Lily Allen, drugs and the Daily Mail

Lily Allen tells The Word magazine that newspapers go OTT when talking about drugs.

The only story is that drugs are bad and they will kill you – you will become a prostitute, a rapist or a dealer. But that’s not true. I know lots of people that take cocaine three nights a week and get up and go to work every day, no problem at all.

Which prompts the Daily Mail to, yes, go OTT about drugs.

Why Police snooping powers are a step too far

The nice people at Techradar.com have kindly given me a regular blab slot to talk about tech, and the first one is up: it’s about the powers that will enable the police to install keyloggers and other spyware on people’s PCs without a warrant.

Imagine if the Home Office decided that the best way to fight terrorism was to ban curtains.

“Hang on!” we’d say. “That means Creepy Dave across the road will be able to see me in my underpants!”

The Home Office would nod sagely. “That’s true, but you know who else has curtains? Terrorists! Terrorists and gangsters! So it’s curtains for curtains!”

The Home Office hasn’t banned curtains just yet, but it’s getting closer.

Yet another reason to love Eddie Izzard

The Times reports:

Will Pike, a victim of the Mumbai terror attacks in November, had been recovering from his injuries in a South London hospital for weeks.

After falling from a makeshift rope he had manufactured from bedsheets in his room in an attempt to escape terrorists who had taken over his hotel, the 28-year-old broke three of his vertebrae, both his arms and shattered his pelvis.

One of the consequences of his fall was that he had to give up his tickets for the comedian Eddie Izzard’s show at the Lyric Theatre, London, last month. (Our critic Dominic Maxwell said of Izzard’s performance “It’s charming, it’s charismatic, it’s accomplished.”) In an attempt to cheer up his bed-bound son, Nigel Pike wrote to Izzard asking if he could send a note to Will.

…[Izzard]  unexpectedly turned up at Mr Pike’s sterile room in one of London’s spinal cord units and performed his entire 90-minute show.