Now some of you may remember that I have written before about how Twitter has become too powerful in the world of instant media and gormless hacks all rushing to be the first to get an exclusive – even if they get the story hopelessly wrong, as the Daily Mail did when it wrongly reported that the accused in the Meredith Kercher case, Amanda Knox, had failed in her appeal – and even provided helpful yet entirely fabricated “statements” from prosecutors on the case.The excuse given by the Daily Mail for this error was that they routinely had two stories written up, in the event of possible different outcomes. What the article also made clear was that internet media sources such as the Mail were willing to put blatant fabrications into these stories, and report them as fact.

That was inherently wrong, and is why I do not trust any internet source of breaking news – it often turns out to be incorrect. But that’s getting slightly off into a different tangent, so back to the topic at hand.

Anyway, Twitter this evening is awash with people from all over the place rushing to be the first to condemn or defend things they didn’t really know about – like I said, the full facts haven’t emerged yet, and Ollie Holt is basking in the glow of spreading unhelpful unsubstantiated opinions using Twitter as his medium, whilst other people retweet and turn this into a juggernaut that may be difficult to stop – as tends to happen on Twitter with certain stories.

Meanwhile we have other journalists tweeting that no such racial abuse happened, and that Adeyemi was allegedly called a “Manc bastard” by a member of the Liverpool crowd. A journalist from the BBC also reported that no member of the crowd was arrested in connection with anything shouted at Adeyemi.

Who are people supposed to believe? The Mirror journo who is in all probability looking for a story where there may be nothing more than a misunderstanding over something shouted? And who wasn’t even at the game? Or someone who was actually at the game and in a better place to report on what happened?

It may be that Adeyemi misheard what the fan shouted. It may be that the fan did actually call Adeyemi a “black bastard” as opposed to a “Manc bastard” as understood by the reporter in the crowd who was near the situation. In either case, it most certainly does not help that newspapers and journalists use Twitter for so much of their dirty work.

Lord Justice Leveson is currently conducting an inquiry into the way that the print media as a whole do their daily business – I do hope that he includes a review of the online section as well as the print section, as I feel that there is a massive problem within this area regarding inaccurate reporting, unsubstantiated rumours being passed off as facts, and lazy journalism propping up ailing businesses.

We all know why newspapers take these courses of action instead of undertaking proper journalism – it’s to sell papers. Instant media means that in order to get a scoop, publishers need to take risks that they wouldn’t necessarily take if they had the time to fact-check their stories properly. Another example of this from recently is the story being run by the Independent alleging that Manchester United are preparing to sell Wayne Rooney. When asked about this story by Radio 5 Live, the journalist who wrote the story, James Lawton, admitted that his headline was not actually based in fact at any level, or sourced from anywhere at Manchester United. In other words (the words journalists hate to actually say), he made that up and tried to use possible tension over a fine handed to Rooney as the base for making such a claim.

Welcome to the fantastically accurate world of instant media, and long may it continue. That last sentence may or may not be accurate.

In the aftermath, I kind of wished he’d stayed on holiday and let someone else take charge.

It took a third night of rioting, the worst night, to force Cameron to abandon his holiday and return to chair a meeting of COBRA. Over those nights of rioting, the call came from the supposedly moderate people who weren’t out rioting to send the army in, to fire the water cannon at these “vermin”, to enforce shoot to kill rules. Moderation went out of the window during that week. The thing that struck me as ironic is that the exact same people who were calling for this treatment were the exact same people who denounced countries like Libya, Syria, Bahrain and China for taking those measures against their own citizens. I would have pointed that out to them but I fear the irony would have been lost on them.

With the return of Cameron (luckily just in time to say lots of things but too late to have any effect on the riots), we suddenly saw thousands more police on the streets of London. I’m sure Cameron would like us to believe it was all his doing, however I believe those numbers would have been arranged whilst the rioting on Monday night was ongoing and it became clear that they just didn’t have enough to deal with the situation. So Cameron came back, and said lots of things about everything at once and nothing in particular, and managed to annoy both the police and the general public with his lambasting of the way police handled the rioting.

