The Long View

Flying back to the States from two weeks in England, I pass the time reading The Daily Telegraph.

 Front-page news: Homes with no garden will hit 2.1m next year. (The number was only 1.6 million in 1995.)

Extensive front-page and inside coverage of the war in Afghanistan (including photos and profiles of recent casualties). The war dead are received with great public ceremony when they are brought back to the UK, including a funeral courtege through city streets. People stand along the route to honor the dead. (In the US, they are flown back in secrecy and returned to families under cover of night.)

Tories have a plan to help save marriages, and a General Synod of the Anglican church debates a proposal to reduce the number of its bishops (44 diocesan bishops, 69 junior suffragan bishops) as a cost-saving measure.

A leading male midwife criticizes the increasing use of epidurals in women who thereby miss out on an important “rite of passage” just because they “don’t fancy the pain,” which prepares “a mother for the responsibility of nurturing a newborn baby.”

A National Health Service brochure for school children proclaims, “an orgasm a day keeps the doctor away.”

And the letters to the editor:

“My brother-in-law, who died last week, had given into my safe-keeping a three-place seat that he had bought about 15 years ago the Mound Stand at Lord’s cricket ground. . . While he was alive, I painted the legs creamy white and oiled the wooden seat slates and the back rest. . . . However, I am not sure about the seat slats. Should they be painted white also? And is there a reader who could tell me about the original appearance of the benches sold by Lord’s?”

England, always the same, ever new.