Bad Week: Damien Green MP, Woolworths, Gordon Ramsay, Brownies

by Greg McDonald

So you’re a member of the Tory shadow cabinet – which of these should you try to avoid at all costs? Is it a) being a few minutes late for a select committee meeting on parking restrictions? b) wearing the same tie as the Shadow Minister for Fisheries? Or c) getting arrested by counter-terrorism police? Yes, it was a bad week for Shadow Immigration Minister Damian Green – and his boss wasn’t exactly having a giggle either.

It was a sad week for Woolworths, as the 99-year-old icon of the British Christmas went under before Advent had even begun. For diehard Woolies fans, here’s some festive nostalgia from 1983, when you could get a state-of-the-art Woolworths hairdryer for £5.99. They don’t make ‘em like that at Tesco. They do? Oh.

It was a meal of a week for celebrity bully Gordon Ramsay. For starters, there were freshly served allegations of adultery with a locally sourced blonde side dish. And for the main course, the spicy revelation that the mystery ingredient was none other than a professional marriage wrecker looking to launch a TV career. Poor Gordon. This media dicing couldn’t have happened to a nicer little lamb.

Finally, it was a bad week for Brownies, as the girl scouts were banned from singing Christmas carols for old people for fear they might – oh yes – obstruct the fire escapes! Health and safety? Humbug! In honour of bosses at Hemel Hempstead’s Marlowes shopping centre, to sing us out this week here are another bunch of muppets.

 

Good Week: The Beatles, Ricky Hatton, Ruth Lorenzo, Chantelle Houghton

by Greg McDonald

It was a far-out week for The Beatles, as the Fab Four’s funereal masterpiece ‘Eleanor Rigby’ was given a new mourning when a document containing clues to the riddle of the girl’s identity fetched a staggering £115,000 for the Sunbeams Music Trust. Proving he still don’t care too much for money, Paul McCartney was more fired up about his new side project.

It was a thumping good week for Ricky ‘Fatman’ Hatton as British boxing’s favourite son, and the Manchester pie shop’s most valued customer scored an 11th-round TKO against Paulie Malignaggi to set up a fight with Oscar de la Hoya and, er, get his face licked by a ringside Liam Gallagher.

It was a red letter week for X Factor underdog Ruth Lorenzo, whose feisty refusal to sing in Spanish was rewarded with a note from no less than the Prime Minister of Great Britain. The PM’s advice? “Keep singing in English, girl. You're doing a great job!” With GWBW’s backing having jinxed no less than three X Factor contestants already, this week we’re saying nada.

It was a good week for Chantelle Houghton, as she finally got round to the big bother of finding a more germane replacement for her ex-pop star ex. Chantelle became a Wag in the process, as she and hobbled England striker Jermain Defoe, er, stepped out – Portsmouth fans will be praying the Chantelle Effect doesn’t do for their centre forward what it did for The Ordinary Boys’ credibility. 

Woolies’ woes mark new low

By Greg McDonald

High street icon Woolworths being taken into administration marks the moment – more than the combined woes of Northern Rock, HBOS and the FTSE – that the global recession hits Britain.

Childhood memories of wet Saturday afternoons being dragged round the household goods section lend Woolies’ death a nostalgic sentimentality, but that’s beside the point for staff unlocking the doors this morning with no idea if they’ll still be in a job at lunchtime.

And unlike financiers whose greedy complicity in bringing the world crashing down is rewarded with protected bonuses, there’ll be no golden handshakes at the pick 'n' mix counter when the lights go out tonight – just the dole queue, the loan shark and the repossession letter, as hard-working, honest people pay a miserable price for the unscrupulous excesses of the few.

Gordon Brown is at least right that this is no time for inaction, and his Government’s newfound taste for boldness is welcome. But greater lessons about propriety must be learned from the hurt currently being felt on British high streets.

The era in which the rich creamed off the profits in the good times and the rest of us bailed them out when things get rough must end, to be replaced with a new era of fairness and equality. Well, we can dream…

Caption competition: Becks to the rescue

Posted by Simon Glover

We asked what was being said as David Beckham helps a female photographer who fell over while taking pictures of him in New York.

