Kirsty Bosley: Shocking news, exam success, Mr Twit's beard and gold glory

And nothing has aided this period of abstinence more than the news that a beer has been crafted using yeast found on Roald Dahl's chair.

Mr Twit's Odious Ale has been brewed by 40FT Brewery using yeast taken from the wood of the author's writing chair. I don't like thinking of yeast at the best of times, let alone yeast from a place where someone sat for hours writing novels.

Roald Dahl's chair was adapted specially to ease the back pain caused by a Second World War injury. I think I'd rather eat the bits of stuff that can be unearthed from a good shake of Mr Twit's beard. In fact, it's put me off beer for life. I think I'm going to have to take up the hard stuff.

Talking of which, UKIP leadership candidate Bill Etheridge has been forced to contact the police.

It was after his ex tweeted: "Getting out my fiancé's car @BillDudleyNorth yesterday I find half a box of Viagra dirty disgusting cheat you should be ashamed of yourself."

The MEP is hoping that things will start to look up for him now he's reported Lorraine Chew to the cops.

Elsewhere in the weird world of UKIP, it's been reported that their only MP Douglas Carswell is paid in gold nuggets for adverts posted on his blog.

In a Campaign magazine article, political advertising agency founder Jag Singh said: "Every month instead of sending him a wire transfer, we are sending him a gold nugget. The quirk about Douglas is that because he is such a fiscally responsible person, he wants payment in gold."

I don't know if that's a stupid idea or a really good one. He's either sitting at home rubbing his hands together, or he's wearing a tin foil hat and is absolutely bananas. It's probably the former though – the value of gold soared more than 20 per cent following the referendum vote to leave the EU. How do you pay tax on a nugget though? I've filled in a tax return and there's no space to insert small flecks of precious metals.

And while MPs continue to dive in and out of gold bullion like Scrooge McDuck, homelessness is 'undoubtedly on the rise' according to the Communities and Local Government Select Committee.

Official figures published by the government have shown that local authorities approved 14,780 households' applications for homelessness assistance between January and March this year. And that doesn't take into account the number of people that haven't sought assistance because they feel let down and hopeless, or because they don't know how to get help.

It's a crisis that needs to be acknowledged, and yet local authorities are still letting people down. The committee found that some authorities were actively discouraging people from making a homelessness application, giving ineffectual advice. It was found that one particular authority even told a lady to go away and Google a solution to her desperate situation. Despicable.

We also learnt that nearly 50 'paupers' funerals' had been arranged in Wolverhampton in the last year for those who died alone or with their families unable to foot the bill.

With the average funeral costing £1,231, it meant that the council had to pay a total of £57,850 to give those people a final send-off. Awful news.

And in more awful news, a review by the Equality and Human Rights Commission has shown that unemployment rates are 'significantly higher' for ethnic minorities.

The review has shown that black workers with degree qualifications earn 23.1 per cent less on average than white employees with qualifications. It's just unbelievable. We are making 'real progress' the report shows, as black and ethnic minority unemployment rates are at their highest levels for 15 years.

All this 'progress' though, and we are still miles behind. Call me naive, but I just can't get my head around that fact that this is still the world we live in. I despair, sometimes.

In better news, unemployment rates are falling across the UK!

Hurrah! Let's celebrate? No, wait. Here in the Midlands, we're bucking the trend. The total out of work in the region was 173,000 for the three months leading up to June – 18,000 up on the previous quarter. I'd pack up all my stuff and move to a more prosperous country if it wasn't for the fact that the whole world seems to be struggling under the weight of itself.

Have you made it this far through my column this week, readers?

I wouldn't blame you if you'd given up because the influx of bad news has thrown you off-kilter. I'm really sorry. Let's make the rest of this column more up-beat, shall we?

It was A-level results day was this week, and record numbers of UK university places have been offered to hopeful students.

There's been a marginal fall in top grades for the fifth successive year but that doesn't matter, as 424,000 uni places have been offered, according to Ucas. In more trend-bucking, many of the girls at Shrewsbury High School were celebrating straight As! More than 85 per cent of grades were A*-C – nice one girls!

For £9,000 a year in fees, it's no wonder that unis are cramming in as many people as possible.

Good news for the new generation though – it's three years of blissful ignorance before the hard times begin. I'm only joking – they're only semi-hard times if you get a decent degree. You'll likely be in debt forever but – YOLO, right guys?

Oh hang on, I'm supposed to be focusing on good news aren't I?

That's been quite difficult this week, all things considered. Erm. . . we're doing well in the Olympics, so that's cool, isn't it? We're a country ravaged by unemployment, homelessness and hopelessness, but we are really REALLY fast on bikes. Gold medals are cool to have though. Especially if you melt them down into nuggets and use them to pay for stuff online.