croft (laugh it up, I was a trigger happy young girl, to me the buxom Ms Croft was sooooooooo awesome), munching through game after game. (My dad used to come and watch me play, not in the least bothered that his oddball daughter, usually seen with her head in a book or up a tree somewhere, got so much joy out of blowing the crap out of a virtual world).

Now times have changed. I occassionally dust the old XBox off (gaming progression: Nintendo, Sega, PC, XBox. I can't be arsed to keep up with gaming trends anymore, that's what friends are for) and settle down for a couple of hours of panicky shooting, profuse swearing and personal frustration. It's a giggle but then I gather the doorstop up into my loving arms and put it to bed for another month. I no longer have the desire to play until my eye lids itch and droop or I start throwing the controller around in anger. But I do still have the same taste in games. FPS all the way man (maybe a bit of role play in there - if I'm supervised)...My games are all silly no brainers - Wolfenstein, Doom, Vice City, Half Life etc...and the immediate objective is always the same. Kill stuff. Right now (before it kills you).

I've never played Manhunt. My soul is clean. I remember when it came out here, though and the fury that followed. Then Leicester teenager Stefan Pakeerah was brutally murder by 17 -year-old Warren LeBlanc, a fan of violent films and video games, Manhunt in particular. Despite the police citing robbery as LaBlanc's motive the dead boy's parents, along with much of the media and middle England, believed LaBlanc was imitating the heavy content and gruesome gameplay of Manhunt. Quite possibly. "Violent games must be banned", came the cry. I can remember proping up a pint and having quite an animated discussion with friends about the issue. "Leave gamers alone" was the response, "just cos we like a bit of gore doesn't make us all axe murderors". So the game was a bit sick and scary, it was a critical and popular success and there was no crazed killing endemic.

Now that its sequel has been banned from our shores I would like to know what others think. As the first game to be unequivocally chucked out by the British Board of Film Classification in 10 years methinks Manhunt 2 is something special.

BBFC Director David Cooke said: "Manhunt 2 is distinguishable from recent high-end video games by its unremitting bleakness and callousness of tone in an overall game context which constantly encourages visceral killing with exceptionally little alleviation or distancing. There is sustained and cumulative casual sadism in the way in which these killings are committed, and encouraged, in the game.

Against this background, the Board’s carefully considered view is that to issue a certificate to Manhunt 2...would involve a range of unjustifiable harm risks, to both adults and minors."

I am no psychologist, I can't say for certain whether or not violent games foster real violence. But I'm no psycho either and I've played violent games (though not the offending article) all my life. I thoroughly understand the risk of such material to impressionable children - all kids play act...But I've always thought that blaming an adult killing on a medium of entertainment is a cop out. I know the difference between reality and the game. I get all pumped and excited and can't wait to butcher some random mutant/Nazi/monster with that controller between my hands. Yet my desires have limits. The thought of seeing whether I could do it in the flesh makes me ill.

I don't doubt the BBFC are making a good decision. The argument runs that surely if the ban stops just one adolescent nutjob from flipping then it's worth it. I agree. It just spoils everyone else's fun. Mind you, it's not like Rockstar needs the revenue.

Dissent and disease - wahey it's Monday...

This year's British Medical Association AGM for GP's saw a practically unanimous vote in favour of sacking Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt. The doctors went on to detail their lack of confidence in the Government. This is no laughing matter... I will therefore restrain myself to pointing and sniggering softly whenever I see the misguided minister...

Eric Rose, the gentlemen who proposed the motion to sort out the health service, said: "the dangers to the fabric of the NHS appear greater than ever. No one is more responsible for this than Secretary of State 'Call me Patricia'". Damning stuff...

Some poor monkey over at the Department of Health issued the official line: "A constructive and balanced contribution from the BMA as to how we continue to improve care for patients would be more welcome". Er....I'd like to think all those doctors who have dedicated so much time and money towards their individual training and their profession as a whole know what's needed to improve care - it's their job (as opposed to some press office oik). The medical profession is loosing patience and is challenging the Government more often than not. Has the DoH become deaf to the clamour of constructive criticism? Maybe its time for a change, Patricia..

40 per cent of hospitals, PCTs etc...believe they are meeting government hygeine standards. Well done. Less encouraging are the 1/4 who admit to inadequate (eep!) infection control, decontamination and general cleanliness. My local PCT is one of the 99 NHS organisations who have owned up to such shoddy standards. As a consequence these sites are happy breeding grounds for those nasty little bugs killing all our old folk....Hmm, 2+2=? It's almost as if they're being encouraged...But seriously, we need to sort this out, compulsory hand washing for visitors would be a start...

Sexed up and clueless

British teenagers are having sex younger and boy do they like it....As a result pregnacy (and abortion) rates are booming and STI's are rife. An adolescent girl has a 50/50 of getting gonorrhoea when having unprotected sex and her chances of contracting syphilis have risen over 2,000 per cent over the past decade. Eep.

And the culprit, according to an independent advisory group? The giddy, glittering, gauche cult of celebrity. Teenagers are swamped with sexual material in magazines and adverts, alongside pictures of pissed popstars and Pete Doherty smoking crack. The result is a growing number of children who define their lives around sex and drugs.

To what extent does the media and it's coverage of the messed-up star antics influence the youth of today? Don't forget that celebrities have been living it up for generations (how many OD's in the '60s and '70s?) but in the digital age there is no escaping the rich and infamous - they're on every desktop and evening telly lineup.

