Home: A nasty man in England killed two little girls. His trial was headline news every day for the last four weeks. Even the day when one juror was a little poorly and the trial was postponed, this fact got top billing on the news.
Away: Pictures reach our screens of a man having a spatula shoved in his torch-lit bearded cake-hole. The man is said to enjoy Mars Bars and Snickers. We are shown the evidence – choccie bars strewn left and right. The man’s US captors are probably checking for cavaties and gingivitis. The bearded man is probably a tramp hired for the camera to pretend to be another man who has done some very bad things. Have you ever heard of Bum Fights? Homeless people on the streets of the US will apparently fight other homeless people in front of cameras for money. Bum Fights. You could probably pay bums to pretend to be deposed evil dictators for far less money than it would cost to hire Brad Pitt to do the same thing. Not only bums fight in front of cameras for money. Some people in funny uniforms fight all over the world in front of cameras. For all sorts of reasons. Political instability, regime change, oil. You have to pay them each quite well to do that though. They are called soldiers.
Away: Some people who are quite naughty are being held in a prison. It is like being on holiday, in Cuba, where it is quite sunny and nice. Cuba isn’t like most countries. It is full of communists. The US is not communist, but it has a naval base on a part of Cuba, which is. The US navy used to make coal there, as well as looking after the naughty people in the holiday camp.
Home: The price of houses in England is set to rise. The people who make money from lending money to other people to buy houses say this. They say that the housing market won’t crash next year. A housing market crash is when lots of people buy things they can’t afford, and then someone says the things are worth less than they used to be for no apparent reason. Houses are very different to cars. Cars get cheaper when they are older. Houses get more expensive when they are older, even if you don’t polish and wax them or have them serviced. Car crashes are very different to house market crashes.
History: Many years ago, a man called William came to England on holiday. He like the place so much that he disenfranchising anglo-saxon landowners and instituted a brand of feudalism that strengthened the monarchy. This means that the English people got whupped in battle by the french at somewhere called Hastings. England is full of saxons, angles, normans and romans. A Swedish pop group sang a song about a battle that the English won. It was such a good song that a train station in London was named after it. The battle happened after William was dead, and his friend Napoleon wanted to come to England on holiday. If someone wrote a song about Hastings, no-one in England would buy it. Comedy programmes 20 years ago used to tell racist jokes. Racist jokes are not allowed any more, so you have to be deadly serious when you say you want to invade france these days.