Government approves BSkyB deal

The Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt has given his approval for News Corporation to own all shares in BSkyB, despite Ofcom saying the decision should be made by the competition commission, in a move which the BBC business editor says will “generate revenues that would dwarf all rivals, even the BBC”.

Example of a bad empire

I actually quite like empires. Sure, sometimes they become bureaucratic – the Death Star out of Star Wars, which was essentially just one big laser canon, seemed to have a lot of redundant office space for what it was. And yeah, they might tend towards evil sometimes – like, say, the Evil Empire out of Star Wars. But if Star Wars has taught me anything (and everything I know about empires I learned from Star Wars, so clearly it did), it’s that empires always prevail (nb I have only seen up to The Empire Strikes Back, NO spoilers please). That’s why I’m over the moon about the Tory Culture Secretary making News Corporation an even more colossal media empire than it already was (it owns a third of the British newspaper market).

It’s unlikely News Corp will be surprised by the decision – presumably they've been hacking Jeremy Hunt’s phone for ages. But also because, as his website puts it, Hunt believes Murdoch “has probably done more to create variety and choice in British TV than any other single person”, and that we “wouldn’t be saying that British TV is the envy of the world if it hadn’t been for him”. That’s right. A quick look at what’s on Sky tonight will show why British TV is the envy of the world – The Simpsons, America’s Next Top Model and old episodes of Hawaii Five-0. All independent, grassroots British projects that Murdoch gave life to, like a big, friendly right-wing hen.

And the non-Murdoch rebels are forgetting the huge concessions News Corp has made: namely, to spin off Sky News into an independent company. The term ‘spin off’ suggests the relationship between News Corp and Sky News will be minimal, like that between Cheers and Frasier – although, since News Corp will still retain exactly the same percentage of shares in Sky News, it’ll be more like if Frasier was set in Boston. In a bar. With the all the same characters as Cheers. And called Cheers.

Now this deal is settled, we can look forward to this media Reich lasting a thousand years – and if there’s talk of ‘pro-Tory bias’ in News Corp influencing this decision, I say GROW UP and remember the front cover of News Corp-owned The Sun on election day 2010.

Either they were comparing Cameron to an inspiring, left wing, and internationally renowned US politician or to the abstract concept of hope itself.  I’d agree with either, but I’d stress The Sun didn’t pick that cover because of any bias in News Corp. They literally just typed ‘hope’ into Google and David Cameron’s face came up, and they were so startled by this little-known meaning of the word they made it front page news.

The LAST thing anyone wants is a plurality of opinion and voices in the media. After all, when I said I heard lots of voices in my head, they called me MAD. This government has made the same decision I made – pick one of those voices and follow it. Let’s just hope things turn out better for them than they did for me, that fateful winter morning…  

Tory council makes homelessness basically illegal

Tory-run Westminster City Council, the richest council in the UK, is proposing a byelaw to make it illegal to “lie down or sleep on any public place” and is to ban charities giving homeless people free food.

I’m a strong believer in giving to charity – in that I’m 99% certain other people do it. But I think I have a right to not have to look at homeless people. Independent research carried out in my mind suggests that looking at a homeless person actually lowers the value of your house by 0.2%. That’s why it’s such great news that the Tory Westminster Council are planning to effectively make homelessness (and free food handouts) illegal in a large area around Westminster Cathedral, a known hotspot for rough sleepers, charitable work and, most likely, homeless Al Qaeda terrorists using free soup handouts to build one of those dreaded Minestrone Bombs.

What others call “idiotic” I prefer to think of as “clear-minded”. This is one of the more clear-minded Tory initiatives I’ve come across. It’s a simple answer to a complex problem: first, you reduce government funding for homeless charities by 30%, then you make being homeless illegal. Eventually, homeless people will realise their non-legal status and disappear in a puff of logic.

