You may remember from last week that a new terror alerts system is to be introduced in response to the London bombing of 7th July. Clearly, it’s important that the public know the terror level at all times, because if we’d known that it was lowered from ‘severe’ to ‘substantial’ just before the attacks then we would’ve been more vigilant. Apparently. No, I don’t understand either.

Anyway, the new system does away with ‘Negligible’, because, durr, we’re always facing the biggest threat we’ve ever faced – otherwise we wouldn’t vote for policies which restrict our everyday lives (like ID cards or House Arrest). They’ve also combined ‘Severe Defined’ and ‘Severe General’ into ‘Severe’, because we can never be sure whether we’ve received intelligence about an attack anyway until after the attack takes place. And no-one really knows whether the intelligence is ‘patchy’ or ‘clear and authoritative’ anyway.

So how will the new system work? Well, I reckon the levels of threat will be determined much like this:

• Low: Oh my god, there’s a terrorist with a big nuclear bomb sat with a detonator in the centre of London. Best not panic the public, let’s keep the alert level down.
• Moderate: Hmm, some planes seem to be heading off course and towards some tall public buildings. Probably not worth calming the public completely, they might not accept draconian control measures, but let’s reassure them a bit.
• Substantial: The Daily Mail, that most reliable intelligence source, says someone who once passed Prince Charles’s butler’s cousin twice removed on Oxford Street made a comment that the Monarchy should be abolished! Clearly a terrorist plotting to kill the Queen!
• Severe: Someone seen calmly walking into a tube station wearing a light denim jacket. Shoot!
• Critical: Save our good Christian souls, a Muslim family has moved into a quaint village in Middle England! We don’t want those people here! Deport them!

So there you go! In fact, the official definitions are worse:

• Low: “An attack is unlikely”
  Which presumably means it’s not likely, but it is possible. See also ‘moderate’.
• Moderate: “An attack is possible but not likely”
  Which presumably means an attack is, erm, unlikely. See also ‘low’.
• Substantial: “Strong possibility of an attack”
  Presumably meaning an attack is quite likely. See also ‘severe’.
• Severe: “An attack is highly likely”
  Or, there is a strong possibility of an attack. See also ‘substantial’.
• Critical: “An attack is expected imminently”
  But we’re not going to tell you where or when. Bwwaaaahaahaaa!

I feel safer already!

The Right Honourable John Leslie Prescott is to have his wrists slapped for staying at Philip Anschutz’s ranch and failing to declare an interest (until bullied into it, of course). My question: Who’s going to do the slapping? Given Mr Prescott’s history of, err, hands-on politics (and no, not hands on that!), who is going to stand there and give him a good slapping?

Those unfamiliar with Westminster disciplinary proceedings may be somewhat lost, assuming ‘slapped wrists’ is merely a figure of speech. They would be wrong. The system works thusly:

• Horrendous, intolerable offences, like taking a two-week part time job whilst not in cabinet without consulting the correct committee are punishable with immediate sacking.
• Major offences like disagreeing with the Prime Minister is treated to a humiliating ‘You’ve let me down, you’ve let the Party down, and most of all, you’ve let yourself down’ speech until eventually you feel forced out of the clique and out of the cabinet.
• If you’re a little bit naughty and abuse your power by sleeping with your secretary, you go over the PM’s knee and have a couple of departments taken off you, but keep your job, salary, and perks.
• If you do something minor, like accepting gifts and holidays from someone before then giving them governmental support (let’s just call it being generally corrupt), then you get a quick slap on the wrist.
• If you do something barely worth mentioning, like, y’know, lying to Parliament or starting an illegal war, then that’s just brushed under the carpet.

See, it all makes perfect sense. All we need now is someone good at ducking!

A health select committee report out today says that the current system of NHS charges should be revamped. They’re talking about phone costs, eye tests, prescriptions, dental care, and – crucially – car park charges.

The current proposal is that people who have to attend hospital daily for treatment should get free parking. Not wanting to sound selfish here, I have to ask: What about me?

I’m a medical student. I go to the hospital every day, pay over £1,000 per year for the privelege, and often spent late nights there effectively working for the hospital for free. And yet I have to pay over £2 per day for car parking charges. Over the course of the last few months, that’s £343.20*.

Now, it might be argued that, hey, I’m young and fit, I can park away from the hospital car park. Well, no, not really, because not only does that drive local residents absolutely mad, and it’s potentially dangerous to go walking round these very quiet, poorly lit areas at 10pm.

*In fact it isn’t, because I don’t park there. Understandably.

Normally, I like to joke about the links I publish here, perhaps slipping in a gentle pun or two, to point out the ridiculous nature of the idea communicated.

Here, I just don’t know what to say.

Channel 4 is to bring mass public masturbation to the small screen.

The broadcaster – once led by Michael Grade, dubbed “pornographer in chief” by the Daily Mail – has commissioned a documentary about the UK’s first “masturbate-a-thon” as part of a series of programmes dubbed “Wank Week”, MediaGuardian.co.uk can reveal.

Wank Week!?

