HEALTH Secretary Jeremy Hunt should be locked in a dark room and made to watch last night’s BBC2 documentary Hospital on an endless loop.

Perhaps Hunt has seen the first series. If not, he can stay in there for a while longer. Or maybe the whole locking in a dark room task could be trusted to someone who is forgetful with keys.

Knowing the chutzpah of the man, he will probably grin and say the programme shows what an excellent job he is doing with the NHS.

The first series about St Mary’s Hospital in London spent much time dwelling on daily crisis management – too many patients and not enough doctors, nurses or beds is the short version.

Now the series has returned and the director of nursing is chairing a staff resource meeting. The vacancy rate is running at 14-16 per cent. More of the same, then; more numbers that don’t add up.

Then the phones start ringing, one by one. There has been a major incident at Westminster. The staffing crisis is immediately swapped for a more acute crisis.

The next hour is a remarkable testament to the NHS, to the skill and dedication of doctors who come together in a crisis. The documentary cameras just happen to be there, which is good timing or bad timing, depending on how you view these matters. But the resulting programme is remarkable – both breathless in the rush of events, and yet deeply calm too, as the professional staff go about their difficult work.

Patients are shunted around, operations are cancelled and the hospital goes into emergency mode. Terrorist Khalid Masood is wheeled in on a stretcher, his bloodied torso on show, and soon declared RIP.

If you count Masood, and perhaps you shouldn’t, six people died in the incident, and more than 50 were injured. The programme concentrates on three of those victims: two French teenagers who were on a school trip, and a man who’d been celebrating his 40th birthday.

The teenagers were badly injured, and Yann has had his scalp sliced open – a horrible injury sewn back layer by layer in a scene not for the squeamish. Vincent has suffered broken ribs and a collapsed lung, and is in danger.

Birthday boy Stephen is in a very poorly state, his leg broken and badly gashed. Surgeon Shehan Hettiaratchy says that in the past he would have needed an amputation.

What follows is at first a medical story – broken bodies to be repaired – and then a human one. We see poor, injured Stephen worrying about his wife, Cara, who escaped with bruises but saw everything as the car driven by Mahood ploughed into her husband.

“It’s really hard when you spend so much time with somebody and then they’re taken away and you’re suddenly really, really alone,” she says, crying.

Stephen is slowly, painfully put back together, and the ending is happier than you might have feared.

As for Yann and Victor, they are stars – funny teenagers still amid all the pain and confusion. The first time they meet again, Yann’s head has been shaved, stapled and stitched together – and he looks a fright. “Your new look is working for you,” Victor deadpans.

Later, Yann says something truly memorable after Victor asks about the souvenirs from Harrods – “I have nothing, just my underpants. The guy fucked me into nakedness on the pavement.”

Such spirit and wit from one so young provided an uplifting moment in sometimes grim but entirely marvellous piece of television.

And those boys seemed to stand as a rebuke to Masood and his idiot cruelty. He did his worst but they were whole again already, even if their bodies would take a while to catch up.

If you’ve not seen this programme, give it a watch – and then say a long prayer to the wonders of the NHS. And hope that nobody has found that key yet.

TO misquote the old blues cliché: woke up this morning to find that something else awful had happened. It seems a monumentally bad thing is scheduled for every other day.

To those of us who like to keep up with the news, the habit is hard to break. A grim irony is that if anything is likely to break that habit, it is the news itself, with one awful occurrence after another.

How relentless the bad news has been: horrible happenings given their own shorthand: Westminster, Manchester, London Bridge, Grenfell Tower and, latest to a depressing litany, the attack on worshippers outside Finsbury Park Mosque.

With each fresh horror comes the reporting and the analysis, while just off to the side is the Twitter chorus, the barracking and the shouting.

