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… in which an ex-Cosmo centrefold, with a penchant for his pick-up truck, was elected to the US senate. Then again, his opponent couldn’t spell the State’s name (Massachusetts), so given the choice between the  ill-equipped and the illiterate, who would you choose?

…in which the British government sent £6.1m in aid to Haiti, while agreeing that the CEO of RBS stands to make £10m. Better to be on the bottom-line than a fault-line.

…in which Gordon Ramsay’s restaurant at Claridge’s lost its Michelin star. Fortunately,  he retained the one in f*ck.

…in which Sir Fred Goodwin was hired by architects RMJM to advise on international expansion. Right – and Jeremy Clarkson is joining Friends of the Earth to advise on carbon reduction.

…in which Geoff ‘Rebel Without a Cause’ Hoon and ‘I’m Alright Jack’ Straw played pass the parcel at the Chilcot Inquiry. When the music stops and it ends up with Blair (as it will) he’ll say that it’s ticking, clear the room, and have the bomb squad take it away. In 45 minutes.

…in which Mariah Carey said that she considers herself black. Of all the disadvantaged groups in America, why didn’t she choose mute?

Popularity: 48% [?]

When I was a kid, the highlight of the week was going to Granny’s house.

A modest semi-detached in Victorian red brick, it had the world’s longest garden (at least to an 8 year-old), with roses at the top, a concrete yard at the bottom, and miles of vegetables between the two.

With a two-bob gas meter in the passage way, and an ice-box bathroom at the back of downstairs, 45 New Road had never been bothered by central heating. And in the days before ‘continental quilts’ (Granny would never say anything as vulgar as ‘duvet’; too French), my memory of staying overnight is one of blankets, eiderdowns and candlewick bedspreads.

The living room was in the middle of the house. Had there been a cat to swing, it’s whiskers would certainly have touched two walls, if not all four. Granny would sit in her special chair, less than 18 inches from the TV to watch the racing, Dad’s Army and Coronation Street (when Annie Walker still rans the Rovers, and the Ogdens’ ducks flew drunkenly over the ‘murial’).

The rest of us would squeeze into a two-piece suite (chair and double-seater sofa), and be kept warm by a real fire, mugs of tea, and warm pies from Lancaster & Crooks. Rather than watch the screen, I’d sit looking into the flames, wondering how on earth my Mum and her five brothers and sisters ever managed to have a bath in here. Indeed, where was the bath?

If it was a Sunday, we might be let in to the ‘front room’ – its sheepskin rug forever waiting for another naked grandchild to lay on it, pink cheeks powdered for embarrasment 18 years later.

On high days and holidays (or more accurately, after the holidays) we’d huddle together – brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins – to watch Uncle Austin’s latest Super 8mm film. Grainy, washed out people standing uncomfortably in a row, waving, smiling, looking into camera, backed by a clicking soundtrack and heckles from the audience.

The new film was always exciting – Granny’s holiday to Ireland with Austin and Auntie Kitty, the latest family Christening, the fancy-dress party at Christmas.  But the repeats films were more comfortable.

They became the family pantomime – Auntie Helen would always walk across the screen in the middle of the wedding, my little sister Jane, in her pink coat and hat, would always stand next to me at the St George’s Day scout parade. And we all knew exactly what we were supposed to say at each given point.

Fresh comments weren’t frowned upon, but heaven help you if you spoke over a well-established old chestnut.

I’ve been thinking a lot about Granny’s house over the past couple of weeks. Not the horse brasses, or the coal scuttle, or the ceramic cat head string dispenser on the kitchen wall, but the enormous Teacher’s Whisky bottle on the sideboard.

Granny wasn’t a big drinker, nor were Kitty and Austin (they lived with and looked after Gran), so I don’t know how it had come into their possession. Whatever its provenance, for a while it became an object of fascination and excitement.

You see, the three of them had decided to go for one big, great adventure to – holy of holies – AMERICA.