Winner

Next time u take my photo without asking i'll put you down for good!
Jabba, Surrey

Runners-up

I don't think Strictly Come Dancing is for me..
JJ

1..2..3 tickle you under there.
Gaz

You go down nearly as easy as Ronaldo
Nick Telford

See all the previous winners

Private chancer

By Alan Tyers

Peter Stringfellow reckons that plans to toughen up on lapdancing clubs are wrong. In the immortal words of Mandy Rice-Davies: “Well, he would, wouldn’t he?”

The Local Government Association wants to make clubs such as Stringfellow’s apply for “sexual encounter” licenses, putting them in the same category as peep shows (yuck). Their current status is essentially the same as that of a pub or café.

If the law were changed, it would be much easier for NIMBYs to prevent clubs opening in a given location.

No fair, Peter told the Commons Culture Committee, who says that his establishments are respectable places, no more or less “sexually stimulating” than a trip to what he rather sweetly calls “a disco”, or David Beckham in his pants.

If that is the case, there must be a lot of unhappy punters in his joints. With respect to the leathery legend, Peter is talking out of his bottom: people go to lapdancing clubs to be titillated.

Are they just fronts for prostitution? No. Can prostitutes be procured in some (although not Peter’s) lapdancing clubs? Yes. Would banning lapdancing clubs have a significant effect in eliminating prostitution? No.

There are three lapdancing clubs within five minutes’ walk of my home. (I stipulated this requirement very clearly to the estate agent.) It doesn’t affect my quality of life at all, although it might if I had more money. Why can’t people be left alone to do what they want to do?

Hanging on in Haringey

By Alan Tyers

Two of the Haringey councillors involved in the Baby P fiasco have clung to their jobs…

The Labour-dominated council managed to use its majority to fight off a no-confidence motion in Councillor Liz Santry, the Cabinet member for Children and Young People, and council leader George Meehan.

Their council opponents, the Lib Dems, wanted the pair out and demanded a public inquiry. They got neither, with Santry saying she believes that an inquiry would only drag out the process of making sure similar tragedies don’t happen again.

You have to admire her nerve, if nothing else.

The people demand vengeance for Baby P and think that the careers of these two politicos would be a start. But who really knows the individuals involved, their strengths and weaknesses?

Might Haringey council be better off with them staying and learning from their awful mistakes? Would the people of Haringey really be better off with some other pair of functionaries?

Clearly, terrible mistakes were made. But rather than seeking revenge, we should be asking if these people, presumably chastened and horrified by their blunders, might actually be the best placed to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

Here comes the stun

By Greg McDonald

Some 30,000 frontline police officers are to be trained to use “taser” stun guns, and in a climate of media hysteria over youth violence it should come as no surprise that the Association of Chief Police Officers, 80% of frontline officers and the majority of the public welcome the move.

And after being tasered 200 times, manufacturer Peter Boatman might well feel confident enough of his product’s safety to declare he’d rather be tasered than truncheoned.

But any Brits hearing the police shout of “Look at the red light on your chest”, may find Amnesty International’s figures sobering: 320 “tasered” Americans have died in the last seven years, leading to Chicago police withdrawing the stun guns in 2007.

Indeed, faced with such figures, many understandably oppose “brutalising” tasers outright.

The £8m taser plan should sound alarm bells, too, about the monumental cost to society of endemic violent crime – and remind us that any government serious about a solution must ultimately address not only individual perpetrators of violence but the systemic economic inequality which produces them.

But in the short term, while supporting the use of stun guns as alternatives to conventional guns, Amnesty International is right to demand police strike a pragmatic balance between empowering officers and safeguarding the public by deploying tasers only as a weapon of last resort.

