Silly season has become plain stupid

Maurice O'Brien • Published 12 Aug 2010 12:30 0 Comments

THE weather’s not been too bad, proper football restarted at the weekend and, if ever I find time, I’ve still a summer holiday to book. So why does everything seems so depressing?

Certainly the sense of anticipation and optimism a new Government brings fizzled out weeks ago, and the Pakistan flood disaster is heartbreaking; not least when despite all the global handwringing there are still people in that country homeless since the earthquake of 2006, or was it 2005 or 2008?

Then again, while the Gulf of Mexico oil leak’s costing BP billions it’s not a fraction as bad as they thought and, thanks to the compensation, hundreds of hick coastal towns with Humphrey Bogart-lookalike mayors are bracing themselves for a 21st century gold rush.

Perhaps it’s the fact that the trial of a megalomaniac (allegedly) cannibalistic butcher barely rated a line in print or broadcast news until some luvvy model testified about diamonds and dinner with Nelson Mandela and Mia Farrow. Or that the chief medical officer at our own Royal Berkshire Hospital allows phrases like “patient experience” and “health outcomes” to fall from his lips, as if he were the amusements manager at Thorpe Park.

Maybe it’s Milton Keynes, where carers who’ve looked after retired nurse Brenda Coker for 15 years are banned from giving her an 80th birthday party because council bosses consider out-of-work relationships “inappropriate”. Or Kirklees on Merseyside where dementia sufferer Eric Earnshaw, 82, collapsed, burning his legs in the fire, but lay untreated without food or drink for 15 days, because his door key was kept in a safe cupboard behind his flat, and a so-called care worker was too scared to collect it in the dark. Might it be that we taxpayers paid £6,764.30 for pipsqueak Commons Speaker John Bercow’s sofa suite, or that 20 years after a Tory government decimated the Armed Forces with Option for Change, it appears the Blair-Brown axis was only delaying matters until little twerp George Osborn could finish the job?

And how depressing that David Willetts, Minister for Universities and Science and reputed to be endowed with two brains, should be interrupted while defending a ban on free milk for under fives on TV by Boy Dave reversing the decision. Never mind. Only 135 days until Christmas.

FOOTNOTE: Some felt last week’s criticism of public relations folk harsh. The next day Alison Jameson PR sent us a press release announcing finalists for a hairdressing award which, and I kid you not, was headed: Wokinghamshire salon finalises for Training Award.

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This article appeared in Reading Chronicle 12 Aug 10

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