Once again, in a matter of urgency for this country, Cameron has been caught on the back foot. He failed to get the public mood over the phone hacking scandal, he failed to get the mood over the NHS plans, he failed to get the mood over plans to sell acres of forests to private buyers. And he again failed to get the mood over how best to deal with the aftermath of these riots. Ed Miliband struck the right notes, calling for a major public inquiry into the causes and threatening to set that inquiry up himself if No.10 failed to acquiesce. For a weak Labour leader, these past few months have been nothing but strengthening both for his political image and for his self-confidence. He has been able to push Cameron into retreats on several occasions and, right now, looks more like the leader of this country than David Cameron. Although having said that, it is much easier to be asking the questions than it is to be answering them.

Today, both Cameron and Miliband made speeches about the situation the country finds itself in, and both leaders came out of their speeches looking like different people; Cameron came out looking much more like an old-fashioned right-wing Conservative rather than the liberal image he portrayed during his days in opposition; Ed came out looking like he had won the battle – he had said the right things, answered questions from young people properly and fairly, and acknowledged that whilst Labour had tried to make things better for the poorer people of the country, that it hadn’t been able to do so. In saying that, he has effectively stopped Cameron using that as a method of political attack. Miliband also very cleverly did not link the rioting to problems caused by current or previous administrations, unlike Louise Mensch who firmly believes that everything that is wrong with this country right now is the fault of Labour (“All social justice, and all progressive goals, depend upon Osborne steering us out of Labour’s disastrous mess”).

Both leaders were displaying roughly the same messages in their speeches, about the role that society as a whole had to play in solving these problems, yet it was hard to see past David Cameron’s rhetoric about policing, funding and numbers and his conclusions about the rioting and how to deal with them, which sound confused against his party’s plans for office. Ed Miliband scored a major one-up by quoting one of the Prime Minister’s earliest speeches as leader of the Conservatives:

Of course, not everyone who grows up in a deprived neighbourhood turns to crime – just as not everyone who grows up in a rich neighbourhood stays on the straight and narrow.

Individuals are responsible for their actions – and every individual has the choice between doing right and doing wrong. But there are connections between circumstances and behaviour.

Cameron, notedly, did not mention unemployment levels amongst young people. He did, however, mention Health and Safety laws and the Human Rights act. He makes it very clear that right now, he does not feel that poverty is a cause for the rioting. And whilst he may be slightly right over that, he has failed to recognise that there is not one single cause, and there is not one single answer. The truth lies somewhere in the middle, that all the possible causes mentioned by both sides need to be remedied. This needs to be done, for a start, by listening to those people who were affected by, and involved in, the riots. As Ed Miliband stated, to seek to explain is not to seek to excuse. Trying to understand why the riots happened does not mean we are giving amnesty to those who were involved. Understanding is the key, and should be the goal of all parties.

David Cameron’s measures, such as helping 120,000 of the country’s most troubled families, monitoring social networking sites, having plastic bullets and water cannon on standby, calling in a US “super-cop” to help and advise on riots (hang on, I thought the US looked to us for advice on crowd control…), have the feeling of nothing more than a sticking plaster. Covering up the wound in the faint hope it will heal itself. And this seems to be a recurring theme of this Prime Minister’s leadership. Not once have the Conservative Party at the heart of this Government looked to gain understanding about why things need to be done – in their minds, it’s all got to be done because Labour screwed everything up.

It’s time for a new message: Wake up, David, and smell the coffee. Britain is not broken, but it needs more than just lip-service.

Humanity’s desire to push for the limits of technology gave us the space race in the 1960s, with superpowers the Soviet Union and the United States engaged in a battle to be the first to put man in space, then to put man on the moon. The Soviets won the first round, with cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin completing an orbit of the Earth in April 1961. The Americans seemed to be far behind in the race for the moon, but the defining moment of the space race was John F Kennedy’s speech to Congress outlining his desire that the US put a man on the moon before the Soviets. This kick-started the funding that was needed to turn the existing US Mercury program into first Gemini, then into Apollo. Eventually, in July 1969, Neil Armstrong guided the Eagle LEM to the surface of the moon, and won the second round.

It is this desire to be the first and best that makes humanity such an intriguing study. Without this impulse to be better than other people, many of today’s technological advances would not have happened when they did. It is unfortunate that the main driving force behind advancement seems to be war between large administrations, indeed the development of the computer has its origins in military research. Alan Turing, widely recognised as the father of modern computing, worked for the British Government during World War Two to decrypt German encoding devices, including the Enigma machine. The Manhattan Project led to a proliferation of nuclear power throughout the world. The Wright Brothers’ powered flight innovations were taken into military developments, where the majority of refinements were made that led to commercial aviation advancements.