But hey, don't forget to blame the parents, our drinking/eating/dumbed down culture, the Government (any excuse..), the schools and the creeping fug of today's feckless, Godless society. To be fair I don't think this is something that can be pinned on social inequalities - we've all overdone it on the sex, drugs and rock'n'roll, or know friends who have, regardless of background or parenting strategies (both liberal and authoritarian attitudes lead to offspring overdoing it).

And never was there a more contentious issue than sex education. By teaching our young people what goes where do we inform and temper them or simply encourage them? I'm very much in the pro-education camp. We live in a world where ideals of morality, marriage and manners seem to be under constant review - I'd rather children knew what the hell they're getting themselves in for. Ha, maybe a Pythan syle syllabus should be adopted (joke...) - all together now: "every sperm is sacred, every sperm is great"...

It doesn't help that we can't even advertise contraceptives properly. We all have a good giggle at wacky Jonny ads from Oz on Tarrant on TV, or whatever but I bet they act as a great reminder.

There is no silly punchline or easy solution to this one, chaps. Mind you castrating a few celebs might make good reality tv, any takers?

Charity and religion

Labour MP and welfare guru Frank Field has accused Gordon Brown's tax credits system of discriminating against two parent families on low incomes.

His case in point is that a single mother, working less than 10 hours per week recieves just over £25,000pa. Christ, I need to get me knocked up....

Well done to Mr Field for getting out his calculator and challenging Gordon but his conclusions are long overdue. He just had to ask any local authority benefit administrator, unemployment clerk or lacky over at the DWP or Revenue and Customs. Mind you they have their own problems...Top of the list are the relentless performance targets set by central government.

Means tested tax credits are awarded to families and individuals on low incomes, with the intention of reducing child poverty. How much you recieve depends on how many hours you work, your income (which includes any other benefit you may recieve) and outgoings, the number of children you have, their ages etc...(not to mention any small savings you may have which can make you ineligible). It's a complicated calculation, one performed by numerous employees at different agencies and one that is constantly under review, should your circumstances change.

As a result the administration of the welfare state is no easy task and tax credits, highly praised when they were introduced three years ago, have made it a nightmare. I say this with complete confidence, having worked for a local authority administering housing benefit.

Like with every other benefit, the level of overpayment is shocking. £6 billion was incorrectly paid out in tax credits alone in the past year - some as a result of fraud, the rest down to admin difficulties. The subsequent recovery of benefits is often messy and misunderstood, causing families and civil servants serious problems.

Mr Field has believes that single parents are being discouraged from finding partners because of the effect it will have on their benefit. He's refering to the more consciencious claimants out there. Others simply hide their partner's income or existance (resulting in the biggest source of benefit fraud).

The benefits system needs a serious overhaul, targets need to be eased and calculations need to be simplified. Will Gordon get the ball rolling and discipline his baby?

Over at the Vatican Cardinal Renato Martino has called for all Catholics to stop donating to Amnesty International. The human rights charity has recently started supplying abortions to unfit African women and those pregnant as a result of rape and incest. I will personally pay for a (one way) ticket to Sudan so he can hold the hands of all those traumatised women about to go into labour. Bet he doesn't go for it.

Normal service is resumed

Right, sorry about that peeps...I'm an idiot, I published when I meant to save and I'm too lazy to lark about cutting and pasting so you'll have to read the second half of my rant as follows....

"Scandal or controversy beats ordinary reporting hands down", asserts Mr Blair - er, surely it depends on the event and the paper covering it...? As I said, I'm not denying/defending the sensationalist streak of broadsheets, tabloids, freesheets, whatever, they have to vamp up events to make good copy. Every paper has its own readership to think about - different people want different information from their paper. The Telegraph's mostly middle-class, centre right readership will get stuck into a story about the Government's black hole IT funding, whereas The Sun won't give it an inch of column space. Instead The Sun may run a story on some washed up popstar accused of cross dressing at the weekends. Each story will have a hyped up headline for their readers but the copy will still have to be comprised of "ordinary reporting" - getting the facts and figures right.

Tony goes on to decry the practice of media comment - this has me livid. "The new technique is commentary on the news being as, if not more important than the news itself". "Opinion and fact should be clearly divisible." Shall we just shut down the presses and servers and have one universal news outlet (regulated by whom...?), with no opinion? I read comment pieces on a daily basis, if the subject interests me. What's the point of being fed news if you can't put it into some kind of context? How do others feel and how does this affect me? And I enjoy reading an opinion piece that blends fact, the author's personal comment and entertaining prose, even if I don't agree with the argument. I am not stupid Mr Blair, I can work out what is fact and what is subjective journalism.

"Stories, are all black and white", "Some good, some bad" is not the way things are done, everything is critical. Methinks the PM is getting a little over sensitive and perhaps needs to read some more balanced comment, I assure him it's out there.

"Viewers or readers have no objective yardstick to measure what they are being told". Sure but the same goes for official information. Human beings are real buggers, huh? Subjective, biased, always trying to spin the best story they can. Though as a result, we tend to know how much bullshit we can tolerate and are able to make rational choices about what we believe to be true.

I sympathise with Mr Blair's attempt to address the balance between the media and politics (good timing, might I add) but I do not think, "we are all being dragged down by the way media and public life interact". I agree, coverage is often unbalanced, much reporting is critical of politicians and the media can and should do more to get the public involved in the political process. But Mr Blair's protestations and likening of the British media to a "feral beast" are childish. Ultimately, there's no smoke without fire.

Right, I'm off to go and see what today's press has made of the lecture....

Not done...

I got all excited and posted the following mid-article, more to come....