Today, even the Daily Mail, which is basically a daily compendium of hate speech, is critical of the government’s lackadaisical attitude to providing front line workers with adequate stocks of PPEs. Beneath the headline, ‘BETRAYAL OF OUR BRAVEST’, the Mail reports, correctly as I understand it, that many hospitals are set to run out of protective gowns today, given delays in the procurement of 400,000 gowns from Turkey (I’ll come back to this later on), doctors may soon be forced to choose between saving patients or themselves. If the Mail, of all newspapers, is critical of the government it worked flat out to help install last December, it will be because they understand what the public, their readers, are saying.
Also on its front page, the Mail borrows a phrase repeatedly used by ministers, coined by government hatchet man and advisor Dominic Cummings: ‘In memory of the 80 frontline staff who have sacrificed their lives, this MUST end. Whatever it takes.’ Whilst I would still urge each and every one of you to not buy the Daily Mail, their damascian conversion to offering genuine and well-deserved criticism of the government is surprising, especially when you see the front page of today’s Sun, which descends to a new low in what used to be known as journalism.
Instead of joining the Mail’s criticism, the Sun quotes an obviously unnamed source at ‘number ten’ who describes said criticism as being ‘nothing less than a smear’. Yes, the same Sun which only last week was referring to NHS workers as heroes. However, this is the front page lead story: ‘LOCKDOWN BLOW: PUBS SHUT TILL XMAS’. ‘Boozers will be last to open.’ A small caption within a photograph of a foaming pint of beer states, ‘596 dead. See page 4.’
People who have died, and their grieving families and relatives, reduced to a caption within a pint of beer. This is ‘news’ created by and created for the heartless, the uncaring and the hard of thinking. This is what they think of you, this is the level of empathy they have for those of us who have lost much loved relatives and friends. If our case workers are the very best of us, then so called journalists who peddle this stuff are the very worst of us.
It goes without saying that not only should we not buy the Mail, we should not, under any circumstances, buy the Sun and for that matter the hate-filled Express, or even the Mirror, despite its more left wing leanings. Every red top tabloid we buy just encourages them to report the death toll of hundreds on a picture of a pint of beer.
Finally, I return to delays in obtaining 400,000 protective gowns from Turkey. Sadly, it appears that the Mail must have ran out of space and was unable to explain the reason for delays in the procurement of 400,000 gowns from Turkey. Allow me to do so. The delays were caused by bureaucracy and paperwork. This is the sort of bureaucracy that we will encounter from the start of 2021 with everything we buy from and sell to most of Europe, once the EU transition period has ended. Delays caused by bureaucracy and paperwork will be the new norm and we can’t complain because we voted for it.
When the Mail talks of the ‘betrayal of our bravest’, never forget their role in supporting governments which have repeatedly ripped into the very fabric of our NHS over the last decade. As for the Sun, if you think it’s a great idea to have a caption of ‘596 dead’ on a pint glass on its front page, then you might do well to have a long, hard look at yourself.
