HEARD AND DEPP AND THE REAL BROKEN CHARACTER HERE - THE SUN

Ive been reading about Thinking for the past year.   I've read so many books on how to think, why to think, when to think, why we don't think, long term, short term, big and small thinking, my brain hurts. But much of what I've read has sunk in and I've observed people from a distance, not judged, just observed.

Amongst the really important seminal stuff like the meaning of life, the fact many of us will die over the next 12 months plus, and at the moment 45,000 of us in the UK already have (my computer has an unnerving habit of adding 0000s everywhere and its particularly concerning when I'm talking virus deaths as if it knows something I don't...). , comes stuff that is of no importance and relevance to anyone other than tabloid editors.

Harry and Megan.  Irrelevant but I liked Harry and I liked his mother, and I felt she should have married someone who loved her. I think Charles probably thought that too.   I don't know either of them, don't believe what the media says, and even if I did, still wouldn't care.  Have never watched Suits, but the Argentinian girl I teach yoga to, looks like her.

The Depp/Heard/Sun case is another don't care.  The media has made much of it being Depp vs Heard. Its not. Its Depp vs the Sun - or rather one editor who used to giggle with Lorraine on weekday mornings about gossip in a cheeky chappy sort of way, but happened to call Depp a wife beater or batterer or something to that effect.   Can't remember his name, as would have put it in.

Depp and Heard both come across as very broken dysfunctional characters, but Depp arguably has a lot more talent, and possibly better PR - although Heard has Elon Musk, a living embodiment of how money cannot buy you looks, taste, integrity or hair - which isn't good PR but I suppose there's the money.  And we are dealing with two actors here, who perhaps haven't been or known themselves for a very long time.

I've also been watching the series about the Murdoch Empire and was particularly struck by the interviews of Moseley who feels his son died as a direct result of something Murdoch printed.  I felt for him, his anger and inconsolable grief palpable and substantial, resonating way above everything else in what was sometimes an insubstantial documentary.  Murdoch must have had his lawyers reading and re reading every single line and semi-quaver of back music to edit it into oblivion.   Murdoch lives literally up the road from me, so it's close to home.

The Sun as a construct is a paper which manipulates and is malevolent in its gestures - strategically malevolent and strategically benevolent.  Like a politician if it can't convince, it confuses with its cheeky chappy short sentences and genuinely funny headlines.   Its values are silver (money money money) although it feigns to have gold (care for its readers - its customers are not its readers) and steel values (have integrity, quality journalism).   And being the Sun, called the Sun, it is powerful, life giving, and illuminates all that is good and bad in the world.  Its name taps into the subconscious and tell us we can't survive without it and literally and historically worship it.  Good marketing and branding, just it hides something much darker, which is what the documentary series reveals.
Murdoch has hid behind it, as have his cronies, his editors, his journalists.  And his silver values have seeped into their veins.

The real broken dysfunctional character is that of The Sun.   Directing the two actors on the stage.  Pretending to be what it is not. Relevant.

COME DIE WITH ME - OF MASKS BUBBLES AND BOXES

I feel for the utter cuddle bunny teddy bear loveable professor that is travel guru/editor/expert (whatever the byline typist decides he is that day) Simon Calder.  He has been the Doctor Hilary Jones of the travel industry during this pandemic, with his oversized glasses, like a classier version of snooker player Dennis Taylor 

He got roasted on ITV This Morning, a programme that is of note more by the presenters rather than the subjects they cover, (today chef James Martin couldn't get a link in, so Eammon and Ruth had to have his cake and eat it, although the government of course says we shouldn't do that - politicians are not the only ones giving mixed messages......). 

People/wannabee holiday makers/tourists/travellers are annoyed at the 14 day quarantine that took less than 24 hours to put into effect making a Spanish holiday into a potential hell  (why can't government instigate the good stuff as quickly hey?). Tourists there are left with the option of one week becoming three, although the likelihood is many of them will be made redundant in October anyway when the furloughing runs out. But that's not the point, people were ringing in to This Morning with questions about holidays and what to do, if to go, if not to go, and if to come back and how to come back.

Simon identified a loop hole (anyone could have done it but he voiced it) suggesting travelling to France where there wasn't the fourteen day quarantine rule on route back home.  Up roar ensued (allegedly) when 100s/10s/1000s  angry viewers called in and said they were 'disgusted' at the advice.  'Disgusted'? Really?   Disgusted at Epstein, Weinstein, but Calder? 

Simon as all travel journalists and editors and broadcasters and bloggers and vloggers should be doing is telling it as it is.  Don't go on holiday. Don't fly. You are not wanted. They want your money but don't want you in human form. It has always been that way, as Richard Gere said in Pretty Woman, 'people are nice to money, not to people'.   

This is what this surreal world has revealed. Life has got real for the first time in a very long time.  It has burst bubbles, ripped off masks and brought to the surface everyone's priorities, prejudices, bigotry and inequalities.  All have been well hidden.  They have always been there, just the likes of Trump and the Virus (that could make a good name for an indie rock band), have brought it centre stage. 

By bringing it all to the surface we've taken off the pretensions and social constructs that make up the day to day - making even the necessity of a weekend redundant. So why do we need the social construct of a  holiday huh?

My advice is do not fly.  It is not safe.  It will literally, could be literally the last journey you ever take, literally leaving you breathless.   If you absolutely must, take the train or the car. Know that they don't want you wherever you go, but they do want your money.   Spend and then disappear into your rented cottage or hotel room or caravan or where ever or however you have decided to stay. But identify why you want to holiday in the first place.  You will be exchanging a box for another box, as we are all put into boxes.   Change of view, of energy, of direction.  Change of people, more space, more sun?   People go on holiday for a number of reasons - to have a break - but we have all or most of us have had a break.  So what do you want a break from - the break?  Think about why you are choosing to holiday.   Your life depends on it.