How Many Dead?

.

Mail Online

I have just had a glance at the 'Mail Online' page and while I expect to see half naked, meaningless celebrities whom I have never heard off, and I also realise that scandal and shock will fill the page, I did find myself shocked by the number of dead people on the page.  One was 'happy Slapped' to death by neds, a four year old was found dead in a washing machine while playing 'Hide & Seek, a pretty young student finds herself dead crossing a road while on the phone, so the driver gets off with that one, and a father is found hanging not long after his wife and two daughters are found dead. Not a bad body count when we are still in the 'Mail's' opening section.

They were joined in the opening section by a 45 stone woman who, the 'Mail claims,' died after stuffing herself on junk food! We quickly move on to a nurse stabbed by her 'ex-lover,' never boyfriend, always 'lover' in this paper, and a 'newly wed stabbed to death by her step son' in the US. There is a cruise ship passenger dying after the gangway collapses, a mother bleeding to death after a long wait for the police, a professional footballer given 25 years for shooting an ex friend in a drugs related case. This led to another murder and about thirty shooting incidents in a notorious London housing estate. However hold on, we are only half way down the page! We still have the 'insanely jealous' boyfriend who bumped her of for finding another man, we must not miss him out must we? 

At a rough count, and it must be rough are there may be more yet to discover on this page, we have about 14, yes fourteen, bodies on one page of the 'Mail Online.' I have missed out the regular things, priests giving communion to dogs, a ship made from plastic bottles arriving in Sydney harbour,  shocking things found on a soap opera and lots of flesh on the side bar as 'B' celebs disport themselves for cheap publicity.

Murder used to be unusual in the UK. We use to manage about one a day, now we are at least ten times that number, although I have no official figures for this guess. The police once shuddered at the thought of carrying guns, now every station has it's 'armed response unit' Youths are always showing off by fighting, now however they all appear to carry knives, and especially so in inner cities. Drugs carry a great responsibility here as all areas appear to have a drug gang of some sort. Heavens, only a few years ago an armed police raid occurred on a house behind my mothers in Edinburgh. I spent 21 years in London and never saw an armed police raid, yet one occurs right next to what once was our playground! Totally unthinkable in the fifties!

There again it is a paper reporting 'news,' and facts are slanted to sell. These sad events take place all too often but life goes on. There are more good things in the New Forest than dead families, some housing estates, even black ones I will have you know, are full of folks just living their lives. Reading the press does give a skewed view of the world around us. When I lived in London the area, Paddington it came under, had about 660 'car crimes.' Stolen or just broken into for a few pounds, that sort of thing.  Maida Vale had well over 700 such offences! Yet when I arrived at this backwater  the local media talked of things taken from cars, garages raided, and police warnings to 'Take care out there!'

The end of the year report told us there had been 24 'car crimes,' and that this area was the safest in the county, and the county had the lowest crime rate in the country! Read your paper carefully!

.