Readers of recentish news, both proper and tabloid, will be aware that the UK is suffering a profusion of stabbings amongst the younger members of the population. Now some may question at this stage as to how much of this is real, and how much a classic moral panic (or possibly that it is becoming more frequent in London, which as UK-peeps will know often seems to be centre of the news), but without a doubt some kids are stabbing other kids with knives. In fact at the time of writing one such story is on the BBC news ticker. This is not good.

But now we (well, at least the 8 million daily readers of the Sun) know why they do it. What else has risen alongside the increase in southern knife-crime? Why, Facebook usage of course!

Whilst doing his usual hardened research into what substances can be semi-legitimately used to water down beer should his nearest and dearest get a bit too greedy, the Poorhouse came across a fabulous booze study. Any study whose published write-up includes:

Our first three experiments were conducted at two local pubs: The Muddy Charles and The Thirsty Ear.

can't go far wrong.

Guess what story the Poorhouse has been saving up all these months? Surely something amazing after such a break, no? Well of course! It's time for a game of guess what bit of the body this is. Warning, from reactions gained from real-life associates upon mere discussions, the following may not be suitable for meal time.

Flavour-tripping parties...they sound fun, if a little illicit, don't they? They're a recent fad as seen is such fashionista parts of the US as New York and San Fransisco. The deal is you turn up, eat some "miracle berries", and then go through your host's fridge eating even the most apalling sort of edibles relying on the afore-mentioned magic fruit to make them taste like sweet sweet nectar.

Sounds suitably implausible, the Poorhouse agrees. But it seems to be true...miracle berries do have a ridiculous name to be sure but they're nothing new. Documented a few hundred years ago and with a slightly more scientific name of Sideroxylon dulcificum or Synsepalum dulcificum they have been used for centuries by Africans native to the part of the world they traditionally grow in.

Big stories here and there for a while about John Darwin, a guy who faked his own death, even to his kids, in the name of future insurance fraud. But the most useful thing that the Poorhouse learnt from this came from an article in the Independent.

The jury was told that Cleveland Police accessed John Darwin's Yahoo account and found a total of 1,012 emails, of which 923 were unread. Police rules meant officers could only look at the 89 opened messages.

Social networking, dotcom profitery and boobies. These are cornerstones on which the modern web is built. So imagine the Poorhouse joy upon discovering myfreeimplants. Ohmygod. Leveraging bits of the Facebook et al. model of chat, pictures and fantasies of all sorts of poking but repackaging it in a way that has an undoubted profit model for itself, the site exists to let women get bigger breasts via surgical implants for free. And men get...erm..."interaction with real girls".

There are a lot of nasty bad evil scammers out there, more than happy to take money of desperate vulnerable people. This is of course A Bad Thing. However now and then one comes along with such a incredulous, and perhaps even genius, scam that you have to admire them for their sheer boldness if nothing else.

The Poorhouse's favourite scam along these lines in recent times was that that Stacey and Brent Finley pulled to great success - $US 989,898 no less.

In the eyes of the Poorhouse, on many occasions the cry of "political correctness has gone mad" is apparently used to prefix some overt racist / sexist / homophobic or other similar statement. Now and then however a silly example does pop up showing some probably well-meaning idiot's attempt to remove offence where none was likely to be taken anyway.

For example, there's the current regulations for Santas (oops, yes kiddies, there is actually more than one Santa! But don't worry, they all love you very much) in Sydney. It seems that the traditional "ho ho ho" Father Christmas greeting is in danger of cultural removal, because it is in danger of being offensive to hos women who like to make money without even getting out of bed.

The Poorhouse is constantly disappointed by only receiving a few hundred emails a day offering either "enlargo" or better yet some intricately complex - yet plausible - offer to give him a billion pounds in return for ooh, a mere few hundred of them or so. In advance. Yes, the money hasn't come through yet, but it's only a matter of a few more sendings of identity and moderately large sums of money to Nigeria away I'm sure.

Luckily, the physical doormat was also crammed with spam the other day - the finest of which is portrayed below.

The Poorhouse is no stranger to the odd flutter, laying down bets a plenty around the place and more recently playing a decent amount of casino blackjack - however, that's fine when you can use mathematics to guarantee a profit. Scams such as the UK National Lottery are held in much lower regard - there being a reason why it is often termed "a tax on the stupid".

Some, it might seem, more stupid than you might even expect.