Now that the Shuttle program is coming to an end, and within an era of general worldwide peace, the onus for space flight is being passed to private entities. Whilst the US private sector comes up for a design for a new launch system and orbiter, American astronauts will be carried into space on Russian Soyuz rockets. Barack Obama has effectively retooled NASA for the purposes of a future manned mission to Mars, with an aim of landing on Mars by the end of 2040 at the latest.

Does this mean that private companies will look at space as a way of filling a profit and loss sheet with positive numbers? In days past, money was never a driving factor in research, development and delivery of a new project, which is why the military and Governmental organisations were able to keep ahead of the private sector. But because of the nature of the world we live in today, money is a much more prominent factor in almost everything that is done. Governments can live or die on the amount of money they spend or save, and this means that development of knowledge is placed much lower on the list than previously. Can private enterprise really deliver the cutting edge that NASA needs?

In truth, the Space Shuttle program lasted far longer than originally intended, it was meant to be a ten-year mission with multiple launches each year. However, the number of launches was reduced and the program stretched as long as possible, again due to cost restraints. George W Bush signed the NASA Authorisation Act 2005, setting in motion the shuttle’s replacement program, Constellation. This program was to have a wider scope than both Apollo and STS in that it was aiming to establish a base on the moon before shooting for Mars.  Budget constraints meant that Obama signed the NASA Authorisation Act 2010 to vastly reduce Constellation’s mission profile and also the State’s fiscal liability.

With new fears about the United States debt levels, it is possible that we may never see the Mars program in our lifetime, and that is a great shame for both science and humanity. We are natural explorers and inquisitors, desperate to find out why we are here, what else is out there and whether the stars can be bridged. The end of the Space Shuttle program shows that the American ambition has been blunted by reliance on outdated monetary systems.

It is time our planet worked together as one in our efforts to explore the local space neighbourhood. Unfortunately, I fear that it will take a new space race to stretch humanity to its best. In the meantime, space will remain seen but not touched, and we will be entering a new spatial dark age. And that is a massive shame.

But it turned out that they had only scratched the surface.

This week has seen a new wave of allegations over the “hacking” of mobile phone voicemails, notably those of the relatives of Milly Dowler, and the relatives of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman. Until now, public interest in this case had been nothing more than the level of gossip columns. It was pretty much about celebrities, and nobody really cares about them. But relatives of murdered people…too far. Public outrage all over the place!

I’m glad that the case is out in the open, and these allegations are being investigated, but I can’t help but think that the paper that broke the latest allegations, The Guardian, were banking on public outcry as a way of selling newspapers. That’s just the cynic in me, but that niggling doubt is still there. What saddens me is that by next week people will be back to not really caring about the outcome of this case. It’s still just a quirk of media to most people.

But what if this behaviour is endemic in Fleet Street?

There is absolutely no suggestion that other papers have sunk to the level of the News Of The World, but what do we have that guarantees something like this will never happen again? We have the PCC, a toothless self-regulation organisation with no real powers to punish papers that do wrong – see the case of Jan Moir’s flagrant disregard for common decency when dealing with Stephen Gately’s death. Other than that, we have to rely on the media policing itself. Is it any wonder we have a case like this, when there is no real preventative measures?

It’s time for the self-policing to stop. It’s time for David Cameron to take positive action, and commission an independent regulatory body along the lines of OFCOM. The media has proved it cannot look after itself, so it is time to give the media the nanny treatment.

The next few months will give a good guideline as to what action Cameron and his Government will take. Hopefully we’ll see the police investigation bring more criminal convictions, and an inquiry give us the answers as to how this was allowed to happen at all. I’m not confident though. Rupert Murdoch has already protected Rebekah Brooks, editor of the News Of The World at the time of the alleged hackings of Dowler’s parents and the Soham girls’ parents, and stated her job is safe.

On the subject of Rebekah Brooks, there have been several little weaselly excuses coming out about her; firstly, that she was on holiday at the time of the Dowler hacking; secondly, her little statement on Tuesday stating:

I hope that you all realise it is inconceivable that I knew or worse, sanctioned these appalling allegations.

Personally, when I saw that, the first thing I thought was that she was attempting to cover her own back. As editor of the paper at that time, she was responsible for all actions that that paper took. And even if she was on holiday, it is inconceivable that she would not have received proofs of the paper whilst away. There are many questions to be answered by many different people at the organisation. Ms Brooks will apparently be leading the internal inquiry at News International over this issue.

