ELECTION 08: Westminster to Washington, Punch and Judy take on the WWE

David Cameron admitted that he hadn’t delivered on beating the ‘Punch and Judy’ politics of Westminster, the kind of irritating showmanship that the televising of Parliament has encouraged (along with the wearing of colourful ties). This is at least half of what Barack Obama is promising – the new politics, a blissful era of cooperation and getting things done. They haven’t even decided the Democratic nomination and yet, oddly, Obama is already running negative ads on Clinton. She forced him into it, you might say – and rightly so. He’s attacking her attacks on him, you might also say. Not always – but it doesn’t really matter. The real point here is the impossibility of the project in itself if it is already failing, and before even crossing party lines.

Cameron is in opposition, as Obama claims he will be against ‘the Washington establishment’ when (if) he sweeps into the Oval Office, installing his new Camelot with him in much the same way that Bill Clinton did in 93. Will this lead to much talk and no action like the early Clinton era, while America twists in bitter economic winds?

Still, perhaps we should have faith. Obama is nothing if not inventive, recently denying that the voters were electing him at all. Distancing himself from the comments of Pastor Wright (who believes AIDS was introduced to cull the black populations of Africa and the US, and isn’t afraid to say so) Obama claimed that the election was not about the people but the project, which had the people at its heart – so the voters were electing themselves into office, not him. There is some truth in that people will usually like what they find familiar; mirrored body language in social situations, that sort of thing. From an advertising perspective, candidates could be seen as luxury versions of their consumers; like them, but able to reach the parts that acme candidates just can’t.

Like McCain and his many outspoken allies (most of them radio hosts), Obama has been forced to disown Pastor Wright, but the religious man sees it in a philosophical light:

“I do what I do. He does what a politician does.”

This implies the new politics is a tactic, one John McCain also claims to adopt, and one from which he may be slipping away now the Republicans scent blood over Obama’s association with Wright. Would Obama hold firm, come the general election?

Whatever else happens, it would be hard for the candidates to outdo this particular stunt they performed for the WWE. Who would you fancy in a Battle Royale between ‘Hilrod‘ (oddly convincing, but then she’s on familiar ground), McCain and his McCainiacs (autocue very slow in the first half, then warms up when he has a go at Obama) and Obama’s aping of The Rock (no eye contact until the punchline, looks exhausted). Horrific. But get ready for worse come November, new politics or none.

Finish on a song – but which one?

If you could go out on a song, which would it be? Stumbling across this list in the course of other research, one of News Hour’s correspondents had his imagination set racing by the remarkable scenes to be created by being incinerated to inappropriate music. There are the more obvious classical standbys in Worthing Crematorium’s list, of course; and perhaps even the theme to geriatric slapstick comedy Last Of The Summer Wine could fall into the predictable bracket (did Compo have it played at his funeral, we wonder? Holmfirth, where the series is filmed, was the actor’s hometown), and even Elvis Presley’s Love Me Tender – but what about the following…

Carl Douglas’s Kung Fu Fighting (remembering a karate champion, complete with back flipping kung fu dancers and fire breathers)
Bon Jovi’s Livin’ On A Prayer (for parties of leather-clad bikers?)
Another One Bites The Dust (for when evil gladiator Wolf shuffles off this mortal coil?)
The EastEnders theme (will he, won’t he go into the fires? A team of live drummers and a screaming illegitimate daughter add tension)
The Only Fools And Horses theme (it all turns out to be a trick, and someone has made off with 50 large in diamonds)

We were sad to note that Livin La Vida Loca by snake-hipped Latino lovegod Ricky Martin, was not included on the list. Perhaps some sound sensitive dancing flames might be a nice addition? (‘It’s the way he would’ve wanted to go.’) Send the crowd home with a smile on their face.

Lawks-a-mercy: UN’s Alfie Moon in identity crisis

POLITICO’S HUMDINGER

Ban Ki-moon, the eighth Secretary General of the UN, is facing an identity crisis. For the second time since he assumed office in 2007, the staff of Kofi Annan’s successor have been forced to send out a letter clarifying that he is not to be known as ‘Mr Moon’, or even ‘Mr Ki-moon’ (the phonetic equivalent of a type of tea), but ‘Mr Ban’. The problem has even spread to his good lady, often referred to in reports as ‘Mrs Moon’ – which sounds like Alfie’s other half in EastEnders, a dab hand with the pints and the banter behind the bar of the Queen Vic. It is a problem similar to that experienced by the actor Chow Yun-Fat, and one which may be similarly solved by exposure.

