In my darkest heart, I suspect it’s because there are hordes of alcohol-fuelled crazies out there munching on some half-cooked ready meal laced with salmonella in front of their television who actually care.

But, I shut my eyes and prefer to imagine that those rumours of drugged-up television executives are true, and in a fit of white-powdered madness they felt that we hadn’t seen enough about Amy Winehouse’s self destruction. They just know that there is someone, somewhere, who hasn’t seen the pasty Pete “This would be my brain on drugs if I hadn’t smoked it” Doherty, and that someone will actually care enough to watch. That, at least, would make sense. The alternatives are too horrifying to contemplate.

A week doesn’t seem to go by without another one of these shows spawning like some sort of ear bacteria that won’t go away, no matter what you pour in there: Top 100 Worst Celebrities, Top 100 Celebrity Television Moments, and the same evening that I’m writing this, Top 100 Worst Celebrity Couples. Some are, admittedly, mildly amusing. The incredulous look on Tom Cruise’s face as he’s squirted with water, for example, is forever watchable. Him jumping on the couch? Not so much fun the hundredth time. But in all seriousness, just how many fucking times do you have to watch Michael Jackson wave his kid off a balcony before you say, “Hey, shit. You know, I just didn’t get it before, but after watching this clip three hundred and seventy six times I finally understand … that guy is just a loon!”

It’s not just the shows that are really mind-numbingly annoying, but the people that give their lofty opinions on why Mr. and Mrs. So-And-So make you want to scratch your eyes out. Who the hell are these people? Don’t they have real jobs? Or were they drugged and dragged in off the street in some sort of weird sadomasochist Celebrity TV cult? That would at least be remotely respectable, because nothing says parasite more than someone who would be broke and homeless if it weren’t for the very celebrity they’re busy telling the world is such a tosser. I’m sorry, but some freak with his hair stuck up into two red devil’s horns on either side of a face that looks like a cross between Jabba The Hut and David Bowie on a bad hair day has no right in commenting on anything, except perhaps his pressing need to find his hairdresser to get his money back, or to shoot him.

They should publish a show about the Top 100 Twats Commenting in Celebrity Top 100 Shows, but I probably couldn’t be arsed to watch that, either.

I guess the fox road-kill I saw this morning on my way to work was helping advertise Dunlop tyres.

Come to think of it, I don’t remember the ad about the CGI squirrel standing outside the job centre because the golden acorns had magically disappeared in a mist of credit-crunch reality, either.

And then, you get the new ad from Fairy, with nothing less than digital Panda bears, brown bears, and ducklings watching in awe as an army of frogs clutch plastic bottles and blast some sort of cleaning liquid into the air. Soapy Fireworks! For animals! I imagine that the Orang-utans were unavailable to star in this harmony of nature-meets-detergent, on account of them dying out thanks to their habitat being destroyed to make way for plantations producing palm oil, an ingredient which may well be in Fairy. We don’t know, because they’re not really telling.

Awww, but look at the cute bears!

And yet, Mbeki has constantly argued for many years, “Together with [Zimbabweans], our government will work persistently and without making the noise of empty drums, to help the sister people of Zimbabwe to find a just and lasting solution to the real and pressing land question in their country.” SA’s Foreign Minister Dlamini Zuma’s elaborated that SA would “never” condemn Zimbabwe “as long as this government is in power” because they didn’t want to “throw [the Zimbabwean] people over the precipice”, despite the evidence that they already are being pushed over it by their own government.

Yet this is not the real reason behind Mbeki’s softly, slowly approach. No, Mbeki was in fact much clearer about it at a March 28 South African Development Community conference in Tanzania, as quoted in the Christian Science Monitor article:

“The fight against Zimbabwe is a fight against us all. Today it is Zimbabwe; tomorrow it will be South Africa, it will be Mozambique, it will be Angola, it will be any other African country. And any government that is perceived to be strong and to be resistant to imperialists would be made a target and would be undermined. So let us not allow any point of weakness in the solidarity of SADC, because that weakness will also be transferred to the rest of Africa.”

Therefore, the real meaning of quiet diplomacy is essentially to support Zimbabwe, which “is perceived to be strong”, through thick and thin because it has been “made a target” by “imperialists”, and the SADC must not show “weakness”.

This is similar to the slogan, “My Country, Right Or Wrong”, and it is likely to have the same disastrous consequences of allowing a thug and a tyrant to stay in power.

1. Bottled Water is a scam
Bottled water is often a con, and is really just purified tap water (some estimates state that around 40% of bottled water begins as tap water): in the United States, the Aquafina brand (Pepsi) was recently revealed to have come from the city of Detroit’s water system, while so is Dasani, Coca-Cola’s brand. Also, in the UK, Coca-Cola in 2004 was hit with bad publicity after it was revealed that Dasani was purified tap-water from a factory in Sid-Cup, Kent.

