Run with Eric:
Politics

*tumbleweed*

Look, I'm sorry. I am. I really am. But what with jobbing, blogging once or twice a week over here and moving house and indeed city, I'm struggling to find the time to visit this dusty corner of the web.

It's a shitter, really. There's so much I want to comment about in all areas of the news, but it inevitably ends up instead on my Twitter account, sandwiched between football ramblings and rants at Neighbours.

Today: the Budget. I'd love to talk about it in more detail, but I've become so innured to 140 characters that -

Sorry. Old joke. The Budget was fascinating, but more for students of politics than of economics. The main talking point, really, is Alistair Darling's decision to axe Stamp Duty on first-time home buyers spending less than £250,000 on their property. Seeing as it's currently 1% of the property value, it'll probably save them around £2,000. Good stuff. Not quite as good, obviously, for the owners of million-pound homes, who are seeing their Stamp Duty rise 5%.

That'll be 5%, please
It's a move that sees Labour move to their traditionalist roots... oh, come on, we know that's bollocks. It's an appeal to their core voters, that's all, but what did you expect in a pre-election Budget? It's interesting, though, that penalising well-off southerners in the commuter belt whose homes have ballooned in value through no fault of their own may cost Labour as many votes as they win through helping first-time homeowners - who, by the way, won't be as poor as all that, since the move affects properties worth between £125,000 and £250,000. Basically, mummy and daddy's mansion tax pays for their first step towards their own mansion. What's that song? We are all bourgeois now?

Still, this Stamp Duty move will probably end up a votewinner rather than a voteloser, which is more than you can say for David Cameron's efforts with Gay Times. If you wanted proof the only principle this man has is that he should win the election, there you go. "What's my stance on gay people again? Wait, I know this one. Turn the camera off, let me get my crib sheet... "

Cameron: direct (well, not really)
So in conclusion, I'm rubbish, Cameron's rubbish, the Budget happened and if you are reading this, thanks for sticking with me. Now I'm settled, almost unpacked and actually have the internet at home, I can start blogging on here a bit more often than once every Twilight film.

I'm back, I promise, and I'll start... oh, next week sometime.

Just noticed this on the BBC about the race for countries wanting to host the 2018 Football World Cup. I have one main concern with the proposed host nations. Who?

It's encouraging - very encouraging - that smaller nations are striving to host such a major event. Ambitious building projects bring in capital, the country improves etc. etc. Basically, hosting the World Cup energises the country in exactly the way hosting the Olympics does not.

However, it seems to be getting less about the football.

Eyebrows were raised when the USA hosted the global tournament in 1994 because their chances of passing the group stages were slim, effectively killing any local atmosphere for the more interesting knockout stages (it also didn't help when an unnamed American expert said 'soccer' was the fourth-most popular sport in the country after baseball, basketball, American football and ice hockey - add that one up). To be fair, the USA got to the last 16 - i.e. the second round - before losing only 1-0 to eventual winners Brazil, but fans the world over were still far from convinced with the country's supposed love for the sport.

Eyebrows were raised yet further, somewhere into the fringe, when the 2002 World Cup was offered to South Korea and Japan, but again a surprise was in store: joint hosts South Korea reached the semi-finals, beating Portugal, Spain and Italy on the way. Fair play - but two goals in five and a half hours of football in the knockout stages showed their lack of real talent. Sorry, but that's the way it is.

Still people remain unconvinced by smaller footballing nations hosting the World Cup and yes, I am in that category (uh, in that I'm unconvinced, not a small footballing nation).

Now we have Qatar and Indonesia wanting to host the 2018 World Cup. Neither has competed in the tournament ever before, although Indonesia technically did in 1938 when they were the classed as the Dutch East Indies. A rich footballing history there, then.

Qatar, meanwhile, has a population of only 1.3 million and will struggle to persuade players to play in a sweltering Arab desert in the middle of summer. Even the proposed underground stadium - an admittedly cool idea (pardon the pun) - will only host 11,000 fans. That's just not feasible.

(Khalifa Stadium's nice though.)

