The News in Balance.

I thought my TV had packed up at lunchtime, but it only needed the power supply switching off and on again. So I read the BBC text news pages over lunch. They didn’t do much for my digestion.

They included stories of police brutality, the Catholic archbishop who’s had to resign over revelations of ‘inappropriate behaviour,’ substandard MRM products getting into the food supply through a legal loophole, the sex trafficking of 13-year-old girls, the Conservative local politician who’s resigned after remarking that disabled children should be put down because they cost the authority too much money… They’re the first five to trip off the top of my head. There were more.

Still, there was one bit of good news. Rosa Parks has finally got a statue in DC. It might not matter much in the greater scheme of things, but at least it sends out a healthy message. It shows that, however much the Establishment is proving itself to be horribly untrustworthy these days, at least there’s a corner of it capable of recognising an ordinary person who had the courage to stand up for right values. I don’t really have heroes, but people like Rosa Parks come closest.