Of course, not everyone’s happy about it. A spokesperson for the extremist militant group 'the Salvation Army’ said "rather than intimidating rough sleepers to retreat into back alleyways, to hide away in refuse containers, or to squat in derelict buildings, the answer is to give them somewhere to stay." Firstly, last time I checked, I think prison counts as a ‘place to stay’. Secondly – they don’t have to ‘squat in derelict buildings’ – they could just as easily lie down or perch, removing a significant strain to their thighs. Thirdly, of course the Salvation Army don’t like this law – they have a vested interest in helping homeless people.

I actually think this byelaw is a great starting point for solving lots of complex problems. For example, surely if the budget deficit was made illegal, it couldn’t exist? Unless…unless the deficit became an outlaw, and escaped into the countryside on horseback, creeping into people’s homes at night to increase their levels of debt…it might make me poor – Jesus Shit! I might lose my golden slippers, my vials of swan blood – my tea towels made of Shakespeare folios. I might lose my house! That would be horrible! 

Police funding cut by 20%

Finally, someone did it. Someone cut police funding. In the Commons a few hours ago, a brave government majority approved a cut of 20% to police forces in England and Wales. The Association of Police Authorities said this will do long-term damage to policing capabilities - but I couldn't hear them over the sound of the party poppers I was letting off.

The police – arguably the laziest public service – have had this coming for a long while. Here are some facts about police wastage:

• 99% of police time is spent being extras in the TV series The Bill. It’s not even on anymore!

• 100% of all solved crimes are either committed by, or solved by, the police. A chilling statistic.

• Despite having sold 30 million copies of the single Roxanne, The Police have consistently failed to chart in Canada.

Now, David Cameron promised on a TV show before the election that there would be no frontline cuts to the police. But the producer of that show, who was probably Greg Dyke, cut away from Cameron just as he mouthed – ‘but I will cut them by 20%’.  The Association of Police Authorities says this will cut frontline police. Indeed, the Association of Police Authorities said this will do "long term damage to policing capability". But if the Association of Police Authorities was worth listening to, surely I’d have bothered to look up who they are?

The thing that the dope-smoking, police-loving liberal left don’t understand is these are necessary cuts, given the state of the economy. No matter how much they permanently destabilise law and order. After a recession, common sense tells you that the way you run a country’s finance is exactly the same as the way you run your household finance. If your household is overspending, then you destroy a part of your house.

And that’s the thought I want to leave you with. Complex problems demand simple solutions.

Take the ancient riddle “if a tree falls in the woods, and there’s no one there to hear it, does it make a sound?” My answer would be to privatise that wood, cut it down and have it turned into a shopping centre, because the trees are all weird and philosophical. And since when have trees been any good at fighting crime, anyway? Everyone is an idiot. 

Daily Mail - Gay lessons to be taught in schools

Actual exam paper

Melanie Phillips, a tireless campaigner for sanity, wrote in the Daily Mail today about how “the ruthless campaign by the gay rights lobby” means “schoolchildren are to be bombarded with homosexual references in maths, geography and ­science lessons as part of a Government-backed drive to promote the gay agenda.” That’s right. Homosexuality is now mandatory for schoolchildren.

The lesson plans are being made available online for schools who choose to download them, so technically it’s only ‘mandatory’ in the same way that Doodle Jump is mandatory. But you know what it’s like – if something is available to download, you basically have to download it. That, at least, is my defence for the ‘horse_slut.mpg’ controversy I was involved in a while back.

Now, Word-Happener is no enemy of the gays. I once accidentally bought some moisturising peach-scented handwash from Waitrose, and I actually used it in the guest bathroom. So I think I understand the queers. Therefore, as a neutral observer, I can see that Melanie Phillips isn’t implying that homosexuality is morally wrong – it’s just that mentioning it to schoolchildren is an “abuse of childhood”. In the same way that answering questions about bird migration for my Maths GCSE made me, for a short time, develop feathers and create a nest in the lower-sixth common room, if we say the word ‘gay’ too much around kids they might become gay. Or – worse - gay birds.

Melanie Phillips makes the very valid point that this initiative would “destroy the concept of normal sexual behaviour”.  Mmm baby, that kinda talk turns me on…I’d love to get a cheap motel room with Phillips, make a list of all the most scintillatingly standard sexual practices and do them for a sexily average amount of time. If I apply heterosexual maths to sexual statistics, I predict I would orgasm in 4.7 minutes. Melanie baby, are you ready for my jelly? It's very run-of-the-mill.

