Read The Daily Star

There! Not quite the sort of headline our regular readers might have expected. Yet its piece today by the admirable Brendan McFadden, [1] is a significant moment in the attempt to save humanity from the self destruction to which it seems to be so recklessly heading. First a little History, which we hope will allow our overseas readers to place this whole mad ramble in a little context.

The Daily Star is a British tabloid newspaper. When it started, back around 1981, we got the impression that it was a cheap copy of The Sun, anxious to steal some of that organ’s readership of-how to put this?-plain, simple folk whose interests were entirely centred on beer, birds and football. We were perhaps wrong, but we paid it little attention; it was the Sun that set the pace, easily outselling all imitators and rivals. We were shamed at the way all the tabloids coarsened and brutalised our national life from the 1980’s onwards. A process that culminated in the phone hacking scandal in the 2010s. We rejoiced as their circulation figures began their present death spiral. We expected nothing from any of them that might advance learning or the sciences.

Which is why the Star took us utterly by surprise with its splash on declining bee numbers. You can, and should, read Brendan’s piece. We did something like this a few weeks ago(LSS 1 6 2023) but he does it much better. But it’s not the story itself, it’s the way Brendan has plonked a major ecological issue straight in front of a readership which up to now has been encouraged to ignore, or even actively deny, the doom now hovering over us. This morning, every builder, van driver or taxista who picks up the Star is going to have to think about this. And the reason this makes us love Brendan is simple. Up to now every ecological event you attend is just the same old faces. People with degrees who read The Guardian, well meaning, earnest and straining, but a tiny, tiny fraction of the population. Now, potentially, we may have broken out and are starting to reach the numbers of the population where real change works. Now, gentle readers we beg you. Go out tomorrow and buy a copy of the Star. if only to annoy Rupert Murdoch.

[1] https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/humans-pollinate-crops-paint-brushes-30462849

[2]https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-24894403

#ecology #pollination #bees #food chains