I love it when newspapers find something, for which there’s no conclusive evidence, and decide to let you know what’s probably going on. But in the absence of much in the way of fact (which never got in the way of any good story), they just paint it out for you, IN BIG LETTERS, and hope you get the point. F’rinstance…

Shaun Woodward, ‘the turncoat former MP’, has split from his wife of 28 years. She’s a Sainsbury’s heiress but it never bothered Shaun, selfless man that he was, slumming it in a £24million pile in the countryside. And he’s a ‘turncoat’; someone who changes sides. Let’s just leave that out there. He was a Labour MP who changed to the Conservatives.

And in a sentence that managed to avoid the Subtlety Department altogether, having established that Mr Woodward’s loyalties can shift 180 degrees, they introduce, in one swift sentence: ‘… has formed a close friendship with Luke Redgrave, the grandson of the late, bisexual theatre luminary.’

Ohhhhhh, I geddit; he changes sides easily and left his heterosexual wife to befriend a man whose grandfather was ‘bisexual’ (read: ‘POOF’), so he’s changed teams again. Ohhhhhhh…

So here’s someone we can really hate. He’s stinking rich, changed political parties, abandoned his wife for a gay lover and yet hasn’t ‘come out’ yet.

Should we arm more of our police? This is the BIG question causing ructions at the moment. We need more guns (like a fish needs more bicycles, some may say) because of the high terrorism risk. And if we ended up with a Black Friday night scenario (heaven forbid) like Paris, we’d be delayed by the keystone cops rushing round, banging into each other looking for guns. No point facing up to Jihadis carrying Kalashnikovs armed only with a truncheon, a can of mace and moral superiority. We remain just about the only country in the world who don’t routinely arm police. But we have ‘firearms units’ to be deployed in such circumstances.

Yet whenever they shoot anyone they get arrested and/or face a public inquiry. Which makes their jobs rather trickier than they already are. If you arm police you are forcing them to make split-second judgments that can (and often do) result in death. You have to just (just??) work out who can make such judgments with the highest degree of success. Which can never be 100% And if they make a mistake… its ‘welcome to America’.

And just a quick message for all those fat people in the gym, fooled by the ‘fat and fit’ motto that Nigella and Jack Black have been tattooing all over their immense bodies. Go out of the gym, you’re wasting valuable time that should instead be spent dieting. Or working out in the gym. (?) But to lose weight, NOT to get fit. Because tests have shown that overweight fit people still die 30% sooner than thinner people and at the same rate as overweight unfit people. Alternatively just say ‘fuck it’ and eat another doughnut with the money saved by cancelling the gym membership.

Happy Monday. Liverpool fans: despair… NOW.

A xxxx