A while ago I wrote an article illustrating why buying goods from Tesco is bad for the soul. Okay, so I haven't necessarily practised what I've preached since then, but they sell Duval and Captain Morgan's at remarkably cheap prices. However, they also sell padded bras for seven-year-olds:

Supermarket giant Tesco has been heavily criticised for selling a padded plunge bra aimed at girls as young as seven.

The bra, which costs £4, is sold alongside vests in the supermarket's seven to eight-year-old age range.

It is the latest embarrassment for Tesco, which in 2006 removed a pole dancing kit from sale after being accused of "destroying children's innocence".

This is no joke. Tesco has 'branches in every Scottish postcode area,' and only 'the Harrogate area in Yorkshire [is] the last in the UK without a Tesco presence.' Armando Iannucci's Time Trumpet presented a humourous ridiculing of Tesco's dominance in a portrayal of Tesco embarking upon an H. G. Wells-inspired war against Denmark. But this latest news reveals a considerably darker side to the company, who seem a little too keen to sexualise the nation's children for profit. To wipe away the disgust from your no doubt furrowed brows, here's that Time Trumpet sketch:

This article goes out to my good friend Matt, who recently spent an inconceivable amount of money on the glorified toiletseat which is otherwise known as an ibook. Or Podbook. Or something equally hip.

Unless you have been walking around with your eyes closed, and your head encased in a block of concrete, with a blindfold tied round it, in the dark - unless you have been doing that, you surely can't have failed to notice the current Apple Macintosh campaign starring David Mitchell and Robert Webb, which has taken over magazines, newspapers and the internet in a series of brutal coordinated attacks aimed at causing massive loss of resistance. While I don't have anything against shameless promotion per se (after all, within these very brackets I'm promoting my own BBC4 show, which starts tonight at 10pm), there is something infuriating about this particular blitz. In the ads, Webb plays a Mac while Mitchell adopts the mantle of a PC. We know this because they say so right at the start of the ad.

"Hello, I'm a Mac," says Webb.

"And I'm a PC," adds Mitchell.

The ads are adapted from a near-identical American campaign - the only difference is the use of Mitchell and Webb. They are a logical choice in one sense (everyone likes them), but a curious choice in another, since they are best known for the television series Peep Show - probably the best sitcom of the past five years - in which Mitchell plays a repressed, neurotic underdog, and Webb plays a selfish, self-regarding poseur. So when you see the ads, you think, "PCs are a bit rubbish yet ultimately lovable, whereas Macs are just smug, preening tossers." In other words, it is a devastatingly accurate campaign.

I hate Macs. I have always hated Macs. I hate people who use Macs. I even hate people who don't use Macs but sometimes wish they did. Macs are glorified Fisher-Price activity centres for adults; computers for scaredy cats too nervous to learn how proper computers work; computers for people who earnestly believe in feng shui.

PCs are the ramshackle computers of the people. You can build your own from scratch, then customise it into oblivion. Sometimes you have to slap it to make it work properly, just like the Tardis (Doctor Who, incidentally, would definitely use a PC). PCs have charm; Macs ooze pretension. When I sit down to use a Mac, the first thing I think is, "I hate Macs", and then I think, "Why has this rubbish aspirational ornament only got one mouse button?" Losing that second mouse button feels like losing a limb. If the ads were really honest, Webb would be standing there with one arm, struggling to open a packet of peanuts while Mitchell effortlessly tore his apart with both hands.

For that full article by the awesome Charlie Brooker, click here.

Man Claims to Speak 'Australian' After Allegedly Being Raped by Wombat

A New Zealand man has been sentenced to community service after telling police he was raped by a wombat and the experience had made him speak "Australian".

Arthur Ross Cradock, 48, from the South Island town of Motueka, called police on February 11 and told them he was being raped at his home by the wombat and he needed help, The Nelson Mail newspaper reported.

The orchard worker later called back and said: "Apart from speaking Australian now, I'm pretty all right, you know."