And yes, Japan, South Korea and the USA are all bidding again. God help us.

Of course it would be short-sighted to suggest only the best of the best footballing nations should host the World Cup. It is important to give these smaller teams the chance to improve their sporting prowess as well as their infrastucture (look at the Italian rugby team improving since the Six Nations). But surely one prerequisite should be that they're good at football. What's the point letting Indonesia host the tournament if they're just going to be humiliated in every match?

It is no longer about the football. It's about the money. Good for a country's infrastructure and development, yes, but not so much for fans all over the world.

Shame.

So, then, The Observer. National institution or financial dead duck? Ongoing liberal tradition or failing piece of press history? Last hope for decent Sunday newspapers or... well, you get the picture.

The problem is that many people don't. The news - or more appropriately, rumours - that Guardian-owned Sunday staple The Observer may be set to close has been greeted by cries of indignant outrage from the left and centre and cries of ugly derision from the right (i.e. almost every other newspaper).

No surprise there, perhaps, and it's good to see people coming out in force to condemn the proposed closure, oppose the Guardian Media Group's pessimistic murmurings and in some cases, call the whole thing a fascist coup. I'm one of them. I've joined a Facebook group and everything. AND I'm following 'savetheobserver' on Twitter. GMG, feel my web 2.0 wrath.

However, I feel the need to tar the rose-tinted Observer portrait with the brush of realism and bad metaphors. There's no smoke without fire, and in this case the fire is coming from an almost ritualistic burning of money from people bowing to a false idol of unerring tradition.

The Observer has not turned a profit in 16 years, ever since the Guardian bought it in 1993. Let's think about that. No profit in 16 years. And it's thought to have lost £10-£20 million every year in recent times. The Telegraph's business section has some more depressing statistics, although I must add that I don't condone the irrelevant comparison of the newspaper's losses with Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger's salary increase.

On Newsnight a former editor of The Observer, Donald Trelford, said the Sunday newspaper is being made scapegoat for The Guardian's losses. I don't agree. Once again, it hasn't made a profit in 16 years, and it's allegedly losing a million pounds a month.

Now I'm not a Godforsaken pennypincher, and I believe in political ideals ahead of profitable business, but can the GMG really afford for this to continue, and now of all times?

It's time, as ever, for a disclaimer.

I am a Guardian reader and an Observer reader. I detest almost every other newspaper from the Sun to the Mail - especially the Mail - for being irresponsible, reactionary and just a little bit racist. You may have noticed that my news links above took you to a story in the Times and the Torygraph, but only because, in spite of everything, they are at least trustworthy newspapers for getting their facts right. I just don't agree with anything they say, that's all.

So when I say we have to be realistic about The Observer, that doesn't mean I want it to die. I simply recognise that there may be no alternative.

But could it find some other way of saving money? Both The Guardian and The Observer have more staff each than the Chinese when they were building their Great Wall. If you were to walk past everyone who worked for these papers, you'd never reach the last one. There's just too many of them. The wage bill must be absolutely epic.

I don't want people working for The Big G or The Big O(we) to lose their jobs, though, partly because I know some of them. So could The Observer be smaller? It's a weekly so it's huge, naturally, but it could probably halve its page count before it had to halve its staff (uh, the number of staff, that is - I'm not suggesting it literally cuts its staff in half, despite the pleasant rhyming).

But if none of these cost-cutting measures are possible, what should the GMG do?

Shoot me for saying this but in times of dire need for a balanced world view, The Guardian must take precedence over The Observer.

The Tories are almost certain to win the next General Election (God help the delusioned sinners that vote for them), and we need The Guardian at its strongest to repel every right-wing newspaper out there. It's the guardian of liberal thinking and good journalism; it is not guardian of The Observer. And it can't afford to keep losing money.

Yes, I'm a bastard. But I do recognise The Observer's proud reputation and prouder history, which is why I think the proposal for it to become a midweek magazine is almost insulting. THAT would be the death of it. It's a 200-year-old newspaper, for goodness' sake. When World War One veterans are on their deathbed, do you cake them in gaudy make-up and call them Ruby? No. You let them die with dignity. I'd rather see The Observer close than see it become a midweek mag.

