Life’s a picnic for pie-in-sky union

IF YOU were one of the thousands of people who had treatments and appointments cancelled thanks to the junior doctors’ strikes this week, you must have been thrilled to know their militant BMA union told them not to bother spending too much time on the picket line but to go on picnics, to enjoy “some downtime”, “dig out a book and get onto the sofa”. And “don’t feel guilty about it”.

Well, if they’re any kind of doctors, they SHOULD feel guilty about leaving thousands of vulnerable people in pain while they swanned off and had a good old laugh about their demands for a 35 per cent pie-in-the sky pay rise.

■ SCIENTISTS have discovered many of us would put up with physical pain to uncover a juicy secret.

Having been a journalist for 45 years, I can tell you that I’ve had to put up with considerable pain – smacks, slaps, water over my head, insults, abuse – just to bring you information. And I endure it happily for you guys!

■ GARDENING expert Carol Klein has criticised Gardeners’ World for its lack of diversity and the fact it’s never had a female presenter. She claims that, when it comes to women, the programme has “a grass ceiling” (how long did it take her to think up that one?).

But why should it have a female presenter? Tokenism?

Why would a woman do the job better? Or is she just annoyed because she keeps applying for the job – and not getting it?

■ THE hit series Succession has been nominated for 27 Emmy Awards. I’ll bet that’s peed off the belligerent but brilliant Brian Cox, who played media mogul Logan Roy, but only featured in two episodes of the final series before being bumped off. He can’t claim any of the credit.