The Facts Behind The Hysteria

With all the mass hysteria going on at the moment, you'd be forgiven for missing this damning letter to the Times; 

Sir, 

Further to your report ('Poison exposure leaves almost 40 needing treatment', Mar 14) may I clarify that no patients have experienced symptoms of nerve agent poisoning in Salisbury and there have only ever been three patients with significant poisoning. Several people have attended the emergency department concerned that they may have been exposed. None has had symptoms of poisoning and none has needed treatment. Any blood tests performed have shown no abnormality. No member of the public has been contaminated by the agent involved.

Stephen Davies,

Consultant in emergency medicine, Salisbury NHS foundation Trust

It's also worth pointing out that the government's line that the nerve agent is 'a type developed by the Russians' doesn't mean made or used by the Russians. And in the midst of the attacks against Corbyn for advising caution (including the 'impartial' BBC's decision to photoshop him as a Russian stooge behind a USSR backdrop last week) how come no one is concerned with the £30,000 donation made to the Tory party by the wife of a former Putin minister - just one of many donations from Russians in recent years. Even Litvenyenko's widow is talking about this, but the media don't seem to want to give her views an airing.

Once again, my advice is look to the truth and not what the government are saying. This is May's Falklands moment and she's loving it, as is the odious Boris Johnson who seems to think he's his beloved Churchill; just in time for The Darkest Hour buzz. Why? Because just like Thatcher's government in '82, it gives them the perfect excuse to bury the real unrest and disasters occurring under May's premiership and the chance to boost her ailing approval ratings with the sheep like contingent of the general public. Brexit, Grenfell etc can all be ignored while they wave what remains of the Union Jack against the menacing Soviet bear.

Rapid Reviews : Moranthology & How To Be A Woman

I love Caitlin Moran's writing and I devoured two of her books, Moranthology (a compendium of articles written for The Times) and How To Be A Woman (in her own words ''like The Female Eunuch, but with jokes about my knickers!") last week.

I could wax lyrical about the plentiful merits of both books and how its impossible not to read them without bursting out laughing on at least every other page, but instead I'll just select one passage which sees Moran discuss the banality of modern day porn movies...

One upon a time, a girl with long nails and a really bad outfit sat on a sofa, trying to look sexy, but actually looking like she'd just remembered a vexing, unpaid parking fine. She might be slightly cross-eyed, due to how tight her bra is.

A man comes in - a man who walks rather oddly, as if he's carrying an invisible garden chair in front of him. This is because he's got a uselessly large penis, which is erect and appears to be scanning the room for the most sexually disinterested thing in it. 

Having rejected the window and a vase, the cock finally homes in on the girl on the sofa.

As she disinterestedly licks her lips, the man leans over and - inexplicably - weighs her left breast in his hand. This appears to be the crossing of some kind of sexual Rubicon because, 30 seconds later, she's being fucked at an uncomfortable angle, then bummed whilst looking quite pained. There's usually a bit of arse slapping here, or some hair pulling there - whatever can ring in the variety in a straightforward two-camera shoot in less than five minutes.

It all ends with him coming over her face messily - as if he's haphazardly icing a bun in one of the challenges on The Generation Game.

The End.


And that is the genius of Caitlin Moran. I am also, to quote modern parlance, super stoked that her semi autobiographical sitcom on her childhood, Raised By Wolves - which had a piss makingly funny pilot last Christmas -  is getting a full series on Channel 4 sometime soon.