But just to make things clear, I don't want The Observer to close. If alternatives are lacking, however, we can't let blind brand loyalty get in the way of responsibility. Because if The Observer continues to print and continues to lose money, it could just bring The Guardian down with it.

And we really don't want that.

If ever you wanted an example of a) how influential Wikipedia is now, and b) how absurd politics is becoming, look no further than here.

Utterly ridiculous.

Thank God for faceless men in suits: if it wasn't for organisers at the Eurovision Song Contest, Georgia could be sparking another war with Russia.

Their song for 2009, We Don't Wanna Put In - an unsubtle reference to Vladimir Putin - has been ruled unacceptable for the competition because no entries will be permitted with "lyrics, speeches, gestures of a political or similar nature". Strange, that, because I seem to remember a slightly political entry last year called Peace Will Come. The entrant? Georgia.

Clearly the worry is that given last year's events in Eastern Europe, letting Georgia slag off the Ruskis - in their own country - in one of the (tragically) biggest European soirees of the year isn't great thinking, and so the song has been forcibly withdrawn.

Probably for the best.

Not really misleading as such, but the story is a massive disappointment after the headline 'DURKAN WARNS OF 'ZOMBIE MINISTER''.

Two Indian child actors who helped the film Slumdog Millionaire to its Oscar success have been relocated from slums to new houses in Mumbai.

Azharuddin Ismail and Rubina Ali, who played the youngest versions of characters Salim and Latika in the film, had been living in the same slums as they were before being discovered by casting agents. Ismail's family home was recently demolished, forcing him to live under a tarpaulin on a busy road.

It has been suggested by critics that the move, paid for by the Mumbai government, represents a publicity-grabbing political manoeuvre months ahead of India’s general election, but Amarjit Singh Manhas, chairman of a Mumbai housing association, has said, "Since the children have made the nation proud, they must be given free houses."

My opinion? Yes, it is a publicity stunt. But who bloody cares, eh?

Well hung, innit? I'm hanging like a parliament. Hang this. Etc. The jokes everywhere are from the news of a hung parliament, as the British public - well, 65% of it - went to the polls and voted for no one in particular.

Some of us were foolish enough to stay up all night to watch the results come in, and for a more in-depth, more drunken look I recommend trawling through my old tweets at www.twitter.com/weekspotblog. But for those of you with lives to lead (I did update so many times I broke Twitter and was told to stop posting), here's a summary of how no one bar the Greens can be happy with this result.

And fair play to the Greens. It's a fantastic outcome for the single-issue nutters.

Anyway, here goes: the Top Ten 'Oh Fucks' of the night:

1. Oh fuck. The Liberal Democrats had a shocker last night, and this is where it all started to go wrong. Clegg's collective had been making promises of a genuine challenge to Government and 110 seats. Instead, they lost five MPs, and currently stand on a paltry 54 (16 constituencies are still to be announced).

Again, it all started here. The LibDems' no1 target seat saw a 6.9% swing AWAY from the yellows and into the hands of a gleeful Tory party. No doubt for Doughty; no paradise lost for Milton.

Clegg considers his career options

2. Oh fuck. The Conservative Party actually had a pretty bad night of it as well, despite what this terrifyingly blue map of the UK might aver. Seriously, if they just counted votes in England, not Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland as well, the Tories would walk it.

But they won't be at all happy with failing to reach a majority, and it was in constituencies such as this that they fell. It really looked like the Blues would take Tooting, but despite a healthy 3.6% swing against them Labour and Sadiq Khan MP held on. 'Yes we Khan' were the chants. Yes we Khan. +10% turnout too. Good work, Tooting.

Not Tooting his own horn here

3. Oh fuck. Labour had to endure a torrid night (this was a particularly painful one to lose - just 54 votes in it), and what will really hurt is losing some big names. Two former home secretaries, Charles Clarke and Jacqui Smith, were among the casualties and although Clarke is anti-Brown and anti-Balls, he's an old head they didn't want to see go.