Marvel Comics has recently entered the movie business on its own buck, having previously licensed its film deals through Sony – and to offset any exploitative, multinational appearances (enlarge its moral footprint, one might say) the company developed a giveaway comic strip in which superheroes worked with the UN to solve real world problems – conflict, disease, bangs some heads together and get people talking. That sort of thing. Some readers may remember that Spider-Man did a similar thing with drugs in the 1970s, and that the characters from the Beano went off to fight the filthy Hun during World War II – there are unclear memories of GI Joe (or ‘Action Force’ as it was known in Britain) treading the same ground.

It is curious to speculate which body would benefit the most from this arrangement, but a starring role for a ‘Mr Ban’, complete with a frame focusing on a nameplate of some fashion, be it on his desk, door or lapel, would surely not go amiss in any future escapades. Perhaps he and Chow Yun-Fat could join forces to fight the evil of name-mangling?

Or, he could just wait a while – should the soft, cultural power of China match its economic rise, this may well be a short term problem.

MAYORAL 08: English Democrats lose trendy figurehead

DISPUTED FALL OF MATT O’CONNOR

As the former London mayoral candidate for the English Democrats, Matt O’Connor cut an unusual figure. Looking like a cross between DJs Dr Fox and Bobby Friction, the Fathers 4 Justice founder ran a local campaign on what appeared to be national issues. It’s hard for Londoners (and especially the London media) to remember that the nation’s capital is still, essentially, a regional proposition. The cornerstone of the campaign relied on a knee-jerk sense of English identity (of which there is little – of itself, an issue of some psychological substance), an unthinking fear of what was described as the ‘tartan tax bombshell’ being dropped on London by a ‘Scottish-run government’. Videos of a British-Asian man (ethnically inclusive = check) illustrating the financial gulf between life as an Englishman and then as a Scotsman (cue funny ginger wig and accent and, therefore, humour = check) did not encourage further attention by appearing to be little more than comic sideshows – humour does not always equal accessibility.

Perhaps this was the plan, be so over-the-top that people think about you, talk about you, and the idea is sown; this brackets politics with advertising, or at least the advertising of politics, a close marriage of which anyone who has been watching the American primaries keenly will be well aware. O’Connor’s trendy appearance is explained by his background as a marketing consultant, and in his resignation from the mayoral race, the comments of the Democrats’ regional chairman, Steve Uncles, seem to recognise him as exactly that – an overpowered consultant – claiming that he “never expected to get him elected”. For his part, O’Connor’s quote seems to throw similar light on the situation:

“I don’t think they got any publicity at all and I was effectively sidelined. I think they thought I was going to take over the party or something.”

It appears they were at cross purposes from the beginning. The problem with O’Connor’s message is that there was very little at the heart of it; phrases like ‘I’m not left or right, I’m not black or white’, espoused as if they were part of a rap, the frivolising of teenage deaths through gun crime in London last year as part of a ‘bloody harvest of bullets and blades’, incessant statements about threats to democracy in Britain – a case he makes by conflating the misdeeds of a Tartan regime with the rise of the ‘surveillance society’. These are unrelated issues. Is he saying that Gordon Brown is a financial terrorist? This equation of bureaucracy with fascism as an opposition to democracy is curious indeed.

Still, as long as the message remained consistently inconsistent, strongly expressed and from ethnically diverse video mouthpieces, does it matter? Sadly for Mr O’Connor, it does.

UPDATE:
In response to a statement made by Mr O’Connor perceived to be blaming the English Democrats, the party has released the following statement about his alleged personal difficulties which we will only link to, but which casts new light on the situation if true.

