Why British newspaper columnists are worse than seagulls
Swooping in, eating identical garbage, and shitting on everything
Previously: On critics and jealousy
Did you know that I'm hugely jealous of Alastair Campbell? Jealousy is not the driving animus for my work but it's in there.
There are seagulls on a roof near our flat. All summer, they have started squawking and screaming at 4 am, the first part of a day-long schedule of dive-bombing, eating, and shitting. I hate them but I’m familiar with their antics: They remind me of British newspaper columnists.
British newspaper columnists swoop in flocks, diving down to feast on the same piles of trash, and to shit on the same people.
Let’s look at what four of Britain’s most prominent newspapers have to offer today from their comment pages:
The Daily Telegraph
Nigel Farage writing about American politics with all the insight of a dog reviewing some vomit it ate yesterday. Headline: One man can help Make America Great Again (spoiler: It’s not Donald Trump… kinda)
Tim Stanley with a grim attack on trans people that seems to call for even more of a ‘Christian’ gender war (New Atheists allowed the trans cult to begin. Christianity can now end it)
One of Britain’s stupidest men, Daniel Hannan, pretending that Keir Starmer is radical or dangerous to the establishment (Labour will never abolish the House of Lords - what it has in store is much, much worse)
Sentient cloud of meat farts and regret, Jordan Peterson, screeching like a red-pilled Kermit that Elite groupthink has put the West on the path to despair - but there’s another way.
The Times
A grotesque denial of human rights is dragging on — Ian Birrell writing about the treatment of people with autism and those with learning disabilities as if the Tories, Labour, and Lib Dems alike didn’t cause that situation.
New mothers need all the help they can get — Libby Purves on a story about a pill to ‘cure’ postpartum depression (the classic newspaper columnist trick of riffing on a recent news story)
The New Statesman’s UnHerd refugee Will Lloyd writing on the morally grotesque asylum policies but just making it about nimby complaints (Local anger over asylum plans is being ignored)
Someone tell the mayor we’re not all so terrible — Emma Duncan angry about signs on the Tube, doing the classic London-newspaper columnist ‘trick’ of pretending that every reader lives in Zones 1 - 6.
The Sun
Trevor Kavanagh with the usual clumsy scare tactics and a cartoon version of Starmer that doesn’t exist: Under Starmer Britain risks becoming the rest of the world’s Rwanda, a safe haven for immigrant gangsters and criminals
Karren Brady setting herself up as a smartphone expert to scare the readers a little more and advocate for authoritarianism: China is smart to limit kids’ phone use, now do it for hooked adults too
The odious minister Robert Jenrick getting a soapbox to scream Sir Keir Starmer faces serious questions for trying to thwart our work to stop the boats
The Guardian
British people are kinder and less divided than politicians give us credit for — a typically good column from Nesrine Malik, one of Britain’s handful of actually decent columnists
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child was the job of a lifetime, and I walked away from it by Gillian Cosgriff (a mild bit of Edinburgh Fringe fluff)
More Edinburgh fluff from Natalie Haynes: Some people just won’t like you, but don’t take it personally: what surviving the fringe taught me about life
Emma Beddington doesn’t like email/ really didn’t know what to write this week: Email makes my fingers tingle and my stomach drop with dread. Can’t we go back to pigeons?
The list there ranges from encouraging genocidal behaviour and stochastic terrorism (Tim Stanley) to the totally banal; the common factor — with the exception of Nesrine and the comedians who are just getting much-needed publicity — are seagull tactics. The Sun and Telegraph particularly gobble down the same garbage and shit all over the same topics. These are not serious people. And unlike the seagulls, they don’t have the excuse of simply being a tube where food enters and guano exits.
Wouldn’t a day without all this screeching be heavenly?
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