Comment of the week

By some bloke called He’s Spartacus.

I’ve just tried to sign up for the beta programme.

Unfortunately I was unable to complete the process as there is no option for loyal Subjects of Her Majesty the Queen.

I am not an EU Citizen.

That is all.

This blog supposes it should be happy that it didn’t fall victim to Citzalia’s censorship policy….

New series! Criminal offence of the week!

3,000 plus new offences have been dreamed up since 1997 by the government of the People’s Post-Democratic Euro-Region Formerly Known as Great Britain. As an hommage to the dedication, application and sheer ingenuity of our nation’s lawmakers, He’s Spartacus is proud to present a new weekly series, Criminal Offence of the Week!

It is, believe it or not, a crime to cause a nuclear explosion.

No! Really?

Yes. Really.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think I’m right in saying that it’s been a crime to blow things up, or try to, since at least 1605, and in any case as Chris Huhne said in 2007….

The idea that anyone might cause a nuclear explosion without killing anybody, and therefore being subject to a possible charge of murder, is extremely far-fetched.

In other news….

Wheel invented! Dolly Parton sleeps on her back! Dog licks own genitals!

I baa therefore I are….the final installment

Some people really do have the most extraordinary priorities.

Not only does Adele Grant believe her child should be taught that animals aren’t harmed in the production of meat (and is perfectly comfortable hounding schoolteachers out of a job to prove it), she also appears to think that this, from her Facebook page….

Put it away, love. You're scaring the kids.

….is an appropriate example to set for her 10-year-old daughter.

My work here is done.

Ed Balls in makeup and a Nazi uniform, staring at a bloke’s arse

I dunno, wherever do they dig up this stuff?

Apparently it’s from his salad days at Keble.

No Bullingdon Club references, please. That wouldn’t be fair.

Agassi….My toupé cost me the French Open

Screw the crystal meth stories. This is the real dirt….

“Every morning I would get up and find another piece of my identity on the pillow, in the wash basin, down the plughole. I asked myself: you want to wear a toupee? On the tennis court? I answered myself; what else could I do?”

Did I just write a blog post about tennis?

Sorry. Won’t happen again. Shoot me if you like.

Stephen Fry saves the internet again

A disaster of epoch-making proportions was narrowly avoided yesterday when, for twelve agonising, nail biting hours, the world waited, digits crossed, gaze fixed intently on its computer screens, to see whether or not @stephenfry, the man widely acknowledged to be in charge of the internet, would make good his admonition that he would be leaving social networking site, Twitter, never to return.

This near tragedy came about in the early hours of yesterday morning when hitherto Twitter also-ran and complete unknown, @brumplum, had the downright gall to refer to Fry’s tweets as “boring”. Naturally Fry wasn’t about to take this lying down and returned serve with interest….

To which, sense of fun and japery going into overdrive, our friend The Plum responded….

Only to discover that Fry wasn’t in on the joke….

As is only right and proper when the honour of a National Treasure™ is impugned, the world wide web went into a ferment, and the sense of outrage and moral panic had reached fever pitch by the time Fry’s QI sidekick, the part time actor and full time Dagenham enforcer, @alandavies1, arrived on the scene and waded in with this flailing combination of haymakers….

Followed by….

And finally, the following call for all good Essex men and true to take up arms in defence of our hero….

And so it continued, for hour after hour, with enraged Twits landing body blow after body blow on The Plum, while the object of all this opprobrium and his small but loyal band of followers manned the barricades to prevent his Twitter account from being overrun and laid waste utterly.

But no word from Fry. Would the internet ever be the same again? Would he return, right hand raised, doe eyed, beatific smile illuminating his features, to pronounce benediction on a rapturous, welcoming throng, or would he be lost forever, a memory, a rumour, a smudge on a forgotten page of history?

Finally, early this morning, as dawn’s fingertips began slowly to draw back the black velvet curtain of night, our long, uncertain vigil was at an end….

And suddenly as if the yesterday’s brouhaha had never happened, love was all around….

Now I think I speak for the vast majority of right thinking people when I say that this kind of thing cannot, under any circumstances, be permitted to happen again. We simply cannot afford to run the risk of Stephen Fry deleting his Twitter account and the internet collapsing into chaos and anarchy. Therefore, with this in mind, I have devised a plan, a series of options that should allow us to sleep easy in our beds….

1. All personal insults, jibes and brickbats must henceforth be presented to a Mockery Panel, made up of admired and respected Twits, such as @rustyrockets, @CHRISDJMOYLES, @MayorOfLondon or @jenxstudios, and scrutinised for quality, grammar, and diversity consciousness. Any that don’t pass muster must be deleted and the user’s account suspended until he, or she, can prove to the panel’s satisfaction that he, or she, has mastered the subjunctive as prescribed in Fowler’s Modern English Usage.
2. All prospective Twitter account holders must be subjected to psychological profiling, involving online Rorschach Tests, the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory and Neuro Linguistic Programming, and graded on a score of one to ten. Any user scoring below one will be banished from the internet until the Apocalypse.
3. The word, “boring”, must be substituted by the following sequence of characters from the Greek alphabet: βορίνγ
4. There must be full implementation of the harshest, most unforgiving Darwinian principles, with unregulated, all in, free-for-all mockery, lampooning, ridicule and sending up, and may the best man, or woman, win.

Call me callous and obdurate but I’m inclined to go with option 4.

Alan Davies has been unavailable for comment, on Twitter at least, for the last 16 hours.