The news is broken.

Can someone please ban the phrase ‘credit crunch’? I’m thoroughly sick of hearing it. The news these days seems to get marketed and dumbed down to the extent that it seems we can’t be told anything unless it is phrased using catchy alliteration or less syllables that the title of a Steven Seagal film. Credit crunch! Rip off Britain! You’re too fick to read proper news!

This is how screwed up everything is – the news bombards us with the credit crunch (which sounds like some of snack bar anyway), mortgage misery, knife nightmares, terror tactics and racist rants, while TV adverts talk about cosmetic products containing demattifying microspheres and pentapolypeptides. The closest mainstream media is getting to including science in daily life is when it sells us shampoo, and when it is supposed to be informing us about important stuff, it’s talking to us like we’re four.

Take today’s thesun.co.uk homepage – alliteration used in the following headlines:

• Dramatic First Pics of Massacre Mansion Blaze
• Megan Fox Gets Wet and Wild
• Whose saggy skin is this?
• Sugar fears for future of footy
• Brad is Burning hot in new role
• Cheryl chops Charlotte chapter (no, really)

And precisely one headline of any relevance to anyone. The Sun also has a headline, Lily Allen’s Kidnap Terror. I didn’t realise someone had kidnapped her so took a look. Oh. No one has kidnapped her. The story begins like this:

LILY ALLEN has revealed how she feared for her best friend’s life after he was kidnapped for almost a week.

The singer, who went out without her bra on again yesterday, was worried sick for her pal.

The story is accompanied by a photo of Allen, not wearing a bra, with the caption ‘Bit nippy out here… braless Lily Allen’. Nippy? Oh, clever. Nipples. Let’s try rewriting the article the way the Sun might as well be putting it:

LILY ALLEN’S TITS! WHAHEY!!! EH? EH? WHAHEY!!! TITS!!!! WE LOVE IT!! TITS!! WHAHEY!!!

Oh yeah and sumfink abaaat kidnapping… TIIIIIIIITS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What does Lily Allen’s lack of underwear have to do with anything? Nothing. Other than the cretins that write this stuff seem to think everyone wants to know about the contents of Lily Allen’s shirt. Sat on the tube today I looked down the carriage to see dozens, dozens of people, all reading either London Lite (sic) or The London Paper. Headlines included something about… Lily Allen. For pity’s sake, this rubbish is given out free every day, nearly two million copies worth of it.

It’s not snobbish to expect better, because I’m pretty sure that people can understand more sophisticated language than you’d find on the side of a crisp packet. Can’t they?