Kneed therapy

Apparently, one of my kneecaps is facing inwards instead of straight ahead. This was probably caused by a kick during kung fu, according to the physio, a short, athletic woman with strong shoulders and great posture. She had the build of a swimmer.

The good news is that I won't need any draining or cutting done. I just need to be diligent about my posture, physio advice and exercises, and not overdo it. So, relief. I just hope it gets better soon.

I won't be sparring in kung fu for a while though. I've been watching one of my friends being trained for a competition and it looks really tough. He has lost two stone and is knackered by the end of class – he looks far healthier for it, as he was a little bit overweight when he started kung fu.

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On another note, this made me laugh. Leona Lewis being asked by a child if she was a virgin, when in fact the little boy had meant to say 'vegetarian'. Ah, out of the mouths of babes...

Juno what I mean?

Oh dear. I am possibly among a minority because I didn't love Juno. It was OK but that was that... it was watchable and I thought some of the characters were well drawn (the mother, father, friend and boyfriend). But I didn't leave the cinema thinking 'wow'. I could see why the film would appeal to some, but, erm, I couldn't see why all the hype was deserved – maybe it was just hype after all.

I think Ellen Page played her (annoying) part well. But I felt that her character's endless smart-arse dialogue was overdone on a grand scale. It was trying so hard to be cool and hip that some good lines, in my opinion, were smothered. There were points when I wanted to shake Juno for going on and on and on and on in that manner of hers. I liked her a bit more once she realised the husband in the adoptive couple was a sleaze, but the smarty-pants comments... Her saying she wanted to "procure" an abortion while on her 'cute' hamburger phone just didn't do it for me. It was all far too obvious and try-hard. A bit of subtlety would have helped at points. The constant ramming down the throat of the 'Ooh, she is so young/but yet she is a woman' paradox choked the life out of the film, I thought.

As I say, it was OK. Just.

But I won't be procuring the DVD. Honest to blog. Silencio!

*scream*

Agh, just PC off, Shami!

We are not living in an ideal world, not that any of us need telling. Some young people – whether it be due to the breakdown of family life, the poor quality of family life/parenting or apathy (brought on by a lack of imagination, need or gumption) can be utter arses.

There have been plenty of stories in the news in the past 12 months, detailing appalling behaviour by some young people. Ask Gary Newlove's widow, who wants the death penalty restored following the murder of her husband. Ask dead Rhys Jones's dad. Have a word with Ernest Norton's wife, who has to live her life as a widow now. Add in teenage gun and knife crime. And on and on and on...

In an attempt to deal with groups of feral youths, someone created a device that emits a high pitch that causes discomfort to those under 25. The so-called Mosquito is used in areas where young people gather in an anti-social manner. It is used as a last-resort. It's not plugged in at Mothercare or Marks and Spencer at two in the afternoon, for goodness sake.

Shami Chakrabarti of Liberty, however, has come out bleating about the rights of young people, saying that the device 'had no place in a country that values its children'. Oh, do shut up. Valuing children means giving them boundaries. Tough.

No one writing about such matters should have to say I'm not talking about all young people, just a minority. It is a no-brainer. However, the minority are a majority in pockets of some cities. And (as I have said previously), I'm sick of people defending anti-social and criminal activity among the young by going on about how a hard life breeds 'disaffected' young people. Poor loves.

The trouble is, their lives are probably not hard enough. They do X and they get a caution (if that). They know the voice of the 'our rights' brigade will come down on their side. They are not slum dwellers; there are ways out. If they could be bothered. This is the UK, not a war-torn land or a slum-dominated city (where I'd wager young people behave with more dignity). People in England do not have nothing. How insulting to those who scrabble in the dust for food, who wear nothing on their feet, or queue for bits of broken biscuits for dinner (I've seen it). Lack of rights? My arse. Disaffected? Hell, I think I am fast becoming disaffected by the stinkingly pathetic attitude of some of this country's decision makers...

Goodbye Grange Hill

Admittedly, I didn't know Grange Hill was still on television (long gone are the days when I have time to watch TV so early in the day), but it is to be axed this year, 30 years after it began.

They're replacing it with 'the Grange' and aiming it at those aged 10-11, basing it in a multimedia environment. It's a shame that it has to change but the Beeb has shifted its editorial policy and that's that.

It was an engaging programme, groundbreaking at the time. It was gritty (though those who can remember 'Just Say No' may laugh with me about just how gritty it was compared to life today). But it did raise issues that needed to be aired and good on it for so doing. I can't say I'll miss it, as I don't exactly watch it now. But 30 years? That's a hell of a good run.

Please let there be karma

Reading stories like this in the news makes me want to weep. Let's hope the judge is sensible.

I don't believe in hell (or heaven) but on this occasion, I'll make an exception, give hell the benefit of the doubt, and hope that those responsible for this murder get what they deserve.

Deterrent? Crapola

Hmm. Two years for stoning a man who then died of a heart attack. Apparently, the punishment – two years in a detention centre – will 'act as a deterrent to others'.

The boys cried and hugged their parents as they were sentenced. Call me a cynic but I'd wager the only people they cried for were themselves.

Reading about the father and son, the mundane details – that they put up a makeshift set of cricket stumps so they could practise bowling – make me want to weep and scream.

I hope the offenders' guilt, if they feel any, stays with them forever, especially when they have children of their own and realise what they stole.

Two sodding years. What a joke.

I have no doubt (judging from previous posts) that there will be people reading this who will be bursting to tell me how badly the boys' lives were/are and oh, what a hard fucking life it is, deprivation this and poverty that. Well (and yes, I am bloody furious), I'll have no truck with that, for a million different reasons. Come on, I dare you...

