Who knew that Grant Shapps, the Tory Minister of State for Housing tipped for promotion in the imminent Cabinet reshuffle, was such an enemy of traditional Conservative family values?

Blackdown Hills, Somerset

Festivals, films and merchandise will go into overdrive in 2012 to mark 10 years since the Clash singer's death.

Orlando Bloom wants to play Joe Strummer in a biopic of the late singer.

A unique photographic portrait of The Clash by Adrian Boot goes on display this week.

It feels like punk never happened!" Don Letts is spluttering over his breakfast, and not because of an annoying headline. The cultural revolutionary is up in arms over the closure of rural post offices. Or, more accurately, he is up in arms that the rest of the country is not in arms over the closure of post offices, or schools or other public services.

A host of British artists and musicians have embraced their inner punk to produce a reinterpretation of The Clash’s 1979 London Calling album cover in honour of its designer and the band’s “official war artist” Ray Lowry, who died in 2008.

I'm sure I can't have been the only British viewer who sprang to their feet and punched the air in triumph when, late on in the Eurovision Song Contest voting, some clearly tone-deaf national jury – Portugal's, or maybe Israel's – took pity on the Belarussian entry and awarded it douze points, shunting "our own" Josh Dubovie to the bottom of the pile. Yesss! At the eleventh hour, true notoriety was grasped from the jaws of mere ignominy. What a relief!

Forget questions of authenticity and credibility, this Swiss Cajun/zydeco trio make a thrillingly souped-up racket with the standard Cajun weaponry of guitar, banjo, melodeon and rub board.

If you had your portrait taken by Rankin, would you turn round and destroy it? Didn't think so. And yet, that's exactly what 73 musicians have done for Destroy Rankin, part of the 10th anniversary celebrations for Youth Music Charity. Alex James has given an old Dazed & Confused cover a lavender and thyme hairdo and beard; Alanis Morissette has burned a hole in hers, and Alex Zane has used his medical-school training to turn half his face into a colourful skin and bones zombie.

They are some of the world's most recognisable faces: defaced. A series of revealing photographs show pop stars rejecting their polished images in order to create original artworks to sell at a charity auction.

Think of a gang from LA and some pretty negative images come to mind, but the smiles on the faces of the punters throughout this gig spoke of a welcome to one particular gang of Latinos that was reciprocated in an exuberant performance that combined accomplished musicianship with undiminished enthusiasm. This quintet has been playing together for more than 30 years, and it showed in the way the original members – Louie Perez, Conrad Lozano, Cesar Rosas, David Hidalgo and Steve Berlin, supplemented by the muscular and inventive drumming of Cougar Estrada – played a set that they seemed to be making up as it went along.

Vocals - Joe Strummer
Not because he had the best voice or anything, but there's something kind of unhinged and totally rock'n'roll about him. He had fire in his belly. You want a riot to break out in the audience or something, otherwise it's just folk music with a back beat.