I HAVE just perused local and national papers (plenty of time these short midsummer nights, for The Cumberland News and the Telegraph) and wondered if other readers have the same experience as myself in finding news today has a similar effect as emerging from a nightmare of surreality but without the relief of realising it was just a dream?

To start with the rather serious economic situation: the Bank of England is forecasting 11 per cent inflation by October, so responds by raising base rate by 0.25 per cent, as effective, as the Telegraph’s financial correspondent put it, as breaking wind in a hurricane.

And so to the general news: page 2 has a photo of an RNLI lady cradling an infant newly arrived after making the Channel crossing by boat, one of around 1,000 unaccompanied children in the first five months of this year, with at least 900 migrants crossing the Channel last week to join the 11,000 arrived this year, double last year’s total at this point.

Priti Patel’s solution? The Home Secretary launches a social media campaign to warn new migrants that even if they survive the dangerous crossing they could be heading for Rwanda.

Since the first plane was at this point still held up by appeals by the Refugee Council and 'lefty lawyers', it would at least make them feel British.

Next most egregious item: at least 660 Ukrainian refugee families have been left homeless after their relationships or arrangements with their British hosts broke down.

I can distinctly remember when the scheme began thinking the old saw that house guests’ welcome (even with their own families) lasts about the same time as fish (three days).

On to the next, and most tragically shocking, story: a 94-year-old man who died of a brain haemorrhage after waiting more than five hours for an ambulance following a fall warned call handlers in three emergency calls that he would slip away unless he was seen quickly, saying it would be better to send an undertaker as he feared he was dying.

I end the national news with the unsurprising BBC journalists’ training that they should use their 'magical ally powers' to lobby politicians and influence the media for 'trans' rights for those wishing to change 'gender' (in my day a grammatical term).

One wonders if there is any other country that would suffer such outrageous reports so quiescently that (as my old infants’ schoolmistress put it) “I can hear a pin drop”.

Which leaves me just time for one outre tale from the Cumberland News: a farmer who led police on a hair-raising car chase, stopping thrice to shout abuse, ramming the armed response police car and crashing through farm gates until ending up in the river, walked from the court - despite the judge telling him the truism that in America he wouldn’t have survived the escapade.

Do any other readers sometimes feel they’ve seen better days?

Richard Lennox,
Henry Street,
Langholm