Those inharmonious backing vocals to the news were ringing loud yesterday, with spats between, among others, the writer JK Rowling and that professional pain in the arse, Katie Hopkins. In any disagreement between those two, I am going to stick with the Harry Potter author (even though I didn’t stick with her novels), although sometimes JK does betray an addiction to the Twitter row.

After a white man allegedly drove a white van into Muslim worshippers gathering outside the mosque around midnight, Rowling reacted to a Mail-online tweet by saying that terrorist had been misspelled as “white van man” – igniting a probably unseemly row about whether we are unwilling to use the word ‘terrorist’ for far-right attacks, or only for Islamic terrorism.

Hopkins fired off the sort of brain-dead remarks for which she is infamous, and which do not need to be repeated here. The world would be a calmer, nicer place if self-promoting haters such as her were just ignored altogether. And while we’re about it, let’s all agree to ignore the foul Farage person, too.

In reacting to that Mail-online tweet, Rowling possibly jumped in too soon, as the Metropolitan police commissioner Cressida Dick says the incident was declared a terrorist attack within minutes.

Hate is thought to have fuelled the alleged attacker here, and that hate in turn re-fuels Islamic terrorists, with Islamic State reportedly claiming that the attack proves how vulnerable Muslims are in Britain – an example of twisted idiocy almost too stupid to believe, except that believe it we must, because that’s the fractured world we live in.

But those fractures are made by extremists, not the ordinary people of all faiths and none. As someone who ticks the ‘none’ box, I sometimes feel that religion in all is varieties lies behind too many of the world’s upsetting problems. Yet such a view, hard to shake sometimes, is almost certainly unfair to those who use religion for blameless good.

Incidentally, and I do like an ‘incidentally’, after Tim Farron stepped down because it would be ‘impossible’ for him to continue as Lib-Dem leader and “remain faithful to Christ”, the Archbishop of York and others paraded this as an example of the harassing of Christians in modern Britain. Oh, not that again – surely Farron could have been strong enough to do both if he’d truly wished.

On the BBC Radio 4 Today programme earlier, I heard the tail-end of a discussion in which a female speaker said she was proud to see the Daily Mail stick up for Christianity. The context was gone, but that snatch had me muttering “with friends like these…”.

The Mail is the favoured bogeyman for those broadly on the left (and the Guardian is the favoured bogeyman for those further out on the left). The Mail deserves that reputation; the Guardian doesn’t, as I argued here last week.

A story on the BBC website today reports that a fake Mail front page went viral yesterday, with a picture of Theresa May and the headline: “For the sake of the country… GO NOW.”

This apparently fooled many people, including journalists and politicians reportedly – although the typography was a giveaway. The ‘GO NOW’ was in a sans face, not one the Mail would use. This fake Mail was published by a Twitter account called Lying Tory Media, another sign of something being up.

As the news seems to become worse, we trust our media outlets less, or so it appears. I still trust the BBC and a few chosen newspapers, but other opinions are freely available – some of them, like that fake Mail page, put out there for mischievous reasons.

As for the most recent attack, the coverage has been as full-on as ever. This is perfectly understandable in terms of the shock and outrage, but sometimes it is possible to wonder if the relentless intensity of the coverage doesn’t add to the problem – and make further such attacks more likely.

Mind you, I have no idea how to unpick that knot.

HEALTH and safety jokes – they’re a laugh, aren’t they? People who drone on about red tape – they’re the purveyors of common sense and wisdom, aren’t they?

And if you want a laugh, you just swap that ‘health’ for an ‘elf’ and merriment is assured. Oh, the endless seconds I have spent amusing myself at those jokes – and the chuckles that arise are nearly as hearty as those stirred by all those references to “political correctness gone mad”.

You might have thought that one lesson from the Grenfell Tower tragedy would be that the health and safety ‘joke’ should now be banished for ever. Whatever the causes of the inferno, one thing that went up with the flames surely was the lazy notion that red tape and health and safety rules are somehow a burden to those who run businesses.

