It must be awful, being a homophobe. Having to spend all that time obsessing about what gay people might be doing with their genitals. Seeing it in your mind, over and over again, in high-definition close-up. Bravely you masturbate, to make the pictures go away, but to no avail. They’re seared onto your mental membranes. Every time you close your eyes, an imaginary gay man’s imaginary penis rises from the murk, bowing ominously in your direction, sensing your discomfort. Laughing. Mocking. Possibly even winking. How dare they, this man and his penis? How dare they do this to you?

Charlie Brooker on the worthlessness of money.

“The entire economy relies on the suspension of disbelief. So does a fairy story, or an animated cartoon. This means that no matter how soberly the financial experts dress, no matter how dry their language, the economy they worship can only ever be as plausible as an episode of SpongeBob SquarePants. It’s certainly nowhere near as well thought-out and executed.”

This is pretty amazing, Charlie Brooker is one of the funniest writers I have ever found, and he speaks truth!

Poor old Ed Miliband. Those aren’t my words. Those are the words your mind thinks whenever you see him on television. And then you feel bad for thinking that, which makes you feel vaguely sorry for him again, and that in turns feeds back into the initial pity you experienced, and the whole thing becomes a sort of infinite commiseration loop that drowns out whatever he’s actually saying and doing.

And this is how you get from discussions about the end of money to the phenomenon of panic buying – not because anybody believes the effects of a currency collapse can be mitigated if you have a really good supply of carbohydrates and wind-up radios; rather, because once you don’t trust the government, you’re immediately alienated. There’s no soft gradation where you stop believing in central government but still trust your local council. It’s a trip switch: one minute you’re a member of society, the next you’re a Mormon – only without the consolation of afterlife (Mormons, for comparison, are instructed to keep three months’ worth of supplies; it makes you wonder how long they think this apocalypse is going to take).

there is a growing distrust of the government (previously because of the punitive tax rates on oil; now for all the obvious reasons starting with the word “Osborne” and ending with “in this together, my arse”)

behind all the statistics and all analysis, are actual children and young people being told by very rich men that their already struggling families are about to struggle even more. Statistics, while illuminating, do not begin communicate the reality of the lives of children from poor families. The effects of child poverty run deep and last long and my own experience is just one of far too many.

If technology is a drug – and it does feel like a drug – then what, precisely, are the side-effects?

Just yesterday I read a news story about a new video game installed above urinals to stop patrons getting bored: you control it by sloshing your urine stream left and right. Read that back to yourself and ask if you live in a sane society.

Every life includes significant landmarks: your first kiss, your first job, your first undetected murder. Maybe that’s just me.