Problem not to be sniffed at

By Alan Tyers

One primary school’s attempts to teach its pupils how to blow their noses have been slammed as “a complete waste of time” by a parent.

Says the disgruntled Oak Primary, Manchester parent: “I send my kids to school to learn, not for someone to show them how to blow their nose.”

They already know how to, see, because they are taught at home. Well, if they are they must be better brought up than a lot of the rest of the country. And I'm not just talking about the five to 11-year-olds. It’s pretty much impossible to take even the shortest journey on public transport without some oaf spluttering or sneezing in your face.

What is it with people and blowing of the snout? Is it really so difficult?

With the cold and flu season upon us, I propose the introduction of a zero-tolerance policy against those who sneeze in others’ faces, wipe their snotty hands on train strap-handles and cough without covering their mouth.

Ideally, I would like to see the introduction of mob rule and have the wanton germ-spreaders lynched on the spot by an angry posse, but I appreciate it may be difficult to make this stand up in court.

At the very least, the time has definitely come for us decent folk – the face-coverers, the tissue-carriers, the discreet coughers – to stand up and tell them to learn some basic decency.

We have nothing to fear but being stabbed to death by snot-drenched hoodies. It is time.

Dumb and dumber in Dubai

By Alan Tyers

Dubai sex-on-the-beach romeo Vince Acors has admitted he was “extremely naïve” for carrying on with a lady in public over there.

That’s putting it mildly! And, incredibly, he also says he is planning to return to the emirate for business.

And seeing how the authorities re-arrested him on some sort of bureaucratic technicality as he tried to fly out of the country last week, purely out of spite, it seems certain that the man they call Vince Charming will be a marked card.

Vince – who was pictured in The Sun a-boozin’ and a-flirtin’ while awaiting trial – does not seem the type to learn from his mistakes.

You gotta say: Vince, quit while you’re ahead.

On a not unrelated note, a British woman faces six months in the Dubai slammer after she was found guilty of adultery. Marnie Pearce, from Bracknell, says that her ex-hubby has fitted her up as a tactic in a custody battle.

She reckons she is being unfairly treated because she is… a woman. Really? In Dubai? The law a sexist ass? Who would have thunk it?

Vince’s situation is entirely of his own making, while it sounds like Marnie is a victim of circumstance. But the lesson in both cases is, surely, “when in Rome …’

Evil on all sides

By Greg McDonald

The international community, including the British government, is right to condemn Israel’s actions in Gaza.

There is evil on all sides – and we should acknowledge and condemn it. Hamas may be fighting a resistance against an illegal occupier, but its wanton disregard for civilian life, its willingness to use the deaths of Palestinian infants to drum up political support against Fatah rivals, and the apocalyptic element of its ideology all contribute to the suffering of both sides.

On the Israeli side, besides the wildly disproportionate violence which makes this latest bout of blood-letting look more like a massacre than a war, both the cynical sabre rattling of a government conscious of February elections and an intransigent opposition which would abandon a two state solution altogether feed a cycle of retributive violence.

Yet while acknowledging the evils of both sides, we must ultimately face the fact that it is Israel – critically backed by the US – that holds the cards in its hand, for only one peaceful solution is possible in the Middle East: a two state settlement in which the occupier withdraws.

Until that day arrives we can only condemn the cynicism on both sides and add to the roar of international condemnation for another round of needless and terrible suffering.

Good year: Obama, Boris, Lewis...

By Greg McDonald

British sporting glory, historic US elections, and John Sergeant’s two left feet kept us smiling this year.

But 2008 belonged to one man. Whether you were up at dawn in February for the showdown with Hillary Clinton in Iowa or partying all night in Kenya on November’s election night there was no denying this was Barack Obama’s year. Was it the visionary rhetoric? The cool manner? The superior grasp of the issues? No chance – we put Obama’s success down to these 10 pledges.

And it wasn’t only in Washington that commentators were left in no doubt that the age of celebrity politics had arrived, as 2008 proved a very good year for new London Mayor Boris Johnson. His transformation from loveable clown to the most powerful Conservative in more than a decade shocked everyone but the man himself.

Controversy plagued the build-up to the Beijing Olympics, with protestors lining the Olympic torch’s route across the world, but the Games of the XXIX Olympiad ultimately belonged to Michael Phelps, the American swimmer whose eight gold medals made him officially the greatest Olympian of all time.