Yet since the days of Thatcher, we have seen inconvenient corners sanded away to help those who chase private profit in the public sphere. And only a day or so after last week’s blaze, the Daily Mail and Daily Express were maliciously blaming the fire on EU insulation regulations – even though the sort of cladding used is banned in Germany because it is deemed to be flammable.

We’re used to such newspapers turning the lens until it’s pointing in a stubborn direction, but that really was a twist too far – a reminder that in some quarters propaganda quickly overshadows what passes for news. (Just consider the front page of today’s Express: “EU exit deal to boost Britain – Confidence high as talks begin today” – a brave but feeble bit of spin if ever there was).

It is fair to say that the causes of the fire may be complex, with blame apportioned to various parties, local and national. But it is also reasonable to ask if all the endless cuts to council budgets, social housing budgets and fire brigade budgets played a part in what happened.

London mayor Sadiq Khan had a sensible thought along these lines in yesterday’s Observer when he asked if deregulation was to blame. “Those who mock health and safety regulations and red tape need to take a hard look at the consequences of cutting these and ask themselves whether Grenfell Tower is a price worth paying.”

Well said that man. Similar thoughts had been swirling in my mind and were forming into a blog as I read Khan’s words.

Good to see that the admirable Khan can still speak sense while being bombarded by ignorant Tweets from Donald Trump. Behind the bluff and bluster, Trump just happens to be one of the keenest cutters of red tape around, often to benefit himself and his billionaire mates.

WELL, I swear – but not too often.

Nothing too bad, but I do have my favourites. The two most regular mouth marbles hardly even count, or so I always maintain. Our distant daughter, away in Australia for the year, sends me a message to put me right. Even from the other side of the world, she hasn’t lost her cheeky side – “See Dad, balls and bollocks are swears!”

Those are two of my favourites and I always maintain that they don’t count as swearing, but it seems that I am wrong. The communications regulator Offcom has compiled a list that ranks British swearwords in order of offensiveness, and that spherical pair are in there.

Those two are a few of my favourite sweary things, and they appear in the section marked ‘medium’, alongside other imprecations including ‘arse’, ‘bullshit’, ‘pissed off’ and ‘shit’.

Now I do love a good ‘arse’, even if that is a risky way to begin a sentence. A good old word, popularised by the sitcom The Royle Family, which had “my arse” as a catch-phrase. In the recent election, mocked-up posters appeared saying: “Strong and stable my arse”. These turned out to be the work of the Turner Prize-winning artist Jeremy Deller, who was inspired by the U-turning of Theresa May.

Give that man another prize, I say.

It is interesting to see this dry list, with all the swearwords arranged under headings from “generally of little concern” – that’ll be you, arse – all the way through to the ‘strongest words’, two of which I can’t bring myself to type. Well, my mother reads this blog. As is common these days, I do occasionally mutter ‘fuck’, which is the third most offensive word.

Anyway, swearing is a wonderful thing, but you shouldn’t overdo it. There is a sense of rhythm and comic timing to good swearing; good swearing enlivens and enriches the language, I’d say. But bad swearing just becomes dull and deadening.

If you want to find out how offensive you are, look up that list. But I’d better get a move on as we are busy today. I can hear my wife vacuuming upstairs. She’ll be calling me something off that list if I’m not careful.

As today is Father’s Day, this daddio is going to end by saying ‘balls’ – and that isn’t swearing, whatever Offcom says. Bollocks to that.

SOMETIMES politicians catch the anti-popularity virus and whatever they do just ends up being horribly wrong.

That fate seems to have befallen Theresa May. She is stricken with the bug and looks more desperately unwell with each passing day.

Prime ministers must cope with bad things happening on their watch – whether they share any blame for what has occurred or not. For a moment, put aside thoughts of governmental responsibility for the still unfolding Grenfell Tower tragedy; forget the acrid suspicion that austerity and the widespread enriching of the few at the expense of the many may somehow be behind what happened.

