Star’s condemnation Street
ACTRESS Thelma Barlow, who played Mavis Riley in
Coronation Street, says our oldest TV soap has lost its humour and warmth, and that she rarely bothers watching it now.
Instead of maintaining its distinctive identity, the Street made the fatal error of sufficiently copying the
EastEnders diet of endless screaming matches, violence, and disaster for
Paul O’Grady to once memorably compare it to Syria.
All nuance and charm has been obliterated, replaced by a grim insistence on “raising awareness” of whatever supposedly pressing social issue writers feel the need to lecture viewers about this week.
Contrary to her former character’s “I don’t really know” catchphrase, Barlow is very well aware of what’s wrong with the Street, as are the millions of others who switched off after concluding that the familiar cobbles have become a load of old shouty cobblers.
BORIS Johnson’s proposal to televise dailyWhite House-style press briefings will add no transparency to our politics.Anything worth announcing can – and should – be done in the House of Commons.Viewers will also be quickly bored to tears – especially if an entire session is taken up with one of ITV News’s political editor Robert Peston’s 17-part questions.
I THOUGHT the Spitfire flyover tribute at the weekend to mark the National Health Service’s birthday particularly appropriate this year.
As far back as April, I likened its staff on the coronavirus frontline to the young pilots who also risked their lives every day by taking to the skies in the Battle of Britain.
Unfortunately however, their bravery is too often used as an air raid shelter to protect the organisation’s many failures and shortcomings from a word of criticism. Contrary to the
impression often given, many comparable countries, especially elsewhere in Europe, do not envy our NHS.
Their citizens also enjoy treatment free at the point of need, but as well as taxes fund their healthcare systems with private contributions which they contemplate as equably as, say, a hire-purchase agreement on a car or a streaming subscription.
Just suggesting such a thing in this country is regarded as a criminal affront. The NHS – and its staff who we believe merit greater award – are literally poorer for it.