That bloody woman...

It's very difficult to talk about Katie Hopkins, primarily known for resigning from The Apprentice and engaging in al fresco sex with married fellas, without resorting to schoolyard jibes about her appearance and kicking all the furniture and pets within reach, while simultaneously frothing at the mouth and spitting obscenities.

Well that's the effect she has on me.

Her latest zinger is claiming that Kelly Brook is "a chubster" and that any working woman "can be a size 8" just like her, and that they should just "eat less and move about more".

So far, so simplistic.

I'm not tall, but even at under 6 stone 13lbs/97lbs at one point in my life, I was never a size 8. What I'd like to know, what would she recommend doing in my case, as I am blessed with a sturdy frame? Is someone going to come out with an all new bone-slimming diet? Should I grate myself on a full length sanding block to get my body down to achieve the necessary proportions? Or can I narrow my shoulders and ribcage purely by force of will?

Yet again, we see this lining up of slimness being passed off as virtue, or "if only they can exhibit the same amount of will power as me, then they will be perfect". Virtue is being kind to people, virtue is not the ability to get into a dress size. If the world is full of tactless TV trolls like Katie, I'm moving to Mars.

In which halfwomanhalfbadger decides the world is madder than a bucket of monkeys on mescaline in a blender

WHAT!!!! WHAT!!!! WHAT!!!!

New blog

One of the things that I tend to bang on about a lot is body image.

So I've decided to do something about mine and take up a challenge for 8-ish weeks and I'll be blogging about it here The 40 Ouch 8 Week Challenge. Weird that, not that the title isn't a giveaway.

At the moment, it seems to be me whining about the parlous state of my core muscles...

Talk about going full circle.

Crown Court Sentencings to be Televised

Every now and then, I get a creeping feeling that in 2010, I awoke one May morning into a grim political dystopia, probably muttering the entirely futile words "Look what you've done now..." and "I didn't vote for the bastards, it's your own fault".

Oh wait, oh dear, that did actually happen.

So despite driving 500,000 to such depths of poverty through benefits changes, under-employment or unemployment that they have to rely on food banks to survive, making it easier to sack the people who are, by their labour, underpinning your economy, doesn't appear to be enough.  Where A girl called Jack is faced with the challenge of raising a child on £10 a week.  Of course, all the while the 1% scoff the gourmet burgers, trouser their healthy bonuses/expenses and have a right old chuckle about how many people they've put out of work this week. (Apologies - Link to the Daily Mail).

We are in the tail is wagging the dog territory here. The government are meant to be serving us, sensibly and fairly, and to a certain extent, protecting the populace from their baser instincts. Besides if you fancy baying at the TV, we already have Jeremy Kyle so if you feel the urge to berate people with chaotic lives with an intriguingly loose moral framework, Bob's your uncle. Though if you prefer your vowels rounder and your suits better cut, you can always catch Boris on Question Time or HIGNFY - Or there'll be something on somewhere about Alan Clarke - Shaky grasps on certain social and moral subjects R' Us apparently.

I'm probably being terribly naive here, but I thought the mark of a civilised society was supposed to be that despite the level of your despair and desolation, if you committed a crime, you were treated soberly and respectfully by the justice system and not exposed to the indignities of public sentencing and public punishments. You know, like we used to do, and it was apparently terribly barbaric and unfair?

That is all this is, the government state that it appeals to the need to see justice done, but if anything, it appeals more for our desire for collective revenge. Our baser instincts. While all the time, our rights are eroded when we're distracted by a pantomime of justice.

Showing sentencing on television isn't constructive or likely to build trust in the justice system, it's public flogging or throwing rotten tomatoes at someone in the town square.

Stuff that I learned yesterday....

1. That the world really doesn't care that you've got a bit of knee stubble. This is real life, not Heat magazine and a gigantic red circle is not going to suddenly appear around whatever perceived mistake you've made with your grooming.

2. Fake tan, if applied with a cautious hand, does not necessarily make you look like a clementine in a frock. 

3. Sometimes accidentally buying a dress that's 2 sizes too small is not a disaster.

4. It's possible to bruise your pelvis.

5. That parents, who find that they rein themselves all the time, will, once the cocktails have kicked in, suddenly develop Tourette's (or is that just me?).

6. Eating like a ravening frothing carb beast is the key to preventing hangovers. Small child has been playing the tiny squeaky trumpet and due to general freshness, I don't want to curl into a ball and rock in a corner...

7. Newcastle is awesome x

No words necessary.

Golly, I end up talking about boobs quite often, don't I?

One of those "Mate, you are clearly having a giraffe" moments...

I read this...

Now Angelina Jolie is a bit of a divisive figure for some people, but not for me. She is an incredible advocate for victims of sexual violence in Africa for the UN and truly does use her fame to the benefit of the disenfranchised. She also seems pretty determined to dance to the beat of her own drum.

I like that in a person.

Her openness about her decision to have a double mastectomy is brilliant. My ghast is also truly flabbered that she worked through all this without a word to anybody.

What irks me are comments like this one...

love to Angelina, but if the cure to breast cancer is that woman have to get their breasts removed before they get cancer, we are in trouble

Where do I start?

An individual woman with a "highly-unlikely-to-not-be-life-threatening" gene mutation decides to have a radical procedure that will (unless she's hit by a bus mid op...) improve her life expectancy. The writers' assumption with this statement is that we're all going to start cutting our norks off willy-nilly because we're frightened of getting cancer. An 87% risk of developing breast cancer is a pretty compelling  reason to have a mastectomy.

(See also "Why do women have preventative surgery?" - I'm looking at you, HuffPo).

The wimmins are not a homogenous mass, solely defined by hair colour, "hotness" and breast size. Please get this into your pathetic noggin.

There is nothing whimsical about making the decision to have a double mastectomy.  The BRCA gene test was only made more widely available in the last 7 or 8 years, and this discovery offers a real life line to families whose mothers, sisters, daughters, grandmothers and aunts have died at far too young an age, or lived under the threat of a early painful death. Good treatments for diseases don't exactly fall fully formed from the sky. I once knew someone who had a full mastectomy and reconstruction aged 21, after being diagnosed with breast cancer. I think she'd rather have been on the lash, don't you?

I mean, what can be more selfish that not wanting your family (and children if you have them) to see you dying slowly and far too soon? And not living in fear that one day you're going to find a lump when you're idly showering? Having to tell your kid that, you're very sick, or that you are going to die?

Personally, I'd take the op. The ladies aren't having the boobies cut off to upset you, capiche?

*Previous breasty ruminations can found here...