THE CONCRETE ROUNDABOUT (TCR)

During the first lockdown they were asking for people’s experience of it. I posted a reply, and the very same day they rang me and did an interview which appeared in the paper the next day.

Some weeks later they rang me again asking for an update of sorts. I told them that I was actually having a quite brilliant time. The sun was out, I had plenty to do, the garden, allotment, and house were all looking fantastic. They asked me about my life. I told them of my working class upbringing on the West Coast Of Scotland. Brought up by socialist parents, how I’d worked extremely hard all of my life, married a nice middle class woman, and that I’d made a better life for myself in MK than I could've done if I’d remained in Scotland. I remember the guy asking if I thought that I’d changed class. I said that I still considered myself working class, but that it’d be churlish to deny that I lived a middle class lifestyle. Needless to say they didn’t run the second interview, because I didn’t fit their agenda. They wanted someone to say how shit life was at the time. Which I wasn’t prepared to do.

From that day I came to realise that, however much I’d like to pretend otherwise, they have just as much of an agenda as The Mail.

During the first lockdown they were asking for people’s experience of it. I posted a reply, and the very same day they rang me and did an interview which appeared in the paper the next day.

Some weeks later they rang me again asking for an update of sorts. I told them that I was actually having a quite brilliant time. The sun was out, I had plenty to do, the garden, allotment, and house were all looking fantastic. They asked me about my life. I told them of my working class upbringing on the West Coast Of Scotland. Brought up by socialist parents, how I’d worked extremely hard all of my life, married a nice middle class woman, and that I’d made a better life for myself in MK than I could've done if I’d remained in Scotland. I remember the guy asking if I thought that I’d changed class. I said that I still considered myself working class, but that it’d be churlish to deny that I lived a middle class lifestyle. Needless to say they didn’t run the second interview, because I didn’t fit their agenda. They wanted someone to say how shit life was at the time. Which I wasn’t prepared to do.

From that day I came to realise that, however much I’d like to pretend otherwise, they have just as much of an agenda as The Mail.

In the interests of even more balance.

Yesterday’s Guardian had a piece on the Oasis reunion by music journalist Simon Price. Now, I’m not a particular fan of Oasis one way or the other. I have seen them, for all of three minutes the first time they headlined Glastonbury. They’re not really for me, more of a Blur man to be honest. But the piece was nothing short of a disgrace.

When someone describes The Union Flag as a “Butchers apron”, or starts a paragraph with “But the Gallaghers can’t outflank me on class”, then I suspect there’s an agenda there. His point is that the Gallagher brothers are class traitors. They’ve abandoned their working class roots by having the temerity to become successful. He goes on to describe his own upbringing, which seems a bit shit to be honest, while describing Burnage as ‘leafy’.

This piece annoyed me more than Vine’s Notting Hill nonsense. I’ll fully admit to having a bit of a blind spot where The Guardian is concerned. I’ve been reading it for over 40 years after all, but that piece was nothing short of a disgrace.

Here's a link, if you can stand reading it... https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... sh-history

I've been reading the Guardian for 50 years now which is long enough to take these articles with a pinch of salt. It's not significant, it's just that person's opinion which some will agree, others won't. It's important to discuss uncomfortable topics, I can be just as annoyed with the Guardian as with the Times or Telegraph - the most annoying aspect for me is that there's less balance now (and I don't mean balance for balance's sake). I'm happier to debate both sides of an argument than have polemic placed in front of me.