The chronic Chronicle - a local paper I won't buy again

Over the last few weeks Viv and I have been making our way through the box set of the  Danish TV series Badehotellet (‘Seaside Hotel’). Much of it is set in the 1930s when politics in the country immediately to their south was dominated by Herr Hitler, and Danes found that they sometimes needed to be careful, for the Danish government, eager not to cause damage to their economy, had adopted a somewhat pragmatic approach to things in Germany, and even Danish people could be in trouble for saying or doing something that would displease the Fuhrer or his followers. One scene refers to a homosexual being beaten up, another to a Jew being sent to a concentration camp. 

Our current crop of politicians - or at least most of them - would believe it ridiculous, but both Viv and I felt there to be some unpleasant similarities between the way peoples' lives were controlled in 1930s Denmark, and the way they are in the United Kingdom today; both seem to be a couple of steps away from totalitarianism. I didn’t realise quite how close we are now until reading a local paper recently.

We live in Bedfordshire, at the agricultural end, close to both Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire. When the Chancellor of the Exchequer made her rather shouty ‘speech for growth’ in Oxford recently, announcing developments in the ‘Oxford - Cambridge corridor’, we were intrigued; I even bought a copy of the Daily Mail the next day to read up on her proposals, for we live slap bang in the middle of the area in question. 

A couple of days later we found ourselves in a local shop, browsing the headlines, and noticed that they had a copy of our weekly local paper, ‘The Biggleswade Chronicle’.  The front page was dominated by the words ‘It’s full steam ahead for rail - New station to be delivered up to five years earlier’. 

We haven’t bought a local paper for a while but this, we thought, the January 31 2025 edition, might be worth the £1.50 cover price if it gave us more details, or a different angle, on what was proposed for a major infrastructure project affecting our area. I took it and our other purchases to the counter, duly paid and we carried on with our shopping elsewhere. 

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Once at home it took me all of a couple of minutes to wish I hadn’t bothered with the paper. I did read the article about the new station - at Tempsford, a flood-prone village a few miles north of us where the river Ivel meets the Great Ouse - but it told me far less than I had read in the Mail, and had probably been copied from an official press release in an office miles away, by a journo with no local knowledge or inquiring mind. Questions like ‘where might the station be in relation to the village and the road network?’, ‘will it result in parking problems around the village?’ and ‘where will the trains go to?’ hadn’t  even been considered. 

Wanting to get something of value for my thirty bob (for a newspaper!), I decided to browse the rest of the paper: it wouldn’t take long, there were only 32 pages. (The Mail had cost me £1.10 for 72 pages). I turned to page two: the top half detailed five TV programmes ‘for your week’; much of the bottom half consisted of a graphic - somewhat unimaginatively titled ‘News in Graphics’.

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This graphic - roughly 15 cm wide by 16 deep - was titled ‘Justice is Served’, followed by the following text:

‘Nearly 450 people have been sentenced for offences in connection with the riots and disorder that broke out in parts of the country after the knife attack by Axel Rudakubana at a Southport dance studio on July 29 2024 that left three girls dead’

Also included were key messages:

• 446 individuals have been sentenced

• A total of 385 … received immediate custodial sentences

• The longest jail sentences so far is (sic) 9 years

It went on to explain - if that is the right word - that, among other things, the oldest person sentenced is an 81 year old man, the youngest a 12 year-old boy, and that police forces in Merseyside, South Yorkshire, Cleveland and Avon & Somerset have accounted for most of the people sentenced. 

You could even scan a QR code from the graphic to read a report on the ‘jailing of the Southport killer’. 

In the centre of the graphic was an image of a convict, behind bars, seemingly holding a sign bearing the words ‘POLICE’ and ‘JAILED’. This image seemed to me clearly intended to instil fear, and definitely had that effect; it very much reminded me of the image of Big Brother in my paperback copy of Nineteen Eighty-Four. That offenders are jailed by the courts, not the police, in England does not seem to have mattered to the artist; the image conveyed what must have been their intended message - that we live in a police state, and you must obey.