How fucked? This fucked

4. Oh fuck. Labour weren't the only party to say goodbye to some prominent figures and again, this was the beginning of the end for the LibDems. Lembit Opik, he of Cheeky Girl fame, lost his seat in Montgomeryshire as the Tories made another gain - this time, with a massive 13.2% swing. Cheeky.

5. Oh fuck. Evan Harris also went - a massive blow for the LibDems. There were only 176 votes in it.

6. Oh fuck. The British National Party didn't win any seats, which is great news, but I wish I could be more optimistic about half a million voters putting an X by their name. I can't. It's disgusting.

Interestingly, the BNP actually lost 1.7% of the vote in the constituency where Nick Griffin plumped his fat bonk-eyed arse.

Understatement?

7. Oh fuck. Essex has a lot to answer for. Chavs, white stilettos and Jamie Oliver aside, the county has a nasty habit of being pretty right-wing in its voting habits. The constituency that best summed up its extent of fail last night was Basildon South & Thurrock East, where they successfully got rid of a Labour minister, voted in a Tory and gave more than 2,500 votes to the BNP. Well done.

8. Oh fuck. Every time I switched over ITV's coverage was absolutely God-awful, from Alistair Stewart constantly interrupting everybody like he's king of the fucking world to filming outside a pub where David Cameron was drinking. It's a pub - just go inside!

9. Oh fuck. Jeremy Vine's house of wank was the reason I kept switching over in the first place.

10. Oh fuck. Last but not least, I was very sad to see this man lose his seat. Richard Taylor is a doctor who ran as a single-issue independent in 2001 to keep Kidderminster Hospital open, and absolutely slammed Labour's junior minister David Lock into the ground. He then held on in 2005 to become the first independent MP to retain his seat since the 1970s. He's such a hero that the LibDems didn't put up any opposition against him on either occasion.

Unfortunately, the Tories did and this time round they won. Bastards.

So, what a bust that was. Here's to a hung parliament seeing some good change put through. What? It could happen.

Oh yay. OK, then, one piece of good news: bag of balls David Heathcoat-Amory, 17 years in power, lost his seat in Wells, Somerset. He literally owns this constituency. It was pretty damn satisfying seeing him lose control of it.

But don't listen to me - listen to them!

The Economist has produced a superb piece featuring some fascinating statistics on the claims behind 'Broken Britain' - teenage pregnancies, a rise in alcohol consumption, etc. In short, they're not true.

So read it - please. At least look at the pictures. Enlightening or reinforcing - either way, they're important.

Sorry, that's all you're getting from me. There's nothing I could add that can't be summarised by calling the Conservative Party a bag o' wankers.

Many thanks to the excellent exclarotive for bringing this to my attention.

This is just a brief respite from my enforced silence to highlight this story and the reporting of it.

First up, The Sun has reacted with typical understanding and calm, making a towering mountain out of the smallest of molehills by highlighting every alleged error. And yes, I do mean alleged. Bad handwriting is not a crime, and frankly I - yes, even I - can excuse a couple of spelling mistakes from a man with a lot on his mind.

It's another example of The Sun's, and most other tabloids', confused politics of war. They want to beat the big nasty terrorists, but they want Our Brave Boyz out of Iraq. They complain about soldiers having substandard equipment, but complain about military overspending (or at least tax, which falls easily under their 'Gordon Brown Iz Rubbish Innit' banner). And they want Brown to do everything at once, but take time out of his schedule to write a perfectly-constructed letter in iambic pentameter to grieving parents with a chip on their shoulder about the war even happening in the first place.

Secondly, both The Sun and the BBC included an addendum along the lines of, "Mr Brown has previously admitted problems with his eyesight." Because naturally THAT'S relevant.

Thirdly, all hail Number 10 spokespeople for yet another idiotic press statement - one of my favourite yet - which runs: "[Gordon Brown] would never knowingly misspell anyone's name." Brilliant. It's good to know that even in times of stress, our Prime Minister doesn't say to himself, "That David Cameron really pisses me off. I know what I'll do. I'll write him a letter addressed to 'Mr Camron'. That'll really get him."

