Last week was depressing as hell. Foreigners kept on dying all over the world with no respect for tabloid circulation.It was a week so full of human suffering that the announcement of the budget was comic relief.

The government got pretty much what it wanted from the right-wing tabloids on Thursday when they explained the budget to us stupids. The Mail happily put Osborne’s transparently phrased summary that the budget would “put fuel in the tank” of the economy on their front page. Do you think the Chancellor wanted our attention focused on any specific aspect of the budget perchance? The Mail were very keen to report on the 6p cut in petrol duty. 6p that consisted of delaying a planned 5p rise and cutting 1p from a price which had already been pushed up more than 3p by the VAT increase. You lucky people.

Anyway, sorry about that- budgets are boring. Creative accounting may be creative but it’s still accounting.

Luckily The Sun have less faith in their readers to care about, or understand, the budget so they made pretty pictures for us all to look at! They helpfully made everything black and white by printing big happy or sad faces underneath each topic, although the really useful part was them illustrating the ‘green shoots budget’ with George Osborne holding a watering can while some green shoots grew from the soil. Never has a man looked less comfortable doing a day’s work than the hapless photoshopped plant-botherer. Weirdly Osborne’s budget moves seemed to perfectly mirror campaigns by The Sun, allowing it to appear that Osborne is in touch with the people rather than working with Murdoch’s press to manipulate public reaction.

The Star didn’t think their readers could be trusted with getting worked up about the budget without a sport connection. The front page shouted ‘Balls to the Budget’ like a back-bencher with Tourettes, and was concerned with footballers earning so much they didn’t care about the budget. They had a brief story inside but it was all grunting and spittle-flecked pictures of ordinary people.

The big story of the week was of course WAR! Once again the tabloids, both left and right are perfectly happy to debate the nuances of the political situation in the middle-east but only until ‘our boys’ get sent in. Then it’s all pictures of fire and playground insults (Gadaffi has undergone a 2011 re-brand as ‘mad dog’) for fear as being unpatriotic. Then when it’s all over the newspapers will start asking ‘difficult’ questions, which are just ‘obvious’ questions which may have saved lives if they’d been asked when it counted.

Regardless of your views on whether Gadaffi is worthy of your contempt, you can take solace that Richard Littlejohn is taking aim at the targets that need taking down. On Tuesday’s Mail he started his most righteous battle since he got annoyed about the victims of the Ipswich serial killer being referred to as ‘women who worked as prostitutes’ rather than simply ‘prostitutes’. If there’s one thing our Richard hates more than the correct employment categorisation of dead women it’s the notion of holding a minute’s silence for the Japanese.

Starting his article

‘no-one with a shred of humanity can fail to be moved by some of the pictures coming out of Japan’,

Littlejohn chooses his platform in a national newspaper to talk about how terrible liberal guilt is. Like a victim of impotence referring to his a problem his ‘friend’ suffers from, he writes about what his

‘wife’s PoW grandad’

would think of all of this but in doing so allies himself on this subject with someone who it is implied had a pathological, albeit understandable, hatred of the Japanese. It’s arguable that the core opinion that drives the piece (stop emoting in public about something that doesn’t concern you, in order to appear caring) is a sound one although other cultural commentators having been making the same point better since the aftermath of Diana. Regardless his timing and embittered headline are far worse displays of attention-seeking than organising a minute’s silence.

Jesus, that was depressing, but this was a week where one of The Mirror’s ‘humorous’ stories was a series of depressing pictures of a Beluga Whale head-butting the side of an aquarium tank.

Maybe we should think about using The Sun’s smiley faces to denote whether this column sad or happy in future?

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Apart from the obvious benefits of tourism, there really doesn’t seem to be much point to the Royal Family. They remind hecklerspray of ghouls, hired to occupy large houses and rattle around staring at old oil paintings and eating from 200 year old plates. And that’s about it.

Of course, countries like America wish they had a royal family. They love the heritage of it all. Well, consider this Americans – The Queen is just our version of Paris Hilton. She’s wealthy for no reason and doesn’t understand how the world works.

At least Paris Hilton has the decency to live it up with purses filled with cocaine. That said, no-one wants to see the grainy sex-tape of Her Majesty and Prince Philip going at it hammer and tongues.

