Clarkson got in trouble this week for a joke about the Public Sector Pensions Strike (which I completely support). The joke as reported was in pretty poor taste and not at all funny, but actually in context it did make me laugh.

I don’t think he should be prosecuted for this, but perhaps he should reconsider his relationship with the BBC like Jonathon Ross had to a couple of years ago. When you have the comfort of a big, lucrative BBC contract its easy to overestimate your own importance and forget the audience you are playing too.

I wouldn’t want our comedians’ freedoms limited to the extent that Stewart Lee couldn’t tell this joke:

The Libyans, when they didn’t like their leader, they dragged him out of a sewer pipe, shot him in the face, and put him in a meat fridge. Nobody told them to, they just went ahead and did it. That’s the big society in action, David Cameron.

(Thanks Zoe Williams in the Guardian for that one), but I’m guessing he won’t be telling it on the One Show any time soon.

And I still don’t know if I like Frankie Boyle, but I thought he gave a very good account of himself in this Guardian profile.

Then Ed Miliband demanded a judicial enquiry, Rebekah Brooks’ resignation and Murdoch’s takeover of BSkyB be stopped. It all happened.

Today Roy Greenslade is asking for David Cameron to go. Oh please, let it be so …

Thanks also to all  the advertisers who have made the right choice this week.

Everything News International have done over the last five years to try and contain this has failed, so its not over yet. When the BBC got in to trouble over Andrew Gilligan it was Greg Dyke who resigned and everyone else who stayed on. With the News of the World its been the opposite, they’re laying everyone off except the bosses.

The Guardian says Andy Coulson is to be arrested tomorrow. They need to arrest Rebekah Brooks as well, and the Murdochs, and Jeremy Hunt needs to tear up the deal to allow the sale of BSkyB.

Then get Tommy Sheridan back in court and see who News International send to say he’s a liar.

And then lets shut down the Sun, Mirror and Star as well. All of these awful papers diminish us.

And I’m not going to mention West Ham again until David Sullivan and David Gold are out of the boardroom and the Sunday Sport is gone forever.

We all forgot how clever the Tories are, that’s the start. We’re all falling for how comic they are: the comedy of the coalition; Clegg and Cameron beside the hospital bed. They’re fooling us into thinking they’re funny – but they’re not, they’re viciously clever people.

And who can complain when they introduce massive austerity measures and then, ‘Oh, by the way, we’re crippling the BBC at the same time’. Because of course we’re manning the barricades for the hospitals, the children, for food – never mind television.

Or sincerely Christian, like this guy (also in today’s Guardian):

My opposition to homophobia is not motivated by a desire to conform to society’s norms but by a belief in the radical nature of Jesus’s message. Jesus’s teachings have little, if anything, in common with the “family values” lobby. Jesus redefined family, insisting that “whoever does the will of God is my brother, my sister, my mother”. He challenged the sexual values of his time, allowing women to make physical contact with him in a society that found it shocking. He criticised divorce in a context in which only a man could initiate a divorce, throwing his wife into social disgrace or poverty. He socialised with prostitutes. This is not to say that he condoned prostitution, but he saved his harshest words for the rich, the powerful and religious hypocrites who promoted legalism over love.

Hey, look at me, I’m Curt Swan.

And just for the avoidance of doubt I voted Yes to AV on Thursday, because I don’t believe in cutting off my nose to spite the Lib Dems.

uh oh …

Let us hope that we never have terms and conditions applied to our NHS.

I see Nick Clegg put up a strong argument in favour of AV.

I wonder which way he intends to vote ?

And just for the record, I will be voting for AV, but I’m still mad as hell at the Liberals for betraying the students (and the rest of their voters).

Hmmm. After reading this book I’m less sure. I had read extracts of the first chapter, about cereal production, in the Guardian and that was enough to get me to buy the book. It struck me that from 38 years of watching TV advertising I had learned that breakfast cereals were both fun and good for you, I didn’t actually know anything about how they are made and why the advertisers work so hard getting us to eat them.

The system of food manufacture and distribution we have now keeps people in poverty by persuading us to buy food made in factories from cash crops that make us fat and unhealthy but make vast fortunes for a handful of multinational corporations and retail chains. This isn’t good.

Felicity Lawrence writes about the human and environmental cost of our sugar, corn,  milk, bacon, fish and soya oil. I never even knew I was eating soya oil.

Reading this book on the train on the way home and then going to the shops to buy cake for a family treat was a source of anxiety. But the book ends optimistically. We can improve our own diet by eating simpler food, but fixing all this will need political will and that will is growing.

Which just leaves the question of what should we eat ? The answer:

organically, more locally, more seasonally, more directly from producers and independent retailers, more fair trade, less meat and animal produce, more wholegrains, pulses, fresh fruits and vegetables, few highly processed foods, nothing with ingredients on the label you cannot recognise, nothing that claims to be a new or techno food, nothing highly packaged

Here’s me trying.