THE winter vomiting bug Norovirus is spreading like wildfire. Millions of people are off work with it. And I am not surprised. Because 2008 is only 12 days old but already I have felt like chucking up, most times I flick on the news or open a paper.

If it isn't the MPs clamouring for their 10 per cent pay-rise - "because we're worth it" - it's Gordon Brown drivelling on about his new "Personal to you" NHS.

Or the fact that when talking about this service, he fails to mention that two-thirds of the doctors trained at eye-watering expense by the British taxpayer last year won't be able to get jobs. Because it's our job to ensure foreign doctors - even those hell-bent on blowing up Glasgow Airport - can have those jobs too, apparently.

Staying with the blowing people up theme, I read on Tuesday that Sohail Quershi, an al-Quaeda operative whose hate-crimes would fill a book (he hates everyone, basically) received a piddling four-and-a-half year sentence, with a possible get-out-of-jail free card after a year, for his plot to kill British soldiers.

Then there's Hazelnut Blears' new, £70 million initiative to combat the Quershis of this world by getting Muslim women to go on assertiveness training courses.

Meanwhile it was pass the sickbag time again, following yet another fawning interview with Chris Langham, which allowed him to continue making pathetic excuses for having viewed appalling child porn on his computer.

Add to this that we'll probably never see our money back on the Northern Wreck bank. And that Ken Livingstone wants people who don't live in London to start paying for his ego-boosting, vote-catching Olympics bid. And I'm surprised I've still got the will to live.

The official advice for dealing with Norovirus is to wash your hands, don't sneeze on people and keep off work until you're sure it's gone. But what anyone can do to save us from the politically-correct, spin-obsessed, lowlife, crime-ridden shower of you-know-what is anyone's guess. And, like I said, it's only January 12.

  • IN one bright moment this week the Beeb published a list of things they discovered during 2007. Nice, quirky things, like Newcastle is the noisiest place in England and the Queen took her corgi on her honeymoon.

Best fact of all? The one which reveals that the bdelloid rotifer is a pond organism that has survived 80 million years without sex.

So, no relation to Russell Brand, then.

  • IT used to be Natasha Kaplinsky but now the most irritating person on BBC TV is definitely Kirsty "I'm a serious presenter" Young. She's reported as saying she's "not scared" of stepping into the Crimewatch job, despite what happened to Jill Dando.

Of course she isn't scared. She's earning a packet for pouting her way round yet another studio, reading the autocue and giving sidelong glances at interviewees. If I was Kirsty, the only thing that would scare me is being found out.