This is what I actually wrote!
I seem to recollect that sometime in the 80s there was a Japanese television programme broadcast in Britain called Endurance or similar. This involved contestants being asked to perform difficult, excruciating and frequently disgusting tasks. Oh, how we laughed at the antics of that ‘alien nation’ – or that’s how it seemed at the time.
Yet today we have our own version AND we have a (former) senior government politician not only taking part in it but advocating it as a means of ‘communicating with the public’. Despite the heavy weight of opinion criticising his action, not least of all for taking part whilst he should be attending to constituency issues, the media seem to be revelling in it. Meanwhile the fact that the prime minister was rushed away from a vitally important conference a few days ago, has been ignored by all the British media.
I despair.
My first objection is that my ‘oh, how we laughed’ line has been modified ‘how we sneered’ – a considerably more arrogant and patronising expression than what I had written. Secondly, the latter part of the letter referring to the media’s reaction to it all, had been ignored entirely!
rowlandwithaw 