I've developed a Radio 2 addiction recently, specifically to the Jeremy Vine Show, which seems to be on every day while I'm making and eating lunch. It's sort of like the Daily Mail if it were a radio show - although Jeremy is always saying that he doesn't want to skew discussion one way or the other, it's invariably one kind of fireband reactivism that comes through. Whether or not that has something to do with the kind of person who spends their lunchtime calling Radio 2, I'm not sure.

Today one of their discussion topics was the recently publicised 25% increase in crimes committed by girls and 'girl gangs'. There was actually some interesting input from panellists - they spoke to a police commissioner who said that the police are under pressure from quotas on 'bringing cases to justice', and so minor crimes are now more likely to result in cautions or even convictions than they were before; and also a guy whose cousin was stabbed to death by another girl at a party, talking about it reasons why young women end up in crime.

Their third panellist was my absolute favourite though - her name was Vanessa Walters and she's the author of a book called Rude Girls. I assumed, given the way Vine talked about it, that it was an academic text about the phenomenon of girls gangs or something. Actually, a quick Google reveals it's actually a work of fiction about three 'rude girls' in North London, written when Walters was a 17 year old student at Queen's College. Yeh, that's right - the one where the Geldof girls go. So far she doesn't seem very qualified to talk about girl gangs, but whatever.

Her theory was fascinating though. Apparently, the rise of crime, and particularly violent crime, among young women is due to... the Spice Girls. Seriously. Apparently they were the first in a line of public figures - also including Angelina Jolie, Jordan and Bratz dolls - espousing a 'sexually aggressive' lifestyle. This acceptance of sexual aggression, along with the idea that girls can 'have it all', encourages girls to voice their actual aggression 'like men' (rather, presumably, than bottling it up like good girls should), which leads them to grab the nearest knife or gun, dash out and mug people. She also cites the example of girls involved in crime/the gang scene 'dressing like boys'; she says that although her own sister (who is 17) isn't involved in crime, her decision to shun pink and skirts in favour of blue and trousers shows a silent acceptance of this culture of violence and aggression.

Wow. I'm not sure I really have anything else to say than that. Clearly, if we were all still married by our early 20s, chained to the kitchen and popping out babies (all dressed in blue for boys and pink for girls), there wouldn't be a problem with violent crime. Actually, maybe if we encouraged all the men into pink skirts too crime would be eradicated completely!