Instead just consider three public reactions to the inferno.

First up for evidence are visits to the site of the fire in North Kensington by two politicians. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn meets people on the street, talks to them, puts his arm around their shoulders and acts like a normal human being rather than a politician. His presence seems to help because he stands there looking shattered and tearful.

Theresa May has a meeting with police and other officials, during which she stands around looking awkward. She does not meet any local people, which isn’t surprising as meeting local people seems to be anathema to her.

Her visit is rightly condemned by the hanging judges of social media, with photographs of her looking uncomfortable among officials set against Corbyn comforting a sobbing woman.

After a different but short visit to St Clement’s Church in the area, the prime minister dashes off, as she does, without a pause. According to some reports, one woman weeps – saying it is because May hasn’t spoken to anyone outside the meeting.

Jump forward to Newsnight on Friday and the prime minister’s interview with Emily Maitlis. This is another uncomfortable experience for Mrs Maybe. She sidesteps questions over renewed criticism of her response to the tragedy, and as usual sticks to the script like a robot with the stutters.

Pressed on the need for the public to hear that something had gone horribly wrong, Mrs Maybe says: “What I have done since this incident took place is, first of all, ensure that the public services had the support they need in order to be able to do the job they were doing in the immediate aftermath.”

Official words, oddly empty words.

The third visitor to the scene of this appalling tragedy is the Queen, who comes along and shows Mrs Maybe how it should be done. Anyone who has tarried on this ledge or read columns I have written in the past will know I am far from the biggest Royalist around. But you must admit that the Queen knows how to handle these sombre occasions, and seems far more willing to meet survivors than Mrs Maybe.

Of course, the Queen carries no responsibility – all she does is show up and convey an impression of being sorry for what happened, while hoping her presence helps in some way. Which it does.

She says that it is difficult to escape the “very sombre national mood” following tragedies in Manchester and London – which it is, and the Queen is right to say that.

We can only guess how much empathy flows through royal veins, but by any calculation, it’s a lot more than passes through the prime minister.

This is odd in many ways, as you would think that a vicar’s daughter might have grown up realising the value of connecting with people, of understanding their troubles and so forth. But I guess it was a long time ago, and perhaps the offspring of vicars are no more sympathetic than those parents were not clerics.

Coming so close after her disastrously fought election, Mrs May’s apparent lack of feeling, or her unwillingness to stray from the official script, her inability to meet ordinary people face-to-face, just makes her look inadequate.

I cannot believe that she doesn’t have feelings, and it is true that feelings can be tricky in politics – either because the politician seems to be taking advantage of a situation, or because they just appear insincere.

But whatever the problem is, Mrs Maybe shows no signs yet of shaking off that anti-popularity virus.

SO MANY questions surround Grenfell Tower in north Kensington, London. The fire ravaged and raged, claiming the lives of 12 people, with more victims certain to be discovered, and then smouldered all day. Even by the time of the 10pm news on the BBC, the building was still burning, almost 22 hours after the blaze began.

The stories are too terrible to tell, of people jumping from the upper floors, a baby being thrown to safety while its mother apparently perished, unable to jump, and of the missing, including a 12-year-old girl separated from her mother during the evacuation, and a mother-of-three who told a friend on the phone that they were not going to make it.

The horror is unimaginable, but we must imagine it – and then we must explore what happened and why in the widest possible context. Not just the cause of the fire and why it spread so fast, but the deeper societal causes and why it was that a tower block in a one of the richest cities in the world housing poor and disadvantaged people could just burn down almost like a giant box of matches.

There are so many questions, but what matters first are the lives lost and the lives shattered. Once the human suffering has been eased as much as is possible, the wider questions will be asked; practical questions such as did the cladding to make the building energy-efficient pose a fire risk, something first raised as long ago as 1999; and questions about the sort of society we live in, where houses worth untold millions stand near council-managed tower blocks warehousing the unseen poor.