Bad Week: John Sergeant, BNP, Kevin Pietersen, Rachel Hylton

By Greg McDonald

It was a bad week for John Sergeant (and poor Kristina!), as the barrage of abuse suffered at the hands of cruel Strictly Come Dancing judges and bitter beaten rivals proved too much for the mild-mannered bacon butty botherer, who spectacularly quit the show. Jeremy Paxman may call John “a mouse” but here at GWBW a fellow who dared consign Margaret Thatcher to Room 101 will always have a place in our hearts.

It was like all your Stalingrads coming at once for BNP leader Nick Griffin this week, as the names of thousands of his far right party members were leaked, leading to a dissing of Nick’s “values” by Merseyside police. We should point out that this paragraph is in no way intended to suggest that Griffin’s respectable political associates are in any way raving jackbooted sieg-heiling Hitler worshippers. Hope that’s clear.

Howzat? Dreadful, Kevin. Yes, after the Stanford Series debacle it was another dire week for Kevin Pietersen’s England cricketers, as they went 3-0 down to India in a fog-hit Kanpur one-day international that puts them in danger of being whitewashed in the seven-match series. And it all looked so bright for England fans when KP took over…

It was a bad week for controversy-hit X Factor hopeful Rachel Hylton, who was left staring down the barrel of a quick exit from the show after being shot by the live TV cameras making this gun gesture. Having already jinxed three of this year’s contenders, we’re keeping (single) mum about which South Londoner we’re rooting for this weekend, but to sing us out here’s Rachel.

Good Week: Top of the Pops, John Terry, Maradona, Spider artist

By Greg McDonald

It was a good week for Top of the Pops, as a nation of pop pickers rejoiced at news of the show’s return for two Christmas specials and began demanding a permanent resurrection of the art of miming, attempted here by Nirvana and later perfected by Oasis. But the truly electrifying news is that the crop-topped and bell-bottomed affront to dignity which was Pan’s People might be back too!

It was a triumphant week for John Terry, as he redeemed a calamitous moment’s hesitation, that gifted Germany an equaliser against an injury-hit England side, by heading down the other end to bag a winner for Fabio Capello’s ever more confident national side. Props to the Chelsea centre half for ‘fessing up to his blunder too – big man, broad shoulders and all that.

It was a winning week too for Argentina coach and fellow redemption seeker Diego ‘hand of God’ Maradona – though Diego wasn’t so keen to confess his sins, daring to compare his infamous 1986 goal to Geoff Hurst’s controversial 1966 world cup winner. Congrats on beating the Scots, Diego – but you might have been better flagging up Paul Scholes' “header” against Poland in 1999.

Finally, it was a good week for newly crowned internet folk hero David Thorne, whose attempts to pay a bill with a drawing of a spider – while failing to settle the amount due – nonetheless resulted in the work becoming an online sensation and fetching a generous sum on eBay. Modern madness? Here’s The Who’s John Entwistle to play us out with some vintage insanity.

Sergeant's mess

by an outraged Greg McDonald of Tunbridge Wells

It’s been a crazy year. World markets tumbling, banks collapsing, and some black kid from Indonesia elected US President. But nothing – nothing! – has shocked like John “white flag” Sergeant’s retreat from the Battle of Strictly.

What do you mean, get some perspective?! Here’s Strictly Come Dancing favourite Tom Chambers to put Sarge-gate in its proper historical context: “It’s who you want to stand for the country – like running for the White House,” intoned the wax-chested nancy in turquoise sequins.

But mock as we may, who else besides John and Barack could unite the public, The Times, Conservative Central Office and Peter Mandelson? Indeed, the President-elect may have delivered some fancy speeches, but show me the joy he ever brought to a nation of drooling dads as a Russian blonde young enough to be his daughter did the splits around his two left feet. And Obama dares talk of “the audacity of hope”!

Yet now – as the very hour of his destiny approaches – Sergeant Spineless sounds the surrender! Is it the end of democracy? Should we cancel Christmas?

Amazingly, some out-of-touch commentators have asked whether it isn't ironic that John Sergeant, having entered his career to put pressing political issues at the forefront of news coverage, monopolises headlines as a spangled celebrity numpty who can’t do the rhumba. I ask you - what planet are these people living on? What do they do on Saturday evenings? Go dancing?