Too much Boris-bashing

I didn’t catch all of Laura Kuenssberg’s heavily promoted interview with Boris Johnson - I know that’s nothing to boast about, as a blogger about BBC bias - but I do know that I’m not the only one who’s thoroughly fed up with the media’s obsession with peripheral issues like threatening to ‘not’ rape an MP or using colourful language with dry wit and a droll sense of fun. 

I don’t think our Laura is by any means the worst offender by the way. I’ve even seen a comment online somewhere opining that the BBC seems to be reining in its Boris-Bashing. On the Spectator, Steerpike is getting a drubbing BTL for his Boris-takedown. 

Sure, some of the recent incidents involving Boris (as well as Carl Benjamin and even Jo Brand) have been blown out of all proportion. These gaffes and lapses (if that’s how you see them) do merit a limited amount of media speculation, but they are 'side issues'. When, in an interview (or these days a cross-examination) they completely obliterate the core object of the exercise (in Boris’s case his p-p-p-policies) it renders the whole thing truly boring, repetitious and just about as worthwhile as a bellyful of malicious, trivial tittle-tattle.

Nick Ferrari seems to have gone completely OTT on LBC,  pardon the acronyms.

Okay, Boris has a chaotic personality. He sometimes wears one sock inside-out and he and his…young lady (whatever) had a heated, shouty row with accompanying crashes and bangs. I can just imagine any of the Beeb's flagship anchors or presenters uttering sanctimoniously: “The BBC has learned” and then smirkily recounting the scandalous news about the sock. 

Shouty/screamy arguments don’t deserve to be casually laughed off, but the accounts I’ve heard about this particular altercation don’t sound worryingly extreme or excessively prolonged. But, who am I to judge.

Sending a recording to the Guardian belies any claim that the main concern was for the lady’s welfare. Sending anything to the Guardian is probably malicious and very likely to be politically motivated. I wouldn’t, would you?

I could tell you a tale now if you like. Shall I? Are you sitting comfortably? 

There is an anti-social family nearby whose shouting matches are intense and foul. Social services were contacted. The ‘problem family’ is not a couple, but a single mum and two or three different dads’ offspring including at least one toddler and a teenage boy, a few waifs and strays and some hangers-on. 

The residents in the vicinity were asked to download a dedicated app, which records such disturbances and sends them direct to the social services. I’m not quite sure what for (probably for the purpose of procrastination.)

Recording loud disturbances might sound like a good idea, but one's device never seems to be at hand at the exact moment - the outbursts are unpredictable, and no-one in their right mind would take their phone or tablet close enough to get a decent recording, and then be forced to hang around for hours waiting for something nasty to kick off. So it looks as if it ain’t going to happen. 

This is not something to be trivialised though. A couple of years ago a really horrible ‘domestic incident’ did occur nearby - involving extreme, life-changing violence. I don’t even like to think about it. The police arrived too late, but I very much doubt if an intervention by anyone would have stopped it, let alone making a recording and sending it to the press. 

It’s a horrible thing to say, but it does take two to tango. Subsequent events indicated that the (severely injured) surviving party hadn’t been completely blameless. 

I think I have strayed OT. 

TTFN.