All day yesterday on social media, people were sharing the concerns of the Grenfell Action Group that the borough of Kensington and Chelsea had been “playing with fire” in the way in which it and a tenant management organisation ran the block.

Conditions had been complained of for years – including rubbish dumped in shared hallways – alongside concerns about what was described as the opaque way in which the management organisation was run.

Cuts to the fire service were raised as a possible factor, although perhaps the deeper question lies in the way that austerity has forced local councils to come to complicated arrangements to maintain services. And of a government, as a leader in the Guardian suggests, “in hock to a grasping building industry running a policy of austerity that has starved local councils of cash”. That sounds about right this morning as we survey this avoidable tragedy.

Newspapers are often criticised for political manipulation and  propaganda, understandably enough, but the media can be a force for good at such a time. Just put aside the usual prejudices and survey today’s front pages.

The Daily Mail uses its reporting heft to powerful effect for once, rather than propping up the Tories and pathetically bashing Jeremy Corbyn. The front page is given over a single image of the tower block ablaze with a headline asking: “How the hell could it happen?

All the papers carry similar images and ask similar questions, with the Times opting for: “Disaster in 15 minutes”, while the i-newspaper has: “Tragic. Horrific. Avoidable.”

The Guardian features the most telling quote, from a buildings expert who says: “We are still wrapping high-rise buildings in highly flammable materials and leaving them without sprinkler systems, then being surprised when they burn down.”

Towers are sometimes symbols of boastful virility, as with the golden excesses of Trump Tower. Towers of that ilk are built to swagger and show off idiot wealth. Other towers seem to stand almost as forgotten voids – big on the skyline but small on society’s list of problems to be resolved.

Yet even though Grenfell Tower contained people I have characterised as the unseen, they were people who belonged to a community; people from around the world who came to the great city of London to make a life, or the left-behind who had always lived here.

That sense of community was palpable both in the tragic losses and in the way how – as in Manchester after the arena attack – people rallied round to help, offering food, clothing and somewhere to stay.

At heart, we live in communities that will help in a crisis; and yet we also live in a country where austerity has pushed problems into corners of neglect, and seemingly compounded those problems in the name of saving money.

Incidentally, if you have building work done on your house it is necessary to put fire alarms all over the bloody place. The efficiency of the alarms in that tower block will be one of many questions needing to be asked – alongside the deeper matter of how we arrange our society.

THE other day my head went in the washing machine in the hope of removing all those political stains, but perhaps there is something wrong with that machine. Here, then, are a few thoughts that refuse to be washed out.

Since last Friday morning, political commentators have been queuing up to eat humble pie as served in big slices from the Corbyn Canteen. I am uncertain about the nature of that pie, although it seems to contain more than an ounce or two of penitence.

The political writers and columnists who dismissed Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership as hopeless have crumbs on their faces and bellies full of sour pie. Hats have been eaten as well.

In my small way, I belong to that class of sceptic now having to swallow the pie. Fair enough, although it is still worth repeating that although Jeremy Corbyn out-performed expectations, running an exemplary election campaign, Labour didn’t win the election – for the third time in a row, and that is worrying.

If another election is held soon, perhaps Corbyn can seal the deal and shift more humble pie from his canteen.

Labour did well, although not well enough, thanks to Corbyn’s campaigning leadership and because of a manifesto that addressed the concerns of many.

I think my favourite comment on this comes from The Economist, which isn’t on my usual reading list. In an article shared on line, the magazine said: “Mr Corbyn has redefined the parameters of the possible” – a nice phrase and a good aim.

Now he must turn that hopefulness into something, and be a better, more combative leader of the opposition, and a leader of his whole party, not just that part which makes up his faithful congregation.

One of the silliest comments I’ve read is from shadow chancellor John McDonnell, who is quoted in the Observer as saying: “If the campaign had been a few weeks longer, we would have won a majority, given the narrow voting.”