Cradock pleaded guilty in the local court to using a phone for a fictitious purpose. He was sentenced to 75 hours' community work.

Police prosecutor Sergeant Chris Stringer told the court alcohol played a large role in Cradock's life.

Full article is available from FOX News but for God's sake don't go their website unless you're wearing sunglasses and your best pair of anti-shit-myself-out-of-fear-of-things-happening-that-will-never-actually-happen pants.

In today's Guardian, the man who many want to see become the new director general of the BBC owing to his brilliant ability to see through and ridicule the manipulative cunning of massive media corporations, Charlie Brooker, expresses why he wants Ken Livingstone to win the mayoral race in London. Or rather, why he doesn't want Boris Johnson (surname added to prevent offence) to win. Here's a few highlights:

Johnson - or to give him his full name, Boris LOL!!!! what a legernd!! Johnson!!! - is a TV character loved by millions for his cheeky, bumbling persona. Unlike the cartoon MP, he's magnetically prone to scandal, but this somehow only makes him more adorable each time. Tee hee! Boris has had an affair! Arf! Now he's offended the whole of Liverpool! Crumbs! He used the word "picaninnies"! Yuk yuk! He's been caught on tape agreeing to give the address of a reporter to a friend who wants him beaten up! Ho ho! Look at his funny blond hair! HA HA BORIS LOL!!!! WHAT A LEGERND!!!!!!

If butterfingers Johnson gets in, it'll clearly be a laugh riot from beginning to end, like a series of Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em in which Frank Spencer becomes mayor by mistake. Just picture him on live TV, appealing for calm after a terrorist bombing - the scope for chuckles is almost limitless.

Now, even if the Standard photographs Ken carving a swastika into a dormouse's back, I'll vote for him for the following reasons:

1) I'm genetically predisposed to hate the Tories. It's my default, hard-wired position. If Boris wins, their simpering pudge-faced smuggery is going to be unbearable. Picture the expression Piers Morgan makes when he's especially pleased with himself, then multiply it by 10 million, and imagine it looming overhead like a Death Star. That's what it's going be like. Therefore I don't care who wins provided Johnson loses, and loses hard, preferably in close-up, on the telly.

2) Ken's other main rival is solid-but-dull Lib Dem candidate Brian Paddick. He probably deserves a shot, but as he's not going to win, voting for him would be a waste of a perfectly good X, which might otherwise be used to pinpoint buried treasure, indicate affection, or mark a plague victim's door.

3) I wouldn't trust Boris to operate a mop, let alone a £10bn Crossrail project.

4) On a related note, I don't believe in my gut that Boris gives even the faintest hint of a wisp of a glimpse of a toss about London, or indeed humanity in general. Both of which are fairly important in a job like this.

5) But on the other hand OMFG LOOK AT HIS FUNNEEE HAIR LOL!!!! BORRIS IS A LEGERND!!!!

Full article available from the Guardian. Lol.

Brass Eye star Chris Morris has revealed plans to direct a comedy film about terrorism.

The comedian said he wants to poke fun at Islamic terrorism in the same way Dad's Army laughed at Nazis.

He told The Times: "Most of us would dearly love to laugh in the face of our worst fears. Why aren’t we laughing at terrorists? Because we don’t know how to, until now.

"I don’t plan for this film to be offensive, but I do want it to be very funny. I accept, though, that some may find poking fun at terrorists offensive.

"There is this Dad’s Army side of terrorism and that’s what this film is exploring.

"This film will hopefully get over that terrorists do what we all do.

"They discuss the mundane, and plan things that sometimes then go wrong. People, that is viewers, are longing to laugh at terrorism."

The script for the film has been produced by writers of the BBC political satire The Thick Of It.

Morris, who sparked controversy with a Brass Eye episode on the subject of paedophilia in 2001, will not appear in the film.

Full story is available here. One to look out for! For those of you who don't know, Chris Morris is the man responsible for spoof-satire news show The Day Today, Brass Eye (in which he goaded celebrities into making complete fools out of themselves), and he co-wrote Nathan Barley, a razor-sharp satire of trendy London life, with Charlie Brooker.

