The Coalition: Flexing masculine muscles....

Everyone knows that the Coalition government has no choice but to make tough decisions in its effort to cut the deficit left by Labour, but there is that suspicion and concern that in flexing their masculine muscles, George Osborne and company, will cut too deep and too quick, with the poor being hit the most.

Whatever Labour says right now about the economy is irrelevant, such is the loss of the party's credibility. It will take time for the new Leader to establish himself, (of course it's going to be a man!), as an effective opposition force, especially when it comes to economic matters, although throwing money at the banks does appear to have been the right decision at the time.

What is worrying is that bodies like the Institute for Fiscal Studies are questioning the government's assertion that the proposed cuts are fair and shared by all, when the evidence seems to suggest that it will be those at the bottom end of the pile who will experience most of the pain.

When the cuts really do start to bite, Nick Clegg is going to have a hell of a job keeping his party together. The rumblings suggest an atmosphere, one suspects, just like that in the Senate before the knives came out for Julius Caesar. How will Nick's team respond when the Lib Dems are trounced in the local elections and the electoral reforms are rejected by the voters? Will those troublesome senior party members, like Charles Kennedy and Simon Hughes, keep their gobs shut then? I don't think so.

Tough choices have to be made, but perhaps George Osborne needs to spell out why his spending cut programme can't be over a longer time frame and that he is not rushing it just to flex those muscles, until just before the next election when lo, with or without the Lib Dems, he finds the resources to dangle tax cuts and other goodies at those nice Tory supporters.

Meanwhile, the poor can eat cake.

Cat Woman: Lola the cat gets her revenge on Mary Bale

Lola, the cat, has certainly got her revenge on Mary Bale, the forty-five year old woman, who dumped her in a wheelie bin "as a joke". The four-year old tabby cat was picked up by this sick woman and left in the bin for 15 hours until her cries were heard by her owners, who then produced CCTV coverage of Mrs. Bale's dirty deed.

The lady in question is employed as a customer services assistant for the Royal Bank of Scotland in Coventry and one wonders if her lack of concern for the poor cat also extends to her dealings with the bank's customers? She should be ashamed of herself and I hope she gets fired.

Nick Clegg: Fat boy "holding the fort"....

Nick Clegg will be "holding the fort" for two whole weeks whilst his partner David Cameron enjoys a holiday in Cornwall. Mr Clegg set the General Election campaign on fire with appearances in the TV debates that were self-assured and charismatic. Back then there was even talk that the Liberal Democrats could actually win a majority and run the country without the need of support from either the Conservatives or Labour. We can all shake our heads in disbelief now, but go back and read the papers of the time!

Personally, I think, Mr Clegg allowed the publicity to go to his head. When he should have shown humility, no matter how fake, he came across as arrogant and condescending and I still say that his lack of respect and attempts to humiliate Gordon Brown, lost him vital votes.

Even now, the Liberal Democrats are getting none of the kudos for the decisive decisions the government is preparing to make to cut the massive deficit. Nick Clegg's own standing within the country has plummeted. What is frightening for his party is that the public has yet to feel the pain of the Coalition's planned actions and therefore a real backlash has yet to come.

Appearances are everything and the Conservatives appear not to have sacrificed too much to form the government, whilst the junior party looks to have surrendered a lot more in its eagerness to taste power. Many Lib Dems' supporters would never have contemplated voting Conservative and feel betrayed that their votes effectively put the Tories in government.

Mr Clegg's decision to ditch principles exposed his thirst for power at any price, no matter what he might say about "the national interest". The current polls are not good news for the Deputy Prime Minister and the danger is that members of the general public, who voted for the LibDems, may not be ready to forgive and vote Labour at the next general election, but might consider the opportunity to directly elect a Cameron government instead of doing so by proxy. That could wipe out the Liberal Democrats.

Nick Clegg has the difficult task of selling the Coalition, without erasing the independence of the Liberal Democrats as a viable party and, of course, himself, as its leader. Apparently he plans to use the Prime Minister's absence to raise his own profile and set out the Liberal Democrats own agenda for the future. Of course, he has to do this without even a hint of disagreement with his power buddy, Mr. Cameron.

Mr Clegg probably easily gained and (already) lost those extra pounds, a reflection of his standing with some of his party and most of the public.

WAGS: Of course Abbey Clancy will forgive Peter Crouch.....

