What The Papers Might Not Be Saying...

...For Very Much Longer

Both printable and unprintable comments today have referred to newspapers, if such be the word in at least one case (it used to be so much better when my friends were editing it), which have taken it upon themselves to annoy me, or so they presumably imagined, in their time.

On of them is entirely student-run. Read that sentence again if you have to. Those involved still cannot believe that their effusions have had no effect whatever in removing me from my post, as they sincerely imagined that it was within their power to do. It is beyond them that nothing is more guaranteed to ensure that no one who is anyone at Durham pays the slightest attention to a "story", or else actively assumes it to be a lie, than its appearance in their publication. Such is the arrogance of extreme youth, especially extremely privileged extreme youth. Meanwhile, by all accounts their drivelling about me - on which I have never set eyes, nor will I ever do so - became the very least of their worries soon afterwards, while I was undergoing, and then recovering from, major surgery.

Now, to a slightly more serious organ, though also a very pale shadow of its former self. Its Editor had better be praying, if he believes in such a thing, that neither the candidate whose only specific policy requirement was a commitment to abortion on demand up to and including partial birth, nor the candidate whose party wants to abolish church schools, is returned to "represent" the seat that contains not only major centres both of Irish and of Recusant Catholicism, but also Ushaw College.

After all, we do not want those actions to go ahead, the one before the Electoral Commission to have his rag counted as election spending, and the one before the Charity Commission to have its publisher deregistered on the same basis. Actually, I am not sure that I would want that at this stage, although it would not necessarily be up to me. Let's see where things are by the autumn, say I. A lot can change between now and then...