So....are we all doomed or what?

There is a heavy sense of depression hanging around this morning. Three days of rioting have left everyone sleepless and slack-jawed. What the hell is happening? Is this the end of all things? Even the number of jokes buzzing around social media are a barmoeter of just how shocked everybody feels.

For me, and my sleepless head, I have that vague but overhanging sense of doom. My immediate reaction is to leave London, leave Britain, leave the planet, change species, blow my brains out. That said, recently I have had mounting woman-fuelled worries that have led me to want to leave London, leave Britain, leave the planet, change species, blow my brains out...so I may not be the best Test rat for this experiment.

Of course, nobody knows quite why this is happening. Why it's escalating is clear: The police are unable to keep the peace, the country seems a free-for-all, looting is inevitable. The politicians and police commissioners are largely way out of step (most Tuscan villas don't get BBC News 24). Headmasterly cries of 'unacceptable' and 'thuggery' are impotent and pointless. It's like putting Mubarak on the naughty step. Even Dianne Abbott, who has barged her way to the front of most interviews is using the language of 'disenfranchisement' and 'without a stake' and 'coalition cuts' which, whilst absolutely valid, will doubtless be scorned in the fury of rightwing, reactionary polemic which will inevitably follow all this.

It's tempting to get righteous about this: either from a leftish 'blame society' view or a rightwing 'blame the parents/ knock some heads together' frame of mind. For many this will be seen as the proof of all those Daily Mail scare stories: of a society that has lost respect, can't feed itself properly, has no morals, is being ripped apart by immigration, doesn't know what it stands for. Or maybe it's a bit more simple and bit less gruesome than all that.

Most societies are kept in check by law enforcement. In a large, liberal city where the forces of community, family and deference can't possibly keep people in check, centralised authority is a necessary evil. People don't like it, of course. For all the crowing about 'community liasions' and 'partnerships' the police are basically there to stop people from doing exactly what they want. For some parts of society, this may seem to impinge more on their freedoms than others. When you remove that force, people will do as they please. It's happened a million times in a million different societies, regardless of the culture, institutions and nicetities in place. An Indian fruitseller outside my house said "It shouldn't happen in this country." But we find ourselves particularly suseptible here. A majority of the trouble has been the looting of large department stores, the seizure of material goods, which young people have been told and fervently believe in an age of base materialism, will improve their lives and confer status but, rather cruelly, have high price tags attached. So will the rioting stop once all the shops have been looted? Probably not. The gate is open, the cork is out, the lamp is ungenied, the bag de-catted, the large jar of cliches has spilt onto the floor. A lot of troubled, restless young people have tasted a sense of power and catharsis which they'll be reluctant to give up.

The immediate solution is to impose curfew, roll out the troops and break the momentum of the disorder. People who despair now will find, for the most part, that life soon returns to normal  at a frightening rate. Once the news crews find something else to talk about, it'll be like it never happened. In the relentless redevelopment of London, no one will notice a bit more plastic sheeting and scaffolding. For some of course, the scars might last longer.

With all the speculation, all the miles and miles of columns and blogs, what could put an end to the rioting, anarchy, social discontent, materialism, amoralism, opportunism, criminality, injustice is a good, undemocratic, British showering. Trainers get ruined, plasma screens fizzle out, and tracksuit bottoms get clammy and tough to demolish shop fronts in. The rain won't wash away the problems, or collate the intangibles, but it will make everyone stop, say "Bloody typical" and return to a proper sense of Britishness - the unifying character we all seek to stitch this nation together: All of the rampaging malice, none of the weather to make staying outside for long a good idea.

A Royal Weddink...

The media seems to be astonished that the fiancée of the heir to the heir to the throne should have been plucked from the 'umble middle classes. Afterall, Catherine nee Kate Middleton is from a humble village in Buckinghamshire and attended the local comp, AKA Malborough College public school.

What mighty social barriers have been broken! To think that some posh person might marry a much, much posher person. What barriers come tumbling down in the name of love...First black president my arse. Change the record, Obama.

Kate Middleton has described both William and herself as "very down to earth". It's just that the piece of earth they are down to happens have palaces built on it.

Old Etonian David Cameron responded to the news in a manner befitting Her Majesty's Chief Toff:
"When the news was announced during the cabinet meeting, a great cheer went up and there was a great thumping on the table...then some oik threw a bread roll at me."

Generation XXL

I rarely just turn on the TV and channel surf, but last night that's what I did. The relationship between the 'box' (though it is flatscreen so 'oblong'?) and me is a frosty one, particularly as someone who wants to encourage more highschool killing sprees at Channel 4 has stopped running Fraiser repeats on weekday mornings from 8-8.30 and replaced it with Celebrity Big Brother footage. Presumably the same person then spends 8.30 - 9 a.m. at the Andrex puppy orphanage with a flamethrower.

