Freedom to choose my own Lent limits
Loophole allows firms to dodge ban on shirt logos
YOU look tired,’ my other half said recently. Sigh. Words every woman longs to hear. He’s right, though. I am tired. Tired of, well, everything. Tired of the same four walls. Tired of the cold. Tired of seeing tiny, pixelated versions of friends, family and colleagues bobbing about on screens. Tired of wearing a mask to go to the shops. Tired of being scared.
As the first anniversary of this infernal mess approaches (I realised with a jolt the other day that Wednesday will mark 11 months since I started working from my kitchen table), it is becoming increasingly hard to summon up energy and enthusiasm for the simplest of things.
Outside seems a strange, faraway place, going out the sort of thing reserved for high days and holidays.
Do I still know how to socialise with other people? Have I forgotten how to buy a train ticket? Can I walk in heels any more? What exactly is ‘a night on the town’?
While there are undoubtedly good things on the horizon, they feel remote and intangible. For those of us who still have a few months to wait patiently for our vaccines, even the jab itself seems somewhat abstract.
Meanwhile, the talk around deadly new variants, booster jabs and quarantine hotels makes normality feel, still, a long way away.
What I need, I decided as I regarded my tired visage in a mirror the other night, is a reset. Something to focus the mind, rather than distract it.
And so, next Wednesday, I will be giving up alcohol and meat for Lent.
I tried to do this last year, too, and ended up sacking it in mid-March on the first anniversary of my father’s death, which also ended up being the same evening that we decided to cancel our increasingly unlikely looking wedding. I had a few drinks that night, I can tell you.
So this year, it seems even more important to complete it. I don’t like leaving things unfinished (so yes, we’re still planning on getting married, too, whenever restrictions permit).
I know this sounds a bit mad, when we’re in the middle of a lockdown. Stripping away pleasures when there are so few to be had in the first place does sound a bit hair shirt-ish, I realise. Giving up toffees? Fair enough. Giving up meat and alcohol? Well, there’s no need to go that far.
But the more I think about it, perhaps
SO there’s a new injection on the market which can boost weight loss by five times. Hallelujah! That’s two jabs to get excited about in 2021.
that’s the point. A G&T and a bottle of wine on a Friday night, alongside a juicy steak or a lasagne, have become something of a staple in this household. Perhaps even a crutch.
And there’s nothing wrong with that, really. Good things in moderation and all that. But sometimes moderation means stepping away, if only for a while, in order to set your mind on a different path.
In this lockdown my daily routine has become set in stone, in a world diminished to the size of my house. Shaking it up by taking a few elements away seems almost a radical act. And besides, I could do with a few more vegetables in my diet. I’ve seen a lovely recipe for a lentil and butternut squash stew.
And whether you hold any religious beliefs or not, there seems something particularly poignant about making some sacrifices, small as they are, this year. To give up a few minor things when others have had to give up so much.
LENT comes from an old English word meaning lengthen. And that is exactly what will happen during those 40 days and nights of meat-free sobriety. The days will indeed lengthen, the sun stretching across the sky for a few minutes more each day so that by the time we emerge in April, it will be spring.
Case numbers and deaths will hopefully be down. The schools should be back in some form, and the prospect of shops, bars and restaurants reopening will be glimmering on the horizon. The world, I suspect, will look a little brighter than it does right now on this cold February afternoon as I sit at my kitchen table in strict lockdown, already anticipating my evening glass of wine.
Will I feel renewed by then? Ready to face the future? Or will I just be cranky from six weeks of dreams about dancing glasses of Merlot?
I honestly have no idea. But right now, when there are so few things about our lives we can change, this one feels worth trying.
At the very least, I might look just a little less tired.
BORIS JOHNSON needs a fool. Indeed, all prime ministers need one — and let’s have no cheap cracks from those who suspect his problem is not an absence of fools but a surplus of them.
Nor, God forbid, should we heed the sharp-tongued friend of mine who observed: ‘All Johnson has to do if he’s in search of a fool is look in the mirror!’ Most unfair. And anyway I’m talking about a special kind of fool, otherwise known as a court jester. The last of them disappeared a few centuries ago but they performed a valuable function apart from making the monarch laugh. They told the King things that no one else would have dared mention without risking an appointment with the executioner.