(I should point out that, to my knowledge, there was little, if anything, by way of rioting, disturbance or public order offences related to migrants or immigration in East Bedfordshire in the summer of 2024. Many of us were shaken by the events, and have concerns about immigration, the lack of housing and infrastructure, but most of all we were shocked by the authoritarian crackdown on alleged offenders, seemingly engineered by central government, even on those who had done nothing more than type something relating to the incidents into a social media app.) 

‘Why are they wanting to scare me?’, I wondered. ‘And who is behind this sort of messaging?’ And then, ‘what the f**k has this got to do with Biggleswade?’

I can see no sensible reason why the editor decided to publish this in a weekly local in the comparatively sleepy east of Bedfordshire; maybe he thought we were all likely to go out and smash the place up now Mr. R. has been sent off to prison, and he wanted to warn us of the consequences, but that is surely stretching the responsibility of the editor of a local a bit far. The obvious reason for its appearance was to remind us all of the penalties for challenging authority - even if only with words.

There must be a dozen ideas they could have had for local items to relate in ‘News in Graphics’ - waiting statistics, bed availability and the like at the local hospital would be a good one, or bus or train punctuality in the region. Statistics on migration, asylum seekers and deportations might be just as, or more, relevant and interesting to the local reader. The item they did publish was neither local nor news (for most of these convictions dated from quick justice last summer, on government orders) - surely a bad choice for content in a local paper - and scared the life out of at least one paying reader, also not a particularly good idea if you want them to buy future copies. I wondered what the editor thought might be appropriate steps the country could take to control migration, or whether they were just too simple to understand the challenges that population increases of the best part of a million a year pose for us all. 

(Indeed, it would be interesting to know whether the editor will, in due course, run an item on the acquittal on 5th February of Jamie Michael. He spent 17 days in jail after being reported to the police by a no-doubt loyal Labour party worker who’d taken exception to one of Jamie’s social media posts regarding migration; Jamie was acquitted by a jury who took only 17 minutes to unanimously find him not guilty of stirring up racial hatred - this is a story the public might be interested in, for it sheds light on the machinations used by ‘anti-racist’ activists to put fear into those who merely want to express an opinion different to theirs, these bearing more than a passing resemblance to the sort of thing that used to go on in Germany - not just in the 1930s, but, as a family friend over there has related to me, in the DDR, just forty odd years ago.)   

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Page 3 contained the article on the new station at Tempsford, and a shorter article on the conviction of a child killer. Just to really set the mood, page 4 was dedicated to ‘Family Announcements’ according to the headline, but half of it was given over to an article about choosing the right place for your burial (“‘There are so many benefits to a natural burial’, says Michael”.)

Page 5 did actually contain an article of interest: the remains of a medieval pottery kiln had been found during building work at a school a couple of miles from where Viv and I live. Cheered, and hoping for something positive on the next page, I turned over - only to be disappointed, to say the least.

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I have looked at that page, number 6, a number of times and cannot work out whether it is an advertisement, or editorial. It is headed ‘First News’, using the logo of the children’s newspaper of that name, with banners ‘News kids can trust’ and ‘Newspaper of the year’ Top right it mentions a ‘Buy one month get one month free offer’, with a QR code, much as an advert would; beneath, the apparent ‘news’ content consists of ‘5 Things to know and tell’. Left and around the mid point of the page were three column inches on ‘thing’ number 1: one  inch contained some text, the remaining two the now ubiquitous image of a rainbow flag. I read the text: 'February marks LGBT+ History Month. This is a chance to celebrate the lives and achievements of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT+) people.’

The whole LGBTQ+ thing is very different from the philosophies of the one time German Fuhrer I mentioned earlier, but the movement’s obsession with flags, parades and celebrating those who are exemplars of the ideology, is worryingly similar: at times, near bankrupt councils spend a fortune lining UK streets with rainbow flags; ninety or so years ago, their equivalents in Germany spent like amounts decking their streets in flags - except theirs had swastikas rather than rainbows. What effect does this trumpeting of an ideology have on our people, especially children? Do they perhaps think that to be LGBT+  is the route to success and happiness in life, as membership of ‘the party’ and following Hitler was believed to be in 1930s Germany? Does it result in our youngsters feeling encouraged to adopt a defined lifestyle that, later, they realise isn’t quite right for them?

