This is not news.

Now, clearly, this isn't news. It's just me putting words onto the intertubes somewhere very few people are going to read. And that's fine. I never claimed that this was news. The BBC, however, seem pretty big on the whole "this is the news" thing. So, I'm guessing it's a slow news day since the front page of bbc news was taken up with (in big-o-vision) Jade Goody shuffling off this mortal coil. Now, those of you (and I use "you" in the loosest possible sense, given that I'm writing this for a target audience of no one) that have had the unbridled pleasure of chatting to me about the subject of Big Brother and the contestants (and viewers) thereof over the past few years may suspect that I did a happy dance when seeing the news.

Thanks for the vote of confidence there, people. What sort of twisted psychopath do you take me for? Of course it's very sad when someone dies. If, for example, you know them even slightly. But, on the other hand, lots of people die every day. I'm willing to bet that a fair few of them are at least as worthy of a good mass mourn as Ms Goody. So why the hell is this front page news? And sweet zombie jebus, what is the Prime Minister doing leading the tributes to someone who never actually did anything noteworthy in the first place? Does he have nothing better to do? I'd quite like the leaders of the nation to spend their time worrying about slightly less trivial (sorry, but on a national level it's pretty trivial) things than the death of a reality TV "celebrity". And get this crap off the news. Let's have some fear-mongering, baseless speculation and horribly mangled misreporting of science. Have our journalists no professional pride? Will no one think of the children/immigrants/environment/bankers [delete as appropriate]?. We don't need cultural nonevents reported for the sake of it. Any idiot can write a piece about that and post it somewhere no one need ever have to bother reading it. Look, one just did.

Hmm.

On consideration, I'm tempted to think it's probably for the best if the current leaders of the nation spend their time commenting on the latest from the ex-I'm-a-big-celebrity-brother-academy-factor cultural melange than actually doing government. At least they'll be too distracted to cock anything up that way.