Darius perceived to achieve linguistic ‘double whammy’

Having earned a standing ovation for his performance as Rhett Butler in Trevor Nunn‘s new adaptation of Gone With The Wind, ex-Pop Idoller and one-time Britney warbler Darius Danesh must have been on cloud nine. He had this to say about the experience after the performance:

“I had a blast, it was my first opening night and it was great to cut my teeth with the inimitable Trevor Nunn.”

Darius appears to manage the peculiar trick of being both complimentary and condescending in one sentence – and considering his previous roles in Chicago and Guys And Dolls, the reference to cutting his teeth is rather curious. ‘Inimitable’ is also a horribly awkward word, not to mention a dangerous one – does anyone actually use it in casual speech?

In any case, this is by the by. Darius is one of the few enduring stars to come out of the reality mill, ever-buoyed by his persistent and at least half justified self belief – and, if all the balance of the reviews are to be believed, he is the undoubted star of the show. News Hour wishes this curious self-made legend of stage, screen and song all the best.

Culture Shock: News Hour meets the Martians

ARTS REVIEW


It’s one of the year’s ‘zaniest shows’ according to the Telegraph – and while it is certainly memorable, what actually is the Martian Museum of Terrestrial Art, currently docked at London’s persistently alien Barbican centre? The principle is simple. Gather a lot of contemporary art, including many things that one might not consider within the bracket and present it all as if through alien eyes, with works themed into communication, rituals, totems, etc – so, while some galleries choose circumspect pretension as their shoehorn, the Barbican’s weapon of choice is contextualisation. A bold idea, but the execution is not what it might be.

When News Hour’s correspondents arrived at the gallery, the show had already been running well over a month. As such, the staff appeared bludgeoned by the relentless oddity of their surroundings. The gallery was nearly empty, and a request for two tickets was met with a knowing, almost rueful grin. Suspicions of a scam were raised when your correspondent was asked to record his full credit card details on an unofficial looking piece of paper in exchange for the audio guides. We were assured that the details, kept in a less than durable-looking box, would be returned. They were – but we would advise readers to make sure they destroy this gift to identity fraudsters shortly after. Do London’s feral youth really covet these unwieldy MP3 players and 1980s headphones so much?

We suspect that whoever is behind the guide wants to write sci-fi comedy – while it makes the occasional interesting point (it is not bad on Warhol), as time wears on it becomes increasingly lost in its own mythology, which is useless if you’re not in on the joke. The illustrative signage similarly apes The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, and a sense of the faux-clever art that appeals to nerds, self-justified through arrogance rather than elegance, pervades much of the lower left hall. Just because you think about something a lot does not make it a good idea, or nice to look at.

Amid all this pulverising nonsense, though, are some gems – Jeffrey Vallance’s Cultural Ties, an installation presenting the correspondence between the artist and assorted heads of state, in which he offered an exchange of neckties, is gentle and fascinating. (He is also responsible for the Blinky shroud downstairs, but we’ll let him off.) It is something that you wouldn’t see elsewhere, and this strange opposition of works is the exhibition’s strongest point. Is it art? By the time you get through looking at the bloodstained table and horrific accompanying video to Luette Mit Rucola, you won’t care – it’ll simply be nice to not be watching someone being mutilated, an experience that inducted a dizzying cold sweat in your correspondent. It came bracketed with some not dissimilar art that had a ring of the stranger end of Scandinavian work, but were student projects by comparison.

There are other highlights, most of them photographic (and one particularly beautiful sculpture by Barbara Hepworth), but not enough. The sense of this exhibition is that the curators suddenly realised what they’d taken on about halfway through, and steamed on regardless. A bold strategy, one which would serve them well in marketing, but it needed more innocence, inclusiveness and intelligence to really work.

The show runs until May 18.

Silence of the abs: Men’s Health cover model ‘seen with shirt on’

NEWS HOUR EXCLUSIVE


The magazine-buying public were sent into turmoil yesterday, by this image taken by our correspondent in Torino – it reveals that for the first time, an issue of Men’s Health has been published without a topless man on the cover. Thousands of supposedly heterosexual men are said to be ‘up in arms’ about the absence of the abs. Also apparent by their absence from the cover were the customary phrases:

‘seven days to a six pack’
‘scrawny to brawny in just eight weeks’
‘flat belly foods’
‘lose your gut’
‘six pack abs’
‘great abs easy’
‘fast food, hard muscle’

Most controversially missing was ‘get abs fast’ – for that underserved one per cent of males who are born without an abdomen, and eat into a tube. The cover model of the Italian edition – who has yet to be identified – was even seen sporting a stylish shirt and not looking self-conscious about it, much to the presumed horror of magazine chiefs in Pennsylvania, from where the tome has been honed since 1987. Only the Italians, some were said to grumble. It would never happen in America, surely?