I am often forced to turn over to BBC1's Breakfast News, which is a wonderful combination of islamic fundamentalist fat cats stuck up property ladders and social awkwardness. The banter between the co-presenters is a wonder to behold. Distil the most dismal, witless, perfunctory office banter you've ever heard down to a heinous licqueur of uncomfortableness and you'll start to get an inkling of just how bad these people are at what they do. At any point where they're not reading directly off the autoqueue, you can sense the raw stench of terror. Their inepitude is to such a degree that it leaves me with the only possible conclusion that there must be an interconnecting door between the BBC's presenter training scheme and a labotomy centre.

"That was John Ball talking about the boating craze in Norfolk. Susanna, have you ever been boating?"
"B...o....a...t...i...n...g?"......drool.
"Ha ha. Great stuff. Over to Bill with the weather."

Anyway, I digress.

Last night I saw a programme called Generation XXL. Naturally, it was on Channel 4. Channel 4 is worryingly similar to Fox, yet at the other end of the political spectrum. Both have schedules which place surprisingly brilliant TV right next to the kind of dire, desperate shite that you wouldn't play to your worst enemy. Generation XXL isn't brilliant TV, by the way, but that's immediately clear from the title. It's one of those titles that you know some researcher at a piss pot, bottom feeding production company shat out during a mind diahorrea session.

"How about Generation XXL?"
"Good title. What's it about?"
"I don't know....fat kids?"
"Yeah! I love it! Edgy!"

It's one of those 'documentaries' that paints itself as a social awareness/ "Come on guys, we're addressing a problem here" type of broadcast, rather like 'The Boy Whose Skin Fell Off' or 'Embarrasing Illnesses' but really is more a case of "Ha ha! Look at the FAT fuckers! Look how FAT they are. Aren't you glad you're not like these losers. I know I am!"

The sad thing about the programme was that, despite diet, there was a clear theme running through each of the three obese children. There was one uniting factor which you felt may have contributed to their phenomenal masses: they were all bone idle. In fact two out of the three ten year olds were actually obsessively concerned with their diets (one was even on Weight Watchers) but it doesn't take a trip to a Sports Science Nutrition Centre (which it did) to suggest that these children are fat because they do not fucking move! But the programme makers knew this, and they were obviously urinating themselves with delight when they asked the boy (a behemouth weighing 17 stone and standing at 6 feet tall despite being ten) what he did with his day:

"I play a lot on my compuuuuaaaa. First I get a helfy snack, den I play on my compuuuuaaa, den I go toilit, den I play on my compuuuuaaa, den I have veg-tiballs, den I play on my compuuuuaaa"

The camera zoomed in like a ferocious predator to capture the fatty; his big wobbly face so inherently lazy that it couldn't be arsed to construct consonants. No opputunity was lost to have a bit of a snigger. The classic 'walking on the beach' sequence gave us another chance to giggle at lardy when the camera otherwise inexplicably focused on a "Beware: Soft Sand" sign. "Imagine that!" the programme makers were saying, "Imagine fat boy sinking in the sand. I bet he would! Imagine him thrashing and sinking in the sand. What a disgusting, gargantuan fuck!"

Aside from the not so subtle bullying, the programme seemed to stumble on to one valid point, and that was that the healthy eating message had not been entirely unsuccessful. Okay, there was one fat oaf of a father who blamed society for his errant parenting. "It's so easy today. All these fast food places. You can feed the whole family for under a tenner"....I bet you can. I bet you can also blow them all up with a single grenade, but i wouldn't advise you do it.

But this wasn't the case on the whole. Two of the families paraded their vegetable packed fridges as if deflecting all possible criticism. In fact it seemed a huge source of pride to two of the mothers that they didn't constantly feed their children melted butter through a straw. The government has spent so much money forcefeeding the message of healthy eating, that people have become lost in the detail. Guidelines are so specific, that people don't even try and engage a bit of sense. At one point, his equally fat mother was blubbing as if to say "What more can I possibly do?" perplexed that leaving salt off chips and serving Diet Coke wasn't causing the tons to tumble. But that seems to be the problem with food education. It seems to be all right to eat a lard sandwich, just as long as you use wholemeal bread.

I have since learnt that they are planning to follow these kids around for the next SEVEN years. The official blurb says that it's in order to "find out what it really feels like to be growing up fat". I imagine that it's the same as just growing up, except more people point and laugh at you. Now these 3 kids can enhoy the next 7 years of their life with millions of people pointing and laughing. Oh well. In for a penny, in for a kilo.