I extend my life by three years.

There was a thing on the radio the other morning about some university somewhere publicising its research that said a mere 15 minutes of exercise a day would mean you live three years longer.

But 15 minutes a day? That's quite a commitment out of the incredibly busy schedule of someone sexy and successful like me. I'm not sure even sure the return is all that great. Say that I live to the age of 75 (probably optimistic, I'm a terrible driver) that's an entire six months of my life gone just on exercise. That works out at 15 minutes a day for the rest of my life, I worked it out.

And all that effort for three extra years of life? Well, two and a half technically. I'd rather have the time now - say I could exercise for 15 minutes every day and then just sit down for an hour and a quarter. That would be much better. Who wants all that extra free time at a hypothetical point in the distant future when you may or may not be in a position to enjoy it?

And then we get on to other means of prolonging my pitiful existence - could taking a vitamin tablet every morning extend my life by a significant amount (investment: 10 seconds a day), or perhaps ditching coffee (saving: 15 minutes a day), or maybe even drinking an extra glass of water would keep my greasy innards in tip-top condition (investment: 30 seconds a day).

What surely won't help my life span is blogging (investment: three minutes a day). I should probably go now, my life depends on it.

Hell, in a handcart

It's become clear in the past couple of days of riots in London that we live underneath such a thin veil of civilisation that sometimes the slightest breeze can waft it away. It's not disillusionment that leads to such behaviour, it's aggressive ill-will and disregard for your fellow human beings.

But I can excuse the inhumanity because that's an inherently human trait. It's not as if we were never thus, that we're blazing a trail for the cruelty of man to man. It would be epic arrogance for us to imagine otherwise, another trait that we would share in common with our forebears of yore.

No, what gets me is the hypocrisy of it all, the hysteria - the 'oh, society is going to hell', or 'the world is falling apart', as if we ever reached a peak. Society never climbed to a summit of civilisation, we never got better or worse, we just got centrally heated.

I'm sure every group of people that has ever lived has assumed it was better than every group of people that ever lived. I don't hold truck with all this existential torture theorising that says people are driven into such evil destructiveness through a lack of opportunity or money being ploughed into their better nature.

I think some people just aren't very nice and they want to show it. Perhaps the thing that society can learn is that there are no peaks and troughs, and through those non-peaks and non-troughs there is a spine of morality that says you can't set people's houses on fire, torch their cars or raze their livelihood to the ground. You just can't.

If I had a superpower.

Do you ever sit and think about silly things? Like if I had a superpower, I would choose the USA. Russia would be far too cold. Jokes – I would like to be able to fly, that would be quite fun. The only problem is I guess that invulnerability keeps you warm when flying. The very first tight turn I came to my puny little body would bend, stretch and snap. Also, wouldn’t you feel a little exposed when flying up in the sky on your own? It’s always nice to be in an aeroplane with some other people to keep you company.

X-ray vision would be cool, but I don’t know whether it would work through my glasses. It would be fairly useless to have X-ray vision without my glasses on; I would need to have my nose touching whatever I was looking at to be able to see it. That would be pretty disgusting. Of course, if I could use it with my glasses on what would I actually do with it? All I’d be good for is working at Heathrow or something.

I think you have to be sanguine about these things – superpowers aren’t always what they’re cracked up to be.

There's good news and there's bad news.

What do we actually mean when we say that no news is good news? Is it that receiving no news at all is like a moment in time of suspended goodness, like a Schrodinger's Cat of current events, or is it rather that all news is bad news?

If it's the latter we should definitely just say so and stop watching the news altogether. I am an eternal optimist - I watch the news every day expecting something good to turn up. Because hey - flipping a coin is 50/50 every time, right? I suspect that all televisual news is bad news simply because people are happiest when feeling miserable. They can have a good moan and then shrug it off because it's on the other side of the world. Just think of the poor African kids who can't watch any news. (And yet for just £2 a month you can make them feel miserable about depressing current events too.)

It's odd though, because I got some news that other day and I said "Oh, that's good news." Are you now telling me that it wasn't good news? Because I feel like I have been misled by the person who gave me the news. They were all happy and excited, when in reality they were holding back some vital component of bad news. I have been trying to reassess that event, and whilst it does mean that I will probably have to buy some new shoes, it does still sound like pretty good news to me.

Such sayings are rather odd - like having those pre-prepared text messages on your mobile phone, as if running late lol :) would take too long to hammer out with your club thumb. They give us something to fill up the conversational void without saying anything too meaningful or controversial so as to cause undue strife. Then there's the other things like 'a stitch in time saves nine in the bush', or 'too many cooks make light soup' (or is it that lots of cocks spoil the broth? I mean, I wouldn't eat it).

I never really know what any of these things mean and I'm like a genius. Although thinking about it - if I did know what they mean I'd probably just say what I mean. A recipe for disaster, cocks or no cocks.

The blog old days.

I have been blogging on ALBOWIEB for SIX years this month – you can’t see all of the posts here, because I did a little reset between finishing up as students’ union president and working in parliament way back in 2008. A haircut, contact lenses, getting the old braces off. I suppose they call it a ‘refresh’ in Hollywood these days.

Oh yes, and there was this strange break for a few months where I moved to Wordpress and started a new blog called ‘No Added Succour’ which was obviously hilariously named, but in reality no different to this one.

You end up with blogging baggage after a certain amount of time. A pattern of posts, a certain style of writing. A funny opener, three or four paragraphs and a meaty payoff. Nothing of too much substance, mildly philosophical. Mildly personal, but let’s not get married.

I remember the good old days of blogging, back in 2005 when it was all fresh and thrilling, everything new. It used to be that if something happened I'd rush to my computer and have to blog my little brains out instantly. Nowadays you scratch that itch via twitter, If I get so inclined I will occasionally write a thought down in my moleskine (natch) notebook and two weeks later it somehow gets turned into something timeless and mildly insightful on my blog.

Anna, of Little Red Boat fame, recently wrote a short piece on the premature death of blogging. She does put it more eloquently than I ever could – “People just like saying things are dead when they don’t feel like doing them anymore, just because it makes them feel better about not doing them anymore.” It’s like being at a party a bit late when some people have gone home and the music has got less beat-y but there are still a few people you like sat on a sofa chatting.

Now about that meaty payoff...