For too long, the Royal Family have been almost entirely pointless. They appear on our stamps and are the subject of the most boring national anthem in the universe (even more boring than the national anthem of the very boring planet of Meh where inhabitants are discouraged from doing anything that might quicken their weak hearts).

However, the new breed of blue bloods coming through seem to be headed up by a pair who are keen to prove that the Royal Family aren’t just a group of people who take up valuable space in Britain which could be used for something more interesting or useful.

And Prince William is stepping up to announce that he’d like people to try and kill him.

Now, it’s worth pointing out that he doesn’t want any old person to try and pass bullets through his well-bred torso, but rather, he is determined to serve on the front line Afghanistan, following in the footsteps of his younger brother, Prince Harry.

Fair play to him. If we were in the same position, it’s fair to assume our vast wealth would be spent getting drugs up our noses and indulging in very dubious sexual practises.

William has said that he wants to head to Afghanistan where Britain has some 10,000 troops as part of a NATO-led force fighting a fierce Taliban insurgency. Harry served in Afghanistan for 10 weeks but was withdrawn after media reported the deployment, which meant that they’d effectively painted a neon target on his back.

William says:

“My heart was in the army and that’s why I first joined them. It’s just a pity I didn’t get to Afghanistan. Which, you know, many people say ‘well that’s very understandable’.

“There are some slightly valid arguments as to why not, but many of them are hyped up as to why I couldn’t go.

“I still have hope and faith and a real determination to go out there.”

The mad fucker.

Bang, bang, bang, bang. Bang, bang, bang, bang, boom. Bang. That is the noise war makes, as reproduced by Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg in The Pacific.

The Pacific is a massive budget ($200m) 10 -part miniseries from HBO, shown by Sky Movies HD in the UK. What’s that? Why is Sky Movies showing a TV series? Good question. The big Sky Movies boss thinks this show is *so* cinematic, it is basically more of a film than actual films.

Each 45 minute episode contains approximately 17 minutes of footage, the rest is filled with opening and closing credits. Bear this fact in mind when deciding whether to Sky+ it or not.

The opening war-athon goes a bit like this. It is Christmas, 1941. America. Some Marines are being told how great they are by an older Marine. This is followed by the Marines patting themselves on the back. A few of them are singled out as the main characters. Even after watching two episodes on Europe’s largest screen, we still can’t tell them apart.

Without giving too much away, these naive super soldiers are about to embark on a trip to various islands in the Pacific (the title gave it away didn’t it?) to bring about the total, 100%, maximum destruction of the Japanese Empire. If you’re not a fan of racist slang, now would be a good point to end your The Pacific experience.

Fairly inane squaddie dialogue follows until the guns start firing and one of the main ones starts questioning the morality of the slaughter at their hands. It is from here that The Pacific gets interesting.

If the thought of brotherhood, camaraderie and sentimental drivel doesn’t make you nauseous, this is for you.

P-Day is 5th April, 9pm on Sky Movies HD.

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Sometimes it’s obvious to find a solution for a problem that has been bugging you for ages.

Sick of getting a nasty shock all over your body? Removing your fingers from the plug socket will always be a solution to stop that problem.

One eternal issue that has plagued the world for centuries has been war. People have been shoving sticks in to each other, burning down castles and dropping bombs on rival countries. It doesn’t look set to stop any time soon as Batman, The Pope and Bono can’t find a solution. But one dizzy American can. Not Hilary Clinton, but another called Paris Hilton.

We’re going to have to stop slagging off Paris Hilton. Soon, we might not be able to keep up with her ever-expanding career portfolio. Music fans around the world were delighted when Paris decided to launch a fully-fledged singing career. Combined with promo videos to make the wonk-eyed blonde look attractive, it failed to help shift copies of her totally gash album.

Bollocks to the singing lark then. Perhaps Paris could make a comeback as a fully-fledged porn star. Perverts from across the world have been treated to what can only be described as a bobble-headed nightvision frolicking. And thanks to the wonders of file-sharing, the antics of a younger, blonder and still stupid Paris Hilton can still be found on the internet.

Subsequently, Paris has had a lot of people fall out with her about her cock-munching shenanigans. So, she needed to launch a self indulgent TV show where she could search for a new BFF. That’s Best Friend Forever for anyone over the mental age of 12. Apart from attracting a lot of wannabe TV stars, she didn’t really find a sidekick to call her friend to clean up after her in the street.