There are also allegations of payments from the paper to the police to divulge certain bits of information – Tom Watson MP also accused James Murdoch of perverting justice.

The whole thing stinks to high heaven, and although it will be out of the public eye by next week as the next big shock story comes along (the Daily Mail slid out a horrid piece by Brian Sewell today that went hardly noticed – had it been next week that’s all people would be talking about). But underneath the public eye, the rumblings will continue. And at the end of it, I hope we have a cleaner, more honest press.

As I’ve blogged before, the whole campaign on AV was flawed and highly disrespectful to the general public. But the public have voted no, and the media are all too happy to spin this as being an overwhelming vote against Clegg.  On its own, it could be said that the No vote was purely about the systems in use. But combined with this result was the local elections, and the Lib Dems were reduced to almost the level of a minor party whilst Labour made massive gains.

Overall, it’s difficult to see these results as anything other than the country overwhelmingly saying “No” to Nick Clegg, especially as the Conservatives emerged completely unscathed in the council elections. If anything, this is probably David Cameron’s best week since he became Prime Minister, as this will presumably endorse to him that the Conservatives are the right party to be in power.

Meanwhile, at Lib Dem HQ, accusations about Conservative underhandedness over the AV campaigning carry on, as the party looks for answers (or more likely, excuses) which will explain the results. There have been a small number of former Lib Dem councillors calling for Clegg to resign as leader of the party, but it is not them that Clegg needs to listen to. If I were him right now, I would be putting the feelers out amongst voters, and finding out their opinions. It is not uncommon for leaders to face quit calls from their own party members, but the party members are not the people who matter when it comes to elections. If Clegg feels that his resignation will allow the party to regain the ground lost over the last twelve months, then that is what he should do.

Whatever his choice, I do feel that it is a long hard fight for the Lib Dems to justify their position in this coalition, and to regain the trust of the electorate. The Conservative vote is remaining strong because they are doing what they always do, and whilst what they do is not popular, they can probably be said to be the least dishonest party at this moment in time.

Some say that a snap election will be called within the next year, possibly by September of this year, so if feelings remain the same what could we see?

BBC’s Poll Tracker collates all the various opinion polls, including the very influential and respected Yougov poll. The trend since the election last year has been a resurgence in Labour support coinciding with a weakening of Conservative support and a halving of the support for Lib Dems. Translated into an election result, it would probably mean another hung parliament but with the Lib Dems losing a good number of the seats they currently hold. This is where Nick Clegg’s dilemma is. He now has to consider not only what the electorate think of him, but also what the electorate might make of whoever would replace him.

The prospective candidates to replace him would be current Energy secretary Chris Huhne, Deputy Leader Simon Hughes, and President of the Lib Dems Tim Farron. Clegg would need to ensure that whoever takes over has no links to him, otherwise the Lib Dems could be accused of cronyism with Clegg accused of back-seat leading.

There is one other option, that I’m sure would be considered a bit extreme by others – Nick Clegg could resign from the party completely. This would probably be a very last-resort option, but if Clegg resigns, he could face calls to leave the party. And I’m sure that he would be welcomed into a safe seat and a frontbench position with the Conservatives if he did leave.

There are difficult times ahead for Clegg and the Liberal Democrats. Whether they are strong enough to get through, only time will tell.

We have the “No” campaign, desperately trying to discredit Nick Clegg and his involvement in the campaign, based on his past political errors. And we have the “Yes” campaign, desperate to discredit the “No” campaign over their funding. Sounds to me like just about every election over the past 50 years, nobody seems ever to focus on their own party or cause…it’s easier to slander and bully the opposition parties or causes. And this is where the real political reform is needed, not in the voting system.

There is a great political apathy in this country, and with the quality of politicians representing us, it’s easy to see why. Labour’s Phil Woolas was removed from his seat and sacked by the party over unfounded lies in his election literature. The Conservatives ran a billboard campaign whose sole aim was to point out all the things they thought Gordon Brown had done wrong. The Lib Dems had one where they said just how much extra tax people would pay under a Conservative Government. And all the minor parties had their own digs at the main parties and each other.

So why do parties do this? My own opinion is because it is a get-out clause, it stops them having to talk positively about their own policies. I watched a lot of the last election campaign with interest, and by the end of it I have to say I had no idea what any of the main parties were planning to do if they gained power. It’s a handy tool for parties, but what it does is it assumes the voting public are idiots who can’t be trusted to make an informed and unbiased decision. It’s time this stopped.