Try telling that to the people of Mansfield, though, as Britain’s own Olympic pool legend Rebecca Adlington was given the golden welcome home she deserved after Team GB’s best Olympic performance in a century saw them claim fourth place in the 2008 Olympic Medal Table.

Yes, 2008 was a truly vintage year for British sport. And if 47 Olympic medals wasn’t enough to sate your appetite for glory, how about Lewis Hamilton’s final corner overtaking manoeuvre in the Brazilian Grand Prix to make him the youngest ever F1 champion? It’s fair to say the billion-dollar baby of motor sport with the Pussycat Doll girlfriend didn’t have a bad 12 months.

TV talent shows continued to command our attention in 2008, though it seemed we’d rather lost interest in the talent part, as the UK’s favourite “fantasy body” Cheryl Cole became an X Factor judge. Meanwhile, the Strictly hopeless John Sergeant’s two left feet made him a national hero before he fell on his sword with rather more grace than he’d brought to the foxtrot.

In music it was a big year for Take That, whose pop circus was well and truly back in town as the manband picked up enough Brit awards, sold enough albums and cashed enough Tesco Christmas advert cheques to tempt a certain Mr Williams to think of coming out of early retirement.

And while many of her peers’ careers descended into tabloid scandal, it was a good year for Leona Lewis, who proudly flew the flag for British pop by becoming the first British solo artist ever to top the US chart with a debut album, and even winning the Sexiest Vegetarian 2008 award.

Too sexy or not too sexy? While theatre critics rowed about whether the stage’s new Hamlet’s pulling power had more to do with his looks or his acting, the National TV Awards was in no doubt that it had been a good year for David Tennant, naming the thespian the nation’s Most Popular Actor for the third year running – while Cosmo reckoned the Time Lord the Sexiest Man in the World. Lawrence who?

Finally, Chelsea fans might want to look away now, because it was a world-beating 2008 for Alex Ferguson, Ryan Giggs, Wayne Rooney and Manchester United, as the Red Devils did the Premiership and Champions League double, Giggsy surpassed Sir Bobby Charlton’s record 758 appearances in a United shirt, and Wayne got hitched to Colleen.

Bad year: Credit crunch, Ross/Brand, Amy...

By Greg McDonald

As markets tumbled, banks collapsed and Woolworths went to the wall, you could hardly blame celebs from Amy Winehouse to Jonathan Ross for losing the plot. Welcome to Bad Year 2008.

It was a catastrophic year for the world economy, as decades of dodgy borrowing and bulging bonuses caught up with capitalism, forcing American and European taxpayers to bail out the bankers. Recession gripped the world from Tokyo to Berlin to Washington, and poor old Iceland (the country, not the supermarket) went bust.

The British economy wasn’t spared a dire 2008, with Government borrowing spiralling to record levels, and unprecedented changes to VAT, top rate tax and interest rates. Housing, construction and the car industry suffered especially, though for many Brits the most symbolic moment of the downturn came with the death of Woolworths.

If we thought we could just fly away from it all, we were wrong – 2008 was a turbulent year for airports. Heathrow’s Terminal 5 debacle saw senior managers’ careers heading for the departure lounge, while Stansted’s security was breached by protestors angry at expansion plans. Meanwhile 300,000 were stranded at Bangkok airport in December.

And if we thought we could drown our sorrows by squeezing in a few cheap rounds down the local we were in for a shock. Yes, 2008 was a bad year for Booze Britain, as beer, wine and spirits saw their prices hiked in the Budget and plans were implemented to ban the few Happy Hours we broke boozers had left. Figures showed 6.000 young women are now annually nicked for being drunk and disorderly. Cheers!

And typifying the new breed of alky-breathed, drug-addled, potty-mouthed young women now terrorising Britain’s streets were a couple of celebrities whose public meltdowns in 2008 kept hungry tabloids well fed. First up, when not checking in and out of rehab with depression, Kerry Katona could generally be found slurring her speech and grinding her teeth on GMTV.

But Kerry’s rollercoaster 12 months were nothing compared to the bad year experienced by Amy Winehouse. Remember that peroxide hairdo? That racist slur? That Bond soundtrack that wasn’t? This Glastonbury performance, where she punched a fan and called Kanye West a c***? Still, none of it topped this crack pipe video. Get well, Amy, we miss you.