Now it seems that Paris has turned for another niche in the market to inflict her genius upon us all. After carefully monitoring the situation between Gaza and Palestine and the strained nuclear missile crisis relations between North Korea and America, Paris has thrown her opinion into the ring.

If only we had done this before it popped into the brain of Paris Hilton. World War II could have been over in a few months, Anne Frank would have been able to keep on writing diaries and the Vietnam War wouldn’t have happened. According to Now Magazine, Paris Hilton said:

“I would definitely try to make peace with the countries we are fighting. I’d go over to them and throw a party, so they could all get together and get along and stop the war.”

A party! That’s what we need everyone! A big party so we can hug each other awkwardly and console our differences over a glass of fruit punch whilst midgets bring trays of pineapple on sticks around for everyone.

If only Winston Churchill had thought of doing that with Hitler. If he’d launched a conga line of peace across Europe, then it could have stopped the trail of death and destruction left by English and German bombers. And it would have meant that Pearl Harbour would have never been greenlit. It’s clear we need Paris Hilton more than ever.

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It’s our favourite time of the year – the time when the shortlisted nominees for next year’s induction to the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame are announced.

Why is it our favourite time of the year? Because we know that from hereon in, it’s going to be a whistlestop pedal-to-the-metal seven-month funride until the bands eventually chosen to go into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame get properly inducted. Seven months. Seven poxy months that we’ll never get back. Fun.

So who could be going into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame next year? Why only Run-DMC, Metallica, The Stooges, Jeff Beck, Wanda Jackson, Chic, Little Anthony And The Imperials, Bobby Womack and War. That’s War the concept of organised military disputes between feuding nations and not War the 1970s jazz-funk fusion band responsible for hits like Why Can’t We Be Friends, by the way. That struck us as weird, too.

Of all the different ways that the Rock And Roll Hall Of fame can make you angry – like the awkwardness of reuniting bands or the desperately bad musical tributes or the inescapable fact that none of it actually matters in the slightest – we think we’ve found a new one.

It’s exactly the same every year. Every year Chic get nominated for the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame, and every year The Stooges get nominated for the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame and every year neither of them do because of the long-winded and confusing multi-stage voting process. Do you know what it’s like knowing that you’ve got to write exactly the same thing about Chic and The Stooges every year? Do you? It’s bloody awful.

However, this year we’ve got our fingers crossed really tight for both The Stooges and Chic get inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame. We think they will, as well, because most of the other nominees this year are crap. But first we’ve got to wade through seven months of bureaucratic nonsense. Reports Reuters:

Artists become eligible for the Hall of Fame 25 years after the release of their first single or album and are represented in an exhibition at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland, Ohio. More than 500 music industry professionals will choose five of the nominees for the 24th annual induction on April 4 in Cleveland. The inductees will be announced in January.

So who’s been nominated for induction into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame? Here’s our rundown.

Run-DMC - Rappers responsible for hits like Walk This Way. DMC actually stands for Dog Muck Clodge, after the time that Reverend Run once made a fanny out of some dogshit.

Metallica – Heavy metal group responsible for hits like Enter Sandman. Now more famous for their film Some Kind Of Monster where they all sat in a circle, wanked each other off and then cleaned bugs out of each other’s fur with their fingers than for their music.

Bobbie Womack – Responsible for hits like Let Me Kiss It Where It Hurts. Legally changed his name to Bobbie Womack from the original Boobie Woman in 1974.

Jeff Beck – Responsible for hits like Rock My Plimsoul. Actually invented the guitar – before him, people just used tennis raquets and their own mouths.

Chic – Responsible for hits like Freak Out and Good Times. One of the most influential bands in history, Chic’s fingerprints can be felt all over everything from No Surprises by Radiohead to Here Comes The Bride.

Wanda Jackson – Responsible for hits like Funnel Of Love. Having studied at RADA, Jackson’s first achieved fame with her role in Ken Russell‘s Women In Love before becoming a household name with her portrayal of Queen Elizabeth I of England in the BBC’s 1971 blockbuster serial, Elizabeth R. Now a Labour backbencher representing Hampstead and Highgate.