Michael, the youngest of the six children who had somehow sprung from Granny’s tiny body (I couldn’t figure THAT one out either), had a really good job which had taken him on assignment to the US. So all they had to do was save for the plane fare, and they could stay with him for a holiday.

Like the thermometer in front of a church needing a new roof, the whisky bottle became the totem of their progress across the pond. All kinds of ’shrapnel’ went in; copper and silver, pennies and half-crowns. And each week, after the obligatory hug and kiss when I arrived, I’d rush into the living room to see how far up the bottle the monetary mass had crept.

It took them a year, but they made it. Penny-by-penny, inch-by-inch the holiday fund amassed. Looking back, I doubt that they bought the tickets with just the savings in the bottle; Post Office accounts would have been raided, Premium Bonds cashed in. But they made it, and while I never had the opportunity to ask, I can say with total confidence that the trip was totally paid for before they went, cash.

Imagine the patience, think of the discipline needed to achieve that. Neither Kitty nor Austin were ‘big earners’ and Granny only had her State pension (her husband died of TB before I was born). Yet week-by-week they crept up that bottle with what seemed like glacial speed.

Finally they went on their holiday of a lifetime, saw the land that until then had existed only on the big screen, and came back with their stories, our gifts and new Super 8 films. Owing nothing.

So now I’m on the hunt for a giant Teacher’s Whisky bottle. Not because I want to go to America, but so that my children get to understand the reality of money.

Popularity: 4% [?]

A few years ago I had the great good fortune to travel to the Far East. It was only for a few days, but it gave me a taste – in some cases, literally – of a totally different world.

One morning, I was sitting in the reception of a Singapore radio station, waiting to be interviewed. A map of the world hung on the wall. It took a few moments to register, then my jaw dropped.

As an Englishman, I’d been brought up looking at the world with the UK in the middle of a double-page spread (Greenwich Mean Time), with the US on the left (West) and China on the right (East). We were the centre of the world.

The Singapore map swapped them, giving a Pacific-centric view.

Suddenly, personal axioms were shattered. Consciously, logically, I’d known that the British Empire was long gone, that the map was no longer primarily pink. But this version put my tiny island in the top left, almost falling off the edge!

And if we were THAT minute, then what did that make me?

I was reminded of that moment by three numerical facts that I learned this week. (Always be wary of data points that are presented in isolation – but these really do speak for themselves).

1) Apparently there are 8,000 business schools in the world (that’s a number agreed by the various bodies and associations that monitor such things). 1,000 of them are in India.

2) According to the US Department of Labor, the hourly factory wage in the US is $17 per hour. The European Industrial Relations Observatory says that the UK rate is $13. Supply Chain Digest (don’t ask why I was reading it) reports that in China it’s $1.

3)The US National Debt stands at $10.2 trillion.

If any of those are just too scary for you, then let me cheer you with this thought – something that really came into clear focus that morning in Singapore: the Latin derivation of the name Paul is ’small’.

Popularity: 37% [?]

Shaping the Way the US Sees the World is a powerful 5 minute presentation from TED.com. It holds a mirror up to the way US news sources report on world events.

Watch it and weep – and think about Sarah Palin’s ‘foreign policy’ experience being based on the fact that Alaska is quite close to Russia.

Despite McCain’s age, despite the meltdown in financial markets, despite the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, despite 8 years of Bush, despite all these things, I don’t think that Obama is a shoo-in.

Why? Because a large slice of America thinks that Obama is too smart and Palin is alright.

Oh sure, folk can keep digging for dirt on her, but it’ll fall on deaf ears. Because “she’s one of us”: she believes in God and she shoots things.

Ultimately, that’s what C21st elections are about: do I like the candidate?

And when you consider the diet of infotainment that the US feeds itself everyday – beautifully illustrated here by Alice Miller – what more can we expect?

Popularity: 6% [?]