2. Bottled Water is not always healthier
Don’t buy into the glossy images of pristine mountains and crystal clear pools that often accompany marketing for these products. A four year study conducted by the National Resources Defence Council in the United States concluded that at least one third of 103 brands surveyed contained varying levels of contamination. In addition, shortly after Coca-Cola was revealed to be using a factory tap for its water, they had to pull the entire line of Dasani water off the shelves because it was revealed that it had been contaminated with the chemical bromate which can cause cancer. Furthermore, bottled water often has added minerals that, in high doses, may be harmful (as a result, the French Senate advises those who drink bottled water to change brands regularly).

3. Bottled Water encourages commodification of water
The bottled water industry is worth a fortune, currently about $100 billion a year. As a result, ownership of water around the globe has become a hot commodity for corporations. In the US, for example, reliance on bottled water often means that much needed money for maintaining public water systems is not available, often encouraging private management and ownership. Furthermore, the privatization of water around the world, especially in the developing world (such as in Africa and South America), has meant that that water has started becoming inaccessible to those segments of the population that need it the most: the poor. Water-rich areas often see their water packaged and shipped abroad to be sold to richer markets. This, at a time when one third of the world’s population have difficulty accessing water, is unforgivable. (Plus, it is projected that by 2025, two thirds of the world’s population will have difficulty accessing safe drinking water). Bottled water is just another sign of the fight to control the world’s water.

4. Bottled Water encourages depletion of natural resources
Many brands of bottled water take it directly from the source. The problem, of course, is that, because bottling this water is such a great commodity, the water is taken and used far too quickly for these water sources to replenish themselves. In Frayeburg, Maine (USA), for example, so much water has been removed from the local natural spring near Lovewell Pond, that the water quality of the pond is deteriorating. In India, Coca-Cola’s rapid depletion of natural water resources as a result of its manufacturing and bottling plants has led to sustained resistance against the corporation. These are just two of many examples at a time when many communities around the world face water scarcity as a result of receding glaciers and droughts as a result of global warming, as well as impacted by over-use through increases in population.

5. Bottled Water encourages waste and pollution
All that plastic packaging is made by oil, and it is estimated that America alone uses 1.5 million barrels of oil to make the containers required for bottled water. And don’t think it’s all getting recycled: over 80% of the packaging in the US ends up as garbage. Plus, all that plastic has a shelf life of around 1000 years, so the problem isn’t just going to go away.

6. Bottled Water aids global warming
Instead of drinking local tap water that uses a rather good energy efficient system in comparison, bottled water drinkers are sipping on water that could have been flown half way around the world, driven across your borders, or shipped in across the oceans, all of it adding to a massive CO2 footprint. And this is not even counting the manufacturing cost, either.

7. Bottled Water helps contribute to war
With water scarcity already an issue and increasing, reports project that by 2025 Africa will face increasing incidences of water wars between states, adding to another long list of problems faced by the continent. Even analysts for corporations such has Coca-Cola have identified bleak assessments for the future of the world’s water supply around the world. Their hopes are that technology will alleviate the problem, and scarcity will encourage better management of resources, but experience suggests that management will be based upon profits and the richest consumers. Regardless, it is clear that, just like oil has helped fuel wars and conflicts, so to will water scarcity, and bottled water contributes to this future.

If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man.

It seems that the exact cause of the decline of bee populations in Germany and America may have a large number of causes. In Germany, it has been attributed to an alien invader from Asia called the varroa mite, the use of pesticides on wild flowers, and monoculture. More worryingly, it is also suspected that it may be as a result of genetically modified crops. In America, similar reasons have been given to account for their loss, also citing a “vampire” mite that destroys bee hives.

The phenomenon of entire hives being destroyed is called “colony collapse disorder“, and it appears to have spread to regions in Italy, Spain, Greece, Portugal, Poland, and also Britain. An astonishing 24 states in America have reported a 50 to 90 percent loss in bee colonies.

Most interestingly of all is a recent German study that claims that radiation from mobile phones is the cause because it “interferes with bees’ navigation systems” and prevents them from finding their way back to their hives.

All the reasons do seem to have one thing in common, however: us. Not really a newsflash, but still, it’s sad.

Human beings will be happier – not when they cure cancer or get to Mars or eliminate racial prejudice or flush Lake Erie but when they find ways to inhabit primitive communities again. That’s my utopia.

Kurt Vonnegut,  born November 11, 1922 and died at the age of 84 on April 11, 2007. If you don’t know who he is, read his book Slaughterhouse Five.