Little Anthony And The Imperials – Responsible for hits like Shimmy, Shimmy Ko-Ko-Bop. Named ironically, since the band were all medieval peasants and Little Anthony was actually Megatron from Transformers.

The Stooges – Responsible for hits like Search And Destroy. Recently reformed, The Stooges now play concerts exclusively at wakes and pet bar mitzvahs.

War - Responsible for hits like Spill The Wine. One of War’s songs was performed at the end of Lethal Weapon 4. For allowing this to happen, everyone in War is legally a twat.

You’re welcome.

For thousands of years, Afghanistan has weathered a near-constant stream of violent invasions. Why? Because Jude Law wasn’t around to sort them all out, obviously.

But luckily that’s all changed now. Jude Law went to Afghanistan on a mission of peace yesterday, to call for a one-day ceasefire that would allow food deliveries and vaccinations to take place. But only if it’s called The First Annual Ceasefire And We Love Jude Law Day and everyone is given a Jude Law mask and a badge that says ‘Jude Law Is My Hero And Also A Fairly Underrated Actor’.

That’s a lie. But while Jude Law’s Afghan peace visit might seem like an embarrassingly hopeless display of celebrity vanity, it might just work. After all, it’s a little-known fact that the Taliban universally considers Jude Law’s portrayal of a sexy robot prostitute in AI to be the pinnacle of artistic achievement in all of history. It might work after all!

We’ve always thought that Jude Law was good at three things – miraculously and naturally reversing the effects of male pattern baldness, having it off with the staff and peacefully unifying all regions of the world forever all by himself.

No, really, he is. Look at the Bosnian war – it was a tangled mess that looked set to rage on for centuries until it abruptly came to an end in 1995, just after the release of Jude Law’s little-watched joyriding Britflick Shopping. Coincidence? No? Pah, next you’ll be telling us that the 2004 expansion of North Atlantic Treaty Organisation didn’t have anything to do with I Heart Huckabees.

Anyway, now Jude Law has turned his focus onto Afghanistan. According to reports, Jude Law is pushing for September 21 to become a nationwide ‘Peace Day’ where all sides of the conflict can lay down their weapons to facilitate 24 hours of safe food deliveries and vaccinations.

Apparently this is the second year in a row that Jude Law has visited Afghanistan, after making a top-secret trip last year to help with the country’s vaccination program. It was such a top-secret visit, in fact, that nobody at all knew he was even there. Well, apart from the crew of the forthcoming documentary that Jude Law was making about it. He’s not stupid. Speaking in Kabul yesterday, Jude Law said of his last visit:

“I was hugely moved, not by the conflict that I have read so much about, but by the people’s courage and the people’s sense of hope. It seemed that they really want to make the peace day work. And they did. People recognise the day because they recognise that lives could be saved.”

According to Jude Law, this Afghanistan documentary of his is “the most important film I have been part of”. What, more important than the Alfie remake? Don’t do yourself down so much, Jude.

Actually, while it’s easy to mock Jude Law for the weird self-belief that he can bring peace to Afghanistan simply because he happens to be Jude Law, you have to admit that – theoretically at least – the Peace Day does sound like an incredibly good idea. And what does Jude Law want in return for his promotion of the cause?

Nothing more than a road named after him and a series of mile-high golden statues depicting seminal scenes from his movies that flash the world ‘hero’ in every language on Earth directly into the sky every night. The man should be applauded.

Historians know that the end of the Napoleonic War came when Napoleon's wife had drunken vomity sex with another man and the Duke of Wellington felt a bit sorry for him.

And now history has repeated itself. Following the revelation that Cheryl Cole's husband Ashley Cole loved nothing more than to dick a bunch of slappers while throwing up the contents of his guts all over them, Cheryl Cole's arch-nemesis Lily Allen has called a truce.

That's right – the ferocious Allen-Cole war is over. Maybe if politicians were more like Lily Allen the world would be a better place. Although if more politicians were like Lily Allen there'd be a lot more shambling amateurish BBC Three chat shows. Probably best that they're not, then.

We don't know what's going on with the world these days. Everyone's being so nice to each other. First Britney Spears gets less crazy and now Lily Allen and Cheryl Cole aren't at each other's throats all the time. It's bad for business, that's what it is. We're going to have to start sending famous people shoebox turds under the pretence that we're Charlotte Church or everything's going to get so unbearably lovely that we'll have nothing to report any more.

