As I write this there are sirens buzzing past my window, a bin on fire outside my flat and a Carphone Warehouse store smashed-in down the road. But that's nothing compared to the sights we've seen in places like Hackney, Clapham, Croydon and now areas outside of London such as Birmingham and Liverpool.

And why is this happening? There's no answer anymore. It's pointless even trying to look for one. One looter was caught on camera explaining it 'was fun' while another claimed they were getting their 'taxes back'. Quite how much tax a 15-year-old boy pays I'm not sure.

What started on Saturday as a vigil protest against police for the shooting of a local Tottenham man called Mark Duggan has resulted in mindless violence with no cause, no reasoning behind it. Nick Clegg came in for criticism yesterday when he used the word 'mindless' to describe the riots, but he's right. I'm willing to bet that most of the vandals - many of whom are teenagers - causing this mayhem have never even heard

Read More »from These riots have nothing to do with Mark Duggan

Trust in the media has plummeted since the News of the World phone hacking scandal came to light, but it's not just the press that is the subject of the public's disdain. Links between News International employees, police chiefs and politicians have rocked this country's foundations of trust to the core and left everyone wondering, just how high up does this thing go?

Over the past two days the scandal escalated further when Britain's most senior police officer, Sir Paul Stephenson, resigned and Assistant Met Commissioner John Yates followed suit the next day. Stephenson came in for criticism for hiring former News of the World executive Neil Wallis as an adviser — you know, the same thing Prime Minister David Cameron did with Andy Coulson.

Speaking of whom, Cameron has been intriguingly quiet on the issue of phone hacking. So much so that last Monday when MPs in the Commons were debating the subject he was away giving another speech on the Big Society.

He's in a lose-lose situation,

Read More »from Phone hacking scandal: Is there anybody left to trust?

It amused me to some extent as I watched the drip of News of the World journalists being interviewed by BBC and Sky News outside their Wapping office on Thursday evening. Not because, like much of the country (or certainly people commenting on our site), I was revelling in the closure of the paper, but because the irony of NOTW journalists complaining about a media and public backlash getting out of control was too much even for me to handle. After all, the paper has been responsible for some of the most sensationalist and public-enraging journalism we've ever seen in this country.

If you take the decision made by James Murdoch (or more likely his father) at face value it seems a huge sacrifice to close a market-leading newspaper which sells 2.6 million copies every week, but when you take a step back, not a lot is going to change.

It has been widely reported that TheSunOnSunday.com and TheSunOnSunday.co.uk URLs were registered on 5 July, two days before the NOTW closure was announced.

Read More »from NOTW: The end of an era and the likely beginning of a very similar one

Hello there. Do you want to be my friend? No? OK then, bugger off. It's exactly that kind of attitude which is causing our beloved Facebook to start flopping. I hope you're happy with yourself.

You might think that because of previous posts I have written such as 'Why I'll never use Facebook Places', 'Are Facebook bosses trying to trick us?' and 'Die, Facebook, die!' that I have some sort of vendetta against the social networking site, but you couldn't be further from the truth. Just look to the right of these words. No, down a bit. See, I actually want you to use Facebook. Only to share Yahoo! News articles, mind. None of that talking to your friends stuff.

Since Twitter's older brother was brought to these shores on 1 October 2005 its rise has been nothing short of meteoric, notching up 30 million users in six years. However according to Inside Facebook, which tracks the site's popularity, there were 100,000 fewer British users in May while over 7 million users ditched their accounts

Read More »from The trouble with Facebook

[L-R] Nitro, Shortcut, Zero, Samaritan Prime and Battlestar [Image: BBC Newsbeat]One of my favourite things about having this column is that it gives me an excuse to be a misanthropic whingebag during any given week. Last week's subject was Osama bin Laden (he had it coming) and the folk who overzealously celebrated his death, and the previous week it was the never-ending build-up to the Royal Wedding, which has since ended.

Readers should be happy too because it gives you the opportunity to be whingebags about my whinging. See, everyone's happy. Or unhappy. It's a tough one to work out.

You might think it's easy being annoyed at something every week. Well it is. Except this week I'm torn. I can't make my mind up whether I hate this week's subject, pity them or downright adore them. I'm trapped in my own version of Snog, Marry or Avoid. Except there's no Jenny Frost, just men in fancy dress.

Let me explain. I was driving from London to Wales last week when I heard a BBC Radio One 'Newsbeat' report about a team of 'super' 'heroes' 'fighting' 'crime' on the streets

Read More »from Whingebag Vs Samaritan Prime et alia

It has been one week since Britain awoke to the news that Osama bin Laden had been shot and killed by US military forces in Pakistan.

At around 6am last Bank Holiday Monday I was called by our Australian news desk who informed me of the news. Stumbling from my bed to the lounge, still half asleep and with the remnants of an enjoyable Sunday evening taking revenge on my skull, I was struggling to process the notion of putting one foot in front of the other let alone news that the world's most notorious terrorist had been killed.

The first thing I did was fire up my laptop to begin what would be a very long day. The second thing, as I slowly became a functioning human being again, was to switch on BBC News. I was greeted by live footage from outside the White House of what was effectively a street party. People up and down America had come out of their homes to celebrate Osama bin Laden's death.

As a nation rejoiced I looked on with mixed emotions; satisfied as the news of bin Laden's

Read More »from For every action, there is a reaction

As I write this there are exactly four days three hours and 42 minutes until the Royal Wedding. To celebrate this fact, here is a picture of the happy couple depicted as toppings on a pizza - the way in which all such events should be commemorated apparently.

While my ability to countdown from seven might underwhelm you, I have been impatiently waiting for this week to climax for the past 120 days. Of course I am gleefully overjoyed at the love between Prince William and Kate Middleton - akin to a giddy schoolgirl — however for my own selfish reasons I cannot wait until it's all over. I'm probably more excited about the honeymoon than William. For you see, once the wedding is over so too is the circus that has engulfed the event for months.

Now, before I explain why I'm being such a stick-in-the-mud, I should try and pre-empt some of the angry folk out there who will misjudge me as a corgi-eating, flag-burning anti-royalist. Couldn't be further from the truth. In fact I actually quite

Read More »from Why I can’t wait for the Royal Wedding to be over

Technology has a lot to answer for. It's an unproven scientific fact that every eight seconds a better version of something I already own is unveiled, making me look as old and doddery as Bruce Forsyth trying to read an autocue. If technology was any more humiliating it would bend us all over and have Charlie Sheen snort cocaine off our backsides. Which he would never do, of course. Allegedly.

What's more infuriating is that the only difference between the iSuperNewThing 5000 and your crappy old excuse for a gadget, which may as well be a fridge from the 70s now, is probably that they've put a camera on the letter 'M'. But seeing as we're all effectively just magpies-in-jeans we'll collect these shiny new objects anyway and take them back to our nests and feed worms to them. That's what I do at least. You don't do that? You're a weirdo.

The iPad 2 will soon be thrust upon us. This is particularly exasperating to me, an original iPad owner, as I've only just stopped receiving

Read More »from Kids and their phones have taken our language hostage