Today Louise Explains... the News. And brings you Value Judgement

Bringing you an open-minded, objective breakdown of current affairs, and then discarding it all and just making spurious generalisations. It’s all very well balanced though, so don’t worry.

Politics:

PRO.
The fact that Gordon Brown has ‘the worst fucking smile in the world’ is now in the public domain, this having finally been revealed by, of all people, the Rt Hon John Prescott...truly a man who should have no trouble in spotting ridiculous things, unless he makes a habit of avoiding mirrors. Brown’s smile and indeed face and general appearance have troubled me for some time, however, I’ve never felt completely comfortable in expressing this. So I am of course delighted that someone has publicly done this for me, and we can all get on with our lives, although I nonetheless feel a bit sad for our PM. What was that saying again? You wait for decades for a job, and then you get it but you’re fucking awful at it and you manage to completely wreck the British economy in the process. Something like that, anyway. Frankie Boyle, imbued with none of the burden of social niceties nor diplomacy of most reasonable people, has previously described his fellow Scotsman’s visage as being ‘like a sad face painted onto someone’s scrotum’, and now that Brown’s loyal colleague has joined the catcalls, I feel that I am finally free to declare Brown’s smile, face and indeed premiership as a huge, terrifying farce. Cheers, John.

CON.
This probably is fairly bad for society as a whole, what with it now being absolutely fine to brazenly insult and ridicule our leaders. I highly doubt that this is what Peter Cook and the nice chaps at Beyond the Fringe had in mind when they set about to satirically undermine deference towards our ruling class. Have we really gone from thinking of our leaders as a flawless elite, to treating them as if they were in some way inferior to the rest of humanity? There isn’t room here for a rant about what the row over MPs’ expenses has done for their credibility in the public’s eyes, but suffice it to say that really aren’t all self-interested, egotistic wankers a la Lord Archer (of Weston-super-Mare, a great town for a great man).

Film:

PRO.
In the Loop is spectacular, I can’t elaborate any more without tedious quoting or lots of exclamation marks, but do see it. The world of film is, net, a happy place.

CON.
Hannah Montana, the existence of.


Health:
PRO.
We seem not to have been obliterated by Swine Flu as previously predicted, good stuff. Props to the Sun who tackled the issue in their usual, moderate way, by proclaiming ‘This Has the Potential to Wipe Out All of Humanity’.

CON.
Tragic deaths, possibility of having spoken too soon. Plus, more importantly, no more jokes about people’s illness manifesting itself with styes or rashers, or of treating the flu with oinkment.


Tv:

PRO.
Eastenders has a new doctor and I can confirm that he’s more attractive than Dr Legg.

CON.
Phillip was fired from the Apprentice last night.

Home affairs:

PRO.
Gurkhas are well on their way to finally and very deservedly receiving the right to settle freely in Britain. As someone or other (almost definitely not Brown) said, anyone good enough to die for England is good enough to live in England. This also represents more embarrassment for Gordon Brown, thereby hopefully leading to his speedy departure from number 10.

CON.
Joanna Lumley is now in with a very genuine chance of becoming the next Prime Minister of Great Britain and First Lady to the Treasury.

Hygiene:

PRO.
All Ladies of Scotland whose husband has just been involved in slaying the heir to the throne for his own personal gain, take heart; hand-washing is now tres chic. Thanks to swine flu, sales of liquid soap have soared and everyone’s doing it, all the time. This can only be a good thing.

CON.
Overly uptight people on the tube who shoot you the Deathglare of Doom when you so much as sniff on a train – it’s not like I’m shooting up, just scratching my nose, okay?

Nationalism:

PRO.
Essex has turned out to be a nice place after all, and not all of it is like Southend, Basildon (Baz Vegas) or indeed Ilford. Some bits of Essex are rather lovely, like Thaxted, where a windmill, cream tea and a lovely walk were all enjoyed on the Bank Holiday.

CON.
No morris dancing to be sighted.


Humour:

PRO.
A pensioner in Berkshire alerted police to the fact that the house next door was being used as a factory to grow fifty-thousand pounds’ worth of cannabis, after she noticed a funny smell... oh, and that her dog, Holly, had started to sleep until mid-morning. Brilliant.

CON.
I thought that Sion Simon’s twitter update, "I'm not saying Susan Boyle causes swine flu. I'm just saying nobody had swine flu, she sang on tv, people got swine flu.", was great. Turns out that this isn’t the general consensus. So the country gets a fuck-off big ‘Sense Of Humour Fail’ from me.

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A pictoral representation to follow.