Scanning the news: yawn or scream? You decide!

 

 

it was so predictable: no actual news to be found when the Westminster MSM are in the grip of ‘Aitch-Fever’, vying with each other in who can achieve the juiciest headlines and deliver the most pixels on that subject! Never mind that the public is heartily tired of this whole thing, that comment posters across the MSM landscape beg to please stop, to please make this go away! Just looking at the front pages of today’s print press (link) makes one join in the outcry.

One publication however shunned participating in this circus. ‘iNews’ lead with a report in a security issue, both in print and online. This is the headline: “​​Hidden Chinese tracking device ‘found in UK Government car’ sparks national security fears”. I’d have liked to quote from this report, but as now customary, one’s gotta have a paid subscription to be able to read. So I had to check on the interwebz and found that the DM had copied this ‘exclusive’ piece of news:

“At least one hidden Chinese tracking device was discovered in a UK government car after officials forensically searched vehicles. A SIM card capable of transmitting location data was found in a security sweep which discovered ‘disturbing things’, a security source said. The tracker was found inside a sealed part that had been imported from China.” (link)

One might have thought, given the experiences regarding our dependence on Chinese manufacturing during the lockdown years and given the constant outcry about Russia’s ‘interference’ in our country, that this information would have merited a spot on the front online pages, but noo: it’s yon prince. Royal gossip is more important than looking at and analysing security questions relevant to the nation.

Talking about national security, there’s a report in the DT which has at least found its way onto the online front page, albeit quite a bit further down. We read that InvisiRishi has lost out to Macron who has “seized Ukraine leadership from Britain” (paywalled link) because he’s apparently sending more top-modern arms to that unfortunate country.

It has now come to this: certain factions in Whitehall, using the MSM as their mouthpieces, are trying to turn Sunak’s policies into a competition with Macron. Where are they when it comes to criticising yon wannabe Napoleon about stopping illegal migrants from launching their dinghies off the coast of Normandy? Do they think that shovelling taxpayers’ money to ineffectual ‘help’ with border patrols is just fine, just as shovelling our arms and armaments into Ukraine is fine? Is this the Remain/Rejoin mindset at work in Whitehall?

To give them their due, the broadsheets also write about ‘Teh Strikes’, with the DT and The Times dividing the ‘honours’ between them. These aren’t actual strikes though but ones still being balloted for. Here’s the DT on the teachers’ unions:

“Teachers are planning to co-ordinate strikes to close as many schools as possible, […] Three of the UK’s major education unions will close ballots next week. If they reach the threshold required for industrial action, teachers will be the next major public sector group to walk out, causing havoc to children’s education. “Unions obviously will talk to each other about strike dates and try to co-ordinate them. It makes sense to do this – there will be more impact,” said an education union source. Teachers at any one school can belong to multiple different unions, meaning co-ordinated strike action would make it more likely that entire schools would close.” (paywalled link)

Never mind that more damage will be done to the education of our children! Should the unions win their strike ballots we’ll surely be told that teachers need to use food banks! As for closing as many schools as possible, they’re doing it from the goodness of their hearts. I nearly fell off my perch when I read (my emphasis)

“The source argued that this would actually be better for parents because it would mean only having to organise childcare on a limited number of days, adding: “The problem with doing it on different dates is that it can create more disruption. The last people we want to disrupt are parents and children.” (paywalled link)

How lovely is that: the unions don’t want to ‘disrupt parents and children’. What does this even mean? Is this how trade union teachers teach English? ‘Help, I’m being disrupted’? Words fail me! Another group balloting their members is going to ‘disrupt patients’ if they win their ballot. The Times reports:

“Junior doctors have threatened to stage a “full walkout” for three consecutive days in March in which they would not treat A&E patients. The British Medical Association told the government yesterday that junior doctors would strike for 72 hours if it is supported in a ballot that opens next week. The association said that “doctors will not provide emergency care during the strike”; this could add to record accident and emergency delays which have been blamed for hundreds of deaths a week.” (link, paywalled)

Yes, well, they’re only patients, most of whom shouldn’t be there in the first place because their GPs ought to deal with them, right? Except for horrifying reports about patients waiting fro ambulances or having to be treated on trolleys our glorious MSM don’t seem too worried about the general attitude in the NHS according to which patients are at the bottom of the heap, especially when they’re elderly.

What would Labour do, now that they’ve decided, according to Starmer’s speech, not to become ‘big spenders’ any longer? As far as I’m aware, Labourites have been supporting those strikes, either openly by standing on picket lines, or, presumably, en coulisse.

Perhaps the shadow Chancellorette, Ms Rachel Reeves, might have a word with union leaders? The Times has a lovely puff piece on her, celebrating her as possibly ‘the first female Chancellor’ (link, paywalled). In a Starmer government, she’d have to use the Treasury chequebook to pay for all that, Starmer’s notions notwithstanding. But then again, the taxpayer is at the bottom of the heap for Labour as well as for trade unions and Whitehall.

Meanwhile the Shadow Health Secretary has come out with cunning plans to ‘reform the health ‘system’, according to yet another puff piece in The Times (link, paywalled). I gather from this piece that the NHS would need more money – what a surprise – and that there ought to be more ‘health clinics’ replacing the GP partnerships. As for GPs: they ought to be employed by the NHS on a salary basis. It’s what the great health reformer Aneurin Bevan wanted, after all. Yes, words fail me yet again. 

I leave you with one observation on yon prince’s book. I found this in The Times’ article on how he ‘had second thoughts’ about publishing his Montesh*tshow book. A source, presumably in the publisher’s office:

“[…] also described how the book had to be translated from American English into the British tongue. “It was extraordinary. A member of the royal family describing everything as ‘awesome’ and using phraseology like: ‘We had gotten ourselves into a difficult situation’ — we had to go through the whole manuscript to make it sound like he was actually English.” (link, paywalled)

I won’t speculate about who might have guided Aitch’s  hand or rather his talk when ‘producing’ his book. I can only agree with one comment poster who wrote that they’d better have left the book ‘untranslated’  because America is  where yon prince will have to spend the rest of his life.

That’s all I have for today. It’s nice to know that we, the paying peasants, are being reassured that yes, we’re at the bottom of the heap when it comes to health, schools, security and ‘culture’ but at the top when it comes to paying: serfdom and neo-feudalism or what! Have a nice weekend.



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