The only previous exception was for Lock Stock actor Jason Statham, who was allowed to protect his modesty with a white T-shirt on account of his moody disposition, and because it was so universally understood he was fit that ‘a little bit of bicep’ was all that was needed.

At least, this was the public story. In an exclusive to News Hour, we can reveal the horror of what happened behind the scenes. Aping his character in ‘The Transporter‘, anonymous sources claim that Statham marched in to the photo shoot ‘smartly dressed and fully armed’, demanding his conditions for shirt wearing were met ‘or else’. Terrified staff were held at gunpoint while pleas for the snarling actor to be allowed an exception were considered. The editors held out for six hours, claiming to the board that this would be ‘the beginning of the end’ and that their journalistic standards could not be lowered. But when Statham began executing hostages, even these cynical scribblers were forced to capitulate.

Sources claim that even the formidable ‘abmaxer’ digital camera filter – used to magically ‘remove’ close-fitting clothes from difficult models – was left on the shelf, such was the fear of Statham’s formidable arsenal of fragmentation grenades, shoulder-mounted rocket launchers and twin Star M249 SAW machine guns. It is an incident that has quietly resonated throughout publishing ever since, one from which we may just now be beginning to feel the waves.

ELECTION 08: Minority report, as Catholics trump swingles

News Hour sniffs the scent of ‘swing voters’, telling us that a key Democratic primary is on the way, and indeed it is – Pennsylvania kicks off on April 22. At CNN, it’s all about the swing voters, with their 15-minute latest political podcast (‘from the best political team’) featuring lengthy reports on no fewer than two of them. First up it’s the Catholics, weighing in at 70 million strong, or 20
per cent of the electorate.

The religious end has recently been excited by the visit of Pope Benedict XVI, and such was the overshadowing fervour of this trip that Gordon Brown’s journey across the Pond received very little attention whatsoever. One can only imagine that Brown planned it this way, as surely only the most wayward of Downing Street advisers (home of the ‘We don’t do God’ quote) would consider the British premier worthy of more notice than his Papal lordship. It is still Brown’s Mekon-like appearance on American Idol that looms largest in the mind, that and the image of him shuffling solo across the set of Good Morning America.

Still, even Catholics must cower at the might of the single woman – this vocal minority accounts for 26 per cent of the electorate but consistently punch below their weight due to not actually voting. What kind of a swing voting group is that? Presumably this army of American Bridget Joneses have been spending more time in bars than voting booths – before waking up, drunk and angry, demanding their say in the nation’s future. If one were to construct a Top Trumps set of American voting minorities, one could confidently predict the Catholics would outswing the single women (swingles?), although this is further complicated by the fact that some of
these single women might be Catholics, and vice versa. How many lapsed Catholics? Does this account for the fact that, according to CNN, 51 per cent of the Pope’s followers were pro-choice on abortion? Are these real Catholics? Who can say.

For the benefit of these drunken hordes, out of the stars of Sex And The
City, only Sarah Jessica Parker is overtly political – she’s a Democrat,
and her five-year-old son is an avid supporter of Barack Obama.

‘Gangsta rap’ invented by G-men to kill blacks, claims Alicia Keys

In perhaps the most astoundingly idiotic theory yet espoused by a musican, Alicia Keys has stated that ‘gangsta rap’ is a genre invented by the US government as a way to ‘convince black people to kill each other’, and that murders such as those of Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G. were designed to ‘stop a great black leader from existing’. (In an interview with Blender magazine.) News Hour is reminded of Aids being engineered to wipe out the gay population, or the government killing thousands of its own people to justify the war in Iraq.

