So then I looked at the World News site and found it full of reactions around the world to the death of the UK monarch. (There was a bit about Ukraine as well.)
BBC Sports News next. There were reports about weekend sporting fixtures being cancelled because the funeral will be on Monday. I suppose that’s fair enough up to a point, but then we get a piece about the England cricket team’s victory against South Africa today, and the headline is a quotation from the captain: ‘England took inspiration from the Queen.’ Oh right; I bet they did.
I imagine editors cajoling their feature writers: ‘We’ve got to fill the site with more about the Queen but we’re running out of ideas. Give me something new.’ ‘How about the fate of the dogs?’ suggests one enterprising young hack. ‘’The dogs?’ ‘Yeah. She liked corgis, didn’t she?’ ‘Nice one,’ says the editor, much relieved. ‘Find out and write it up.’ And that, no doubt, is how we got the one entitled: ‘Prince Andrew to Take Care of the Corgis.’
The only one of these features I could be bothered to read was the one about several people being arrested for shouting anti-monarchist slogans in public. (The police deemed it a public order offence.) That has to be a bit worrying, doesn’t it? You know, freedom of speech and freedom to peacefully protest in a democracy? I gather one protester was later de-arrested. I didn’t even know that a person could be de-arrested, but apparently the malefactor is now ‘voluntarily assisting officers.’
This country is becoming sillier and sillier.
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