The first squirrel of 2023!

 

 

This doesn’t bode well for the year just started: the ‘silly season’ seems already to be upon us, given the ‘news’ our esteemed Westminster MSM are serving up. The broadsheets’ print editions moan about ‘compulsory maths until 18’, a Sunak-initiative – as lovely a squirrel as i ever saw!

Meanwhile the Red Tops are on about yon strikes, with the Mirror in full electioneering mode, screeching “They broke the NHS”, i.e. all the Tory PMs since 2010. Scroll down in the usual place where you can look at the other front pages as well. 

Obviously, none of the editors and reporters of the Mirror or the Guardian or the FT, for that matter, did spare a glance at Allison Pearson’s column in the DT. She is not afraid to ask the one question which the ‘save our Sacred Cow’ crowd in the meejah,  in the HoC and indeed all of us ought to ask and ought to have been asking.

Ms Pearson begins by referring to the apocalyptic utterances of yet another doctors’ trade union boss who howled that 500 patients have died needlessly because of the strikes and the situation in hospitals generally. This made the headlines, but, she asks:

“If all these people have died unnecessarily since last Wednesday – real men and women, beloved fathers and mothers, adored husbands and wives who should still be alive – then that’s a national emergency, clearly. An almost unfathomable tragedy. But where are the TV anchors demanding immediate action? Where is the sepulchral BBC News tour of the morgues in which all those bodies are piling up? Why do these “avoidable deaths”, caused in no small part by managerial incompetence, excite so little outrage? Why do we stay silent rather than criticise the NHS?” (paywalled link)

Yes, where are they? Nowhere to be seen because an investigation might scupper ‘Teh Narrative’. Ms Pearson also blames us peasants for staying silent as well. I’d argue that, unlike MSM columnists and reporters, we don’t have access to NHS hospitals to do research. Also, when we or one of our family members are ill and ‘in need’, we’d rather put up with all that jazz just to receive treatment.

Anyway, we’re used to being told from the great height which is Westminster that our complaints are ‘just anecdotal’, so shut up and go away. But then Ms Pearson asks:

“[…] where, you may well ask, are all the highly paid NHS managers offering answers to this appalling crisis? Why the hell isn’t Amanda Pritchard, the £255,000-per-annum CEO of NHS England, and her team being hauled over the coals? They’re the ones in charge. Not that you’d know it. Shyer than the African aardvark, and even harder to spot, the NHS senior manager has perfected a camouflage so effective that it’s impossible to tell that he or she has any kind of responsibility for the NHS at all. We give them north of £150 billion a year to provide a health service that preferably doesn’t kill people, but there is zero accountability. Like Jeremy Corbyn at the funeral of a Palestinian terrorist, NHS managers are mysteriously “present but not involved”.”(paywalled link)

Indeed. Some brave columnists have mentioned here and there in subordinate clauses how extraordinary it is that the NHS has been going on their merry way with no repercussions while Health Ministers past and present are always being blamed, never mind that most of the dire state of hospitals and health care generally is due to the ineffectual NHS ‘bosses’ themselves.

What are the combined MSM chiefs, MPs and ‘ministers’ so scared of? A headline in the Mirror? Retaliation from an incoming Labour government? What, btw, has Labour ever done except weaponise the NHS in every single election campaign since Mrs Thatcher?

Where is the courageous columnist or reporter asking Labour ‘Big Beasts’ for their solutions, perhaps pointing out that throwing ever more money at the Sacred Cow hasn’t precisely led to better health care, not even when Blair and Brown did it. Perhaps Sunak’s demand of compulsory maths for everyone up to age 18 might bear fruit when people learn how to understand plain numbers.

No – instead we get ‘news’ about yon rail strike, with a cute label for tomorrow: “Rail strikes to get even worse on ‘Tragic Thursday’ ” (paywalled link). I’m sure the Mirror and the rest of the Red Tops will pick that up tomorrow. 

Those strikes are now being treated like an ‘Act of God’ about which nobody can do anything except duck and hope they’ll go away, just like illegal immigration. According to the leading article in The Times, there’s also nothing “we” can do about this:

“[…] ministers fear that there is, in effect, an infinite number of people who would attempt the crossing if Albanian arrivals were stemmed. A senior government source said: “Even if you stopped any more Albanians coming across, the boats would still travel. Their places on the boats would be filled by Somalis, Eritreans or Afghans who can’t afford to pay as much as the Albanians. There is an almost infinite number of people who want to come to the UK.” (link, paywalled)

Yeah right: let’s just do nothing except cower and hope they somehow stop coming! Perhaps a  PR campaign similar to the one the Aussies ran a few years ago might be useful? Or would that be ‘racist’? What does Labour have to say about these illegals? ‘Let them come – we have money’?

Perhaps Labour MPs would benefit from a few lessons of remedial maths, explaining how big numbers work and how ever more taxes, combined with inflation, would have this country from being on her knees to flat on her face? Or is this their secret plan, to make life here in the UK so horrific that illegal migrants simply wouldn’t want to come here any longer?

I leave you with the report topping the DM’s online front page early this morning. As customary for the DM, the headlines are a summary so this is all we need to read:

“Stars of 1968 film adaptation of Romeo and Juliet sue Paramount for $500m for ‘forcing them’ into a sex scene when they were just 15 and 16 years old and filming them nude without their knowledge – Olivia Hussey, 71, and Leonard Whiting, 72, filed a lawsuit on Friday in California – The complaint accuses the studio of sexual harassment, abuse, and fraud  – They are seeking damages ‘believed to be in excess of $500 million’ – The film was directed by Italian filmmaker Franco Zeffirelli and released through Paramount Pictures – Zeffirelli, who earned an Oscar nomination for best director for it, died in 2019 – The British actors claim they were originally told no nudity would be filmed or released” (link)

Seriously? Fifty years after the ‘event’? ‘Damages’ for what? Haven’t they lived happily ever after, for 50 years? Or do they just want to be in the headlines now that they’re probably too old to get ‘work’ in the ‘industry’? Perhaps just getting some money from the meejah, print and TV, is what they’re after? Or do they hope that this film will now be shown again, ‘because: nudity!’, for which they might get some money? And anyway, they were minors at that time, so why didn’t their parents or guardians intervene then? Gawd. 

Anyway, that’s all I have for today. Enjoy the early ‘silly season’ and look out for more squirrels because, clearly, the Westminster Propaganda machinery is floundering and threading water until ‘that book’  by ‘that prince’ is officially out. It’s easier than rising one’s head above the parapet and ask inconvenient questions of both government and ‘loyal opposition’. Have a nice day.



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