Behind the headlines

A quick scan of Saturday’s Times to find a topic to blog about opened the floodgates, and by that I don’t mean the combined sewer overflows, although I touch on those later.

Starting off with a doozie, "Roxy Music model fights to stay after 73 years in UK". An ex-model, married to someone related to someone famous, didn’t get her act together and is now threatened with deportation from Blighty. She didn’t get her act together and Brexit is blamed. I woke up in agony this morning with cramp in my calf – curse Brexit for that as well, eh? I admit that deportation for an accidental lapse of paperwork, by a seemingly harmless, law-abiding, if tedious, individual who’s lived here legally and peaceably most of her life, is a tad harsh, especially when the authorities turn a blind eye to others who intentionally ditch their paperwork so they can land here illegally. That’s not the fault of Brexit but of shoddy implementation and oversight by Mandarins pre-occupied with their rejoining, Boris-shafting, box-ticking, process-paralysing, outcome-obfuscating, WFH, DEI agenda. Where we’ve seen that the Brexit agreement could work better, they should be looking at ways to get round it, even if it means redacting whole paragraphs from the agreement.

Talking of Boris, again, Matthew Parris is twisting the knife. Again. The sub-heading of his opinion piece reads, “It would be characteristically cowardly of Tory MPs to abstain from censuring ex-PM — they must kill him off for good”. Oooh, cowardly? If some MPs don’t believe that Boris should be censured, and/or are following the wishes of their constituents, that’s called democracy, not cowardice. And using language like “kill him off for good”, isn’t that incitement to violence? Isn't inciting others to do your dirty work for you cowardly?

Another Saturday-headline might have you thinking it was another dig at Brexit: "Hospitality labour crisis piles pressure on hotels, restaurants and tourist destinations”. Not a bit of it. This article is all about the labour shortages in Spain, France and Italy, where they’re not blaming Brexit; they’re pointing the finger at Covid and generous state handouts. Try blaming a similar problem in Britain on anything but Brexit and you get scoffed and sneered at, as I have found to my cost. 

Here's another example of moving goalposts to suit entrenched biases, there were numerous headlines throughout the media about South East Water announcing water shortages and blaming dry weather and increased demand. That got the usual suspects agitated: bloody typical of the privatised industry underperforming once again thanks to corporate greed and lack of investment and they should be renationalised which is the only solution. Funnily enough, there was another headline on the BBC website that has been ignored: “Warning Scotland faces threat of water shortages”, (following an extended period of dry weather). If Scotland, of all places, is facing water shortages because of dry weather, why isn’t the same explanation a strong candidate for southeast England? And there’s more. According to Wiki, “In 2021, it was revealed that untreated sewage was discharged by Scottish Water into Scotland's rivers and lochs more than 12,000 times in a single year, through combined sewage outflows. It emerged that the regulator, SEPA, estimated that there were 645 'unsatisfactory' outflows, and that Scottish Government officials viewed Scotland as being 'way behind' England in dealing with the problem.” What’s my point? Scottish Water is a publicly owned statutory corporation and they’re ‘way-behind’ England’s privatised industry. You do the math.

Also published today is the King’s birthday honours list. It includes someone who wears expensive frocks, an overrated hypocritical writer (RIP), someone who used to kick a ball and now talks about others kicking balls, and a woman who talks women down. Thanks to her, women facing a variety of health issues in their 40s and 50s are now more likely to be dismissed as menopausal when other forces are probably at work.

Talking about women who talk about women as if we’re all walking, talking vulnerable sickos, I was then confronted by "Naga Munchetty: why did my adenomyosis diagnosis take so long?" Because of her suffering, BBC-leftie Naga is backing calls for British companies to offer menstrual leave for their employees. What, with time off for menopause, periods, and morning sickness as well, who’s going to want to hire women? Well done, girls; you’re handing ammo to the misogynists. While I obviously sympathise with women who have debilitating conditions, Munchetty weakens her case by claiming that there’s nothing about adenomyosis on the web. I’ve just googled it. There’s plenty. She then says GPs told her they don’t know enough about the condition and don’t have the time to learn more about it. Do you believe that? I don’t. I agree with Munchetty that women should receive proper treatment and understanding for such afflictions, but she again loses credibility by laying into Tory MPs one minute, and the next giving strike-leader Mick Lynch an easy time. What she’s tacitly saying is that it’s unfair that some women suffer because of an unfortunate quirk of nature, but it’s acceptable for millions of men, women and children to suffer because of the calculated, cold-hearted callousness of a calamitous quirk of nature.

Peach of a headline next: “How will Harry and Meghan make their money now?” Meghan will probably divorce Harry and milk him and his family for every penny she can get.

Next! “Trophy-hunting ban at risk if peers want changes”. The crux of the matter is, trophy hunting is bad, but income from trophy hunting can actually help conservation. Without trophy hunting, even more animals would suffer. And doesn’t Britain claiming the moral high-ground over African nations smack of colonialism? How to lose friends and alienate people. Tory peers want the bill to be amended to limit the damage to conservation and to our relations with Africa, otherwise China is going to ‘come to the rescue’. Then again, the bill’s proponents (the most left-wing Tory government ever, Labour, Lib Dems and Greens) can’t think beyond the ‘trophy hunting is bad’ mantra and are prepared to sacrifice the greater good for a headline-grabbing point of principle. It’s like the Whitehaven coal mine: coal is bad, but the mine will reduce net global carbon emissions, but ‘coal is bad’ and naught else matters. Silly little people.

I’m going to give the last word to one of my idols, Melanie Reid, the tetraplegic magazine columnist with intelligence, wit, charm and stoicism. The headline this week is, “You have to laugh at old age. The alternative is too grim”. She tells how she and husband Dave took a trip into town to get her eye infection diagnosed, but Dave literally tripped in the carpark, Biden-style, and they were helped by a lovely family; others showed concern too. Not a bodice-ripper, a preachy finger-wagger, a fact-fiddled agenda-pusher or a point-scorer, but a warm-hearted tale of love and kindness.

I wish she’d write all the Times’ articles. The newspaper, if not the world, would be a better place.