Once again, women in the media were screaming for Abbey Clancy to high-kick her cheating boyfriend, footballer Peter Crouch, in the balls and take herself and her dignity elsewhere. It seems he paid money for sex with a prostitute, who had hardly put her clothes back on before rushing to the papers to spill the beans.

Abbey rushed off to Spain to seek her mother's advice and no doubt be reminded of her amazing lifestyle with the Tottenham striker, which gives her status and celebrity within the world of WAGS. So, she is standing by her man, although the evidence is emerging that he is a serial cheat.

Abbey's role models would no doubt include Toni Terry and Colleen Rooney, two independent woman, who learned to turn a blind eye to their partner's little foibles. A little protest like not wearing your engagement ring for a bit, is a given.

The WAGS lifestyle comes at a price....

The Royal Family: Protection costs.....

The British Royal Family

In this age of austerity, when HM The Queen has to put up with leaking roofs and falling parapets, because the government won't dish out any more dosh, it is not surprising that her family's protection costs have also come under scrutiny.

It seems that protecting the Royal Family costs a staggering £150million, which I would have thought was unacceptable at any time, but obscene when the country is in such dire economic trouble.

Even anti-Monarchists would accept that Her Majesty, her husband, the Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Charles and his sons, should be protected. But, why should we pay for security to accompany lesser members like the Duke of York and his daughters Beatrice and Eugenie, when he plays golf and they enjoy another holiday in some exotic place? It seems that the Duke, who spends a fortune of your money and mine, on unnecessary helicopter trips, objects to efforts by Scotland Yard to reduce security costs.

Surely, the answer is that when he and they are undertaking public duties (and I don't believe his daughters do), then of course they should have armed protection, but when they are sitting on some yacht or striding another golf course, then they should dip into their own pockets.

Fabio Capello: David Beckham deserved better...

David Beckham

England's win against Hungary means that all is once again okay in the fickle world of football. The tabloids will be disappointed that the fans didn't have reason to riot and boo, but there's plenty of time in the future.

For now, Fabio Capello is safe in the job....but isn't he a walking disaster? His announcement, on television, that David Beckham will no longer play a part in a future England team, was a disgraceful way to treat one of the real stars of the game. Whatever you may think of the Beckham industry, the man has served his country with talent and dignity. It may be time for him to bow out of International football, but surely he deserved a telephone call from Mr Capello?

The England coach is an idiot when it comes to dealing with people and one still wonders if perhaps it really was his management style which led to the bad showing in the World Cup?

David Beckham deserved better.

David Cameron & The Milk Row: Playing spin the bottle...............

David Cameron has been playing spin the bottle to downplay any suggestion that he was the man planning to take the milk from the nation's children. It is a difficult time for the Coalition who have yet to sell the necessary cuts to a nervous nation, so the least we expect is a thoughtful approach to what will and will not survive the axe.

For a government minister to go on Sky to encourage the idea that milk-snatching may be a good thing, only to be contradicted while still on air by a nervous No 10, reeks of Mr Bean incompetence. Even more worrying, it shows the behaviour of a Prime Minister happy to throw his weight about, if he thinks a policy will tarnish his own image. I wonder what he was doing when he heard the unfortunate David Willett on Sky and if he had time to telephone his partner Nick Clegg first?

It still worries me that too many of those at the higher levels of this Coalition government are far removed from the lives of ordinary people and will never be able to comprehend the pain the planned cuts will cause within the general population. The Prime Minister, his Deputy and George Osborne, the Chancellor, can play at being one with the people, but the reality is that these rich men have really no idea what it is like to live hand to mouth.

It is really hoped that they don't just cut for the hell of it.....or spin in other directions when it matters to their image that they do so. Over the next months this Coalition government will be snatching more than milk from the rest of us....

Naomi Campbell: A model humanitarian

We all know Naomi Campbell as a well-known model humanitarian, but I must admit I have often been amazed how close she is to the Nelson Mandela inner circle. What an evil man like Charles Taylor was doing at a meeting with Mr. Mandela is also somewhat disturbing.

Naomi Campbell

The fact that Naomi Campbell would get a late night knock on her bedroom door and then open it to find two strangers delivering diamonds should not surprise us. Both the actress Mia Farrow and Carole White, Naomi's ex-agent, have given evidence that contradicts the model's version of events, but all agree that Miss Campbell was disappointed not to find the stone or stones bigger and with more shine. And in a Tiffany box no doubt.

