In accepting the Booker Prize last night, Hilary Mantel said the following:

I think Peter Carey said at some point that for an author to win the Booker prize was like being in a train crash. Now if that is so, I can tell you that at this moment, I am happily flying through the air.

How lovely.

How wonderful to equate the suffering, maiming and death of a train crash to winning a prize for writing.

How wonderful for those people who were involved in the Paddington rail crash almost exactly ten years earlier must feel to have their experience compared in this way.

It was a ridiculous comment and for someone who is believed to have a way with words, it is amazing that at no point in writing her acceptance speech did she think it even slightly inappropriate or offensive.

It is my prediction that within a year we will see a book from Andy Hayman with “UK’s 9/11″ in the title.

During the coverage of these three retarded clowns who dreamed of mixing up liquid explosives, he was on every news organisation going, each time excitedly spluttering his claim that this would have been the UK’s 9/11.

He must be gearing up for a book launch “Stopping The UK’s 9/11″ or something similar.

He knows this plot would never have got off the ground, these idiots are not terrorist geniuses, they are idiots who had nothing in their lives and tried big themselves up as terrorists. Looking at their suicide videos, you just have to laugh. One even wipes his nose like a child half way through.

They should not be held up as a serious threat, they should get no credence at all. They should be mocked and ridiculed.

I think mercilessly having the piss taken out of them is more of a deterrent than splashing their names and faces across TV screens world wide.

Popping up in my iTunes Podcasts this morning was “The Real Deal?” in the Five Live Football Daily.

I thought it had the hallmarks of a crap Brian Alexander piece and I was right. The genius title, the cropping up from nowhere, the covering a story a month after it was interesting.

I really wonder what is the point of Brian Alexander. He used to present a pretty decent show on Sunday mornings but since leaving Sportsweek, he seems to go on infrequent jollies at the licence payer’s expense with faux in-depth investigations into stories that are of no importance, relevance or interest.

If you were desparate enough to listen to his pieces in the last few years, you would have been rocked by these revelations:

• Chelsea players earn a lot of money and some spend it on expensive home cinema systems.
• If you turn up unannounced at the offices of a sports agent and demand an interview, you probably will not be let in. It is OK though, because you can then say that they refused an interview request and make yourself sound like you are not lazy.
• Carlo Ancelotti came from a small village near Milan and his Dad was a farmer.
• If you get two respected Spanish football experts and the former President of Real Madrid in a room, you get a decent conversation without having to do anything yourself other than press the Record button.

I would also like to point out that in his piece on Ancelotti, the backing music chosen as the intro to the interview with people from his northern Italian village was by a Napolitan singer, Renato Carosone. It is like using “Maybe It’s Because I’m A Londoner” in a story about a Geordie.

The BBC are totally wasting their money on Brian Alexander.

He does nothing that a staff reporter could not do and is the journalistic equivalent of a duck moat in an MP’s lake – pointless and not something we should be made to pay for.

British Airways today announced that they will no longer offer food on short haul flights after 10:00.

If your flight is less than two-and-a-half hours, you won’t even be offered the chance to buy food or a drink.

If BA cannot even offer a paltry sandwich, how can they claim to be a full service airline? Cutting costs is one thing, but it should never be at the expense of what the customer experiences.

A £5 charge for a food pack would be fine, but cutting the service is a bad move. I have twice been seriously delayed on a BA flight, which involved actually being on board the aircraft for well over three hours and if this happens now, there won’t even be any food or drink available for passengers.

It is a poorly thought out move. Goodbye BA. At least Ryanair have food available to buy and in one move you have comfotably positioned yourselves at the very scrapings of the barrel.

There is huge uproar over revelations of the types of things that Ministers are getting the public to pay for.

It is clear that Ministers are using the public purse as their own personal home improvement service where everything comes for free.

It is a dreadful state of affairs and what is worse is that people like Peter Mandelson just try to brush off the revelations as attempts to smear the Cabinet. The smearing is being done by these politicians themselves and you can bet that the next few days will see politicians wheeling out the same phrases like “We did not break any rules but it is clear that there should be a review”.

Mandelson and his friends need to understand that something does not have to be illegal in order for it to be wrong. The government is morally bankrupt and if people like Harriet Harman seriously think they have nothing to be ashamed of then they are simply wrong.

