Does Teenage Sex Lead Your Mortgage Astray?

There is, I suppose, one good thing about being a Daily Mail reader (although it can hardly make up for being damned in perpetuity). Which is that, however bleak the year may have been, it can't have been as bad as your newspaper predicted. Amazingly, 140,000 asylum seekers have failed to move into your bathroom, Channel Four hasn't been transmitting 24-hour Communist pornography, and the Princess of our Hearts, Diana, hasn't risen from the grave to insist you pay for an ID card for every benefit cheat in England.

But now you can re-live those happy possibilities, and many more, with something called the Daily Mail-o-matic. I came across this on the Web, so apologies if you've seen it before. I think it's hilarious.

It's one of those random sentence generators, but every "random" sentence is an entirely plausible candidate for the front page of Britain's most frothingly psychotic periodical.

Have a few goes and you'll see the same themes come up time and again - just like the real thing. As well as the headline on this article, some of my favourites include "Will Gordon Brown give your daughters cancer?", "Could Greenpeace lead the Queen astray?", and "Do Brussels bureaucrats scrounge off your pension?"

Have a go, it's a laugh.

Some heartwarming words for Christmas

The good thing about working for Land Securities is that you get to explore all sorts of interesting bits of London. On a recent job, my researches brought me to a little place called 'Postman's Park', tucked away near St Bart's Hospital in the Smithfield/Barbican end of town.

Here, in the late 1880s, the painter and philanthropist G.F. Watts set up a very touching memorial garden, commemorating the courage of ordinary men, women and children. The hand-lettered tiles (by Doulton) carry tales of great bravery, told in brief, almost naive, words that get you right there.

The tale of William Drake, for instance, reads as follows: "April 2 1869. William Drake lost his life in averting a serious accident to a Lady in Hyde Park, whose horses were unmanageable through the breaking of the carriage pole."

Or what about this for a heart-breaking story: "Henry James Bristow aged eight - at Walthamstow on December 30 1890 - saved his little sister's life by tearing off her flaming clothes but caught fire himself and died of burns and shock."

There are many of these wonderful memorials at Postman's Park, and you can see them on several websites (click here for one). But if you get a chance, go along and see them in the flesh. Bet you can't leave without a tear in your eye.

Hocus-pocus and so forth

Last month's invitation has produced a little slew of rhyming, hyphenated words along the 'hocus-pocus' lines. Thanks to all who wrote in. The 'H' list now also includes hotch-potch, hoi-polloi, helter-skelter, happy-clappy, hi- fi, hurdy-gurdy, harum-scarum, hugger-mugger, higgledy-piggledy, hanky-panky and hokey-cokey.

A pretty sound demonstration of H's dominance in this realm, you'd think. But wait - there are challengers from other letters. Like itsy-bity and teeny-weeny, argy-bargy, namby-pamby, roly-poly, super-duper, fuddy-duddy, rumpy-pumpy (to go with the hanky- panky), razzle-dazzle, mumbo-jumbo, willy-nilly, nitty- gritty and, for the kids, Incey-Wincey - the famous water-spout-dwelling spider. (Although kiddie language is cheating a bit, really.)

There were other offerings (like topsy-turvey, Humpty Dumpty or mish-mash), but I'm afraid I have to be strict. These baubles are pretty, but flawed: they're either missing a hyphen or don't quite make it to a full rhyme. Allowing them in would simply devalue the entire collection. One must have standards.

Mike Reed: Urban Modernist

Today I received a mailer from Wallpaper magazine, that glossy journal of all things designery. I'm not a reader, but it seems they'd like me to be.

"Launched in London in 1996," their letter states, "Wallpaper* is the world's only design lifestyle magazine for urban modernists and global navigators like you."

Blimey. Do you know, I had literally no idea that I was an urban modernist. Or, indeed, a global navigator. I've just had new business cards printed, too. How annoying.

Sadly, I stopped reading the letter at this point, because I was chuckling too much and thinking that this seemed to be just the sort of thing you people might enjoy.

Punny names: back from the dead

Loyal readers will remember all the fun we had with people's punny names (like Ida Ho, still my favourite), and equally punny businesses (like kebab restaurant Pitta the Great). That all seems a long time ago, but my article last month about daft company names inspired Chris Friend of Liquid Communications to get in touch.

Chris's email revealed the existence of a near-mythical entity in this rarefied field of exploration: the double pun. And it's a lovely thing to see.

Chris tells me he holds a business card from portable toilet company "Mobile Thrones" - a delightfully naff pun that stretches the form to its limits (and perhaps beyond).

But there is more. The card is that of Mobile Thrones' esteemed owner. And given his name, one wonders if our fates are not, after all, mapped out for us from birth. For his name (wait for it) is Mr Philpot.

Suddenly we're back in business.

Charles Clarke learns the importance of care with words

Don't worry, I'm not climbing onto my political soapbox. (Well, not much.) But one of the stories that emerged from the recent Government defeat over 90-day detentions showed how a poor choice of words can backfire rather dramatically. (Especially when they arise from a poor choice of ideas.)

Shortly before the vote, Labour (in the form of Mr Clarke) "consulted" with its members via an email survey. The somewhat loaded questions included, "Do you think police should have the time and opportunity to complete their investigations into suspected terrorists?" and "Do you think the government should make sure there are new safeguards to protect innocent people?"

Unsurprisingly, this bull-headed attempt at manipulation went down like a lead balloon. Campaign group Compass sent out a rather more neutral set of questions, the answers to which can't have been much comfort for Messrs Blair and Clarke:

"Do you think there should be a new offence of encouraging or glorifying terrorism?" (No: 74%); "How long should the police be allowed to detain terrorist suspects without charge?" (Most popular: 14 days - 46%); "Do you believe that the Terrorism Bill in its current form will increase or decrease the chances of further terrorist attacks in the UK?" (Increase: 49%)

On its website, Compass includes a quote from a man who rarely had much trouble with words. In 1943, Winston Churchill wrote a sentence that resonates rather boomingly at the moment:

"The power of the executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him the judgement of his peers, is in the highest degree odious, and the foundation of all totalitarian government, whether Nazi or Communist."