Tabloid Tales.

I have been, to say the least, somewhat under the weather lately - hence the absence of posts - but musings on my profession have generated sufficient adrenalin to drag me back into the real world.
Two news stories have broken nationwide in the last few days, both of which have left me bracing myself for what is to come here in the good old UK of A in the newspapers (and hence on the TV news as all the camera-loving fluffies do is read out the papers on air anyway).
Christmas is normally a completely dead time in newspapers so hacks are asked to write about absolutely anything NOW (what they did on their summer holidays, my granny's recipe for seedcake etc) and stockpile it. These bits of crap are stored centrally, usually in computer baskets called "Christmas Specials", "Festive Extras" or something similar, and then dribbled out a bit at a time over the Christmas period to fill what would otherwise be gaping holes because nothing is happening.
Well, Father Newsmas has dropped two big stories in the hacks' laps over the last few days to keep them happy over the festive period, and beyond.
The first, and you will forgive me if I find little or no humour in it, is that a psychopath is going around the Ipswich area murdering women - three confirmed victims to date and two more suspected. It is the predictability of the coverage of these awful events which leaves me wanting to bite my own foot off. The Press has already achieved its primary goal which is to dismiss the poor victims - "Well, they'me just prozzies, ain't they?". That done, they are now free to concentrate on the nutter himself and give him (I am obviously making an assumption here) the infamy and lofty standing in the annals of criminology he so desperately craves instead of dismissing him as a fuckwit, inadequate, pathetic, no-mark, evil, little cunt. There is just one element missing from the coverage to date which both the hacks and the murderer need, in fact insist on. Got it yet? Yes, a cliched nickname for the bastard! I am not even going to suggest the sort of names I bet you are already being considered - it is too sick - but just you wait. A nickname will come, it has to.
The second news item to keep the presses rolling comes in two parts. Part one is that the final report into the death of Di (you know, O-Level in shopping, bad choice in men, worse choice in taxi drivers) is due out tomorrow. That should make interesting reading. How on earth did she die? Well, having established the fact that she got driven home in the dead of night at 200 mph by a driver who was pissed out of his mind, I would have thought the final chapter was pretty easy to write! The second part of the seemingly never ending Di story is that next year is the tenth anniversary of her death and the little princes are organising a concert to mark the event. Fuck! Pages and pages and pages and pages AGAIN devoted to "England's Rose", to "Did She Hump so Was She Hushed?" and to "The Day the Muesli Died". That is bad enough but there is even worse to come. It is rumoured that Elton John, despite having previously vowed not to, will again play his tribute to Di - "Candle in My Arse", or whatever it's called. Oh my dear God! Save us. Didn't the woman suffer enough. It can't be our turn again already, can it?
All this was appearing in the papers at a time when I spotted two paragraphs - yes, just two pars! - in a tabloid which said that a British soldier had been killed in fighting with Taliban militia in Afghanistan. Remember Afghanistan? The place the Yanks and us invaded but where everything is hunky dory now because the Taliban was defeated and it's not a fuck-up like Iraq?
Can't Grantham's news pages be stuffed with Di "news" and leave us with coverage of the important stuff.
FOOTNOTE: A MERE TWO DAYS AFTER THIS WAS POSTED HER MAJESTY'S PRESS DUBBED THE IPSWICH NUTJOB "THE SUFFOLK STRANGLER".