Moreover, the column inch of ‘news’ didn’t, I think, convey the intended message. The words used seem to infer that we are not allowed to, or able to, celebrate the lives of LGBT+ people at other times of the year. Why do they feel that to be the case? Indeed, the first question I would have asked about this when I was at junior school would have been ‘why can’t we celebrate them at other times?’ (First News is, according to its website, aimed at 7 to 14 year-olds).  Recognising the achievements of LGBT+ people might have been difficult in the past but it isn’t, or shouldn’t be, now; why do we feel the need to have a special month for it, or confuse children - yes, children - with all of this ideology. I am amazed that the writer of the piece didn’t use clearer wording; it is as if it was authored by someone who didn’t quite know what to say. Personally, I think primary children are too young to discuss LGBT+ matters with, it will only confuse and upset them. I was probably about twelve when homosexuality was first discussed in class, that’s a more appropriate age, when youngsters are starting to get to grips with the sensations of physical attraction; in my case the topic had to be raised with all pupils at my boys-only boarding school, if only as a fairly weak warning not to indulge in the physical aspects, for problems tended to arise when pupils wanted to be, er, unduly affectionate with each other. 

Imagine the pressure children must be under to subscribe to one of the many gender or sexual preference norms. Schools probably tell them - or they take away from their often badly-taught lessons - something like: ‘Hetero people are like this. Gays are like that. Bis do both. Trans are like this, and have drugs and surgery’. What if a twelve year old boy doesn’t feel he fits into any of the categories he’s told about? If he says something to his mother or father it won’t be detailed - children struggle to talk about ‘private’ things to their parents - and he might get dragged off to see an ‘expert’ at somewhere like the infamous Tavistock Centre; of course, he will be told that this is for his own good, in the long term (maybe a bit like having a brace to sort your teeth out). What might be said there?  I wonder; perhaps: ‘Sorry madam, but your child is not a normal boy. He is trans. We need him to see a specialist so that he gets the best possible care’; and said specialist might then discuss the issues with the child: ‘So, young man, don’t like wearing Y-fronts do we? Prefer something softer, more clingy? You are what we call trans. We can help you, we will do some surgery and give you some drugs to make you feel more comfortable’. I suspect Dr. Mengele said similar things to his victims in Auschwitz; that’s where things ended up with all the flags and marches in ‘30s Germany. 

Shouldn’t the child of today just be left to wear, and think, what the heck he or she likes, and be allowed to be themselves?

I don’t for one minute believe it would be right to return to anything like Section 28, but things seem to have gone too far. Years ago a child who was different was, well, different; sometimes they might have been teased, but in the 60s it became the done thing to be different, to be ‘far out’, to push the boundaries. Think of all the music and art that was produced by youngsters who had been allowed to be different then. We need once more to let children be themselves; yes, a boy can play with dolls and still be a boy, and a girl can play with cars and still be a girl. Let them think, experiment, create and enjoy being an individual. We should cherish the true diversity of the individual, for every single one of us is unique; categorising us all into ‘straight, gay, lesbian, trans’ etc. is wrong, and we should educate parents that a child being ‘different’ is not a child with a medical condition - it is a child enjoying their individuality. Children should not be educated into thinking that certain, defined lifestyles are more special, or honourable, than others, or pressured to follow a lifestyle that conforms to any convention. A column inch on that might actually be ‘News kids can trust.’

Oh, I write this as a ‘male identifying person’ who has always known himself to be male, a man; and, if you’re interested, I haven’t worn Y-fronts since I left that aforementioned ghastly boarding school nearly fifty years ago. I’m me, an individual, like you, and we all are, and our children always will be - if it is allowed.