And she’s got a point about how we’ve turned against the normal ethics of sexuality. “Expressing what used to be the moral norm of Western civilisation” will now get you into trouble. Exactly. I’d like to hear what the Ancient Greeks would think about all this gay sex. Besides, if LGBT people want to change social norms they should do it through something other than education, like…er…You know. Declaring war or something.

Of course, the best defence against this kind of silliness is to deny there is such a thing as LGBT people. As the user ‘lord_summerisle’ says on the Daily Telegraph comments page for this story – “I seriously doubt that the LGTB community actually exists”. Well said, your Lordship. So when Sue Sanders, of the LGBT pressure group Schools Out tries to defend what is basically gay Nazism by saying “all we are attempting to do is remind teachers that LGBT people are part of the population”, we can simply all look puzzled and ask “what people?”. 

Coulson resigns

Coulson making his statement yesterday morning

Now cracks a noble heart. “I’m sad Coulson felt compelled to quit” said David Cameron, echoing the views of the nation. "He was doing his best," a government insider said, their voice cracking slightly. Perhaps the most poignant words came from Coulson himself, however, as he remarked in a defiant but quavering voice - "it's time to move on", looking toward the sunset outside No 10, a single tear rolling down his princely cheek.

He was a great PR man (he managed to convince the nation that George Osborne is an adult), and we will look for his coming in the Downing Street press office in vain. 

I think it’s shameful that people are victimising Andy Coulson for something we can’t know for sure he did. It would be fairer, for example, to victimise him for choosing to edit the News of the World at all. This is, after all, the paper that confused being a paediatrician with being a paedophile, leading to one woman being attacked in 2000. 

It was this kind of thinking that led Coulson to some embarrassing moments in government, such as when he believed being a ‘spin doctor’ meant he was actually a qualified doctor, resulting in him giving Michael Gove a near-deadly prescription of hypochlorous acid. The scandal passed, and Gove eventually regained the use of his legs, but most importantly Coulson learnt a lesson about knowing what words mean before acting upon them. Personally, I’ve never subscribed to that school of thought, and remain a hermaphrodite about it.

The real problem facing the Tories now is that it’s lost its best PR man. Take a look at this photo of David Cameron, before Coulson was able to photoshop it:

Cameron at his Witney constituency

That’s just not going to play well with the Islington elite. And now with Coulson gone, Cameron has to temporarily handle his own PR. Word-Happener has heard from trusted sources some of the PR initiatives Cameron has come up with on his own. Blogs are of course highly reliable news sources, being the virtual equivalent of a wall someone has graffitied “Bazzer is gay” on. Here are some Cameron PR initiatives, which will be a hard sell without the noble lion of PR:

-  Rebrand ‘money’ as ‘Care Points’. That way, when a banker gives himself a bonus of ‘7 million Care Points’, they just sound really lovely.

- Rebrand the upcoming lack of NHS beds to lie down on as "vertical health solutions". 

- Cut the army. I mean all of it. Defence spending is £32 billion a year. The army will be replaced by Cameron’s vision of the ‘Rush Hour Militia’. By asking hard-working families to give up an hour or two before rush hour each day to be involved in various land conflicts, he will “hand responsibility – and a Glock 19 – to local mothers, fathers and citizens”. As Cameron will put it, “mother knows best”, for example when it comes to launching a tactical assault on a heavily fortified enemy forward flank.  

Bill to scrap EMA approved in Commons

The Daily Mail has published a very thoughtful article by Jan Moir defending the scrapping of EMA (as well as an article about how breasts are “getting bigger” - a very serious biological think piece with great photographs).

