There was one slightly surprising thing about US lawyer Guy Womack’s comparision between the Abu Ghraib prison abuses, cheerleader shows, and tethering small children to protect them from harm.

He wasn’t being hired to say this by the government.

The tsunami’s effect on the Andaman & Nicobar islands was particularly shocking. Partly because a good friend spent three months last year on an Andaman island viewing it as the most amazing, least commercialised paradise ever (yes, I know this is Western-gap-year-bollocks; the relevant point here is that she won at the Western-gap-year-bollocks game), so it’s weird for that paradise to be destroyed.

The other reason is that in Indian culture, Nicobar is seen as the last refuge of the cannibals that they a) drove out of the rest of India b) forcibly converted to Hinduism c) killed, and therefore I’ve always had an image of it as pre-Aussie-imposition-of-arguably-sensible-Western-law Papua New Guinea.

While I’m not massively up for hanging out with too many cannibals any time soon, it feels like the world would be somehow a less interesting place were cannibal tribal culture fully extinguished. Reassuringly, it seems that at least some Nicobar tribespeople were doing well enough after the disaster to continue trying to shoot the Indian Air Force with arrows.

Admirable.

I feel a bit sorry for Mark Doogue (pronounced ‘dodgy’, presumably), who told his family he was off to Thailand for three months while actually off to jail, then got found out for tsunamical reasons.

Presumably he especially resents the efforts of emergency services to put them in touch: imagine how much of a hero he’d’ve been if he’d been let out then returned saying "oh yeah, I’m alive; hi guys. I haven’t got much of a tan cos I was in hospital for ages, sorry I haven’t been in touch…"

Found via the ever-entertaining Biased BBC, a set of demented ravings from the paranoid brigade.

Jesus… I lived without a TV license for six years; this was easy, as I simply threw away all letters from the TVLA unread. No stress. How do these people cope with bills? "British Gas has sent me a threatening letter telling them I owe them £50 and that they’ll cut off my gas if I don’t pay. Their letters are actively rude, offensive and frightening."

Biased BBC’s current obsession, meanwhile, is that the BBC is creating future Islamic terrorists by daring to report that there are rumours in circulation about why the Diego Garcia US base escaped tsunami devastation.

The point that such (rather silly) rumours would not be circulating were the current US administration not a bunch of cynical liars who have been proven willing to cause the deaths of thousands for political means is, it appears, lost on the BBC’s critics.

If you, like me, are a fan of Tesco and food retailing in general, then you’ll find this article interesting.

Favourite fact: Tesco Expresses are made in a factory in Scotland that turns out one local shop a week (I guessed this when they installed a Tesco Express near where I used to live over the course of approximately a fortnight…)

I wonder if the Manic Street Preachers will play at the Cardiff Live Aid-style Asian disaster gig? If so, hopefully they’ll play this one.

What does "disco dancing with the rapists" mean, anyway? Actually, I’ve been to bad provincial clubs where the appearance and behaviour of the locals could provide at least one possible explanation.

Update: The Manics have confirmed they’ll play…

Stewart Lee’s excellent Jerry Springer The Opera is going out on British TV tonight (BBC2 10PM). A bunch of ridiculous religious nutters are complaining that it’s rude and offensive and shouldn’t be shown. They should be ignored: most of them look like they’ll die soon anyway, and hopefully their attitudes will die with them.

The protests have made an impact among PR-hungry politicians (apparently, there’s an election due soon. Who knew?): Conservative deputy head Michael Ancram has told the press that he agrees with the protestors, and that the play should not be shown on TV.

This is not a surprise, but should be kept in mind by any classical liberals who were planning on voting Tory this time round. They are not a liberal party. They are not a libertarian party. They want to exercise more control over the important bits of your life (and whether you pay 35% tax or 40% tax is certainly not one of these) than do the Lib Dems – or even Labour.

Apparently the US Army compels its recruits to have socialist haircuts. I’m sure if they were aware of this fact, they’d mutiny.

And yet, people are good. And yet, people are unimaginably evil.

Ah, it’s all far too confusing. Should you have any dodgy Xmas/New Year’s fizz left over, I’d recommend making champagne sorbet too. It has a surprisingly potent effect…