”This attitude of churlish indifference seems like nerdish deference contrasted with the belligerent antipathy of the indigenous farm folk, who regard the hippie-dippie interlopers, the denizens of the shimmering tit temples, as one fey step away from transvestites.” This quote helped Russell Brand win an award for gobbledygook courtesy of Plain English Campaign’s Foot in Mouth award for 2014. It’s been a busy week for Brand. The Sun newspaper has sought to smear his name because the paper seemingly doesn’t like Brand’s campaigning on behalf of communities facing eviction. The paper called him a hypocrite because he pays rent to a tax-dodging landlord. He dismantles The Sun’s logic wonderfully here. 

“Opportunities have to be created across Africa and protected by democratic institutions through which people can hold leaders to account and prevent the abuse of power.” Page six in Saturday’s edition of The Times from an article remembering Nelson Mandela.  

“Before I was cut, it was lovely,” she said. “Now it doesn’t feel like we are making love. We are just having sex to have children.” Said by a woman called Maria in Saturday’s The Times in an article highlighting the papers’ Christmas appeal to combat female genital mutilation. I, for one, can’t imagine a life without a clitoris; let’s hope no more women get to know the reality. You can donate to the appeal here.

“Depression takes off a layer of skin, so accept that you feel more of the world than most people,” Caitlin Moran in her ’10 Things Every Teenage Girl Should Know’ for The Times Magazine. 

Lastly, I simply couldn’t resist posting this picture of Nick Clegg’s and his wife Miriam’s 2014 Christmas card . It hands down beats David Cameron’s and Ed Miliband’s cards which don’t even have anything to do with Christmas. Let’s not even start on Tony’s and Cherie Blair’s 2014 Christmas card…