A change in the election rules is needed in order to stop parties treating the electorate like idiots. The rule change I would like to see is to ban political parties using election campaigns as tools in which to smear their opponents, and to treat the electorate in a fair and unbiased manner by publishing and fully explaining their manifesto commitments. By doing this, people will be able to choose the party that best fits their own political beliefs, and it will allow the public to hold any future Government to account over its failings. This is where the reform in politics is needed, not a change in voting system.

By defeating voter apathy, we will ensure a much fairer political system without actually having to make costly changes. A fairer system is a better system, and a better system ensures a brighter future.

All this has made for a very exciting start to the season. In Australia (which was the start of the season due to the difficulties in Bahrain), we saw Red Bull start in a blistering fashion, McLaren confound spectators with a sudden return to racing form, and Sauber exceed everyone’s expectations by finishing seventh and eighth. Unfortunately, due to technical infringements, the Sauber pair were later disqualified from the race, which promoted the Force India of Paul Di Resta up into 10th in his debut race in Formula One.

Malaysia continued in a similar vein, but in China at the Shanghai International Circuit things really took off for the season. It looked as though Seb Vettel was set to continue his early-season dominance with another pole…but his KERS start system apparently didn’t function correctly, and both Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button were able to get past him at the start. In the end, Hamilton took an exciting victory to announce to Red Bull that he will not be lying down and letting them steamroller this season.

So we have a season that might not give us true unpredictability in terms of results, but in terms of pure racing, those drivers are going to have to work harder than ever for their points. And viewers throughout the UK can watch it all for free on our national broadcast channel, the BBC.

But not for long, if Rupert Murdoch gets his way.

It seems strange to me that F1 has only just come to the attention of News Corporation after all this time on free-to-air television. But apparently the Concorde Agreement between the teams, the FIA and Formula One Administration is up for re-negotiation. A major part of that agreement is that Formula One be broadcast on free-to-air television due to the massive viewer numbers this generates.

News Corp are sniffing around because they think that now might be the time to take another of our great broadcast sports and put it behind a paywall. This cannot be allowed to happen, and thankfully Bernie Ecclestone sees things the same way. Bernie is the ruthless ringmaster that runs Formula One on behalf of its owners, Formula One Administration, and he negotiates all the commercial rights for the sport. People may see him as blunt, but everyone in the sport knows exactly what they will get with Bernie at the helm.

If he were to sell the rights to F1 to News Corp, there would be massive conflicts of interest, as News Corp own rather a large portion of the world’s media as it is, and owning F1 would allow those media outlets to get preferential treatment when it comes to broadcast agreements. This would be a bad thing for Formula One.

Bernie will always act in the best interest of the sport, even if he doesn’t appear to do so, because he knows that if he annoys enough of the teams involved they will break away and form their own championship. This is why the concorde Agreement is so important. And what’s the point in Formula One if there’s no Ferrari, no McLaren, no Williams? News Corp, in my opinion, would rinse the sport for every penny it can muster, and to hell with its history.

I’m actually dreading the day Bernie passes away, as it will open up Formula One to whoever replaces him and to whatever they want to do with it. Here’s hoping mad Bernie is in fact immortal!

In today’s example of the steady and civilised chance for the PM to answer questions about anything and everything (he gets briefed on things that might come up, as well as on everything the Opposition Leader will ask), Speaker John Bercow had to try and calm the rabble after just ten minutes of questions. This is the first reason the session is pointless.

The second reason the session is pointless is that the PM very rarely answers questions with a straight bat. Whenever he is asked a question that attacks any Government policy, instead of giving a straight answer, the PM will use it as a chance to attack Labour’s policy. Let it go, Dave, you’re in charge, you don’t need to keep doing that any more! The constant lack of answers tells me a couple of things about this Conservative Government.

• It tells me that they are running scared. Their constant attacks on the Opposition are designed to try and get the public to see that the Conservative way is the only way forward because the Opposition would keep on ruining the country. It effectively frees them from any kind of blame, because when they are attacked they can simply answer “still better than the last lot”. But is it really?
• It tells me that they have no answers. Constantly pointing to the opposition means that they have not needed to have answers, their stock answer of “the other lot made a mess” is the only answer they need. But it is NOT GOOD ENOUGH. not good enough for the people of this country to be told “We will do what the hell we like because the last lot made such a mess”.