Of course, it wasn’t just the girls who were caught misbehaving in 2008. Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand caused outrage with a sexually obscene prank call to Andrew Sachs, an ageing comic actor fondly recalled from a time when TV comedy was less crude and – some might suggest – funnier for it. Some 30,000 complaints and a cool million quid’s salary down the drain later, Ross could reflect that it hadn’t been his year.

And he wasn’t the only man behaving badly. TV bully Gordon Ramsay allegedly cooked up trouble for himself with some spicy revelations about a locally-sourced blonde side dish, and didn’t do himself any favours by joking about “f***ing Delia” a few days later.

It was a very bad Jahr indeed for Formula 1 boss Max Mosley, who was caught out in a compromising position by a tabloid sting on his underground sex den. And though the F1 supremo ultimately won his legal battle with the News of the World, it’s hard to imagine this year’s family Christmas will be quite the same.

Finally, it was a year of terrible tragedy and suffering for the people of Zimbabwe. The Zimbabweans weren’t alone, as violence continued to plague the globe from Sudan to Tibet, but in a year in which political violence, a collapsed economy and a cholera epidemic conspired against them, it was the fact that the Zimbabweans’ suffering was so avoidable that made it all the more tragic.

Chin up, cheese lady

By Alan Tyers

An interviewee on the Today programme has just said that she and her husband will have to stop eating cheese in the new year as they tighten their belts.

They used to eat cheese once a week, the devils, living like some sort of latter-day Roman Emperors.

But cheese will only come once a month from now on, she says, and hubby has even been made to get a slower, slightly cheaper broadband connection. Oh, where's the humanity?

These are my favourite credit crunch tales of woe as yet, inching out the idea that the nation should mourn for the demise of Whittard of Chelsea, who apparently sell or sold expensive coffee. Perhaps people just decided that they could get coffee better or cheaper elsewhere. Perhaps the shops were rubbish. Businesses come and businesses go, like all flesh.

Let’s not get too carried away. Same feelings about the fall-off in mortgage applications. When did it become a basic human right to borrow 10 times more money than you’ll ever have?

Even the Queen, who seems singularly ill-qualified to pronounce on the subject, will use her speech to discuss our feeling the collective financial pinch. I just hope the corgis are alright.

Sure, the economy is contracting. But this mass hysteria and constant representing of really quite everyday things – rubbish businesses struggling, people not being allowed to borrow bazillions of pounds of pretend money – as signifiers of doom is not helping.

We’re not dead in a ditch yet, and it is, after all, Christmas. Let’s enjoy it. Have a bit of cheese.

Unintelligent designs

By Alan Tyers

So three out of 10 teachers think creationism should be taught in schools? They should be turned into dinosaurs. That is an absolute disgrace.

I’ve been to the creationism movement’s worldwide HQ, the museum in Kentucky, and those people are bananas. Seriously.

The “theory”, if you can call it that, is of course that God created the Earth in six days – literally, six 24-hour days – and then populated it with all the animals and  people. This all happened 6,000 years ago: we know the date to within a few years or so, because it says it in Genesis.

The museum has some hilarious installations of animatronic Adam and Eve playing alongside dinosaurs in the Garden of Eden. My personal favourite piece of information was that “all dinosaurs used to be vegetarian” – this is before the Original Sin of the apple – because the world was all good and perfect and therefore no creature would eat another (before Eve, typical woman, messed everything up).

But why then did the vegetarian dinosaur have those great big sharp teeth for ripping and tearing flesh rather than nice flat molars for chewing veg? Ah, says the creationist: God designed the dinosaurs with sharp teeth, because He KNEW that Eve would ruin it for everyone and so he built in the potential for carnivorous animals.

There's an answer for everything, of course - and they’re all absolutely bonkers. That anyone with tertiary education qualifications could suggest this baloney be given any credibility at all is bad enough, but to foist it upon children is a joke.

It’s not “a theory”: it’s a pack of lies, and it has no place in our schools.

Christmas is great - and cynical Scrooges can’t wreck it!