Her argument is targeted against people like the “beautiful young woman” who she saw arguing for EMA on Newsnight. Firstly, I’m glad to see Moir is liberated enough to follow the Mail in being unable to mention a young woman without coming across as a pervy retired colonel at a supermarket checkout. Secondly, Moir is right to suggest that the girl “has probably never sliced a breaded gammon nor combed out a perm in her life”. I’m not sure what the stats are on gammon-slicing (Labour’s probably suppressed them), or quite what Moir’s point is, but it has an unsettling ring of truth about it. Thirdly, Moir’s right to slam Labour’s denial that EMA is a waste of money. Labour would probably even deny that breasts are getting bigger, if they thought it would win them an election. So let’s just take these non-gammon-slicing, breast-growth refuseniks to task.

“Under-18s are outraged that they might have to pay for their own beer, ciggies and Pret A Manger sandwiches. What do we want? Crayfish and mayo. When do we want it? Now!” Moir’s portrayal of today’s youth would be outrageous, if it were true. So I think it probably is true. Just to be clear - I wasn’t like that when I claimed EMA. Who the fuck buys crayfish when Pret do warm meatball wraps? I had principles. Juicy, spicy principles with melted cheese on top. But I used to see these other young fat cats – some of them in households earning as much as £33,000 – riding into college in carriages made out of gold and hypocrisy, swan blood dribbling from their mouths as they sang The People’s Flag.

Moir’s single, powerful argument is that EMA is an “expensive flop” designed to keep young people “off the unemployment register”. Too right. I suppose another way of putting it is that it keeps young people in education rather than on the dole, but I question whether we really want it that way round. This is a time of record youth unemployment, so young people clearly find something attractive about being unemployed. Let them have what they want.

Secondly, Moir’s right that EMA’s expensive. The IFS (probably at the behest of Greg Dyke or someone like that) did say the cost of EMA is “more than recouped by the increase in productivity” it provides. But the IFS is itself, most likely, run by paedophiles. And I have yet to see one report from the IFS on the recent shocking growth in breast size.

So, there you have it. I’m not saying that supporters of EMA are basically worse than Hitler. I’m writing it. The fact that I benefitted from it doesn’t mean I’m kicking the ladder out from underneath me. I’m just saying the ladder shouldn’t have been there in the first place, and the ladder is morally wrong. And how are ladders going to help anyone through education anyway? The world’s gone mad.

Predictions for 2011

It's the time of the year when newspapers print reams of pages predicting what will happen in the coming year, bravely moving away from a 'news' focus into a sort of 'bullshit' vibe. One of the things readers won't know about me, however, is I'm a genuinely gifted futurologist. I got into the game fulltime after my asbestos business went bust.

Ladies and gentlemen - behold, the future!

Prediction #1

* It’ll be the year of iPad apps. In February the app makers DigiSolutions will release an iPad app that can digitally replace a human bow tie. “Going to a dinner party? Forgot a bow tie? Welcome to iTie.” The software consists HD image of a bow tie, which the user holds up to his neck. It will sell for £2.99 and will be downloaded over a 750 million times. In April, the iTie SX will come out, allowing you to choose between four different colours of bow tie. Eventually, the company branches out into hats, shoes and contraception.

Prediction #2

* David Cameron will personally launch a new government scheme to create a series of magic rings - five for the dwarf lords, seven for the elves and nine for men. Part of the initiative will involve the further creation of an extra “big” ring, which Cameron shall wield. The objective, as he will announce at a press conference surrounded by young supporters, is to give him power over all the free peoples in the land and create a never-ending darkness wherein the living shall envy the dead. After the initial announcement, the government will downscale its plans due to pressure from academics, care workers and wizards. Ed Miliband will be unavailable for comment, but will later remark that the government should be “careful” with such schemes.

Prediction #3

* You’ll be able to download celebrities. The hadron collider in Switzerland will finally achieve something useful, and crack atom-reassembling through digital transfer – in layman’s terms, you’ll be able to beam the real Justin Bieber into your home, relatively cheaply. Unfortunately, the service will soon be abused by rich students with laptops and boats, who repeatedly summon Amanda Holden into the waters of the Atlantic Ocean. Illegal downloading will also become a problem, with JLS being downloaded for free and kept in a closet by a 15-year-old in Stevenage. They will be forced to sing for scraps and water, before JB manages to escape and run for help.