A good example was today’s question from David Cairns (Lab). He pointed out that the Government was responsible for massive cuts in the Police budget, asking whether the Goverment was being soft on crime. The PM’s considered answer was that Labour were denying the need to reduce the deficit. It’s that answer that makes Dave truly believe he can do what he wants with this country.

Another one: Mr Miliband followed up one of his questions with an attack on the Government’s cuts, saying they will make society “smaller and weaker”. Mr Cameron’s answer? “Labour has no answers, and nearly bankrupted this country”.

Personally I would like to see PMQs replaced with a different format. The questions are still gathered in the accepted manner, but instead of facing the House with the questions, the PM faces a cross-party (or ideally independent) board of inquisitors. The questions HAVE to be answered properly, and any reference to the previous Government would be banned. This would last for one hour instead of 30 minutes, giving the inquisitors time to ask follow-ups where necessary, and all answers would be televised for the nation to see. Surely this has to be a better solution than the current non-entity of a session that is foisted on us every week in the name of democracy.

You see, the Coalition, in its infinite wisdom, chose to package the bill that needs to be come law for a referendum to happen along with a controversial piece of legislation allowing for massive boundary reforms across the country, reducing the number of seats from 650 to 600 and benefiting the Tory party massively. Labour are arguing that a full public consultation needs to happen before boundary reforms of this scale can happen and want the AV bill to be put through separately. This is an inconvenience to the Tories, as the boundary reform bill is unlikely to make it through Parliament without major changes if it were to be put through on its own. By piggybacking it along with the referendum bill, they will be able to change the boundaries regardless of the outcome of the AV referendum, as well as taking the Lib Dems out of the equation for possible negative votes. So stand-off occurred.

Anyway, I digress.

Most parties apart from the Conservatives argue that electoral reform is badly needed to improve the level of democracy in this country. However, neither the Lib Dems nor Conservatives included it in their election manifestos, it was used as a bargaining chip in the subsequent coalition discussions. Both Gordon and Dave agreed to a referendum on an alternative voting system, but when Nick got into bed with Dave, he gave his party a weak version of what he actually wanted.

The reasons that this AV referendum is both unwanted and unnecessary I have laid out below:

• If this referendum were to provide a positive result, in that the electorate chooses AV over the current system, that would be the end of the matter for at least 20 years, as no party will want to legislate to change the system again so soon (they will want to see how it works a few times through). So the chance of obtaining a Single Transferable Vote system would be lost to our generation.
• If it provides a negative result, or not enough of a turnout, the chance to reform voting will be lost for at least 10 years thanks to the underhandedness of the main proponent of this bill, Nick Clegg.

What is expected of people is that they will vote on this issue based on their own understanding of which voting system would be best. What will actually happen, because it’s the way people work, is that the referendum will become about judging the Lib Dems. People have stated that the Coalition may not be able to survive a negative outcome, though this is denied by the Lib Dems whilst the Conservatives stay quiet about the matter.

It was totally wrong of Nick Clegg to accept this weaker and negligibly better system on the referendum, this is one of those many times where Lib Dems should have stood up for what they really wanted rather than accept a sop on the basis of receiving limited powers in Government. We are facing a pointless referendum as whatever the outcome, nobody will get what they want. Once the Yes Brigade finish their campaign on this, they will immediately shift to wanting STV, but will anyone be willing to offer them another referendum in four years time?

My bet is on No.

Amanda Holden recently very tragically lost her unborn child at seven months. The celebrity world, and indeed many well-wishing non-famous members of the Twitter community were quick to pass their condolences through the social networking giant. Jan Moir doesn’t like this.

At best, it appears narcissistic. At worst, it is, surely, just plain, old-fashioned showing off. Not to mention self-seeking puffery of the very worst sort.

So to send condolences to someone for a devastating loss is self-seeking puffery? You horrible twisted woman. How sad does your life have to be that you can only see this in a well-intentioned public show of support? Would she rather everyone tweeted “I’m glad she lost the baby, no sympathy whatsoever for her…it’s her own fault for being famous!”

Of course, the Daily Mail will defend her right to free speech and all that, but there’s a difference between using free speech to express an opinion and using free speech to downright abuse people.

For a particular kind of focused, gimlet-eyed celebrity, there is no public currency in private sympathy, particularly as grief increasingly appears to have a social dimension these days. And to express it, either for yourself or particularly on behalf of others, is seen as giving you some kind of social cachet.

Link to the Daily Mail article in question through a proxy so as not to generate hits for the Daily Mail website.