Rest well, Caroline

As ever, whenever a celebrity dies, especially when they die young, suddenly and tragically, the internet comes alive with the inevitable public grief, hand-wringing, assumptions from people who claim they knew exactly what happened in that unfortunate person's final sad weeks, days and hours, and there is a rush to apportion blame. 

But with the news only breaking last night about the suicide of Caroline Flack, we only have certain facts available. We know she took her own life, we know she was due to face trial for the assault of her boyfriend, Lewis Burton, we know the CPS alleges that she hit him with a lamp while he was asleep, we know he didn't want to press charges, we know that she pleaded not guilty, we know that a condition of her bail was that she was not to contact her boyfriend. 

And there is plenty we do not know. 

We do not yet know what the post-mortem or inquest will reveal. And there are things we will never know, such as whether this story may have had a happier outcome if she was allowed to see her boyfriend before the trial, or indeed what the outcome of the trial would have been. We won't know of a not-guilty verdict or find out how she could rebuild her life after an acquittal - or what would follow for her and Burton in the event of a guilty verdict. 

The only thing we can be sure of is that if she was found guilty, she'd become the anti-poster-child for the "See? Women can be abusers too!" brigade. That brigade had already come out of the woodwork, shitting on the whole concept of presumption of innocence. Nobody is saying that women cannot be the perpetrators of domestic violence - of course they can - but everyone accused of this dreadful crime has the right to a fair trial. 

This brigade of (mostly) angry men was emboldened by pictures published by The Sun of a bloodstained bed at Flack's flat, pictures which, horrifically, were still on the newspaper's website at the time of writing. The publication of the bloodied bed was, at best, in poor taste and, at worst, not in the public interest, particularly before her trial had taken place.

There is a rush to blanket-blame "the media" for Flack's death - and she has long been an object of tabloid obsession, particularly after she dated a 17-year-old Harry Styles when she was 31. No age of consent laws were broken, but eyebrows were raised when Styles was photographed leaving her flat. It didn't take long for her to be pigeonholed as a "cougar", a sexually aggressive and adventurous seducer of younger men, a woman who is seen as a threat to the ideal of a demure, compliant woman. 

She became an easy target for hate and it wasn't restricted to the usual tabloid suspects. Everyone with a Twitter account and a misguided sense of moral righteousness could pile in. 

And the public lapped it up. If there wasn't a market for these sort of salacious stories, they wouldn't be written or broadcast in the first place. We feed the beast when we click on the links. Entertainment journalists are often quick to defend their profession, to point out that it's not an easy job (it's not) and they are obliged to constantly seek out the stories that will get the clicks and the sales (also true). But it is unfortunate that in the quest to keep eyeballs on screens and papers, fingers furtively scrolling or turning pages, that not only does accuracy often fall by the wayside, but public interest tests fall short and there is little time to pause and contemplate if a story is kind or even necessary.

Advocating the end of entertainment journalism or holding "the mainstream media" solely responsible for Flack's death is reductive and simplistic, ignoring the role of social media in this complicated story, especially as that was the only way Burton was able to communicate with Flack since December. However, it shouldn't preclude entertainment journalists from pausing to think about how they cover stories, especially those involving celebrities who may be vulnerable, may have mental health issues, may be struggling with addiction, or may simply be going through a tough time, as can happen to any one of us. 

The guidelines for reporting on suicide, issued by the Samaritans, are an excellent resource - it is not a restriction on press freedom to report responsibly.

Ultimately, gossip is part of human nature. That's never going to change. We devour gossip about our friends as readily as we devour celebrity gossip. Hell, I have an episode of The Bachelor burbling mindlessly away in the background as I write this and I just rolled my eyes as a doe-eyed blonde used her one-on-one time with the prized Colton, the hot, virgin bachelor, to call her mother for the first time since her release from prison. I'm not going to pretend I'm immune to taking a pervy interest in the lives of beautiful people I'll never meet. Of course, with every celebrity death, there's always one sneering blowhard who feels the need to comment "Who?" under a tweet or Facebook post, as if not knowing about a figure in popular culture is some form of moral superiority. 

But the truth is that none of us are superior. We're all flawed and farty and prone to awkwardness, even those who, on the surface, appear to have everything under control. And any one of us could end up in as dark a place as Flack found herself in her lonely final hours. May we all pause to be kind to each other and to ourselves.

Photography by Alex Borland.

Wanting young people to suffer: the new sadism

It starts out as a seemingly harmless thing that most of us have heard from our parents or grandparents: "Young people today! They don't know they're alive! They know nothing of the suffering we went through as kids..."

Hell, as I become an increasingly old hack, I'll roll my eyes at journalism graduates when they baulk at having to make a phone call or look aghast at the days of heavy reliance on fax machines or dial-up internet only being available on one computer in the office. But I'd like to think that I'm not a bitter sadist, mercilessly wishing we could all go back to the paste-up era of newspaper production, or wanting to deprive young journalists of the convenience of fast internet to teach them a lesson.