Oh, come on – that’s like a football managing moaning: “If we’d had another ten minutes of extra time, and scored two more goals we’d have won by a goal.”

But what can he said with confidence is that Labour’s resurgence under Corbyn pushed Theresa May into a tight corner, and caused just the sort of chaos she kept advertising would arise if Labour won.

Instead, she is holed up in a dark room talking to the reactionary forces of the DUP, whose ten MPs have only been voted for in Northern Ireland.

This hasty marriage of electoral convenience sees Mrs Maybe climbing into bed with a party whose views include being anti-gay marriage, anti-climate change and anti-abortion – anti just about anything that passes for normal in mainland Britain.

Oh, and according to assorted reports, the DUP may insist on Nigel Farage being included as a Brexit deal-maker – and say the BBC should lose the licence fee.

Which of these dark desires end up being included in whatever shabby deal Mrs Maybe comes to is at yet uncertain.

This morning, it is being reported that David Cameron has said something sensible, and it’s not often that you wake up to trip over such a thing. The former prime minister who got us into this toxic Brexit muddle tells the Financial Times that Theresa May will have to “listen to other parties” as she reviews her Brexit strategy in the wake of the election.

As Brexit affects everyone, including the 48 per cent who voted no, this is common sense: whatever deal is signed in the end, it should appeal to as many people as possible, and not only the rabid crowds of Europe haters and their cheerleaders in the usual suspect newspapers.

I’ve got this far without mention the return to government of Michael Gove. And I think that’s how we shall leave matters. Some twists in this torrid tale are just too gruesome to dwell upon.

A reader asks on Facebook if I could write about the threat to open green spaces. I don’t usually do requests, but here goes.

What follows is inspired partly by a campaign to save playing fields in York, but other thoughts will be reflected in that glass.

Yesterday’s musings on why I won’t be dumping the Guardian brought many comments on Facebook, some in agreement and some not. One comment from a campaign group hoping to save Windmill Lane playing fields said the Guardian should be dumped because the paper’s reporters, letters editor and columnists had ignored all the group’s press releases. Perhaps they were just too busy disparaging Jeremy Corbyn.

Newspapers have open spaces too, and items line up in competition to fill those spaces. A common frustration arises when readers feel their concerns are not being addressed – whether it’s the true nature of their preferred political leader or the threat to a treasured open space. The papers have an in-built ability to disappoint on that score, whereas the wide-open spaces of the internet allow people to express themselves freely or advance their chosen cause at length (often slagging off those in the ‘mainstream media’, to use that favourite Trumpian insult).

I would imagine that the Guardian, along with other national newspapers, habitually disappoints those who send press releases about local issues. The paper also, I can tell you, habitually disappoints locally based freelances who submit comment pieces and other ideas, but never mind.

To the playing fields, then. I don’t know that side of York well, but do know the whereabouts of the threatened green space. York St John University wants to build houses on the land and has offered use of its playing fields – about three miles away on the opposite side of town, which doesn’t sound like thoughtful compensation for the loss. Members of all political parties have lent a hand in the campaign, and Labour MP Rachael Maskell joined a protest march

I am not sure if the support of one man on a ledge counts for anything, but here it is. Better to see open green spaces used by the local community rather than build houses most people in the area will not be able to afford. A planning meeting on Thursday will decide the issue.

Outside of York at Green Hammerton, developers want to build 2,700 homes on open green fields – a small town or a new village at the very least. The locals there are campaigning too, and who can blame them. This proposal is huge and nowhere near Harrogate, which perhaps is why which Harrogate Borough Council reportedly wishes to approve the development.

These things are never easy. We live on the outskirts of York in a house built in 1926, when there were fields all around and a minor road threading its way out of town. Now there is a busy ring-road half a mile away and a large council estate on those open fields, although remaining fields can be seen in the distance.

