Have you ever heard an item being read out during a radio news bulletin and it took you a moment for it to sink in properly?
It happens quite a lot to me, because I’m usually doing something else at the same time as listening to the news on the radio – like reading the news in my daily paper or on my iPad.
I prefer to listen to the TV news rather than watch it, because so many newsreaders have irritating habits that detract from the job they’re employed to do.
When reading the news, Huw Edwards can’t look into the camera lens for more than a minute before giving in to a compulsion to cast his eyes downwards and to his left.
It’s like he’s being distracted by a TV set under his desk that’s featuring a more interesting and less pompous newsreader than himself. If you haven’t noticed his infuriating habit yet, you will from now on!
Last week, I was in bed changing a wheel on my mountain bike and listening to a news bulletin on BBC Radio Wales. The last news item before the sports report was one of those stories that took me a moment to take in.
Thousands of British children who rely on being served breakfast and lunch during the school term are going hungry in the school holidays and at weekends. I couldn’t believe my ears.
In 2016, children are going hungry in Great Britain – the fifth richest country in the world?
So, I did some research and it turned out to be perfectly true. Frank Field, the Labour MP who led the UK Inquiry into Hunger and Food Poverty and published the Feeding Britain report, said that grown-up politicians find it easier to be silent while all too many poor children go hungry.
He also said there’s been a conspiracy of silence and that ‘School holiday hunger’ is the one great unmentionable in British politics. Un-flipping-mention-able?
It’s a national disgrace that can’t be mentioned enough.
Sixty-four percent of the British population are obese because they eat too much junk. The living proof can be seen waddling along every street and supermarket aisle.
Yet thousands of children wake up in the school holidays and there’s no loaf in the bread bin. No cereals in the cupboard. No milk in the fridge.
Can someone please explain this wickedly unfair conundrum to me?