Yes, Fox News have done it again. Now, it's not only A-rabs and liberals you should be keeping an eye on in airports, but pregnant women as well!

The growing use by terrorist groups of women — some disguised as expectant moms — to deliver deadly homicide bombs has prompted the Department of Homeland Security and FBI to issue a rare warning that such attacks could take place on American soil.

The joint security assessment cited recent female homicide bomber attacks in Baghdad — in which two women who appeared to have Down syndrome delivered a deadly explosion that killed 99 — as well as in Sri Lanka, Chechnya, India, Pakistan and the Palestinian territories as reason for the warning.

"Female suicide bombers may have an advantage over their male counterparts in accessing targets," the analysis cautioned. "The means to conduct a suicide attack vary widely, but a key element in maximizing the lethality of a suicide bombing is the bomber's ability to get close to the target."

The assessment also strongly warned that potential female homicide bombers could use "prosthetic devices that mimic the look of a pregnant woman."

Those pesky women, always with something up their sleeves. So, as a result of two women being severely exploited in Baghdad by terrorists, the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI have concluded that pregnant women could be a threat. What about women with large chests? Do we see Fox News warning us all to steer clear of these types of women? Of course not, because if we did see such a thing occur, Fox would lose 95% of their target audience. How's about fat people? Are we all warned to avoid putting our trust in fat people? No, because if we were, Fox would offend 99.9% of their target audience.

Surely both are just as capable of camouflaging bombs and suchlike? Full 'story' is available here. This comes shortly after Fox decided to run, on the front page of their site, a story about Muslims trying to censor wikipedia. This was the image they used:

...except I've cut off the right hand side of the image, because I haven't decided yet whether I want to piss off millions of people just to prove that I've got the right to free speech. But it strikes me as odd that Fox would run with such a headline, unless they were deliberately trying to incite a story that can only portray Muslims in a bad light, which surely they'd never want to do, especially not with the caucuses going on?!

vs.

Neil Young was recently in the news for two things, the first being that he's got a new film out. However, the second, and more relevant story is that whilst showcasing his film at the Berlin Film Festival, the political rocker imparted the following message:

"I think that the time when music could change the world is past... I think it would be very naive to think that in this day and age.

"I think the world today is a different place, and that it's time for science and physics and spirituality to make a difference in this world and to try to save the planet."

Sad words for a generation who once marched against a war to the sounds of 'Ohio', a song written shortly after the Kent State shootings, in which student protestors were gunned down by the national guard. Has Neil Young given up, then?

On the other side of the spectrum, stands, as ever, Noam Chomsky, the most clear-sighted visionary of the actual left. In the Guardian today, Cornelia Parker discusses a sit-down interview she held with Chomsky about apocalypses, both nuclear and environmental, with the focus primarily on the latter. In her own words...

What was the most important thing I learned from Chomsky? That capitalism compels us to work ourselves to death in order to stuff our houses with things we don't need. Perhaps this is one thing art can do: create a new aesthetic, one of austerity.

There are other things art can do. It can imagine the unimaginable. I have just read my first novel in more than two years, Cormac McCarthy's bleak but redemptive The Road, in which the author imagines what the end of the world might look and feel like (McCarthy regularly talks to scientists). Artists can bear witness. We are free radicals in a way that scientists can never be. Humanity may be on the brink of disaster, but this could be an exciting, creative period, with everyone - philosophers, artists, politicians, bus drivers - doing everything they can to avert it. My Chomsky piece is me putting my head above the parapet.

Perhaps Neil Young himself can conclude this article with the most eloquence:

No one song can change the world. But that doesn’t mean its time to stop singing.

Today, critics allegations were confirmed, Heath Ledger is a stiff actor.

They say he is a good actor but Heath Ledger’s last performance was a little hard to swallow.

Accountants from the new Batman movie are in a state of panic today. Reports indicate they have lost a Ledger.

