Twollocks

Twibel. I kid you not, this is now the word used to describe a libel action brought by one person who feels offended by something another has tweeted about them.
Now I'm all for made up words in newspapers but this is ridiculous. I mean, I can understand when the reference fits - like twitterati or twiticisms - but this doesn't rhyme, scan or make sense.
So I looked up others. And they are legion. There's tweeple (for people on Twitter) and twitterverse and even twittercal mass.
It's as if you just put the tw in front of a word and twey presto, you've got yourself a new tword.
I must admit, I've never quite got the benefit of the whole Twitter twenomenon though I have plenty of friends who swear by the twenefits it offers (ok, no more, I promise.)
My company has a Twitter feed but we are only occasional users because we rarely find anything to say that we think will actually help our company. And we write Tweets for others as part of our services, and they find it helpful.
But unlike Facebook and Linked In which has genuinely led to work, I don't think we've ever had anything tworthwhile from Twitter. Sorry, couldn't help that last one.
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As I've only a couple of years left until it hits me, I've started considering all the fun things I can take up when I turn 50 but which I am reluctant to do beforehand in case it makes me old before my time.
So far the list includes cruising (on a cruise ship that is, not dressed in leather with a yellow hankie in my left back pocket which is meant to signify a strange sexual preference I believe), golf, a Porsche and paying off my credit cards. I would add running marathons and boasting about being able to do so aged 50 plus but I have no intention of doing this before or after my 50th to be honest.
Other suggestions from my friends - displaying what they consider to be activities one should not touch with a bargepole when trying to keep young - include pyjamas, watching Formula One, line dancing and touching things with a bargepole.
I would also consider adding skiing to the list. Honestly, it's wasted on the young, all that drinking sweet, warm wine and trying to look cool in the most unfashionable clothes known to mankind (see, also, golf).
Plus Pringle. No one should wear Pringle until they have grandchildren (see, also, golf).
And who knows, once I turn 50 I may even start to like Downton Abbey, Phil Collins and Alan Titchmarsh. Actually, not Phil Collins.
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Talking of golf, it reopened a debate between some pals over what constitutes a sport and what constitutes a game. One friend refuses to acknowledge snooker as a sport. His reasons are not totally clear but he thinks anything involving a table and sitting down every few seconds is more like going out for dinner than playing a sport.
Personally, I've always considered anything in which you can smoke a cigar while doing it is not a sport - hence ruling out darts, cards, that horse and carriage thing that the Duke of Edinburgh does but, strangely, not synchonised swimming (so perhaps there's a flaw in my argument).
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Interesting headline on the back page of the Daily Express this week. While the front page was all about possible nuclear disasters in Japan, the back page, relating to the woes of the English cricket team, screamed: Meltdown.
I think they got it the wrong way round.
Then stablemate, the Daily Star, bolding declared that up to 100,000 were feared dead though, on closer inspection, it turns out that no one with any kind of knowledge has actually predicted this.
But best of all are the TV news channels, including Sky with its legendary frontman Mark 'er' Longhurst who cannot string five words together without going 'er'. Watch him and count the 'ers' in every sentence.
They keep getting proper nuclear experts on who then go and spoil all their fun by not claiming that the world is on the brink of nuclear disaster and then going on to claim that the authorities in Japan are actually handling the power station failures properly and may avoid spreading deadly radiation across the globe. All attempts to get these kosher experts to forecast armageddon are failing miserably and you can tell the er disappointment in er Mark er Longhurst's er voice.
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Sad news from Israel this week where a Palestinian crossed the divide, snuck into a house in the occupied territories and stabbed to death a Jewish couple and their three baby children. That's appalling enough on its own but there is now a row between many Jewish organisations and news gatherers like the BBC and the CNN who compounded the tragedy by refusing to acknowledge there was anything racial about the murders if they covered it at all. Lots of inverted commas around words like 'terrorism' and a lot of excuses to print a litany of charges against the Israeli state rather than concentrate on what is a mass murder of innocent people.
I'm not particularly pro a lot of what goes on in Israel but this is more to do with the right wing leadership than the whole legitimacy of the state argument which I genuinely believe is used by a lot of people to try and hide their anti-Semitism.
There is an awful lot wrong with the way in which Israel sometimes conducts itself but not in this case. This is a human tragedy, wherever it happens. The picture of the murder scene, the photos of the murdered children, the grisly details such as the fact the family were discovered by another daughter who wasn't in at the time and arrived home to find her brothers and sister and parents slaughtered, are too horrific to contemplate.
And then there are the reports of celebrations in the streets of Palestine when the news came out. No matter what your politics, this is just plain wrong. On the other side of the coin I have seen Jewish friends react to these scenes by saying some hateful things themselves about destroying the Palestinians - as if the sentiments behind a final solution don't have enough tragic resonance already.
I don't believe anyone has claimed responsibility but if a terrorist organisation can do something as shameful as this in the first place then surely they can't be too ashamed to own up. And if and when this happens, I hope the BBC and CNN have the guts to report it.
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Professor Brian Cox. It seems my kids love him and a lot of people with no interest in astro physcis think he's dead cool. Personally I think I like him except that he talks as if he's about to laugh all the time and keeps looking away wistfully. I also find it hard to watch his TV series about the universe without trying to work out how many different all-weather outdoor jackets he owns. Ooh look he's wearing a Berghaus, and now he's in a North Face and so on.
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Raymond Blanc. Blimey, how French is it possible to be. He is even more Gallic than Robert Pires. I'm sure he puts it on.
Adieu....Solly