Two questions:

Will it mean Q gets good again?

and, more importantly,

What does it mean for The Word?

Here's 25 for starters:

NGorge
2win 2owers
NuScientizt
Theydon Boyz
Mandelson
S.T.I.
2Soups
4Skin
Fresh Meat
M11
Ruff Trade
Sutcliffe
LibDemz
4mica
Single Supplement
NorthSouth
iDropz
NuMalden
2point25ive
Thatcha
SpitRoazt
Frijmagnet
Crispz
Clegg
5 iTemz or Less

I know the Beeb is running scared from its enemies in the media and their incoming Tory government chums, but their "plans" for BBC radio start to look less like a strategy and more like a panic response with every passing day.

Having justified the absurd recommendation to axe 6 Music - a distinctive radio station with no viable commercial alternative - with a vague promise to make Radio 2 more appealing to 6 Music listeners, Mark Thompson then comes out and says Radio 2 should primarily be appealing to "the over 55s". Huh? And now they've taken the even more insane decision to cut the contribution of Radcliffe and Maconie - Radio 2's most distinctive, musically literate broadcasters - by 25%.

Exactly which chimp is calling the shots here? It's like they've listened to criticism that the BBC shouldn't be stepping on the toes of commercial radio and then taken an axe to all the stuff that explicitly doesn't do that.

Any why even start down this process of self-disembowelling anyway? The BBC is the finest radio broadcaster in the country, possibly the world (have YOU ever heard a British non-BBC station that wasn't utterly unlistenable? Of course you haven't) and now they're deliberately putting a match to all that's good about their output, instead of standing up to their critics and mounting a passionate defence. It's the broadcasting equivalent of self-harming.

So Paul Du Noyer's review of the "new" Prefab Sprout album got me thinking... Why is that, 250 years after the Age of Reason, while the rest of Britain has taken giant steps towards becoming a secular nation, God still rears His head in so much of our music - even the music by very, very smart people like Paddy McAloon or Stuart Murdoch?
Is it because music is, at least in part, essentially a spiritual experience, with its roots in worship? Is it because so many singers started out in church choirs (or is that a uniquely American tradition?) Or is it because the artistic, creative mind is intrinsically vulnerable to the sort of woolly, heart-rules-head thinking that lets God in?
So my question is: What are the best atheist songs in pop music? This one seems an obvious place to start. I'd welcome your thoughts / suggestions...

We all know that pop music is a young man's game. So isn't there something inherently ridiculous in people of a certain vintage (like me, 37) constantly trying to keep up with it? For example, Lily Allen's new album has received rave reviews in everything from The Word to the Sunday broadsheets. And fair enough, it's pretty good for what it is, but listening to it in the car the other day (which probably betrays a few rings on my tree in itself) I was suddenly struck by the absurdity of a married man with a child and a mortgage and a hint of middle-aged spread listening to songs like It's Not Fair (rubbish boyfriends), 22 (good time girl approaches 30, starts to look a bit desperate) and Everyone's At It ("Why can't we just be honest, admit to ourselves that everyone's on it?" - not in rural South Cambs they're not, Lil).
It's a similar thing with the Arctic Monkeys - there's no doubting Alex Turner is a songwriting genius, but the more I listen to his songs about lairy, WKD-fuelled teenage nights on the lash the more I think... well, I won't recycle the crushingly obvious Morrissey lyric but, seriously, isn't the thought of 30, 40 and 50something men all over Britain listening to this stuff just a little bit... weird?
And why is it exclusively a rock and roll phenomenon? It would be a bit odd if we all started watching Hollyoaks and reading Judy Blume books, so why this need to keep getting our teenage kicks long after we're incapable of kicking anything without pulling a hamstring?

Why is it that, whenever any high-profile rock bod tries to use their position to make a positive contribution to this sorry-ass world of ours, everyone immediately turns on them and starts chucking around terms like “preachy”, “pompous” and “self-righteous”?

I’ll tell you why: It’s because, in our primitive Neolithic brains, these “do-gooders” are assumed to be betraying some ridiculous romantic notion of what a rock star “should” be – i.e. a self-centred, nihilistic pr*ck whose only concerns are getting wasted, getting high and getting laid. Oh, and if they’re really cool, starting the odd ruckus outside a nightclub.

I don’t know where this infantilist ideal comes from, but I’d guess it’s the same bit of evolutionary hard-wiring that makes so many animals fight it out to become the dominant male of the pack, combined with a wistful touch of vicarious living by proxy on the part of Walter the Softie-style rock fans and critics who prefer their sex, drugs and violence kept at a suitably safe remove.

But if we just took a step back and really thought about it, wouldn’t we see how ridiculous it is that we heap such opprobrium on people trying to use their celebrity currency to buy a better deal for Africa, or promote fair trade, or save the rainforest or whatever, while retaining a sneaking admiration for people whose main extra-curricular interest is getting themselves arrested?

Look at it this way: If a rock star is approached by an organisation like Oxfam, they have two choices. They can either say “Okay, I’ll step up and get involved and do the right thing, even though I know I’m going to take a load of flak for it, and it may well leave my rock credibility in tatters”. Or they can say: “Sorry mate, I’ve got a reputation to protect. People expect to see me brawling in the street at 3am, and I can’t risk damaging that hard-won brand for something as trivial as world poverty.”

Who, in this scenario, is the bigger man? Who is the braver, and most deserving of our respect? And, above all, why do we continue to put our faith in the other guy?

I know all our primal, atavistic instincts scream out to us that Keith Richards is cooler than Bono. And in our narrow, defiantly adolescent interpretation of the word cool, he undoubtedly is. But, music aside (cos, luckily for Mr Vox, that’s not what’s on trial on here) which one really deserves our respect, and which our ridicule? The one who tries to strongarm world leaders into doing something about the scar on our conscience that is Africa, or the one who’s getting whacked and falling out of trees a good 45 years after he really should have put that sort of thing behind him? At the end of the day who, ladies and gents, has the biggest cojones?