Yesterday, my Sunday began as it often does these days, with a kitten jumping on my head. Cute and annoying in equal measure. As a self confessed news addict, Sunday usually evolves via Andrew Marr and something fried (I am Scottish) into a bleary eyed trip to the corner shop to pick up the Sunday Times.
Yesterday, and today, and probably tomorrow, the news is fixated with Kate Middleton's boobs. On a regular day, this would irritate me mildly. Yesterday, as I walked to the shop, I discovered the Lee junction and the Sainsbury's closed in one direction and ominous blue and white police tape. Police patrolled the cordon and press were just beginning to arrive. A little way from the roadside, figures in full forensic gear moved without urgency.
A clipped conversation with a Community Support Officer filled in the gaps. On Saturday night, a fourteen year old boy was stabbed to death getting off my bus, outside my supermarket, just a few yards further down my road. I admit that from that moment, my mild irritation with the news evolved into something more akin to near irrational rage at our values, probably to the detriment of the article I'm writing.
Outrage! Outrage! Outrage! Nicholas Witchell's rodentine features contorted in disgust, Sir John Major's withering reference to 'Peeping Toms'. News reportage so slanted you would think the French had urinated on the Queen's head or set fire to a Corgi. The Royal statement, bristling at 'Images reminiscent of the worst excesses of the press and paparazzi during the life of Diana, Princess of Wales'. No. Nobody was chasing anyone. They're just photos, the like of which any mid level celebrity must guard against.
Amid all this, as Sunday unfolded, a young child lay dead, most likely murdered by children, his end on that Saturday night barely registering the merest blip on the news of the following day, even though his murder occurred on the same road as that of Jimmy Mizen, another school boy killed for nothing. Things were supposed to have changed since then. Where is the disgust at this? Where is the outrage?
As I told my fiancé what I'd seen, it occurred to us that we'd heard the sirens. Sirens being nothing unusual in our corner of South East London. Lee and Lee High Road are conduits for the emergency services and are routinely illuminated by the flashing lights of police response. This was evidenced in the 'Oh, by the way...' footnotes of the brief report on BBC's local news website. Someone else was stabbed in New Cross too - Condition critical...
But now, for more on the boobs, we go to Nicholas Witchell reporting live from the sphincter of the establishment...
I have some sympathy for Kate. Learning the ropes of regal cloud cuckoo land cannot be the easiest thing in the world. But my other half probably put it best. 'Why do you need to get your boobs out on a balcony?' (Regrettably something she doesn't often do herself)
I go further. In exchange for entering a fairytale world where your lavish lifestyle is paid for by the public and your every move beatified by a rabid, salivating press and an enraptured low IQ fan club, you might have to sacrifice topless sunbathing in view of public roads. And if you are caught out, don't go suing people for buying into and seeking to profit from the myth of your importance.
Princess Margaret to me put it best, underlining royal responsibility through a tacit admission of their opulence. 'We've got plenty of houses. If you don't want to be seen or photographed, you don't have to be.' When the story first broke, I hoped that the response would be the following. 'Yes, I must now officially confirm that I have boobs. As do half the world's population. I'd rather they weren't photographed, but c'est la vie, at least I'm extraordinarily privileged.'
Perhaps if the murdered child had been white, the balance of reportage might have been different. Perhaps the skewed representation of our news was not governed by things as cynical as money. It should be noted that the UK press stoking the 'outrage' are guilty of exactly the same profiteering as those who have published the photographs which at least have the decency to attach no more importance to the 'story' than an idle salacious distraction.
Perhaps it is just that national representation is more important than fact. In olympic year, perhaps our country should be better represented by wronged royalty than murdered black children.
