Tuesday 2 August 2016

You used to know it was silly season when...



The BattleAxe Elves is disappointed by the poor quality of this year’s media silly season. I’ve heard whispers in the Corridors of Power (the one that leads to the tea-bag store) that the news has been way too serious of late and that “the whole country should lighten up a bit”.

With August upon us there are no signs of skateboarding dogs, sightings of Nessie, and not even a proper expression of outrage at the price of Wimbledon strawberries.  Not since 1861 when the term “silly season” was coined in the Saturday Review has there been such an apparent dearth of appropriate summer reading. 

If you look hard enough, there are still stories out there where it’s quite hard to tell if they’re fact or a flight of the editor’s fancy to fill out the column inches.

I mean, who would believe that:

  •   A business that was once worth $125bn, that turned down a $44.6bn offer from Microsoft, then spent $2.8bn on investments has sold it’s most famous part of itself for just $4.8bn – Yahoooooo!!!!;
  •   May is Prime Minister, Hammond is Chancellor but no-one quite knows what Jeremy’s (Clarkson or Corbyn) going to be doing this autumn - let alone driving! Even Evans is leading the House of Lords now!
  •   HMRC are still sending in the debt collectors when nothing’s actually due and admitting that their IT systems are inadequate;
  •   Chris Frome was impersonating the BattleAxe by going straight from a bike ride to a run (we both need to do a little work on his transition technique…);
  •   House of Commons Select Committees seem to think that they’re suddenly a combination of a forensic accounting department and the official receiver – enough to make anyone turn a shade of Green;
  •   The UK retained the prestigious Ladies World Pea Shooting championship with Michelle Berry making history with a third consecutive win – that and Frome winning La Tour!;
  •   Cats made as many headlines during the Cabinet reshuffle as the ministers and talking of Wildcats – they’re ahead of the Giants and Rhinos in the Super League;
  •   The CEO of one of our biggest PLCs (BT) will be barred from knowing what is going on in his major subsidiary (if Ofcom get their way); 
  •   Yorkshire players won the second Test against Pakistan pretty much single-handed -  even Joe Root was bowling them out!


And yet to come we are, as usual, waiting for a stellar performance at the Olympics from the Yorkshire team and that Brexit will have some positive outcomes for UK businesses.

So, maybe the world is still as reassuringly potty as ever in the warm weather!

Enjoy the August break, relax with the great summer of sport obviously having properly planned for it as I recently suggested! 

This article originally appeared in Huddersfield Examiner
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