Teenage kicks

On the shortcut home from the local Italian restaurant, we came across two young women sitting on the ground near some workshops. It was dark and all we could see were dark shapes and hear plenty of giggling.

One called out: "Hey, hello, can you wait a minute? It's OK, we don't want any money or nuffink like that. But can you open this bottle? We have the thing but we don't know how to do it. We are not alcoholics. God you must think we are such lushes."

Goodness, I cannot recall not knowing how to open a bottle of wine (obviously, I didn't open bottles of wine as a child).

S had a go but the poor quality of the opener and the manky plastic cork was a rather tricky combination, and there was a risk that the cork would be stuck and goodness knows what the girls would have done to try to extract it. So, up for holding a wine bottle, (it has been a while) I had a go and, sure enough, the old skills kicked in.

Before they could say: "We're seventeen," and I could say, "You're drinking underage and are young enough to be my daughters," I'd whisked out the corks and plonked the plonk down. They told us we were lovely, "had a great figure", and suchlike. We warned them about the rats that might be lurking nearby but either they didn't know what rats were or they weren't bothered.

We got home to the strains of a party down the road. It was obviously a post-GCSE party, or a going-to-college do, or something. But my, these youngsters were loud and happy, and very, very drunk. It was all rather sweet. Bless. Just the thing to make you feel really old, too, if you were of a disposition to worry about such silliness.

Oh, the poor, deprived children...

Yeah, yeah. According to some people, there's 'nothing to do' in Croxteth or London or (reaches for newspaper to get details)... Birmingham, Manchester, Blackpool... This, of course, is why kids get guns and blow each other's heads off. This is why they are – what's the word – alienated. This is why there are gangs and fights, and deaths. It's because they are all living a life of poverty and hardship, and a community centre would make all the difference.

Bollocks. What a load of absolute liberal twuntage. Tell it to the kids who play football, barefoot, in real slums overseas.

How fucking dare certain people in this country – the 'trendy' liberal wankers who think the mere fact that they read the Guardian and automatically diss the Mail makes them right – attribute the cause of murders to young people being alienated by the rest of us? Who are they alienated from? Their parents? Oh, well, that's OK then. That makes sense – there's a solid reason, so let's dish out a 100-hour community sentence for a life taken, shall we?

You tell me why members of my own family who don't have a roof over their heads that never leaks and who have queued for bits of food, and waited patiently, and seen (too many) deaths, but get on with it, and remain human and humane and retain their integrity... you tell me why it is that they – who have nothing – behave with dignity when our 'poor', 'needy', murdering fools value nothing and no one.

People carry out mindless actions because they are mindless. They don't have 'nothing'. They have too much. It's too fucking easy. They value jack shit. So, mired in their self-pity, in a world that proves that 'discipline' is just something they moan to their human rights lawyer about while bringing a case against a teacher, they become devoid of imagination, intellect, gumption, foresight, ambition or love for (or any concept of) their fellow man, and they regress. It's evolution in reverse, doing a handbrake turn en route.

And don't turn round to me, Ms Lilly-Livered, and bleat, 'well, they have never known love etcetera'... People have come out of orphanages and concentration camps and care homes, and all sorts of places far, far worse than the towns mentioned above, and have challenged themselves.

We do not have ghettos in this country. I have been to ghettos and no, we do not have ghettos in this country. We have a welfare state and we run our justice system in a manner that will surely make people laugh at our stupidity in generations to come. I hope.

There are people I know who have suffered in childhood (violence, sexual abuse, parental divorce, bereavement, bullying) who have not sunk into the gutter but instead get on with life. They are deeply decent people. So, don't you dare, Mr and Ms Liberty, pretend that those who cannot be arsed to do something are somehow our victims.

There is an abundance of liberalism that has gone so far up its own arse that it is giving itself a blow job as it peers around the other side.

Excuses. Excuses. Excuses.

This is a world where a Jehovah's Witness who abused many children is walking the streets because the judge said, well, he was a religious man, among other reasons, so it's OK, no need for jail, Mr Pervert. Pardon? So, if you are a religious person, who is surely meant to have a conscience, you can walk around and carry on living the life you lived before, having ruined the lives of so many? Is this really 2007? Are the judges sitting in padded rooms at the Maudsley Mental Hospital?

What use is it to endlessly debate the reasons in the way that Gordon Brown and Jacqui Smith pledge to do? Come on. What? Another promise that we need to look into gun and knife crime? You don't say... Miss Smith has been in tears, talking about Rhys Jones, who was only 11 when a bullet landed in the back of his neck. Do something then. Change the laws of this land – make it law not laughable. If the much-quoted 'breakdown of the family' is what you believe is the cause, then provide the discipline that is by default so utterly lacking. Go on. Look at the judiciary and its rampant idiocy. DO SOMETHING.

The looks on the faces of the friends of poor dead Rhys Jones (pictured) are simply heartbreaking. I couldn't find the picture to post here but if you do see it, you'll know. It's the one where the boy in the middle, in the red shirt, is particularly bereft. He looks down, his eyes are fixed on the flowers laid on the ground for his friend. He has a small teddy in one hand and a small bunch of flowers clutched in the other. These are boys who still shared sweeties.

The boy in red seems so puzzled, he is obviously deeply shocked and upset. He has lost his friend. He has also lost his childhood. Bang, bang. Will he have to also learn that the killer will be sentenced leniently because he came from a broken home/ was abused/ is 'young' or is religious? Well?????