It would be lovely if someone turned back the clock to make our life peaceful, but obviously that can’t happen.

Here are two personal anecdotes about open spaces. When I was a boy we lived in a cul-de-sac in Cheadle Hulme (not Manchester, as I sometimes say, hoping to sound cooler than I am). The ‘sack’ was an open space known to children in the road as “the Mud”. After a while, the developers took back the playing space and built more link-detached houses, so the space was lost.

On my father’s side, our grandparents had use of a holiday bungalow on the south coast. This faced open an space, until more bungalows were planned. At night, the grownups – including my father, possibly led by my father – went out and removed the sticks marking the new plots. Mischievous fun was had, but the new holiday homes went up anyway.

That’s often the way when you try to defend an open green space, but perhaps the Windmill Lane protesters will have better luck. And you can’t fault them for trying.

And that is what the open green spaces of my mind came up with today.

“Dump the Guardian” – demanded a post on Facebook. Well, I won’t be doing that, and here are the reasons why.

Left-wing comments and quips often fill my Facebook feed, mostly from friends who share similar views, and occasionally from cyber acquaintances, or friends of friends with an axe to grind.

I have read the Guardian for more than half a lifetime, certainly since the days when the term “Guardian reader” was a term of abuse reserved, by demands of the cliché book, for sandal-wearing lefties. Because of this, it still seems alarming to see the newspaper attacked from the left.

Mostly the sniping comes from the truest disciples of Jeremy Corbyn, who feel that anything short of total fealty to the Labour leader is basically a sin. That seems to be the case here, as the post carries a picture of Jonathan Freedland, alongside a headline of one of his columns – “No more excuses: Corbyn is to blame for this meltdown.”

I do have a problem with Freedland – but only that he basically stole my ideal life, being a columnist and a writer of bestselling thrillers. That grudge aside, Freedland is one commentator among many who often feature in the Guardian. If you don’t like him, read Owen Jones or Paul Mason instead, or enjoy the spiked tumbrils that blow through Marina Hyde’s column. It seems small-minded to let one columnist you dislike damn a whole newspaper.

On a personal level, the Guardian is part of my life. I always buy the Saturday paper and the Observer on a Sunday, both of which keep me going for the week. As an inveterate internet dipper, I also now shell out £5 a month as a member, even though money is tight.

Sometimes it’s the familiarity I like, the signposts: Hadley Freeman, Clive James and Tim Dowling in Weekend. I contacted Tim in my role as visiting lecturer role at Leeds Trinity University, wanting some thoughts on writing personal journalism, and he happily obliged.

I always read Oliver Burkeman’s This Column Will Change Your Life, too. This is partly because Oliver once did a spot of work experience at the newspaper in York where I was working at the time, but mostly because his column is interesting. And I never miss Marina O’Loughlin’s restaurant review, even though I’ve yet to taste a mouthful of what she writes about.

My preferred route in the magazine is to read the Zoe Williams motoring column and Clive James first, then go back to the start. I noticed recently that a friend reads the magazine from back to front, but it takes all sorts.

On a weightier point, newspapers – whether print or on the internet – take an incredible amount of work to put together. Commentary aside, last Saturday’s Guardian had pages of in-depth reporting on Theresa May’s miscalculation of an election: and that takes skill, experience and effort. It’s easy to sit at home and put the world to rights in a blog (as I know), but much more complicated and demanding to be out there doing the hard work of reporting.

As for opinions, surely it is better to seek out as many different views as possible. You can do that within the Guardian if you wish. Or you can pick and choose from various sources. But listening only to those you agree with is the route to a smaller mind; and pouring bile on the heads of those who dare to disparage Jeremy Corbyn represents the sort of censorship people on the left should be wary of.

Newspapers are writing history on the hoof, and columnists are commentating on life as it happens, firing off opinions that may well turn out to have missed the target. But don’t go condemning a whole newspaper because of a few columns you didn’t like. The Guardian, like other papers, is having a tough time of it nowadays, and if you wish to disparage newspapers there are more obvious ones to choose. You know, the usual Labour-hating suspects – and they really did misread the signs of the unnecessary election we’ve just had.