Whats the difference between Neil Armstrong and Heath Ledger?
Neil Armstrong was the first man on the moon… Heath Ledger is dead.

Ladies everywhere have finally found out how to pick up heath ledger... with a stretcher.

What does Jack Nicholson’s potrayal of the Joker have that Heath Ledger’s doesn’t.

A chance for a sequel.

What’s the worst thing about Heath Ledger’s death?

He wasn’t black.

Jingle Bells, Batman smells, Robin laid an egg. The Batmobile Lost it’s wheel and the Joker…died.

Nice to make jokes about the dead.

jeremy beadles lawyer is having difficulty reading his will, apparantly it was written in short hand.

after the autopsy when asked if jeremy beadle had a big manhood or not the coroner replied, "well on one hand he has but on the other hand he hasn't"

thats a bit harsh. i feel sorry for the guy. life dealt him a shit hand.

Did you know Beadle used to be a boxer?

His right hook had people on the floor regularly.

What is the difference between a porn star and a thalidomide ?

One has a cock like a baby's arm, the other...

I found this highly unsurprising piece of news on the Guardian's website today:

Indian 'slave' children found making low-cost clothes destined for Gap

Child workers, some as young as 10, have been found working in a textile factory in conditions close to slavery to produce clothes that appear destined for Gap Kids, one of the most successful arms of the high street giant.

Speaking to The Observer, the children described long hours of unwaged work, as well as threats and beatings.

Gap said it was unaware that clothing intended for the Christmas market had been improperly subcontracted to a sweatshop using child labour. It announced it had withdrawn the garments involved while it investigated breaches of the ethical code imposed by it three years ago.

Full story is available here. This is the beautiful thing about massive, global corporations: they're so big, they can get away with murder and still be believed when they deny all knowledge. Of course, when it comes to such shocking atrocities as, say, little Jenny walking into their shop and stealing a jumper, you can guarantee that the statistic she just generated will end up accounted for somewhere in head office. It is, after all, solely about maximising profits.

But come on, this is GAP, we already know that they use child labour, but still people buy clothes from them. I wonder how much of an effect this 'revelation' will have on their profit margins?

"So ya like, Tony Blair is a war criminal ...the system's all wrong ...the rich get richer and the poor get poorer ...we're trapped in an illegal war ...inequality ...homelessness ...injustice ...racism..."

I went to a 'debate' at the Leftfield stage at Glastonbury, and of the five participants, the above was all I managed to hear tumbling out of the mouths of three of them. The 'debate' was of the theme: 'Is another world possible?', it featured five prominent leftists, and it began with a loud young man, who insisted that, being as he was able to co-operate with people in his drugged-up dance-freak youth, another world is, indeed, possible. The next speaker was a lesbian-looking woman, who decided that another world is certainly possible, and cited Venezuela, that shining beacon of equality, freedom and liberty, as proof. No mention of the television station that Chavez shut down for broadcasting messages that might oppose his own. No mention of the protest movement which, growing ever-bolder, is fighting desperately to save democracy in Venezuela.

This wasn't a debate, it was a farce. An ex-raver, an ex-student and a wannabe suffragette thrown together onto the stage, given only Wikipedia as their source of information. My my, how things turned when the final two speakers took the stage.

George Monbiot launched into an unprecedented and scathing attack on the Labour party, not New Labour, but the Labour party. To an audience that whooped and hollered every time someone sent a shout-out to the unions, Monbiot's accusation that the union leaders were as much to blame for the Iraq war as Tony Blair himself must have been quite unsettling. As my own cheering died down, I listened further to what the man had to say, and it was an unrelenting wake-up call to all those who sacrificed the moral backbone of the party in favour of Cool Britannia and street 'cred'.

The final speaker knocked me square on my arse. This was, of course, none other than the Gandalf of the left, Britain's answer to Chomsky, Finkelstein, Zinn and Cockburn, Tony Benn. Addressing the crowd as comrades, Benn unleashed a magnificently well thought out tirade against the war in Iraq, against the class system, but most importantly, in favour of the power of people. Citing examples from recent history such as the poll tax protest, the largest protest Britain has ever seen, Benn eloquently articulated the sheer strength of people working together, stressing the importance of the experiences of the individual.