Such a conspiracy would have to be impossibly complex to exist – let alone succeed – and its formulation has the mark of that strange modern mindset of both distrusting and yet vastly overestimating the capabilities of modern administrations, a beholden attitude that only serves to fuel that which it perceives. It appears surprising, for instance, that Barack Obama has made it as far as he has. Or that the government allowed the famously administration-friendly Fox network to have positive black role models in 24.

Is gun crime also a conspiracy? Are LA gangs all created by the government, secretly peopled by painted G-Men on deep cover, killing each other in the name of repressing the black man? Also, one must consider that while the majority of ‘gangsta rap’ is about shagging, power, drugs and guns, some of it is genuine street poetry, and to claim that the genre is simply a paranoid invention does its more noble practioners a disservice.

One can only hope that Keys is on a wind-up, stirring up a storm to promote some album or other.

Media trickies: Brown, Shepherd face twisting in the wind of appearances

Rarely do politicians look natural on television, but Gordon Brown’s appearance on American Idol was a sight to behold. His head catapulted from side to side, his mouth beamingly claiming how wonderful everyone was, before someone flipped the serious switch on the magic word: ‘Africa’. Before long, Brown was pledging £100 million in mosquito nets (the smile surfaced again occasionally) before signing off to an ecstatic Ryan Seacrest in the studio. This came barely a day after the British premier was seen chatting with George Clooney, a meeting about helicopters in Darfur with which the actor seemed most pleased. Unlike many stars, Clooney has credibility when it comes to Darfur, having made a documentary on it with his father – and few people dislike watching Hollywood’s last true star doing anything.

On Idol, the spectre of Brown rolling his head and smiling was inflicted on 17.6 million Americans – one has to wonder, is this not a greater cruelty? Could not the premier have maintained a dignified silence, simply donating £100 million in the name of Mr G Brown, Westminster? But surely the eagle-eyed Seacrest would have twigged – and we would have been subjected to a reluctant admission of amazing generosity from the Prime Minister, a scene worthy of the loathsome Richard Curtis’s Love, Actually. What use is generosity if no-one knows about it, runs the publicist’s adage? (But there are subtler means, as recalled in this episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm.) It faintly recalls the heady early days of New Labour and Cool Britannia, when deluded pop musicians quaffed bitter and champagne at No 10, cracking open a new future with merry abandon to the fate of either parties’ credibility.

It is the manner, not the results, which is the problem. Media relations are fraught with difficulty, of course; the star sees a mirror clapping back and slips into a parallel world, where they are right and never wrong, as long as the money keeps coming. Soap star Jack P Shepherd, occasionally seen without the P*, is doing the media rounds as his character on Coronation Street reaches a head. Having previously compared himself to Robert De Niro, and sung with Ocean Colour Scene after clambering onstage, the actor recently remarked that David’s entire trajectory was down to a single calculated look he gave on set, turning the writers on their heels and forcing them to look at the character anew. (It may be true but don’t say it, one imagines soap veterans thinking.) He was on loquacious form on This Morning, impishly implying that his character had a homosexual future and ‘plenty of shower scenes’ while sharing a jail cell with a man named Bubba, forcing soap bosses to issue a retraction. Should this fever escalate, one can only fear for a moody departure, a la David Caruso or Jack Ryder – apparently for great success but actually for points unknown, bridges burning in the breeze behind them. Fingers crossed that, if he says Hollywood beckons, it actually is.

*One should note that this is probably down to mischievous sub-editing – he is Jack P Shepherd to differentiate him from Jack Shepherd, familiar to millions as Cornish detective Wycliffe.

ELECTION 08: Candidates play top trumps with travel

As the Democratic campaign enters what must surely be its dying weeks (around ten more contests to go, and the convention in late August), hysteria appears to be setting in. Once shy of specifics and negativity, Barack Obama has laid into the foreign policy credentials of Hillary Clinton at a closed door fundraiser. In a recording obtained by the Huffington Post, he was heard uttering the following, provoking no shortage of guffaws toward the end:

‘Foreign policy is the area where I am probably most confident that I know more and understand the world better than Senator Clinton or Senator McCain…when Senator Clinton starts bragging about how “I’ve met leaders from eighty countries” I know what those trips are like! I’ve been on them. You go from the airport to the embassy…There’s a group of children who do a native dance…You meet with the CIA station chief and they embassy and they give you a briefing.’