It’s all over the news, yet almost everyone I talk to claims they have no idea what’s going on this week in the Middle East. Now, my personal knowledge of Middle Eastern politics is abominable, but I’ve made it my mission to explain the current problem in the simplest possible terms. Yes, I’ve ignored hundreds of years of history here, and probably insulted everyone involved in the conflict by doing so, but I’m presenting this at the simplest possible level, the very basics, the ‘dumbed down’ version – that is, the level I understand it. So here goes.

Hezbollah is a political and military group in Lebanon, which was formed in the 1980s to drive Israeli troops out of Lebanon. By 2000, they achieved this objective, and so won lots of support from the Lebanese people. So much support, in fact, that they won lots of votes in Lebanese elections, and now have a sizable presence in the Lebanese parliament, and even a representative in the cabinet. Now, crucially, whilst they have a big political influence in Lebanon, Hezbollah is not the Lebanese government. Hezbollah is a separate political and military organisation.

On Wednesday, Hezbollah – this military group – attacked an Israeli town, and in so-doing managed to kill several Israeli soldiers, and capture two. Why they did this isn’t clear, but it may have been an attempt to capture some soldiers with which to bribe Israel into releasing some prisoners which Hezbollah beleives are being wrongly held.

Obviously, Israel didn’t take to kindly to this, with the Prime Minister calling it an ‘act of war’. But, of course, the action wasn’t launched by the Lebanese government, but by Hezbollah – a group that just happens to be in Lebanon, and has a lot of popular support there. Despite this, Israeli troops responded by dropping bombs on Lebanon, and returning into Lebanon for the first time since they withdrew in 2000. That pissed off Hezbollah somewhat, this being the group which had forced the Israelis out of Lebanon in the first place.

On Thursday, Israel continued to pummel Lebanon with bombs, killing at least 35 Lebanese civilians, and essentially said that Lebanon and Hezbollah could forget the idea of keeping the border between the countries at the location they’d agreed when the troops withdrew. George Bush said that Israel was well within its right to beat the poop out of Lebanon given that they’d been suddenly attacked, but the EU were less happy, saying that Israel was being too harsh with their response, given the small scale of the first attack and its unofficial nature.

Also on Thursday, a big bomb was dropped on Israel’s third biggest city. Hezbollah said it wasn’t them, but (probably understandably) Israel didn’t believe them. So on Friday, Israel went and bombed the Hezbollah headquarters, which made the Hezbollah leader pledge ‘open war’ against Israel. By this time, the UN Security Council is starting to get a bit worried, and says that it’s unfair that Israel is killing a whole load of Lebanese civilians, and basically asked it to stop. They didn’t.

As Israel’s attacks on Lebanon grew, so Hezbollah’s responses grew. On Saturday, the Lebanese Prime Minister called for help, because his country was being turned into a ‘disaster zone’. Of course, the Lebanese Prime Minister has no control over Hezbollah, as they’re a separate group, so he can’t stop the attacks that Israel sees as Lebanon committing.

So now, the attacks are getting bigger and bigger. The worry now is that Israel might start being aggressive towards the countries that contribute funds to Hezbollah – namely Syria and Iran. Of course, if Israel attacks, they will be forced to respond, and then the whole region will be at war.

Obviously, war would be bad in and of itself, but it’s got the rest of the world worrying because much of the world’s oil comes from the Middle East, and getting that oil isn’t going to be too easy if there’s a war on. Which means oil prices will rocket, and that will destabilise all of our economies.

But how can we stop this? Hezbollah aren’t going to back down, even though their initial attack did appear to be somewhat provocative. But Israel’s at fault too, for a clearly disproportionate response. A very rough and ready analogy would be if the Lib Dems in the UK were to capture American soldiers to barter for the release of prisoners from Guantanamo Bay, and America responded by bombing Leeds. There are no good guys in all of this – they’re all at fault.

Israel quite understandably won’t talk to Hezbollah, as it’s seen as a small radical group, and the Lebanese government who Israel will talk to have no control over Hezbollah. But it’s probably unreasonable to ask Israel not to respond to Hezbollah’s attacks, and Hezbollah will continue to respond to Israel’s attacks, tit-for-tat.

So how can it be stopped when the parties involved won’t even speak to each other? Beats me.

For more on the on-going crisis, see the BBC’s special site.

A little bit late I know, but could this, from 21st June, be the best Grauniad correction ever?

In our review of The Who at Leeds University, page 36, June 19, we attributed to Pete Townshend the exclamation, “You are wank!” [sic]. We are assured that what he actually told the audience was, “We are all back.” Apologies.

Oops.

Walter Pincus, a veteran Washington Post reporter, argues that US networks should fight back against what he terms ‘the PR presidency’ by refusing to cover statements and events staged purely as PR boosters. I say: Please ignore him.

If we were to ignore every PR-motivated statement, we would miss real gems. We would’ve missed the sight this week of Blair desperately trying to convince us he’s a “green” PM by giving a statement whilst stood aboard a launch by a windfarm: Possibly the most ludicrous PR stunt this PM has undertaken in a few years, which served only to make him appear “green” in an unintended sense. Well, that’s not quite true. It also served to lift the spirits of a nation through a profound sense of schadenfreude.