Will Somer was a famous jester at the court of Henry VIII. Historic England tells us one of his most pointed ‘jokes’ went like this: ‘As please your Grace, you have so many frauditers… and so many deceivers to get up your money that they get all to themselves.’
In modern language, the King was being royally ripped off. In modern times it’s the taxpayer who gets ripped off all too often.
One example: the scandalous waste of money at the start of the pandemic when contracts worth many millions were awarded to companies for vital kit such as PPE even though they had virtually no experience of providing it. What they did have was the right contacts in high places.
Sometimes, even ministers themselves admit they’ve been stupid. The Transport Secretary Grant Shapps did it the other day. He told a committee of MPs that ‘smart’ motorways were anything but smart.
‘Death traps’ was the phrase used by a coroner recently. Just this week, Highways England was referred to prosecutors and may face a corporate manslaughter charge after yet another death. Anyone who’s ever driven on a motorway knows that hard shoulders are there for a reason. But the policy went through anyway. What was lacking was a bit of that undervalued and often derided commodity: common sense.
Another example: Can you imagine anyone in this country being sentenced to jail for ten years because they told officials at Heathrow they’d just come from Spain when they’d actually been in Portugal? Of course you can’t, even if Portugal is on the so-called ‘red list’ of 33 countries where Covid may be a greater risk than it is here.
TEN years for raping a child? Certainly. Ten years for failing to fill in a form? It will never happen and everyone knows it will never happen.
So why did Matt Hancock threaten it this week? Perhaps he really believed it would act as a deterrent to any would-be rule breaker. But deterrents work only if they are credible. This one isn’t.
Common sense was jettisoned on Thursday, too. The Government announced it is reforming the NHS. Again. These reforms will reverse the last reforms of ten years ago. Maybe they will work and maybe they won’t, but one certainty is they will, once again, cause massive disruption.
Did anyone in Whitehall point out that we are in the middle of the greatest health crisis in living memory? I bet the over-rewarded management consultants didn’t.
They earn their considerable fees by peddling change. In the last reforms a doctor friend, making polite conversation with one such consultant who was telling him how his hospital should be run, gently enquired which previous hospitals he’d worked in. ‘Oh, this is the first,’ he replied. ‘I was in a biscuit factory last month.’
It’s not that governments never get it right. We are reaping the benefits of a brilliant vaccination programme as I write. But let’s remember it’s the scientists and researchers who made it possible.
And let’s also remember what the Government got horrendously wrong.
Last month, we recorded the highest Covid death rate in the world. That’s in spite of one lockdown after another and measures that have crippled our economy for years to come and blighted the future of countless children.
Some policies have been unthinking and inhuman: effectively killing old people by turfing them out of hospitals into nursing homes, so denying vast numbers even the comfort of a dying hug with their loved ones.
Some have been simply barking. ‘Eat out to help out’ was nothing but a cheap gimmick — except that it wasn’t cheap. We are paying for it still.
And what about the nation being endlessly ordered to ‘protect the NHS’? A meaningless and even harmful notion. The NHS is there to protect us. It would have been more honest had it read: protect the NHS for Covid victims.
We shall probably never know how many people with other illnesses have suffered or even died because they were afraid to trouble their GP or hospital. They wanted to ‘protect the NHS’ and, as a result, vital tests and examinations were delayed.
Figures released yesterday show nearly 225,000 have waited more than 12 months for routine hospital treatment. That’s the highest number since 2008.
I could continue this litany of government failures and misjudgments but it is not, of course, just this Government. The problem is endemic.
MY PROPOSAL to bring back the court jester may be flippant, but there is a great vacuum in government where common sense should sit. Most prime ministers have recognised this at some level. Most have failed to correct it.
Boris Johnson thought he would be able to bypass the sclerotic nature of the Number 10 machine by making the maverick Dominic Cummings its boss. That went well, didn’t it?
Until fairly recently, the role of the wise fool was often filled by unambitious backbench MPs. On the Tory side they might have been the knights of the shires, not necessarily the sharpest knives in the box but with an ear to the ground for what their constituents thought made sense. They spotted Margaret Thatcher’s poll tax for the nonsense it was.
On Labour’s side, they were often elderly trade unionists, the famous ‘horny-handed sons of toil’ rewarded for a lifetime’s dedication to the Labour movement with a safe seat for a few years and equally attentive to what their own grassroots were thinking.
What linked both groups was that they brought experience and, yes, a bit of common sense to the affairs of state. Crucially, they were no longer chasing promotion, anxious to tell prime ministers only what they wanted to hear.