That was the second time I've seen Tony Benn speak publicly, and given the current crop of our country's leading 'leftists', it looks like it may be the last time I'll be inspired in such a way ever again.

Not looking good. But, Millets are doing some very nice wellies for 9.99, or 8.99 if you're a student.

I have to admit, I'm shocked.

Political correctness in the Kingdom has gone haywire, to the point where we're now being asked to close our eyes and ears to racism, and pretend it doesn't exist. Take, for example, Jade Goody and the crew, on the most recent Celebrity Big Brother. I wasn't remotely surprised to discover that Jade, a common, mouthy essex girl, was using less than kosher words to describe her Indian housemate, Shilpa Shetty. It's disgusting, I do not tolerate racism from my friends, nor should I from celebrities. But let's have some perspective here: in the real world, racism exists.

It's a big statement to make in this day and age, but there it is. Racism is out there, literally on your doorstep. Like dogshit, you can't just pretend it isn't there, because if you do, your feet end up smelling funky. We live in times where people are fighting for kidneys in reality TV shows, where parents are taught how to control their kids by a 'professional', and where grown men disfigure themselves for the purposes of entertainment. It's an unwholesome world, and to pretend otherwise is to simply bury your head in the sand.

So I take offense at the notion that the Big Brother team are now being forced to apologise for showing the public exactly how repulsive Jade Goody actually is. Are we supposed to stop teaching about the holocaust now as well? Are we no longer allowed to remind the world that there are people out there who have unwholesome outlooks on their fellow human beings?

In the same torrent of attacks against Channel 4 came an attack against the show, 'Shipwrecked', because an 18-year-old girl told people that she didn't like black people, or lesbians. Well God damn, shit the bed. Racism and prejudice, it would seem, have turned into the 21st century's number 1 taboo (with the possible exception of paedophiles and 911 jokes). The girl in question, Lucy, has since discovered that actually, lesbians and black people are just like any others. Had she been removed from the show, as requested by her critics, she would never have had the experiences which would change her mind.

Come on chaps. If we pretend something doesn't exist, it will eventually bite us in the ass. Global warming, for example. It's time this media blackout is exposed as being nothing but counter-productive. The more that we are allowed to pretend that bad things don't exist, the more attractive the bad things will become, just look at kids and sex or drug-based education.

Beauty contest officials chose a model from Stoke-on-Trent to represent Birmingham because they could not find anyone pretty enough from the city.

Miss Great Britain organisers picked Sophie Wilson to represent the city in a heat despite her only connection being an ex-boyfriend who lived there.

The 18-year-old IT student said she thought it was unfair on Birmingham's beauties.

The competition was later won by Rachael Tennant, from Aberdeen.

A spokesman for Miss Great Britain said: "We were desperately looking for a Miss GB entrant from Birmingham but in truth, there was no-one suitable who entered.

"We look forward to more entering next year."

Now I've been to Birmingham a couple of times, and to be fair, I wholeheartedly concur. Full story is available here.

Only joking. The judges clearly weren't looking in the right places...

She's from Birmingham. Allegedly.

Gotta love the Daily Mail:

Secret plans to encourage the nation to give up eating meat are being examined by the Government.

A leaked e-mail expresses sympathy for the environmental benefits of a mass switch to a vegan diet - a strict form of vegetarianism which bans milk, dairy products and fish.

The change would need to be done "gently" because of a "risk of alienating the public", according to the document.

The extreme policy is being examined on the basis it could make a major contribution to slowing climate change.

Farm animals are blamed for producing huge amounts of the greenhouse gases methane and carbon dioxide.

Full story is available here. So let's pretend, for the sake of amusement, that the Mail might have printed something true. Farm animals are being blamed for creating methane and Co2? What do cars and planes run on, sunlight?