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Diana – ‘No’ News

by | 16th, December 2006

CHERIE BLAIR stood with her dress unbuttoned. She was not wearing underwear. It was Monday. It was cold and it was raining.

But this was no revolution. Cherie had not been stripped and thrown into the street. She and Tony remained very much within No. 10.

This was a portrait of Cherie created 25 years go by artist Euan Uglow. It took him two years. And, as the Mail noted, it was unfinished.

Entitled Striding Nude, Blue Dress, there was something oddly familiar about the work created in 1981, the year Margaret Thatcher, that most strident woman in shades of blue, took command. Three years before Euan Blair, Cherie’s eldest child, was born.

As Cherie Blair dispatched her private Christmas cards, each wrapped in a plain brown envelope and then secreted between the covers of a copy of Barristers’ Husbands, the Mail saw some other seasonal missives sent from on high.

It reproduced a picture of Home Secretary John Reid’s card. (Mr Reid is believed to be delivering each card personally and you are reminded not to be alarmed should the stalwart of law and order find cause to peer though your letter box as he makes his rounds.)

Recipients of Reid’s good cheer see a Christmas tree in Trafalgar Square. A smattering of people mill around the landmark. Their faces are unclear. Do you know them? Look again. Study the image. If you recognise any of the people call John. He’d like to know their names, passport numbers and religious persuasion.

And while we study the cards, and swab the envelope for Reid’s DNA – no-one is above suspicion – there was talk of murder.

A manhunt had begun.

Police are loathe to use terms like serial killer, but evidence points to one man being responsible for the murders of five women in Suffolk, all of them prostitutes.

The Express led on Wednesday with news of this “serial killer”, a “RIPPER” at large. And its sister paper, the Star, agreed, adding that the “River Ripper” was being actively pursued.

“Pervert, psycho, sicko,” announced the Star descriptively. The “River Ripper” must be stopped. The “River Ripper’s trail of horror spreads”.

And it was spreading fast. The Star’s River Ripper moved like the Colorado rapids. The Star had seen five bodies found in ten days. It consulted the record books. It very possibly called up Guinness. And it announced: “FASTEST SERIAL KILLER IN HISTORY.”

So the hunt was on for the Rapid River Ripper. Of course, you may not know him by this name. And the Mail introduced its readers to “the Suffolk Strangler”. Less fearsome sounding than the Ripper, at first mention the Suffolk Strangler appeared like a wrestler taking on Big Daddy and Giant Haystacks on Saturday afternoon television.

But before we got to read the potted life stories of the victims, “All someone’s daughter”, the Sun warned us to look out for the “SUFFOLK RIPPER”.

The press were trawling the English language for the right word, the correct term that would mete out justice to this maniac.

And language is important. The Mail had seen the work of linguists at Lancaster University. And it noted that while the over-25s use 21,391 words in daily conversation, the teenagers use just 12,682.

This seemed impressive, until you realised that no less than 11,216 of those teen words are for chips. The teenage vocabulary is pared down to 20 key words.

In order of use, these words are: “You, I, the, and, it, a, to, yeah, that, what, no, in, know, he, of, it’s, oh, but, like, on.” Add on “Stunna” “Ripper” and “prostitute” and every Bianca, Armani and Borat can understand media English.

Which is useful for the likes of villagers living in Moroieni, Romania, reading about themselves in the Sun.

The paper had visited the municipality which embraces Glod (a village whose name the paper told us translates into English as “mud”). Glod is the place featured in the Sacha Baron Cohen movie Borat.

Glod may be no more typically Romanian than the lunatic killing women in Ipswich is a typical British gent, but it serves as an emblem for greater ills.

The Sun introduced its readers to the impoverished inhabitants. Local Dan Nelu wanted to leave. “It’s my dream to work in Britain,” said he. “I want to go for one reason only – the money.”

Villager Stan Nino said he had four Romanian friends already working in London. He said the two working in restaurants earned £1,200 a month.

But what about us going over there, to Romania, that land of basic services, where we remain in constant touch with earth, reconnecting with the mud?

Chances are that our basic grasp of English will enable us to fit right in over there. Away from the rat race we have time to reflect on our lives and, more vitally, the life of Princess Diana.

On Friday, we read “THE VERDICT”. The Scotland Yard investigation into the death of Princess Diana was in.

As the Times’s Mick Hume noted, this 832-page report compiled by Lord Stevens of Kirkwhelpington, that cost £3.69million to produce, would succeed where the 6,000-page French police report had failed.

And the facts were shocking. The Sun told us that with NO evidence to the contrary it has been proven that Diana was “NOT murdered, NOT pregnant, NOT engaged” and did NOT have her hair tied in a bun.

This was it. This was the last world. And the last word was “No”.

The accidental death of Diana ten years ago was making headlines. It was bigger than Tony’s Blair’s achievement of becoming the first serving British Prime Minister to be questioned by police conducting a criminal investigation?

Diana. Tony. A conspiracy. No. A cover up? No. At least not for Cherie…

Paul Sorene

Anorak UK Ltd

www.anorak.co.uk



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