Mark Andrews: Trump feels the heat, the dangers of covering up, and would you dress your daughter as Jeffrey Dahmer?
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper's decision to grant anonymity to police officers who appear in court after shooting incidents is the exact knee-jerk response one might expect from someone who believes more regulation is the answer to every problem.
It is also the entirely wrong one.
The decision, of course, is in response to the hounding of Sgt Martyn Blake, this week cleared of murdering Chris Kaba. It now emerges Mr Kaba, shot while trying to ram police officers in his Audi, was not so much the 'hard-working family man' and 'talented musician' we were led to believe, but more of a vicious Al Capone wannabe who imposed a reign of terror on his community. Had this information not been suppressed by reporting restrictions, I'm pretty sure the public would have taken a more charitable view towards Sgt Blake.
Concealing the names of officers appearing in court will just make it even more difficult to report fairly on such cases, creating a vacuum that will gleefully be filled by malevolent oddball conspiracy theorists like Tommy Robinson.
The solution lies in more openness, not more cover-up.
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Donald Trump has asked the US Federal Election Commission to investigate claims of UK interference in the presidential election.
He is upset that about 100 Labour Party workers boarded a plane for the US to help out with Kamala Harris's election campaign.
Two things baffle me about this. First of all, why would anyone spend hundreds, maybe thousands of pounds of their own money to campaign in another country's election? Particularly as they will have only just finished with the one over here.
But more to the point, why is Trump getting so hot under the collar about it? Imagine the situation was reversed, and some Yank turned up at your door telling you how to vote. Would you welcome their advice, and respond positively? Or would you ask what it had to do with them, and suggest they sort out their own country before lecturing us?
If I were Trump, I would be lending them my private jet to bring another 100 over.
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Please forgive my ignorance, but until this week I was shamefully ignorant about the work of Carla Bellucci.
Apparently Carla is an 'internet personality' and 'influencer', which as far as I can see, translates roughly as an 'attention seeker' and 'show off'.
It seems she shot to fame feigning depression to get a £7,000 nose job on the NHS. She then attracted further headlines by boasting: "Who gives a s*** about the cost-of-living crisis?"
A few years ago she was banned from a Halloween party for dressing her baby daughter as cannibal killer Jeffrey Dahmer. And she's in the news again this week – well the Daily Star, anyway – over plans to dress her other infant daughter as double murderer Lyle Menendez.
By the way, the daughter she dressed as Dahmer is called Blu. Which will come in handy if she ever wants to marry a Mr Tack, or a Mr Movie.
I wonder what sort of 'influencer' videos Carla makes. Perfect parenting, maybe?