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Somewhat exasperated, I moved on pages 7 and 8, the top halves of which contained stories about the sorry state of Bedfordshire policing, and (surprise!) that next year the council tax will have to rise - without actually clarifying whether they have a plan to ensure that the extra money the police receive will result in improved performance.  The next few pages were dominated by adverts, a column by the council leader (explaining that they, like the police, have ‘challenges’, which undoubtedly will end up with their part of the council tax also going up). The ‘Letters’ page followed; well, ‘letter’ page, for there was just one, then six pages of very dense text on ‘news from the villages’, interspersed with adverts. None of the entries were relevant to us, it all looked so heavy I moved on, and turned to page 20, headed ‘Food and Drink’, where the top half of the page contained a book review that can’t be very relevant to many readers in East Bedfordshire.

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‘Beautiful bright side to Ramadan’ read the headline, ‘Nadiya Hussain shares the beauty of the holy month in her new book’. I’ll give the journos some credit, this verges on local relevance, for Nadiya is from Bedfordshire - but the other end, Luton, which has quite a high Muslim population. Biggleswade doesn’t; there are a few shops, and a taxi company, where the staff are obviously of that faith, but the newsagent in town will tell you that the majority of those who buy the Biggleswade Chronicle are, older, white, and have either lived in the area for years or have moved there from elsewhere in the south east. Many probably don’t think about religion, those that do would declare themselves to be a Christian of one form or another. 

The review of Nadiya’s book doesn’t really take this into account - it's not until about three quarters of the way through that the precise constraints (not eating while the sun is up for thirty days) observed by Muslims during Ramadan are mentioned: you have to read through paragraph after paragraph about why these recipes are good before knowing what the challenge is that they are trying to address. To me, it seemed that the writer had assumed that the reader would understand Ramadan - that is, they would be a Muslim - when they started on the piece, and then realised many wouldn’t be, so slapped in something explaining it towards the end, before finishing off with some quotes from the author about how much she likes Ramadan. 

The bottom half of the page contained two recipes. The first, for ‘samsas’ (sic), contains a little explanatory text from Nadiya, and a reference to the book being reviewed, but it's not mentioned whether this recipe is from the book. The second recipe printed is for a spicy lamb dish, with no reference to Nadiya, or her book, or Ramadan, at all.

In a strange way, the review might have made me more likely to buy Nadiya’s book, because I do enjoy cooking and trying out new ideas. However, there was nothing about the recipes themselves in the text - are the meals high in protein or carbs, are any, or all, vegetarian - indeed, there wasn’t even a sample recipe mentioned. If I do buy it it will probably be from a charity shop, where there are always cookbooks to choose from; I’m not going to order it at the publisher’s price based on this review. 

Many readers of the Biggleswade Chronicle probably would have seen the review and just thought ‘I’m not Muslim, that doesn’t apply to me’ and moved on. That’s not racist, nor islamophobic, it's reasonable behaviour given the headline; if the paper was going to run a review of this book, to the Biggleswade public, they could have done a much better job of it.  

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Page 21 contained five captioned photos promoting up and coming productions at local theatres; 22 to 26 were full of puzzles. 27 to 29 were classified ads - dominated by a small number of not very cheery ‘statutory notices’ about new parking restrictions, planning and licence applications, and Trustee Act notices, and display ads for skip hire, financial services and a half page ad for mail order begonias.. The ‘Cars for sale’ column was badly named, for it contained just one advert. Pages 30 to 32 were on local sport; not being a supporter of any of the local clubs I didn’t bother reading them.

Whatever the purpose of local media is, it surely isn't to leave paying readers feeling the way I felt when I put the paper down: disillusioned, saddened at the state of an industry in which people were proud to work, concerned about the way even limited circulation media seems to be selecting fashionable, or ‘correct’, messaging in what it publishes (or is directed to publish), and determined to never buy a copy of the paper again. If it was the editor’s idea to discourage sales, then it's working; it's probably also helping to recruit people to the army of Reform voters that may, one day, elect Mr. Farage as PM. 

What will be left of this country when that happens is anyone’s guess, but I don’t think there will be even a small pile of Biggleswade Chronicles on the newsagent’s counter every Friday by then.

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