Both breeds are now largely extinct, supplanted by young career politicians. They are smart for sure, but too often out of touch with the people who gave them their jobs. The voters.
It’s not as if there aren’t plenty of sensible, public spirited, decent people out there who don’t want political power but do want to get involved at some level. They’re the sort who become lay magistrates or school governors or volunteers in the Covid crisis.
They’re the sort who aren’t afraid to say what they think. People like Jackie Weaver, who won the nation’s respect by standing up to the bully boys on Handforth Parish Council.
Ms Weaver is no court jester but Boris Johnson could do worse than tap into the common sense of her and many more like her.
CHILDREN are being exposed to betting adverts worn by footballers as young as 16 because of a legal loophole.
Celebrities and sporting stars under the age of 25 are banned from promoting gambling in light of their influence over young people.
However logos emblazoned on team strips are not considered advertising under the rules.
It means 16-year-old Kaide
Gordon, who is widely regarded as one of the brightest talents in English football, has been able to wear a shirt advertising 32Red while playing for Derby County.
And Harvey Elliot was 16 when he made his debut for Fulham last season wearing a shirt bearing the logo of Dafabet.
They are just two of scores of young players promoting gambling brands even though some are too young to wager themselves.
Campaigners said it was ‘outrageous’ that ministers knew of the loophole but had failed to act.
More than half of Premier League and English Football League teams have a gambling company as their primary shirt sponsor, generating an estimated £110million in income.
The revelations will fuel calls for a clampdown under the review of gaming laws launched last month.
Sports minister Nigel Huddleston has told MPs that under current regulations ‘adverts must never be targeted at children’. But he added: ‘The depiction of a team football shirt which features the logo of a gambling operator is not considered advertising.’
Former England goalkeeper Peter Shilton, who is campaigning for curbs on gambling advertising in football, said: ‘It beggars belief that a government minister can say that shirt sponsorship is not advertising – especially when it is being disviduals played on the shirts of teenage stars. Thousands of young fans are being taught they can’t enjoy the game without a bet. It’s time to kick gambling advertising out of football.’
Richard Holden, a Tory member of the Commons public accounts committee, said: ‘The time for semantic games is long past. It’s outrageous that there’s a loophole that suggests shirt sponsorship is not advertising.
‘If it looks like advertising, smells like advertising and is paid for to promote a brand – it’s advertising.’
Dr Alan Smith, Bishop of St Albans and spokesman for the Church of England on gambling issues, said: ‘Children are gambling at a worrying level. By using children to advertise, some operators are clearly wanting to appeal to the young. The Government and the Advertising Standards Authority must take action.
‘That means reversing the gamblification of sport – football must be returned to its fans, not kept in the hands of betting executives.’
The ASA’s rules state that ‘indiwho are or appear to be under 25 are explicitly prohibited from appearing in gambling marketing communications’.
But scores of footballers under the age of 25 play in the top divisions and, without the exemption for shirt sponsorship, would normally be banned from advertising gambling.
A study found that the BBC Match of the Day children’s football magazine had a ‘gambling logo on every other page’ because of the adverts on players’ shirts. In one edition of the weekly magazine, which is read by 38,000 children aged from six to 14, there were 52 logos.
James Grimes of The Big Step campaign group, said: ‘Teenage footballers are relatable to children and should not be promoting online casinos, a product they aren’t old enough to use themselves.’
Top names have also worked as ‘ambassadors’ for bookmakers or appeared in their adverts, including Jose Mourinho, Gary Savage, Alan Shearer, Jermaine Jenas and Harry Redknapp. The Mail has been calling for tighter regulations on advertising under the Stop the Gambling Predators campaign.
The Betting and Gaming Council said: ‘BGC members – who have a zero-tolerance attitude to gambling by under-18s – adhere to the strict rules set out by the ASA.
‘Last year we published an updated industry code for socially responsible advertising to further prevent those aged under 18 from seeing betting ads online.’
The ASA said: ‘Sponsorship has always fallen outside the remit of the Advertising Code because, in and of itself, it’s an arrangement or contract between a brand and another party, rather than paid-for ad space, and is therefore not classed as advertising.’
The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport was approached for comment.
There are thought to be 400,000 gambling addicts in the UK, including 55,000 children.
STOP THE GAMBLING PREDATORS