Because, come on, Lily Allen and Cheryl Cole? They're sworn enemies, for God's sake. Lily Allen wrote a sarcastic song about Cheryl Cole, then Cheryl called Lily a 'chick with a dick', then Lily called Cheryl a 'stupid bitch'. Things literally don't any more serious than that.

But now Lily Allen has extended the olive, and for once not so she can reach the higher up shelves at the supermarket. On hearing about Cheryl Cole's predicament with husband Ashley Cole – you know, the one where Ashley cheated on Cheryl by puking on another woman and then Cheryl left him and eventually took him back because she wouldn't be as famous without him – Lily Allen has extinguished their long-running feud by offering her sympathies to her.

Well, alright, not exactly offering her sympathies to her, as such, but telling some people on her awful chat show about it. And the 'sympathy' bit isn't entirely accurate either. Here's what Lily said, according to Marie Claire: 

The star told the audience on her chat show, Lily Allen and Friends: 'A couple of years ago, if I had read the stuff about Cheryl Cole, about her and Ashley, I’d probably have had a little laugh to myself. Now I actually feel sorry for her. I’m not a nasty person anymore.’ She also admitted that her contempt of Cole had arisen out of jealousy of her stunning looks, saying: ‘She’s beautiful, that’s why I hated her so much.’ 

Ah, the old 'transparent self-pity masquerading as forgiveness' tactic. We hear that's how Churchill beat Hitler too, you know. 

But now at least we can all sleep safe at night knowing that Lily Allen and Cheryl Cole are friends again. The world is a better place, especially for Cheryl Cole. After all, nothing makes up for the fact that your husband systematically cheated on you several times with a string of dodgy-looking women like a three-nippled munchkin half-apologising on a TV show that nobody watches.

Read more:

Lily Allen: 'I feel sorry for Cheryl Cole' - Marie Claire 

The feud between Rosie O'Donnell and Elisabeth Hasselbeck was one that not even the most hardcore pervert could have imagined turning sexual.

But that's exactly what has hap… no, we're only joking. Rosie O'Donnell and Elisabeth Hasselbeck aren't fighting any more, but only because Rosie though to send Elisabeth's newborn some gifts.

Still, we had you with the sex thing, right? Right?

The View has always been about disagreements, and it always will be – whether it's a disagreement about how much Danny DeVito has had to drink or about if murdering dogs is really brilliant or just quite brilliant. But no disagreements on The View were ever like the splitscreen battle royale between Rosie O'Donnell and Elisabeth Hasselbeck back in May. 

Founded on their inherent political differences – basically that one is a rightwing lunatic and the other is a paranoid conspiracy theorist – the Rosie O'Donnell/ Elisabeth Hasselbeck televised face-off was so vicious that we think it actually tore a hole in the space/time continuum. It'd explain a lot if it were true.

It would explain why Rosie O'Donnell left The View in a tantrum immediately and subsequently failed to find any other TV work, and it'd also explain why Elisabeth Hasselbeck got knocked up and gave birth to a baby boy pretty soon afterwards, even though we imagine that she thinks sex – even sex within a loving marriage – is filthy and wrong and will send you to hell and is something that only immigrants do.

But, despite keeping a tentative distance from each other since their on-air scrap, now it looks like Rosie and Elisabeth are ready to act like grown-ups around each other again. Apparently Rosie has decided that enough is enough, and that children are the future and that she and Rosie should teach them well and let them lead the way. Rosie's been speaking to People about her new softer relationship with Elisabeth:

"He's very, very cute. I saw him on TV, and I sent him a lovely gift, and [she and Hasselbeck] have been e-mailing each other. And peace prevails… We e-mail back and forth. She seems good. She looks like she adopted, like she didn't give birth. She looks perfectly fit and gorgeous already."

It's almost enough to bring a tear to the eye, isn't it? Not the fact that Rosie O'Donnell and Elisabeth Hasselbeck are slowly becoming friends again – we couldn't give a stuff about that – but we're just overwhelmed to learn that Rosie O'Donnell doesn't speak in that ridiculous blog haiku-speak all the time. Truly, this is a time of goodwill on Earth.

Read more:

Rosie Sends Baby Gifts to Elisabeth Hasselbeck – People