Clinton’s riposte: ‘I’m not quite sure where Senator Obama has been, so far as I know, he’s maybe taken two trips.’

(These two trips presumably refer to his growing up in Indonesia, and a college trip to Pakistan.) They sound like gap year students arguing over who has seen the most rat children, or had the most ‘authentic experience’ in Thailand. Perhaps, in the interests of transparency, both of them should fill in their Facebook travel maps so that the public can judge for themselves.

Shock and awe: Ringo beheaded, while whites want Obama more than blacks

In a CNN poll, more American white men than black claim to be ready for a black president, by almost ten per cent (78 whites, 69 blacks). Also, three percent more men than women stated that they were ready for a woman president (65 men, 62 women). Admittedly the latter statistic falls within the three per cent error margin, but the figures beg a question: is it that neither group can see it happening, or that they don’t want it to happen? It’s an interesting question, and we must always factor white guilt into figures concerning intended voting for Barack Obama – it’s a bit like saying that all you watch on the television is documentaries. So many people say this, but the viewing figures for soap and cosy, mainstream drama far outstrip those for documentary (barring topicality of the subject).

Mind you, if any significant block really had a problem with him, Obama wouldn’t have got as far as he has – the very fact that he hasn’t had to campaign on race (the speech rebuffing pastor Wright came very late on) proves it. Others have paved the way. One must also consider the fact that, when the question is asked, people aren’t just thinking about any black person, or any woman – they will be thinking about Obama and Hillary, which must skew the result accordingly.

Despite this disparity between thought, speech and action, people take alarming levels of offence to the most offhand of comments. Consider this bizarre but strangely impressive tribute to the Beatles, in which the mop-topped singers are rrendered in a splendid display of topiary to greet tourists arriving at Liverpool’s South Parkway railway station (while John Lennon Airport plays host to an art exhibition for Yoko Ono). Such an unusual tribute – but it is now missing a piece. Presumably in some delayed buildup of rage to Ringo Starr’s comments (over how there was nothing he missed about Liverpool and that he had no plans to move back – all rather far from a trashing, really only an offence of omission), some wag has lopped the drummer’s head off.

At least, this is what is presumed. Given the lag between Ross’s interview (January) and now, one suspects this is more likely to be an act of random drunken violence, committed by a horde of youths recently disgorged from a train. But then the tribute was only erected recently, and how often do you see a pair of secateurs abandoned in the street?

As such, News Hour wonders whether Yoko Ono ought to fear for the safety of her work after noting that it was ‘not easy’ to be associated with a Beatle – and remarking that John’s bedroom in the city was ‘tiny’. When asked whether Liverpool would have become a European Capital Of Culture without the Fab Four, Ono kept a dignified or – as some might see it – damning silence.

NEWS HOUR CAMPAIGN: New towns for the people, named by the people

News Hour is appalled to learn of government plans for new ‘eco-towns’ to be established across Britain, the first wave of ‘new towns’ since the 1960s (unless you count Poundbury, which doesn’t constitute a ‘wave’ by itself – what ever the Prince of Wales may believe). The idea is not the problem, however – it is the names of these ‘carbon neutral’ (or ‘low carbon’, depending on who you read), towns that cause offence, and may well be the most recycled part of the whole concept. See how these sound.

Pennbury, Leicestershire
Manby and Strubby, Lincolnshire
Curborough, Staffordshire
Middle Quinton, Warwickshire
Bordon-Whitehill, Hampshire
Weston Otmoor, Oxfordshire
Ford, West Sussex
Imerys China Clay Community, Cornwall
Rossington, South Yorkshire
Coltishall, Norfolk
Hanley Grange, Cambridgeshire
Marston Vale and New Marston, Bedfordshire
Elsenham, Essex
Rushcliffe, Nottinghamshire
Leeds City Region, Yorkshire.

Ten of these locations will become full-blooded eco-towns, although presumably not all of these names will remain – ‘Imerys China Clay Community’ would be built on land disused by the Imerys mineral company, and so at least gives a clue to its origins.

