Oh they will, will they?

A minor boiling of the blood as I saw this on Facebook this afternoon:

'Every smoker knows that one day he will have to quit. Either voluntarily or involuntarily.'

Is that a threat? Involuntarily? How does that work then? Are a crack squad of antirauchennazi going to kick my door in and wrestle me to the ground whenever I spark up? I do hope so, because if they're not quick enough they'll drop stone dead as soon as I exhale. These guys must be on serious danger money.

Oooh, what's that I spy? There's a little. . . thing. . . in the corner of the clever little logo which looks like a stubbed out ciggie. Ah, yes it would be the EU, wouldn't it? I thought I'd have a little look, see what they're all about.

You can't display the content while I'm viewing Facebook over a secure connection? What's going on here? The EU wants me to view one of their Facebook apps by surrendering my secure connection? Let me just go to the kitchen drawer and get my tin-foil hat.

This isn't the EU trying to covertly harvest data from Facebook, is it? That would be a low trick. I wonder how many people fell for that?

So, out of a population of 500 million, 55 people have decided to 'like' this. I bet they're doing the conga around the corridors of Minitruth about that.

Unstoppable? More like unstartable.

Muppets.

The One That Is Asking Can You Please Stop It? . . .

I've been driving around all over the place for work today. I can't stand commercial radio as it's all the same four shite songs interspersed with adverts of toe curlingly bad quality. I can't stand Radio 1 as it's like commercial radio but without the adverts, that tool Evans is on Radio 2, Radio 3 is so ridiculously worthy and Radio 4 is as dull as ditchwater. So given I didn't have the foresight to bring my CD's with me that leaves Radio 5. And it's been getting right on my wick today.

Two stories it's been leading with all day have driven me to the edge.

Firstly, they've been reporting this story about a report about the number of children being admitted to hospital with preventable diseases such as tooth decay and obesity. Sigh. Well, you remove any meaningful cooking lessons from school for a generation and what did you think was going to happen? All this citzenship guff started creeping in during my last couple of years at school, and that was under the last Tory administration. Indeed I'm certain I did a project in the 5th year (early 90's) in these extra-curricular yet timetabled lessons called 'Challenge' (God help us) about global warming and how we'd all be bollock deep in glacial melt water by the time 2000 came around. Nothing changes.

Anyhow, I digress. These lessons were at the expense of other lessons about how to cook and child development, and PE and useful stuff. This is what happens when you stop teaching and start indoctrinating. Good isn't it?

So, when I arrived home this afternoon, I was not in the slightest bit surprised to see what the subject of tonight's Panorama is.

From obesity to alcohol misuse, from rotting baby teeth to hearing problems caused by passive smoking - Britain's largest children's hospital is treating younger and younger children for health problems which are ultimately preventable. Many are the result of kids' lifestyles and are, according to the experts, causing them unnecessary suffering.

BBC Breakfast News and 5 Live have form in this area. Look, arsewipes, it's perfectly simple, if you are going to do news and current affairs programming, at the least I would expect the news to be reported. I do not expect you to make a programme and then build your news coverage around it. At best this is ethically questionable. I'd complain to them about it, but it would make no difference. The sooner this bunch of leeches lose their public funding the better. Let's see how much takeup you get on subscription for pretend news, Eastenders, the promotion of Lloyd-Webber's latest show and celebrities clearing out their lofts and heading off to the bootfairs.

The second story that has annoyed me is this constant whining from CEOP about Facebook not having a panic button. CEOP, which is like an elephant's graveyard for retired senior coppers even went over to DC to demand, Demand, a panic button on Facebook.

You can already log complaints of inappropriate conduct and content with Facebook, but it doesn't go to CEOP. You see, an American corporation who generate a huge amount of revenue off the back of advertising on their site have no vested interest in making sure that their users are safe, that their users' parents are satisfied it is safe, and in making sure that their sponsors are happy to be associated with a safe product.

Any parent who allows their kids uninhibited access to the 'net is just plain lazy and naive or neglectful, and it is not the place of a corporation to take over parenting duties for them.

Who the hell do CEOP think they are? How would we react if an American 'law enforcement' agency came over to London and started brow beating our corporations over how they do business?

Oh. . .

One final point in this ridiculous story. Isn't it strange how CEOP start stamping their feet and shreiking about how awful this is, and how they are absolutely the only people who can sort this out just as it seems likely that a Labour government is going lose office and herald a round of significant cuts in the public sector?

It would be cynical of me to draw any connection and to point out that CEOP's record thus far is not entirely glorious.

The One That Loves The Daily Mail . . .

This is how authoritarianism is ushered in and personal responsibility is abdicated.

There was a story in the media over the weekend about a party in Farnborough, hosted by two teenagers in adjoining houses which got a little out of hand after being publicised on Facebook and resulted in around 50 coppers with a helicopter and dog handlers turning up to control the crowd of around 150.

1 copper for every 3 teenagers and a helicopter and some land sharks seems a little OTT to me, but that isn’t the point.

I will say that I love the Daily Mail, no-one does indignant righteousness like the Mail, if it involves the young, the police, alcohol and technology then the shrieking gets ramped up past 11 and well into 12.

It is no wonder in their article that young Jordan is ‘giving it large’ he’s the centre of attention and is loving it. Just like the Sex Pistols with Bill Grundy he’s going to say whatever he thinks is going to cause most controversy. I’ll bet he was actually quite relieved when the old bill turned up and sorted out his mess, he’s just a kid and what seemed like a wild old time in prospect perhaps didn’t seem quite so appealing when it dawned on him that it was his house and his stuff that was in the firing line.

It is the comments on the article that intrigue me most. They have in the dead tree version a section called ‘Straight to the point’ or something similar, and it is full of fantastic Blimpish bon-mots akin to ‘My grand-father spent many happy years in Africa shooting darkies, and old sambo was grateful for it. We should send them all back there.’

The comments on this article have a similar feel. Although their scope is much more diverse and representative of people in the county. They range from the almost Libertarian: ‘Make the hosts of the party pay for the police time and any damage done and it will certainly cure any further self promoters from doing it again.’ – You made the choice, you deal with the consequences.

To the predictable but incisive: ‘And the parents were where exactly?’

To the almost apologist: ‘I thought the police were meant to close parties advertised on facebook. looks like they messed up here!’ – Yes, it was the police’s fault for not calling around at 6pm, kicking the front doors in and shouting ‘don’t even think about it, sonny.’

To the mildly alarming: ‘In fact more control over facebook could help.’ – Yes, but by who? Daily Mail readers?

And the downright mad: ‘Time to get rid of the internet. It's far to dangerous. We survived long before it was around and will long after it's gone.’ And ‘ban the internet! its the only way to make britain great once again.’

To the barely literate ‘This world has lost all a control in the name of demcracy and freedom’

Ban the internet? What? Of course last year there was probably a similar story about party publicised on MySpace, the year before it would have been on a message board, a few years before that, it would have been by SMS.

Three predictable things: 1- Kids will organise parties when Mum and Dad are away. Sometimes they’ll get out of hand. 2 – It will make headlines because it is summer and silly season. 3 – The dead tree press and their righteous attack dogs will blame whichever medium of communication was used to publicise the event as the end of our civilisation.

Kids do silly things. Make them take some responsibility for themselves, learn that their actions have consequences, make them face those consequences. It’s all part of the learning process. Banning the internet and democracy because some kids got a bit pissed up and rowdy, well, it’s as OTT as the kids at the party, isn’t it?