Surely the least shocking news of all time

Amy Winehouse has died. Whilst it is genuinely quite sad that someone should have died at the tender age of 27, can anybody really be surprised by this news? The poor girl lived her life on the front page of the tabloids, usually in a drugged-up or boozed-up condition, and her frequent (and ultimately unsuccessful) trips to rehab were standard fare for the red tops.

Dead at 27 - we knew about her foibles thanks to blanket tabloid coverage

Not that the same can be said for the horrific events in Norway. I wrote some time ago about the death of Olaf Palme, the Swedish Prime Minister who was gunned down in a Stockholm street 25 years ago. That story was all the more remarkable because we do not associate the Scandinavian countries with violence - at least not since the Vikings - and the events in Oslo have been quite stunning for all the wrong reasons. (Funny how all the usual suspects decided that it had to be another so-called 'Al-Qaeda' atrocity)

Carnage in Oslo

We are living in quite unsettling times. The fall of the Berlin Wall was predicted as the start of a new era - perhaps a time of peace and prosperity for the world. How wrong we were. Nature abhors a vacuum and human nature dictates that when one cause of evil and tension disappears, more will rush to take its place. Whilst the troubles besetting the Murdoch empire have given me cause for joy, I seriously doubt that it will spell the end of evil practices amongst the gutter press. Maybe the tactics will change, but ordinary innocent people will still find their lives devastated by these vile organs - and worse - and much more worrying - the British public will still continue to buy them, and in doing so, will give every encouragement to carry on causing pain and unhappiness.

Innocent people have their lives destroyed by these vile organs

The names, the faces, the places - these may change. The capacity to do evil will not. It is not always easy to go through life without causing harm along the way, but it is always worth the effort. Sometimes it is easy to predict the 'who' and the 'what'. At other times, the 'who' and the 'what' are a surprise. The only constant is the 'why'. Because that's what humans do...