Smurfing USA

Every so often the US stock exchange invites a celebrity to ring the bell to signal the start of trading.
At the moment the US economy is in such a mess than unless the Republicans and Democrats work out a compromise, the government will be broke.
So, which important figure did they get to open the stock exchange on Friday? Yes, that's right, the Smurfs.
And not even real Smurfs but people dressed up as Smurfs.
Apparently there's a movie out - I believe it features Katy 'look at me, I'm so wacky, no really much wackier than Lady Gaga, so wacky that I married Russell Brand, please look at me, pleeeeeze' Perry.
Nice to know that even though America faces its greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression, thanks to a ridiculous two party governmental system that means no one ever has any power to do anything, as long as they can still give a rubbish film a bit of a leg up, then why should any of us worry.
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It's not just phone hacking that brings journalism into disrepute. Sometimes it's journalism itself and I give you no finer example of the kind of guff that masquerades as personality than Liz Jones in the Mail over the last couple of days, berating the NHS because her local GP's receptionist refused to let her jump a queue of genuinely ill people (and perhaps, just perhaps, some malingerers) in order for her to get an innoculation that her private doctor wasn't able to give her.
Never mind that she was not registered at this particular practice, nor that she did the whole 'don't you know who I am' schtick, it was the fact that she was on her way to Somalia to visit dying children on behalf of Her Majesty's Daily Mail that made her think she was entitled to special treatment from an NHS she had ignored since birth.
Needless to say she was refused, as the surgery did not have any record of her and do not simply give people injections just because they say they need them. And needless to say this mad harpie who has chronicled various embarrassing facets of her life without a shred of shame, wrote a long and self serving column about it. It makes me ashamed that she pretends to belong to the same profession as me.
There's nothing wrong with disagreeing with a columnist when they make their own points and have their own beliefs that are different to mine. I can happily read and disagree with Clarkson and Littlejohn and even Melanie Phillips - who thinks that just because a Nazi nutter shoots 70 kids because he hates multi-culturalism, doesn't mean it was her fault (the Norwegian Nazi Nutter quoted Melanie Phillips in his rambling manifesto). So not everyone who hates immigrants is a mass murderer. Shame she never made the point that not every Muslim on the Tube with a backpack is a bomber.
But back to barking Miss Jones.
The very fact she is going to report back from Somalia is cause for concern in itself, from someone so detached from reality that she thinks being a non-smoking vegetarian with private healthcare means she should jump to the front of the NHS queue.
Let's guess now what she'll write from Somalia. Here's a few suggestions: business class travel to Africa is outrageously expensive; famine and a lack of a cohesive government is terrible for house prices; Civil War gives you cancer; Bob Geldof raised all that money and yet this still happens; the way the women admired my Mulberry handbag tells me that amid the food shortages and rape of children, there is still hope for this war-torn nation; they may be poor, they may be starving, but at least they're not claiming benefits - How Starving Somalians Put Britain's Welfare State to Shame.
For a more detailed, bit-by-bit demolition of everything Liz Jones said in her disgraceful article, read this blog by a doctor (ie: someone who knows what he's talking about and not a journalist!)
http://www.briankellett.net/brian-kellett-dot-net/2011/8/1/raised-expectations.html?SSLoginOk=true
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Body fascism. It's everywhere. The sooner anyone puts on a bit of weight then the aesthetic army  jumps on them, though not literally of course. Going on holiday? Then don't dare carry any spare ounces on the beach otherwise some skinny cyclist will castigate you for daring to go out in public without having a six pack.
And yet have you noticed how health freaks who run marathons in their spare time or cycle 1,000 miles a week, look nice and thin but at least 10 years older than they really are?
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Anyone see Dragons Den? The new series features some woman who hasn't realised that shoulder pads went out 30 years ago, looks like a hunchback with half a ton of Blue Circle's finest slapped on her face and looks and sounds like a female Les Dawson after 100 Woodbines a day.
If I didn't know better I could have sworn I'd seen her driving a juggernaut down the M1, window wound down, an Anchor tattoo on her  bicep and sucking on a Yorkie.
I'm out...Solly