Lastly, the woman complaining about the letter in the first place has found completely the wrong outlet for her grief, and shouldn't have been given the publicity (and certainly not with the grim picture The Sun arranged of her holding her son's photograph - it just reminds me of this brilliant website).

I just wish the reporters had included all of the spelling mistakes I am absolutely sure she committed in her own letter. Muphry's Law is an absolute gem.

Well, well, well. Barack Obama has won the Nobel Peace Prize.

The Norwegian board awarding the prize said, "Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future." (More here.)

That's certainly true. But is this enough to merit the most prestigious award there is? I'd be the last to suggest Obama is all mouth and no trousers, and I'm confident he'll deliver on his promises - but the point is, in terms of world peace (the simplest of achievements, surely), he hasn't made a fantastic deal of progress yet. So what exactly is this Nobel Peace Prize honouring? An indirect inspiration to this fantastic poster?

Personally, I'd like to have seen Zimbabwe's Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai recognised for his attempts at overcoming corruption and restoring order in Zimbabwe. But then, I suppose he didn't succeed either; part of a tragic year in which he also lost his wife in a car accident. Perhaps it's right to reward effort, rather than results.

After only nine months in power Obama's Peace Prize is surely a sign of hope, not achievement. But maybe that's the point.

Just a quick one.

I'm appalled by this news that student loans and grants are to be frozen while tuition fees are set to rise a further two per cent.

In no way is this fair on the record number of students applying for university places this year. I completely understand that we are in a difficult financial situation and to that end, freezing student loans and grants may be a good idea. But you can't do that if you are going to raise tuition fees. You can't have one and not the other; it's both or neither.

Simple as.

It's the job interview from hell.

From across the country, Britain's brightest political prospects head for London. Chosen from thousands of applicants: 10 candidates. They will fight it out for a top job with a six-figure salary.

But to succeed, they'll have to impress the boss. Famously hard to impress, he heads a vast political empire. Now, he is on the hunt for a new Speaker.

Hang on, didn't the BBC already do this? Hasn't this already been decided, and the new Speaker for the House of Commons is a 15-year-old Bristolian boy with a dodgy taste in suits?

Well, it's all about young blood, I suppose. And he was miles better than Kay Kay.

While I've been away from projecting my views about how and why the whole world is going to shit, Prime Minister Gordon Brown has cheekily sabotaged himself with a number of backfiring decisions just to make me look silly for missing them.

His main mistake was inconsistently backing some expense-fiddling ministers and not others, which is why he's less popular than bird/swine/man flu at the moment. Then there was the Joanna Lumley-led Gurkha controversy, and before all this, the Damian McBride emails and some horrific YouTube videos. It's almost as if he's trying to lose the next General Election. Stop it, Gordon. Stop it, I say!

"How much shit am I in? I'd say about this much"

But as if to welcome me back with heavily folded arms, Brown has finally done something clever. Hiring Simon Lewis as his chief spin doctor is a very astute move.

The main reason for this, of course, is that the unnaturally rosy-cheeked Lewis is very good at what he does. After the Queen's near-fatally slow response to the death of Princess Diana, Lewis turned Queen Liz's reputatation right around from villain to heroine, effectively giving the monarchy the shot in the arm it needed, instead of the shot in the face for which it seemed destined.

Lewis has also done superbly well at Vodafone and Centrica, and from personal experience I can tell you he gives a half-decent lecture in political communications. If he can just sit Brown down and give him that lecture, the besieged PM is well on his way to sorting it all out. Lewis is the man he needs.

"OK, maybe this much"

Yes, very good etc. etc. But most importantly for Gordon Brown, Simon Lewis' brother is Will Lewis, editor of The Daily Telegraph.

The Telegraph? Haven't they been up to something in the last month or so? Can't quite remember...

Ah yes, that's right. It's been the Telegraph that has exposed the MPs' expenses scandal, regularly attacking the Government with infinitely more gusto than the equally guilty opposition (which is what makes David Cameron's promise to end sleaze so horribly hypocritical) and wisely milking the story and the scapegoats until they're dry, raw and bleeding votes.

