Evidently nowhere near sated in their desire to inflict spectacularly crass and tasteless stunts on the people of Liverpool, the Sun excels today with an interview in which Girls Aloud singer Nicola Roberts is invited to discourse on the murder of 11-year-old Rhys Jones.
Nicola is from a town 20 minutes away from Liverpool by train - as though that matters - and in the course of this chat, she touches on both the penal system and shoe-shopping, reminding us why celebrities should ALWAYS be encouraged to think being in the entertainment industry qualifies them to turn their forensic gaze on politics and social problems.
"I'm disgusted by [the murder]," says Nicola, 21, last seen gyrating awkwardly in a latex catsuit in the Sexy No, No, No video - the precise outfit she's posing in to accompany this peroration, in fact. "I blame Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. We should lock up more people. I know prisons are full, just build more! Young criminals now think they can get away with committing crimes. I just can't believe the state of this country. I can understand some people are in a vicious circle, coming from a difficult backrgound, but they don't have to become criminals..."
There's more - so much more. But we'll leave it there.
Of course, Nicola has close-up experience of senseless violent crime - it was she who was with bandmate Cheryl Tweedy when the latter lamped that nightclub loo attendant, an assault for which Cheryl was subsequently convicted. Let's see more of Nicola's important contributions on this issue, and indeed all issues other than the one on which she can speak with most authority: dancing sulkily behind the less "specialist" members of Girls Aloud.