The former Liberia warlord, Charles Taylor, is said to have supplied arms to rebels in the neighbouring country Sierra Leone, in exchange for blood diamonds from the mines of the war-torn country. His support for a brutal war has landed him before a court in The Hague, where the prosecution are attempting to link him with the blood diamond trade. However, the model has denied she knew who had given her the diamonds, a claim contradicted by Miss Farrow and Miss White.

Miss Campbell did not want to appear at the Tribunal and it was unfortunate that she referred to her forced appearance as an "inconvenience", especially when the stakes are so high and so many people were killed and others brutally maimed and mutilated.

The model's reputation has never been high in the public's eye, but it would be unfair to pin the fate of Charles Taylor on her. There are some celebrities we do not expect to be decent human beings. And the beautiful Naomi Campbell is one of them. But, it is not her fault if warlords want to ply her with diamonds, even when they are imprinted with the blood of the brutalised.

The Bankers: They get the pleasure, we get the pain.....

Of course the bankers should be rewarded handsomely for a job well done, but it was only months ago that the very same bunch nearly brought the country to its knees with behaviour that often appeared not too far off the criminal. In fact, in some cases it certainly was.

Unless I am mistaken, we, you and me, put a lot of our money into saving the banking system from total disaster. Gordon Brown didn't give us a choice, it was either let the banks go down the pan or keep them afloat and then, they in turn, would support the economy by lending to successful and struggling businesses.

I don't know much about economics, but I am in awe how quickly they have recovered and how easy it has been for them to celebrate their new-found successes, without a thought for those who have lost their lives and livelihoods due to the disgraceful incompetence of our banking community. And while they stash away bonuses, there is a reluctance to even consider loans to businesses in need.

The previous Labour government and the current Coalition promised to do something about the greed within financial institutions and now it is time for David Cameron to have the backbone to take action and end the obscene culture of massive bonus payments, at a time when the country is about to face real hardship. No banker should get a bonus until every penny of public money is returned.

Too many photographs of bankers celebrating would be disastrous for the Coalition and result in an angry response from the public.

The Iraq Inquiry: Lord Prescott and a tale of "tittle-tattle"

I thought John Prescott's relaxed demeanour before the Iraq Inquiry was quite impressive, even if what he said was an embarrassing reminder of a government's total disregard for the lives put at risk in its' careless support for the war.

Lord Prescott was one of the great survivors of the Labour years in Government, despite the nasty snobbery he attracted from certain sections of the media, in particular The Daily Mail. However, like the rest of his cabinet colleagues, he failed in his duty when he and they, gave Tony Blair the backing to go to war.

Lord Prescott and the rest of the bloated cabinet behaved like nodding dogs, accepting that even if the intelligence about Saddam and weapons of mass destruction was "tittle-tattle", the invasion of Iraq was a worthwhile cause. No matter that young British servicemen and women would be killed, it would be for the greater glory of Tony Blair and his good friend George W. Bush.

There can't be anyone out there who truly believes that Tony Blair did not commit British forces with or without the evidence of Saddam's stockpile of WMDs? America wanted war and the Prime Minister wanted his own Falklands' moment. Remember, George W. and Tony had a vision of toppling Saddam and riding atop a tank together into the bowels of Baghdad, hailed by a grateful population. It was never to be and probably the greatest sin of all was the lack of a post-war strategy.

John Prescott’s evidence showed a government casual in its approach to just about everything, with a cabinet that had no contribution to make other than blind allegiance to the mechanisms of power.

David Cameron: In a pickle over his remarks about Pakistan

David Cameron is in a pickle over his remarks about Pakistan and its involvement in terror. Let's face it, everything we hear and read suggests that he is right in his conclusion that there are senior people in Pakistan who are actively involved in the export of terror. But perhaps it was naive, even dangerous of him, to air his views in neighbouring India.

He is now Prime Minister and rules of diplomacy apply,which means in the interest of the United Kingdom, there are times when he needs to be circumspect with the truth, especially in public. He has delighted one country at the expense of another, a sign, some say, of immaturity and arrogance on his part. Was there no one of experience around, prior to his speech, to even suggest to Mr Cameron that he not make his incendiary comments?

At home, David Cameron has impressed with his sure approach to the job of Prime Minister, but in striding the world stage he needs to engage a little less tongue and a bit more brain to gain respect.