It probably also served as a reasonable metaphor for the “rocky times” this government is currently undergoing, what with members of the governing party and close friends of the PM being arrested. Though that, too, is really quite fun to watch: After everything he’d done wrong, the net is finally closing in on him. It’s a little like the fifth season of 24, but without the cliffhangers every hour. Or, y’know, MacBeth if you go for the more traditional approach.

The tragedy for Blair is that he’s now lost control of the “stable and orderly transition” he always wanted. He’s stayed past his welcome, and there’s now no way to resign with dignity. He’s off, and not at a time of his own choosing. And power won’t be handed straight next door, there will be a challenge. Blair’s government can no longer end; it will be ended, leaving Blair humiliated, just as he’s being humiliated into playing Cameron catch-up now.

Blair’s started out as a PR government, and it’s ending as a PR government. Just different PR’s. Humiliating and undignified.

From last week’s Friday Thing:

‘A third of the population regularly suffer paranoid or suspicious fears that others intend to harm them, say researchers,’ reported the Daily Mail this week. Apparently psychologists at King’s College London have found that a worryingly large proportion of people believe others intend to do them harm or are criticising them behind their backs. The research suggests that paranoia could be as widespread as depression or anxiety.

Exactly why we’re all so paranoid isn’t clear, but one explanation could well be: ‘It’s because you’re reading the Daily fucking Mail.’

The *same* edition contained the following headlines:

– Will Britons be forced to eat hormone injected beef?

– Security bosses keep terror watch on 1,200 homegrown fanatics

– Schoolgirls’ websites make them prey for paedophiles

– Migrant housing cheats

– Child protection police chief ‘throttled girls’

– The freak accident that left my son obsessed with sex

– You’re eating the WRONG fruit and veg

– IS YOUR X-RAY SAFE?

– TRAPPED IN HER BED FOR 14 YEARS

And, perhaps best of all:

– Is going to the gym BAD for your health? – Lurking on the dumbells. Hidden in the towels. The millions of killer bacteria festering in your gym.’

Yes, millions of deadly bacteria, all waiting to get you, like microscopic Viet Cong. It’s a miracle that regular Daily Mail readers don’t just kill themselves and have done – blissful release from a world of fear and loathing. Or maybe they’re happier that way. As Sparks so eloquently put it: ‘My parents say the world is cruel. I think that they prefer it cruel.’

It’s worth mentioning, too, that for the last little while, The Friday Thing has been free… I’ve always said it was worth signing up for – and that’s true now more than ever!

Just a few minutes ago, a story I’ve been working with Guido Fawkes on was published on his site – using, perhaps, stronger terms than I would dare.

The story was first posted here as a foot note to another post, here. For those who can’t remember, here’s a quick reminder.

Back in 2004, I sent an email to my MP, David Borrow, asking him to sign an Early Day Motion in the House of Commons, stating “That this House deplores recent announcements by leading universities that they are to close, or freeze recruitment to, some departments because of funding problems”. I have long since lost the text of my original email, but happened to come across the originial reply just recently. In it, Mr Borrow said:

I am currently the Parliamentary Private Secretary to Higher Education Minister, Kim Howells MP. When I was appointed I took the decision that as I was a member of the government, albeit at a very junior level, I would not sign EDM’s.

I’m not sure that that’s the best response to the request at the best of times, but – apparently at odds to this statement – he went on to sign hundreds of EDMs whilst PPS to Kim Howells, on subjects as diverse as the televising of cricket, National Tree Week, and Sales of Bananas in the Palace of Westminster. That is to say that he would not sign an EDM which aimed to halt the decline of technological and scientific advancement in the United Kingdom, yet would sign an EDM about bananas in Parliament.

You can see Guido’s comments on the story, and comments left on his website, here.

On a personal note, working with a blogging giant like Guy (featured in today’s MediaGuardian, as it happens) on this has been quite an exciting experience, and a fantastic way to celebrate the growth of my own blog to over 900 posts and 200,000 words. Thanks to your continued visiting, and thanks to new visitors too, the site is going from strength-to-strength, with hits for the first half of 2006 up 105% over those for the same period last year. There have already been over 1,000,000 hits this year, a point only surpassed in November last year. As a blog that does not try to make a profit, hits mean very little – but having so many of them is certainly a personal boost. So thank you to all my readers for your continuing support.

Tomorrow, David Cameron is to make a speech defending the hoodie (hoody? What is the singular?) wearing ‘yoofs’ of today. I guess I’m probably one of them, given that I own two hoodies, though with both of mine being emblazed with university insignias, I’m not sure they’re quite the ones Mr Cameron is complaining about.

But really, this post is an appeal. Please can Mr Cameron follow the lead of Archbishop John Sentamu, and give the speech whilst wearing a hoodie? Tomorrow’s my first weekday off in some considerable time, I have exams coming up, and I need a good laugh. Please, Dave, just for me?