JENNIFER SELWAY Life’s hard enough for young people
SPOILER alert: ITV’S Red Eye finally taxied to its conclusion with the all too predictable twist – it was the CIA whatdunnit, rather than the Chinese.
Of course! China,
Russia, Iran and North Korea may be in an unholy alliance; the Chinese may be hacking our phones and kettles and they may be persecuting the Uyghurs.
But in TV luvvie land, only western democracies can be fingered for crimes against humanity.
HERE ARE a few pointers for our politicians in the coming weeks:
Rishi Sunak – please wear a jacket sometimes.you don’t look informal in your shirt sleeves.you look cold.
Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves – can you stop appearing like a couple who have just announced their engagement?
Starmer and Angela Rayner – ditto.
Reeves – please stop reminding us that you once worked at the Bank of England and can therefore do sums.
Starmer – stop telling us that your father was a tool-maker. Nobody cares.
Ed Davey – stop hugging every female
Lib Dem supporter who crosses your path. It smacks of desperation, though that is understandable.
All of you – stop calling each other by your first names as though you’re best mates. We know you are ferrets in a sack.
And please stop saying you’ve been “clear” about things.that is for us to decide.
IT’S JUST the odd sniffle now, the occasional stifled sob – when I think about the desperately sad ending of the TV version of One Day – David Nicholls’ bestseller, adapted recently on Netflix.
Time to move on, possibly to read his new book You Are Here about a middle-aged couple hiking through the Lake District.
Even if it makes me cry, I’ll enjoy it.
The author was at the Hay Literary festival last week warning his readers not to try and visit the pubs, hotel and restaurants that the imagined couple visit during their imagined hike.
Because, he explained, all these places are – brace yourselves – “entirely fictional”.
“Don’t try and book it because it really doesn’t exist,” he said of the lakeside pub where the characters spend their first night. He has even, he admitted, “taken a few small liberties with the route”.
So many dramas and books trade on the notion that “this is a true story” – such as the Netflix hit Baby Reindeer about the unfunny comic pursued by a deranged female stalker.
“A true story” sounds so much more significant. But stories do not have to be true to be meaningful or moving.
David Nicholls’ jokey admission is a timely reminder that the job of a novelist is – simply – to, you know, make things up.
“MENOPAUSE almonds in dark chocolate” it says on the pack of Holland and Barrett confectionary (£3.79), and there’s the added come-on: “For mood support”. Oh right. Mad menopausal women might just be coaxed back from the brink with a chocolate bar – like soothing a crazed horse with a carrot and blowing up its nose.
A menopause campaigner said this was “exploiting vulnerable women” because we all want to be victims now.
But the truth is it is just plain stupid. And is “menopause almonds” even English?
Read the full interview online at British GQ now.
IAT THE END of his recent interview with Keir Starmer, Paul Mcnamara, Channel 4’s Senior Political Correspondent, shook the Labour leader’s hand as though he was some sort of fanboy meeting his idol. It wasn’t a simple gesture of politeness, it looked like one of endorsement. Somehow I can’t imagine Sir Robin Day or Jeremy Paxman pumping a politician’s mitt in that fulsome manner.
NTRODUCED, with great difficulty, by Clement Attlee’s Labour government in 1947, National Service was never popular. Young people in drab post-war Britain had no desire to put on a uniform, but at least there was some sort of rationale. Numbers in the armed forces had to be kept up somehow.
For most it was a drag and a waste of time, 18 months (extended to two years) of compulsory square bashing for all fit males aged 17 to 21.
And not to be forgotten are the 395 young men killed in active service from 1947 to 1963 (when the last national serviceman was demobbed).
There is no practical purpose in Rishi Sunak’s idea of re-introducing national service. It is social engineering, an attempt to change the mood music of Britain, as he himself admitted.
“It is going to foster a culture of service,” he said, “which is going to be incredibly powerful for making our society more cohesive. In a more uncertain and dangerous world it’s going to strengthen our country’s security and resilience.” It may sound quite compelling, but it is airy nonsense.
In 1949, university students were allowed to defer military service until they had completed their studies. But there were very few students then.
Now, most 18-year-olds are students but there is no deferring. Those who don’t fancy the military can do voluntary work for one weekend a month.
That may not sound much of a commitment, but when you’ve just taken on £50,000 worth of debt you may need to spend your weekends earning some money by working in a bar, rather than visiting an old people’s home.
As it is, plenty of teenagers already do voluntary work via the many available schemes, including the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award.
Home Secretary James Cleverly says there will be no jail time for teenagers who will not comply.
Though there must be some sanction, which will presumably be community service – just what they are being asked to do in the first place.
But Labour is wrong to dismiss this scheme as (their two favourite put-downs) “desperate” and “unfunded”.
They say that about all Conservative policies without having any plans of their own.
It is not about creating a “teenage Dad’s Army” as Keir Starmer sneerily put it. But it is another unnecessary burden for young people who find it increasingly hard to get their adult lives under way because they simply can’t afford to live independently and play an active part in society.
If they could do that then the resilience and the spirit that Sunak seeks would develop unaided.
‘It may be they need to spend weekends earning money’