How’s this for a comment:

“MPs believe in the cause of public service and that’s why they’re in public service and I believe our House of Commons is not scarred by corruption on the scale of other political systems.”

What an idiot. She is basically saying that it is OK as long as the UK is not as corrupt as other countries. These fools should be slung out of office, slung out of their second homes paid for by the taxpayer and slung out of their jobs, plain and very simple.

Shame on them.

Today marks the 20th anniversary of the Hillsborough disaster when 96 Liverpool supporters died at an FA Cup semi final.

The investigation into the incidents that day that led to those terrible deaths is a litany of confusion, poor organisation, substandard facilities and plain incompetence.

The families of those who died continue their campaign for justice, but what does justice mean for them?

Still nobody has taken responsibility for the events that day. It might be hard to blame any one person or organisation for the tragedy, but it is clear that some people made terrible decisions that led to at least some if not all of the deaths.

The tragedy also represented for me the first of New Labour’s deceptions. Jack Straw, shadow Home Secretary at the time, said he would launch an enquiry to decide whether the Hillsborough enquiry should be reopened, if New Labour got in to power in 1997.

Once in power, Straw decided that there was not enough evidence to reopen the enquiry, despite several major problems with the initial one. To me, that was New Labour’s first deception and now look at the political culture they have fostered.

The organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) warned today that the UK has no more funds for bail outs.

The banks have had the lot.

Unbelievable.

MPs awarded themselves a pay increase of just under 2.5% and while the figure was decided upon before the complete collapse of the world’s financial systems, it needs to be reviewed at least and preferably deferred.

Politics really has changed hugely even in the 20 years since I studied it, the major change has been that politics is now a financially viable career option.

But should someone enter politics because of the potential financial rewards?

Labour has shown politics in the UK to be a filthy business where the opportunity exists to run an enterprise that can employ family members, pay for one or even two homes and allow you to claim back the cost of any minor domestic charge as an expense. Even a plug for your sink can be claimed back from the taxpayer.

Why are MPs allowed to have their lives almost completely funded from the public purse? It has become the case that there is no element of having a calling to serve the public, only a calling to cream off the public purse.

I wondered how Jacqui Smith would try to weasel her way out of “Wristgate” but Gordon Brown’s response has really floored me.

To say that her husband submitting an expenses claim on her behalf for TV and Internet connections including two adult films is a “Private Matter” is a joke.

How can it be private when money is being claimed from the public purse? If he was paying for these films himself, that is most certainly a private matter but as soon as he decides that it is appropriate to claim the cost of these films back from the public, it most certainly becomes a public matter and one that should result in Jacqui Smith losing her job.

What does a cabinet minister have to do these days to be kicked out of office?

Remember that Labour effectively won the 1997 election on the wave of criticising the Tories for being the party of sleaze but with the likes of Prescott, Mandelson, Donorgate and many more, Labour are far, far worse because they absolutely refuse to accept any wrongdoing and immediately shuffle like weasels in support of any of their chums who are caught with their fingers in the till. Gordon Brown really ought to be ashamed of himself for supporting Smith so blindly when this is so clearly wrong.

Actor David Jason has caused a stir with an attempted joke he told live on air during the Christian O’Connell show a couple of days ago.

The most interesting thing about it is the incredible overreaction from Absolute Radio who have made him apologise, despite not receiving any complaints about the joke at all. Apologise for nothing, old man!

Try to make sense of these comments from Absolute:

The comments made by David Jason were unacceptable and Christian O’Connell distanced himself from them live on air.

We consider the views of our listeners to be very important and have received no complaints about these comments.

We will continue to monitor any complaints and Christian O’Connell will issue an on-air apology in tomorrow’s breakfast show.

How can you continue to monitor complaints when you haven’t had any? Whoever wrote that wants lynching for ridiculous use of the English language to try and generate a scandal where none exists.

Perhaps Absolute are so scared by the failure of their relaunch that they are trying to drum up some controversy or portray themselves in a favourable light after BrandRossGate.

You can guarantee though, that O’Connell, the world’s funniest man (in his own opinion) has said some far more offensive things on the radio. In fact, I find the fact that he is on the radio offensive.

Maybe Absolute would like to allocate someone to continue to monitor complaints like that. They would certainly be busy.