"Oh, fine - this much. I am in this much shit"

So why would Brown go to his sworn enemy's brother? Surely he can't be expecting his new spin doctor to persuade the Telegraph to turn the expenses scandal in his favour? No, he can't. But it's much more feasible that Simon Lewis can tell brother Will to tone down the Government-bashing a bit in future - or at least be in the situation where he can influence the story and its prioritisation a bit. So this is some good manoeuvring from Brown. If you can't beat 'em, get their relatives to work for you.

Oh, it's a cynical move - of course it is. But it's an intelligent move, and one that admits weakness, which is not an easy thing to do as Prime Minister. As they say in rehab, admitting you have a problem is the first step to recovery. This, then, could be Brown's first in a 12-step plan to re-election. And as long as the other 11 include curing cancer, bringing world peace and jettisoning Peter Mandelson somewhere from which he can't EVER come back to Cabinet, he might just have a chance of being here in a year's time.

But don't hold your breath.

Right, I'll keep this short.

It doesn't matter that what Carol Thatcher said was behind closed doors in the Green Room. When she called Jo-Wilfried Tsonga a "golliwog", she was displaying racism unacceptable in a television broadcaster (well, unacceptable in anyone, but we can't sack Daily Mail readers). I don't care that she said it in private and not on air. She should remain fired.

That people are calling for her reinstatement on The One Show is an appalling indictment not just on their sense of entertainment, but on their views that television personalities can say whatever racist crap they like as long as it's in private. What difference, really, is there between Thatcher calling Tsonga a golliwog off-air in the Green Room and Ron Atkinson calling Marcel Desailly a "fucking lazy n*gger" live on ITV? Only the level of personal embarrassment for the idiot speaking.

People need to stop sticking up for Thatcher. She has to go.

Bad news for Team GB: eight sports have had their funding slashed ahead of the 2012 London Olympics.

They're all relatively minor sports, but the cuts are major enough: water polo is losing half of its budget and shooting will be forced to scale down from 46 funded athletes to 10. Several teams, including water polo, may be forced to pull out of the 2012 Olympics, scuppering the Government's plans to field athletes in every... field.

Well, that's not good, is it? Especially after Britain's success in the Beijing Olympics last year. I can see a lot of people being disappointed with this - and not just the athletes. The British public has fallen in love with the idea of hosting the Olympics, and knowing their own country won't be able to compete in some events will be a major blow to morale. Also, the UK was given the Olympics on the basis it would be cheap - much cheaper than Beijing. I don't think withdrawing their own team was the idea they had in mind.

It's easy to say this kind of disappointment is inevitable in a recession, and to an extent it is, but that's not the direct reason for this. No - it's a £50m funding shortfall. Yeah. OK, enough beating around the bush: the Government failed to raise ANY MONEY AT ALL from the private sector. Not a single penny. Nothing. At. All.

So yes, indirectly the economy's general downward spiralling motion is arguably to blame because private companies aren't happy to be chucking about money at the moment, and certainly not into the training of younger athletes, contributing in turn to national success (much better to invest in Iceland, eh?).

But ultimately, the Government itself must take some responsibility for failing to marshal the private sector into investing in Britain's sporting future. I don't know quite what its level of campaigning was, but clearly it wasn't enough.

I know one thing, though:

taxpayers will not be happy. Reading The Metro tomorrow morning on the bus to work, I can see them choking on their Nutri-Grains reading about how private business has let them down once again. "Why should we pay the money if they don't?", they'll ask. I don't think taxes will rise as a result of the funding shortfall - too unpopular, even with the excitement over the Games - but it's not going to help public attitudes towards companies that many see as having helped to land Britain in this economic mess in the first place. Class war, here we come: public vs. private sector. Now that's sport.

I picked up on two stories in the Metro with similar themes: animal rights.

The first was the story of a sniffer dog who has sadly died of nasal cancer (quite a rare form). It is thought that seven years of sniffing out class A drugs might have contributed to his doggy demise. Still, it's a dog's life etc. etc.