By Greg McDonald

I’ll say it again: Christmas is great. Not just a-bit-naff-but-nice-to-have-a-few-days-off great, but 100-mega-watt, partridge-in-a-pear-tree and a-fairy-on-the-top great.

In fact, the only drag about the whole affair is the tear-inducing, dreary, self-styled modern Scrooges who - having forgotten that life is about living around the last time they had fun (circa 1971) - now find their only pleasure at this time of year is in a steely determination not to get into the festive spirit.

You know the types:  they could bore a hyperactive baby reindeer into a  100-year coma with another year’s list of gripes. Commercialisation, consumer greed, the death of religion, the queue in Tesco, pine needles on the carpet... Oh sweet little baby Jesus and the holy virgin, no! Not PINE NEEDLES ON THE CARPET!

Our forebears, God rest their souls, got half a day off work if they were lucky, a satsuma to share, and – if it had been a really good year - a plum pudding. And they were grateful for their blessings. Is our centrally-heated, luxury-mince-pied and double-creamed, half-price-at-Iceland, four-day holiday really such a terrible cross to bear?

It is? Then in the spirit of Saint Nicholas, Noddy Holder and Kermit the Frog in The Muppets’ Christmas Carol, I implore the hard-hearted, world-weary seasonal cynics who can’t drive past a house covered in novelty lights without emitting an involuntary sigh of doom: guys (and it’s always guys), put a stocking in it and humbugger off.

Bad Week: George Bush, Fiona Phillips, Jeremy Paxman, sports cars

by Greg McDonald

Duck! It was a lame week for America’s leader, as George Bush’s farewell tour of the Middle East saw the US President forced to dodge a flying trainer at a press conference. And while Bush’s notorious Guantanamo Bay torture camp was being booted out of use back home, rival Iraqi shoemakers rushed to claim it was one of their soles that narrowly missed shooing Bush out of Iraq.

It was a teary week for GMTV stalwart Fiona Phillips, as the breakfast show veteran whose juicy interview technique made toast of everyone from Leonardo DiCaprio to John Prescott finally left the sofa. Here are your best breakfast bits, Fiona - though here at GWBW we found you a more satisfying start when you were popping up with this tart.

Your starter for 10 - is Jeremy Paxman racist? It was a bad week for the Newsnight legend as Estelle called him out for "disrespecting" Dizzee Rascal on the current affairs show. Though if you caught Paxo asking Boris Johnson the same question 12 times during this year's London Mayoral debates, you might agree with us he's probably not losing any sleep.

It was a bad week for sports car manufacturers as Jaguar begged the Government for a bailout in the UK while in the US Chrysler took an almighty prang from the economic downturn and wrote off production until late January. Here at GWBW we hope both businesses can keep it on the road: here's Chrysler's finest, the Dodge Charger, in action in 1968.

Good Week: Chris Hoy, Benji Madden, Ultimate Fighter, Gordon Brown

by Greg McDonald

It was a winning week for cycling champion Chris Hoy, as the Olympic hero who chased down three gold medals in Beijing in the summer was named BBC Sports Personality of the Year, beating favourites Lewis Hamilton and Rebecca Addlington to the line to join the ranks of such personalities as, er, Steve Davis and Nigel Mansell.

It was a hot week for Good Charlotte guitarist Benji Madden as the legibly challenged name-changing axe man found himself eligibly unchallenged atop a list of bachelors compiled by no less a matchmaker than Britney Spears's dad Jamie. Among lesser studs chopped down to size by the ‘I Don’t Wanna Be In Love’ axe man was Olympian Michael Phelps. Something tells us the swimmer might settle for silver this time.

It was a cool week for Ultimate Fighting Championship's hottest property Michael Bisping, as readers of lads' mag Zoo named him Coolest Man of the Year in a list dominated by the tough guys readers dream of being when they're tall enough to reach the top shelf. In other results, Zoo subscribers' Coolest Extra Item Mum Puts In Your Packed Lunch was Penguins, and for the sixth year running Worst Thing About School was having to sit next to girls. (Not really.)

It was another good week of polling figures for Gordon Brown, as the revival of Government fortunes since Sarah Brown’s “kiss of life” at her hubbie’s conference speech saw David Cameron back below 40% - which, after a political cracker of a year, leaves us exactly where we were last Christmas, just with cheaper presents in Woolies. Oh, and no jobs.