An extract from a typically hilarious piece from little.red.boat:

Why would I buy sausages? Because if I buy sausages, there is growing evidence that beginning to cook them will summon the vigilante CGI deathdog, who will perform some random act of humilation-based sado-sexual act on me, while my loved ones stand idly by.

Click here to read the full post.

The Royal Wedding has now been postponed until Saturday, so that Charlie can go to the Pope’s funeral on Friday. This is clearly the right thing to do, as it will finally show Charles as putting State before self, which is the main thing he’s been criticised for not doing in recent times. However, because they chose to precede this announcement with this one yesterday, it just makes the wedding look even more of a shambles. But the lastest annoucement is certainly good news.

It all sorts the week out too: Today we’ll have the Westminster service and the lying in state of the Pope, tomorrow will be the calling of the General Election, Wednesday will be final PMQs, Thursday will be the dissolution of Parliament, Friday will be the Pope’s funeral, and Saturday will be the Royal Wedding. A busy, but well co-ordinated, week.

The latest on Charles’s wedding problems:

Prince Charles’ wedding to Camilla Parker Bowles will go ahead Friday as planned, even if it clashes with the funeral of Pope John Paul II, the prince’s office said Sunday.

This just seems a foolish position to take, because most of the people invited to the wedding (or at least the civil ceremony) will be expected (and no doubt will attend) the funeral in Rome. Last time I checked, people can’t be in two places at once, so Charles will end up with no wedding guests, making the whole event look even more of a farce than before.

It’ll also present a bit of a dilemma to the journalists – which is more important, the unpopular wedding of the future king of our country, or the funeral of the greatly respected leader of over one billion worldwide? It’s certainly not clear-cut, because they’re both about as high as high can be on their relative importance scales.

As it happens, I shouldn’t think it would matter anyway, since I think the Pope’s funeral will be on Thursday, not that I have any particular basis for that feeling. If I’m right, though, it will be a mighty busy news week, with the election called on Tuesday (thanks to the sensible and respectful delay in the election announcement), and the wedding on Friday. Monday will probably have lots of coverage of Mr Blair’s visits to Westminster Cathedral, and Wednesday will be busy with the last PMQs before the dissolution of Parliament.

The worst possible problem for Mr Blair now would be the unlikely calling of the funeral for Wednesday, which would see him miss the last PMQs, and struggle to get an announcement out on Tuesday. Of course, he could surprise us all and announce next week, or even dumbfound us all and wait until June, Maggie Thatcher style – though that would be a bad move, considering the battering Labour are likely to receive in the local elections – unless Milburn et al can work that into the masochism strategy somehow.

Whichever way you look at it, though, this week is going to be a biggun’ in almost every news sphere, and with an intense election campaign and conclave looking like they’re going to coincide, it won’t be letting up any time soon.

Some good news on the ID Cards bill:

Controversial plans to introduce the ID cards are also expected to be shelved, with both opposition parties again determined to block the them.

But given that Labour are still marginally leading in the election race, it looks like it’ll be a temporary reprieve:

Clarke said their position ‘was crazy’ and pledged to reintroduce ID cards if Labour is re-elected, adding: ‘It will then become an election issue – which it doesn’t have to be. If it is, it will be because the Tories and Liberal Democrats have decided to make it an election issue.’

I really think that a scheme that is to cost hundreds of millions with little actual advantage to the fight against crime – or anything else for that matter – should be an election issue, and the fact that Mr Clarke thinks otherwise is perhaps because he knows that he can’t form a robust defence in the eyes of the public.

Writing in this week’s New Statesman (well, New Stateswoman – for one week only), Amanda Platell (who, it surprises me to find, I’ve never blogged about before, despite my simmering dislike) said the following (you have to pay to access the full article, but here‘s the link in case you’re particularly interested):

From dawn to dusk, TV executives are still opting for the boy-meets-girl presenter combination: enter Dermot Murnaghan and Natasha Kaplinksky, the former on the back of a serious journalistic career, the latter on the strength of her dazzling cha-cha and equally blinding ambition.

If young female presenters are chosen for their lip gloss and dancing ability, who will be surprised when, in 20 years’ time, there are no contenders for the heavy-weight hard-news jobs?

And, as much as I don’t like agreeing with her, I am forced to do so here. I think she’s probably got a point. There are currently no major news or political programmes anchored by women – though I’m surprised to see that Ms Platell chose not to promote her dire televisual car-wreck in her column this week as an example of a female success. I actually think that women can be much better than men at presenting certain stories, and I think that a political show led by a woman could be very successful – Perhaps a good idea in the search for a replacement for Frost? Unfortunately, I can’t think of any women in the media world at present who could pull it off, with the possible exception of Kirsty Young. The list Platell provides of high-flying women all seem too nice or too stern for such a show.

We need some new, good quality, female blood in the news-sphere – not fluffy celebrities like Natasha, who I’ve certianly never really warmed to on Breakfast, simply because she sees herself as ‘above’ the programme. Where are the female Paxmans, Dimblebys, and McDonalds? Someone should go out and find them.

Surely no-one can have believed this year’s April Fools’ prank from Google. But I bet a lot of people did.

Andrew Brown’s helmintholog looks at the front pages of the most popular papers in our country on the day following the death of one of the most widely respected world leaders in history. Highlights include The People: “Drunk for 2yrs solid” and “The Corrie Monster exclusive”; and the ‘upmarket’ Daily Mail: “Camilla will be Princess of Wales”.

And we’re supposed to have one of the best press packs in the world.

The not entirely unexpected announcement that Pope John Paul II has died was made a little over ninety minutes ago. The funeral will now occur sometime within the next nine days (probably next Saturday confirmed moments after posting this as Wednesday – much earlier than usual now expected Thursday finally confirmed as Friday), and then the conclave to elect a new Pope will occur between fifteen and twenty days from now.

I somewhat ashamed to say that I really don’t know enough about the life of this Pope to write anything very meaningful, so I’ll just say that, from what little I know of him, he has been a truly Great Pope, even if I disagreed with what he said a lot of the time. The fact that he’s stuck to his way of thinking to the very end is something that can only be respected. There’s a full obituary over on the Guardian site, written by Peter Hebblethwaite (who died in 1994, apparently).

I’ll be watching this ground-breaking TV programme, and I think it looks worth recommending to you, too. It’s The Quatermass Experiment, on BBC Four, live at 8.20pm tonight. Can’t wait.

From this poster, you might get the impression that interest rates have halved under Labour. An easy mistake to make, I agree. Sadly, though, it isn’t true. When Labour came to power, the interest rate was 6.25%. It’s now 4.75%. If Mr Brown’s maths thinks that’s interest rates halved, then how on earth are we supposed to trust his budgets?

The Conservatives have produced some figures that you can argue about, but they have a pretty clear explanation of how they’ve done their calculations and why they’ve done them that way. And, as it happens, they haven’t used the figures that would show Labour in the worst light: They’ve tried to be as logical as possible using the next-to-useless government figures produced by Labour. Their crime ads are blatantly misleading, though, and quite a disappointment because of this. But, by my count, Labour are still streets ahead on the number of blatant lies they’ve told during this pre-election campaign. But then, Alan Milburn said he’d do anything to win. Labour should be ashamed.