I don't really have much of a point here except to predict that animal rights charities will soon be campaigning for the rights of police dogs to do only a limited amount of work. It'll happen, believe me.

And on the subject of animal rights, PETA have had an advert for, uh, vegetables banned on account of its raunchiness. Quite what the charity is trying to do with this advert is beyond me, since their focus is usually on the alleged immorality of eating meat. Here, they are trying to make vegetables sexy, with questionable results. See for yourself. Myself... I'm not convinced.

Chris 'Controversy' Moyles is in trouble again after making inappropriate jokes about Auschwitz and Will Young (not in the same reference, by the way). The BBC has said it "regrets" the comments. Again.

It's becoming increasingly hypocritical the way the BBC condemns comments made by Moyles et al yet does nothing to stop them happening. Surely no one takes their 'regret' seriously. And in this case, no one should.

As far as I can work out, Moyles said nothing especially offensive. The Will Young reference ("It's my birthday; gonna wear my new dress tonight") is tantamount to no more than a crap joke; it is perhaps slightly homophobic, but only pathetically so and I can't imagine Will Young upsetting himself about it. He's gay - doesn't have feelings (joking).

Auschwitz is, surprisingly, something of a touchy subject for comedy, but in this case Chris Moyles wasn't even trying to be funny. He just made a good point:

Unlike a lot of the Who Do You Think You Are? shows I didn't go to Auschwitz... pretty much everybody goes there, whether or not they're Jewish... they always kind of end up there, you know, if they just pass through on their way to Florida or something.

Where's the offence there? Please point me to it. It's very true that Who Do You Think You Are? has something of an Auschwitz obsession, because it provides

fascinating history - the point of the programme, surely (no one actually cares if Kriss Akabusi had Scottish ancestry). Who cares if the only link a celebrity has to Auschwitz is that their grandmother's cousin's flatmate was half-Jewish? It's more interesting than their Aunt Noreen, who was a homemaker in Bury St. Edmunds all her life and once brushed past a young Des O'Connor.

Anyway, Moyles said absolutely nothing offensive, but as per, he and the BBC will have to apologise because they said the special word. Auschwitz.

Next time, complainants need to focus on what is actually being said. Stop. Look. Listen.

And shut up.

Just a quick one, then, before it all kicks off and America welcomes its new President.

Here is a generator to predict Barack Obama's inauguration speech. You enter random words where it tells you to, and works out a speech for you. It's great fun, and in places, strangely accurate given you are entering words without knowing where they'll be going.

Here's mine, if you're interested. "Green and famous challenges" aside, it's eerily close to what the real thing could be and also, really quite amusing - especially the final paragraph.

My fellow Americans, today is a happy day. You have shown the world that "hope" is not just another word for "change", and that "change" is not only something we can believe in again, but something we can actually do.

Today we celebrate, but let there be no mistake – America faces green and famous challenges like never before. Our economy is large. Americans can barely afford their mortgages, let alone have enough money left over for tables. Our healthcare system is nasty. If your heart is sick and you don't have insurance, you might as well call a journalist. And America's image overseas is tarnished like a underwear magazine. But doctoring together we can right this ship, and set a course for Hawaii.

Finally, I must thank my lovely family, my black campaign volunteers, but most of all, I want to thank Hillary Clinton for making this historic occasion possible. Of course, I must also thank you, President Bush, for years of messing the American people. Without your white efforts, none of this would have been possible.

Oh BBC, when will you learn? After many previous examples of ambiguous and misleading headlines on their news website, you'd think they'd pay a bit more attention to what they're writing. But then the point, I suppose, is to draw readers in, and nothing does that more than suggesting the First Lady of America wants to be in a porn movie.

This time it's global war, and President-elect Barack Obama's new approach to tackling Iran. Yes, approach. Not attack.

The BBC's headline is 'Obama promises new tack on Iran. Now read that at a glance and what does that look like? Yes. 'Obama promises new attack on Iran'. Now that's a very different thing, and personally I think choosing such an easily misread word is a tad irresponsible.

Think on, BBC. Think on.