And don’t forget inconvenient truths such as Labour still losing that election, even if that defeat was a victory of sorts – in the same way that Theresa May’s victory was a defeat of sorts.

Anyway, there are lots of newspapers to read, and I know that newspapers aren’t always popular nowadays, but I am old-fashioned enough to believe that a spread of opinions and views is always better. That’s why I won’t be dumping the Guardian.

I wouldn’t like to be the Downing Street paper boy or girl this morning. They probably had all the newspapers thrown back at them.

Theresa May receives the pasting she deserves from the Sunday papers. The Sunday Telegraph sums up her dire position with the headline: “In office, but not in power”, while the Observer has “May’s premiership in peril”, and the Sunday Times has a banner declaring: “Down and out?” – above the headline: “Five cabinet ministers urge Boris to topple May.”

Even her toady old friends at the Mail have thrown away the May bunting – “Boris set to launch bid to be PM as May clings on.”

Ah, dear old Boris – that loveable toff caricature hiding a ruthless plotter and self-advancer. I wouldn’t trust that man to run a Pimm’s party, never mind the country.

If Boris Johnson manages to wheedle his way into Downing Street by climbing over the garden wall, then there really will need to be another election.

But what price democracy? Oh, I have seen the figure of £130 million put up as the public cost of Mrs Maybe’s unnecessary election. Another election will cost a similar amount, presumably – and that’s before all the money the parties will have to come up with.

This morning’s headlines illustrate the ways in which the newspapers can become a feral pack – especially the once-friendly dogs of war now snapping at Theresa May’s ankles.

Incidentally, the slavish Express tries its best with: “May’s ‘toxic’ aides resign” – a reference to the departure of joint chiefs of staff Nicholas Timothy and Fiona Hill. Ah, the toxic advisers are despatched – but not the toxic prime minister.

It’s worth recalling that some of those newspapers were the same ones that over-sold us Brexit and then over-interpreted a narrow ‘yes’ vote as that least trustworthy of megaphones, “the voice of the people”. The people who could be bothered to vote a year ago – too few, and shame on those who didn’t – were evenly divided, with a narrow victory for ‘yes’. That leaves around 28 per cent of the population who backed the Leave vote, which is hardly the ringing endorsement we’ve been sold.

The curse of the Brexit black spot has already seen off one Tory prime minister; and it looks certain to be passed to another.

On the morning of the election, I joked about making Theresa May toast for breakfast. And by the next morning, she had been popped under the grill – an outcome that was as surprising as it was pleasing.

She is at present trying to get herself out of that toast scenario by coming to a grubby arrangement with the DUP.

As for Jeremy Corbyn, he performed brilliantly and good luck to him with whatever comes next – possibly another election, as happened in 1974, when there was great political flux, and there were two elections within eight months.

Some Tory sources are reported today to be what might be termed as shitting their pinstripes over the prospect of another election, believing that Corbyn could pick up even more votes.

It’s worth adding a degree of caution to all the excitement – and, yes, it is exciting, and I am excited – by listening to Professor John Curtice, that bouncy castle of an election expert. He points out that Labour’s tally of 262 seats is only a handful higher than the total won by the party in 2010, when Gordon Brown was shown the door.

“Labour is still a long way away from winning a majority for itself,” the wise prof cautions.

Such a view will be apostasy to the disciples of Corbyn, but it’s always sensible to consider the long drop of history.

Anyway, another election – is that what we need? Time now to stop and make more Theresa May toast for breakfast, with some of Jeremy’s jam on top.

Incidentally, Jeremy’s jam is either what he produces from his allotment or it is his good fortune in having faced the worst Tory leader in memory.

Either way, it’s time for breakfast.