Surely, though, someone can come up with better ideas than these:
Coltishall, Rossington, Weston Otmoor, Elsenham, Manby and Strubby. (Middle Quinton sounds like something out of Agatha Christie, so can stay) which sound like they’ve come from a random British town name generator. Why not give them abstract names, like those you find in the middle of nowhere in the US? (Hope, Phoenix Rising, etc, etc) Or perhaps – in a blistering multicultural move – reverse the colonial practice and build towns with names like ‘New Mumbai’?

Perhaps the most interesting route would be to let the public name some of the towns by themselves – the lesson of Milton Keynes is that a new town would be best served by having some kind of character, and who better than the quirky British public to decide such a matter? (Even if it is called ‘Jediville’. ) As such, News Hour is launching a campaign on behalf on the silent majority, to have a say in the naming of these new towns – lest they become a tedious cancer across the country.

While we are about it, why not let the new inhabitants of these towns choose their own accent, too? Anything but Brummie would seem wise, as recent studies revealed that people speaking the Midland twang were perceived to be less intelligent than those that kept a dignified silence. What a kick in the teeth for centuries of linguistic evolution; one wonders what Charles Darwin would have to say on the subject (he came from Shopshire, before you ask).

As an aside, the government may want to consult this particular expert on their plans for eco-friendly towns. We hear that his work in Sunflower Valley was beyond reproach.

Hot sauce proves highlight of Shaggy’s right royal affair

The life of the non-musical plebeian is a humble one, but the world’s less boombastic denizens should take comfort from the fact that even the world’s highest fliers enjoy a little taste o’home. Take bass-rumbling Jamaican Shaggy, whose social circle extends to royalty – while chatting to the San Francisco Chronicle, the Oh Carolina singer confessed to regular partying with Prince Albert of Monaco. The most recent of these monarchistic mash-ups was, we were not surprised to hear, a ‘very glamorous, upscale affair’. Also the recipient of the Order of Distinction from the Jamaican government, the upstanding reggae reveller was blown away to find himself dining with none other than feted soul belter Patti LaBelle. But it didn’t stop there. Oh no. In what the Gulf War veteran confessed was the ‘eyelight of the evenin’ (this isn’t arrogance – even he didn’t know it was going to happen) the singer found himself dueting with LaBelle on stage.

Such heights – but one suspects the following was the below-baritoner’s favourite moment. Back at the dinner table, LaBelle was said to have ‘broke out de ‘ot sauce out of her purse and hooked up my steak’. It was said she even had some cayenne peppers lurking in there.

Anti-stab vest is like ‘hairnet in a meat factory’ claims MP touring dangerous London borough

The furore which greeted Harriet Harman’s decision to wear a ‘stab vest’ while touring her Camberwell and Peckham constituency (with police) was met with a curious riposte from the Deputy Labour Leader. Harman, a first cousin of historian Antonia Fraser, claimed that wearing a ‘stab vest’ in Peckham was like wearing a hairnet in a meat factory, or a hard hat on a building site. (Claiming that your assistant wore one too does little to alter the situation.)

The estate she is pictured walking near is little more than a building site at present, so the comparison at least has some relevance; but it is also a tacit admission that the vest is necessary protection against the inherent perils of the area – knife wielding hoodlums, their minds bleached by the slow bleed of heroin dependency. Either that, or perhaps Brixton’s famed ‘crack squirrels’ have been up to their old tricks again, and Harman’s route strayed too near their seasonal stash for comfort.

The hard hat protects against danger, the hairnet against contamination – so if we hold the latter as the firmer comparison, we may infer that Harman fears her essence may somehow sour the milk of Peckham’s multicultural rivers. But in either case, to claim this as simply kowtowing to the traditions of the tribesmen is to miss the point. Both items are requirements of their environment, not customs – so at the very least it implies a lack of consideration for the effect of one’s actions, especially when one considered Jacqui Smith’s kebab fiasco, or ‘donergate’, which happened just down the road. And it is also surprising, considering Harman’s two speeding convictions – one would imagine she would have more nerve.

At the time of writing, Harman’s website was unavailable for further research. One can only speculate that either it has been deluged by like-minded souls, or that there is some serious re-purposing going on.