SURVIVING THE SILLY SEASON

HEAR that sound? Clue: Simon & Garfunkel wrote a song on the subject. It first began to ring out when Holyrood stopped for its holidays. Westminster followed. Strasbourg and Brussels, which never usually break decibel levels with their activity level anyway, were as the grave. Silence. Hush. Tranquility. 
Who in their right mind can stand it?
Perhaps I am biased. In the newspaper trade, depending as it does on stuff happening, these silly season months can be killers. Every day a long, hard slog through a desert of nothingness, and at the end of it all very little to show for it. 
Possibilities emerge like mirages: a scandal in bud, a sniff of a U-turn, political rivals on manoeuvres while their rivals are on holiday. Too often the leads come to nought, leaving the parched correspondent holding a handful of dust.
Civilians do not understand. They look on these summer months between the start of the parliamentary recesses and the beginnings of the party conference season as a much needed break from the 24/7 hot air machine that is politics as usual. As far you lovely lot are concerned, the lights stay on, the bins carry on being collected, and we are not being bombed by North Korea. Whitehall and Edinburgh have everything in hand.
As one quiet week follows another, the more cynical among civilians begin to wonder if it is really necessary to have all these politicians around, drawing salaries and expenses, being housed in expensive buildings, and generally being pandered to like the Queens and Kings of Sheba. It is not an unreasonable question.
But really, how selfish can you people be? Forget destroying hundreds of years of parliamentary democracy and ushering in a dictatorship. One imagines more than a few people might see that as not such a bad option, hence why there will never be a referendum on that topic. Look what happened when they asked UK voters if they thought the EU was worth having.
Forget, too, all those poor politicians who would have to go out and get proper jobs like real people. Honestly, have you met some of them? Some one can imagine saying goodbye to Westminster and Holyrood and having quite the jolly chat at the Job Centre as to what they can move on to next. Colonel Ruth Davidson, for example, would be a shoo-in for the Army. Journalism would throw a few more bones the way of messrs Johnson and Gove. Nicola Sturgeon could return to the law. 
But what of the likes of poor Alex Cole-Hamilton? In assessing his ability to start again, we are indebted to a Holyrood magazine Q&A in which the Lib Dem MSP, asked what skill every person should have, said: “Probably being able to light fires without matches.” How could you send that wee soul out into the real world, you heartless lot?
Here is the deal. Politics carries on as normal for a chunk of the year, supplying things for politicians and civil servants to do, and the media to report and opine upon. It is an onerous burden, for the media especially, but one that we are happy to take on for the sake of the public good (and wages, don’t forget the wages).
In return for this sacrifice, the media would only ask that we be cut some slack during the silly season, when politicians, and many of our fellow reporters, are off on their holi-bags. In particular, we would like the following frequently occurring silly season story offences to be written off, or at least punished with nothing more than a raised eyebrow and a sigh.
First, the publication of “beasts of…” stories. We know the large creatures often sighted in the countryside in summer and captured in fuzzy photographs are merely local cats and dogs gone a bit tubby rather than escaped panthers or fleeing bears, but give us a break, they fill half a page.
Next, wall-to-wall coverage of every royal sneeze and cough. Ditto Donald Trump, a president who is proving a godsend to reporters everywhere, regardless of the season. Sometimes one almost wishes he would take a day off.
Finally, saturation coverage of the Edinburgh festivals. I know you would no more travel through to Edinburgh to see a groundbreaking new work by a radical north London playwright just up from Oxford than you would stick a fork in your eye, but let us pretend that we are all terribly interested. If we drive the festivals away, the Edinburgh rental market will collapse and before you know it there will be folk on the Royal Mile begging for their next Barbour jacket.
Sound like a silly season deal? You’d be mad to turn it down.

TELESALES, TRUMP-STYLE

WITH every day that passes Donald Trump comes across less as the 45th President of the US and more like the world’s grumpiest toddler.
Remember those early days when he made the traditional series of phone calls to world leaders only for some to go better than others? Well, it is even better – sorry, worse – than we thought.
Transcripts obtained by the Washington Post show the call to Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull was not merely bad but full beamer awful. Trying to get out of an Obama promise to take 1,250 refugees, Mr Trump said: “I guarantee you they [refugees] are bad. That is why they are in prison right now. They are not going to be wonderful people who go on to work for the local milk people.”
Unable to get anywhere, toddler Trump hit the floor screaming. “I have had it,” he shouted. “I have been making these calls all day and this is the most unpleasant call all day.”
Poor Donald. He goes to all that trouble to become president and the world treats him like a sales rep who phones during dinnertime.

NOTHING LIKE THIS DAME

SHE has been a guest at many a movie premiere down the years, but the greatest gift by far the film industry has given the Queen is having Helen Mirren play her.
The Queen, the imaginatively-titled 2006 biographical drama, not only won an Oscar for the British actress, it went a fair way to restoring the monarchy’s image after the death of Diana, Princess of Wales.
There is nothing and no-one like Dame Helen Mirren, 72. She visited The Herald’s offices many moons ago while researching a part as a reporter, and some of our older residents still talk about it with a tear in their eye and a secret smile.
The sparky, outspoken Mirren was in the news this week for saying of an expensive face cream: “I know that when I put my moisturiser on it probably does **** all but it just makes me feel better.” Just one problem: the gloop is L’Oreal’s, and Dame H is paid oodles to promote it.
A very smart PR cookie at the cosmetics house said they were very proud to have Ms Mirren on board and “love her authenticity and humour”. Don’t we all.