But the cries of young people not knowing true suffering now go beyond the jocular overtones of the "Four Yorkshiremen" sketch or laughing at trigger warnings supposedly demanded by the snowflake generation. There's a nastiness, a disdain for comfort, a yearning for good old days that were actually terrible, a desire to see young people have as hard a life, or harder, than previous generations, rather than wanting to see the next generation be more successful, more comfortable and more prosperous.

Misplaced nostalgia for WWII is a good example of the new sadism, and it is particularly embarrassing when it comes from people who were not alive during the horrors of WWII or have never served in the military. Someone who courageously tweets anonymously as Brexit Stonking Majority Tory tweeted the following miserable nonsense:

In 1941 teenage RAF pilots were flying old MK1 Hurricanes & putting their life on the line against Luftwaffe veteran pilots in the brilliant ME109F.
Remainer teenagers today.... #marr

The image is a still from a video of a pink-haired teenager dancing joyously in support of the UK staying in the EU rather than spending his youth bombing neighbouring countries in a war that we won with the help of European allies (but don't tell Brexit Stonking Majority Tory that...).

We've had almost four years of Brexity blathering along the lines of: "We got through two world wars, we'll survive Brexit!" to jolly people along in the face of evidence of a forthcoming recession, increased prices, bending to US standards to get a trade deal with Trump, job losses and anything else that indicates that the leave campaign's grand promises turn to dust upon any contact with reality.

The reality is that leaving the EU will most likely lead to hardships - because Brexiters can't refute this, they are instead revelling in the possibility of suffering, getting their pitiful excuses in early, saying it'll be a price worth paying for some intellectually bankrupt notion of sovereignty, rather than preparing to take any responsibility for any hardships which might come as a result of their vote.

Wishing another war on young people to somehow harden them up is appalling. There are already plenty of young people across the world suffering the horrors of war on a daily basis. Adding more young people to their number won't make anything better for anyone. 

Liz Kershaw joined in the sadistic idiocy last month in an awful attempt to squash the notion of period poverty, that anyone in the UK was suffering from a lack of access to sanitary products. She tweeted:

Sorry if this is gross.
But #periodpoverty FFS?!
My mum had to use old rags which my grandma boil-washed and she re-used.
How did she ever manage to get a scholarship to grammar school, go to Uni or become a headteacher without free tampons???

The most charitable reading of this tweet is that Liz Kershaw is an eco-warrior, calling for more widespread use of reusable sanitary products, but she's really just advocating a time when things were harder, especially for girls and women. There are certainly very good reusable sanitary pads on the market today but they are not cheap and they do rely on access to good laundry facilities. A return to shoving any old rag in in your pants is a return to, at best, the risk of a humiliating bloodstained accident and, at worst, the risk of infection. Liz mindlessly generalises from the example of one person and glorifies suffering as a result. She is the same woman who twisted the 430 job losses in East Anglia as a result of the closure of the Philips factory as some kind of Brexit benefit so you'll have to forgive me if I fail to see any altruism in her sadistic period tweet.

Still, the good news for anyone crowing about the possibility of young people suffering or wishing hardship on them all is that their sadistic dreams are coming true. There are measurable examples of things getting worse rather than better for the next generation.

Last year, the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries reported that life expectancy in the UK is declining and it is a trend rather than a statistical blip. Compared with 2015 figures, the institute now expects men aged 65 to die at 86.9 years, down from 87.4 years, and women aged 65 are likely to die at 89.2 years, down from 89.7 years. While this is not on par with Chad, with a life expectancy of 50.6 years, it's not something we should be celebrating either as it reflects a decline in healthcare, living standards, individual affluence and the overall economy.

The Learning and Work Institute projected last year that the UK will drop four places in world literacy and numeracy rankings by 2030 - so the good news for the sadists is that we're apparently less healthy and less educated.

Housing is becoming less affordable too, even if those pesky kids quit spending their deposit on avocado toast. A report released by the Office of National Statistics last year revealed that on average, full-time workers could expect to pay an estimated 7.8 times their annual workplace-based earnings on buying a home in England or Wales in 2018. The figure was 7.6 times annual earnings in 2016 and 3.6 times earnings in 1997. And these figures are based on people in full-time employment - this does not take into account the gig economy or people languishing on zero hours contracts when they would love job stability.

This is not catastrophising or being what Boris Johnson, a man who cares little for facts, stats, details or nuance, would call a "doomster and gloomster". This is modern reality.

So, well played, sadists! Take a fucking bow. You're achieving your dream of the next generation having it worse than you did. If this is what you need to do to feel proud, I feel sorry for you - but I feel even more sorry for the young people who are genuinely suffering, even if you're deluding yourself that they're all pampered softies living a life of luxury.




Photography by kai Stachowiak