I know, yet another post having a swipe at ‘The Guardian’, and I wish I was sorry, but not only am I not, I’m also aware that it won’t be the last. Don’t blame me. If they persist in printing contradictory tosh that perpetuates the breathtakingly self-serving notion that their readers – or proprietors/owners/tune-callers/ – can keep on having children and be concerned about the climate emergency, what else can I do? Ignore it, pretend it never happened, or possibly follow their example, because it isn’t hypocritical if ‘The Guardian’ doesn’t say it is?

Anyway, the lead story on on Monday screamed;

More than 90 English primary schools to close or face closure for lack of pupils

Guardian analysis lays bare effect of dwindling pupil numbers and associated funding amid rising housing and childcare cost

Wait, was that 90 schools? Is that a lot? How would I find out? I mean I could always do a search on google, I suppose, to find out exactly how many primary schools there are in the UK, but that would take me all of 0.17 seconds. Here goes.

The answer, surprising to any Guardian readers continually told how bad things have become after Brexit, is just over 16,000. So, far from warranting the screaming headline it was given, and yet further still from deserving of a lead story. But yes, it was an ‘exclusive’, in the sense that no other newspaper wasted their time on it and yes, it was ‘news’, albeit in the very narrowest of definitions of what we understand the word to mean, inasmuch as no-one was aware of it.

But wait, it gets worse;

The analysis showed 88 primary schools in England were more than two-thirds empty last year, leaving them in danger of closure. On average, the vacancy rate – the proportion of unfilled places – recorded by the 156 schools that have closed since 2009-10 in their last year of operation was 66%.

A further four primary schools were already proposed to close.

So only four schools, four isn’t that much, and hang on… 156 schools that have closed since 2009-10…but that means fifteen or so have closed each subsequent year since then, and that’s not much either, is it? But the message was clear, it wasn’t as celebratory, that the birth rate is declining, as it should’ve been. So much such so, in fact that, we were told that primary school admissions are predicted to fall by a percentage that may be either large or small depending upon what the original figure was. No, it was all doom and gloom, that somehow people having less babies is a bad thing, a source of concern worthy of a screaming headline. It was their top story on Monday. No mention of the fact that no schools have closed. Never mind though, a story reporting that nothing has happened although it might happen at some future date, for entirely logical reasons, isn’t much of a story, is it?

Thinking again of their readers – or proprietors/owners/tune callers ‘The Guardian’ couldn’t leave it at that, all hand-wringingly sad face, no matter how much they wanted it to be the fault of Brexit, partygate and Boris’s Johnson. They need the donations to keep coming in after all, so therefore they had this, to cheer their paymasters up. So further down the homepage was this;

Baby boomtown: does Nagi hold the secret to repopulating Japan?

Fertility rate is more than twice the national average and nearly half of households have three or more children – thanks in no small part to generous daycare and an all-in approach to raising families

It seems utterly bizarre that a family having three or more children is seen as a good thing, something to be admired. To me, it makes no sense, the notion that you can have children, yet still be deluded enough to think that recycling this, driving an electric car to there or eating the other is somehow doing your bit to help the planet. Perhaps ‘The Guardian’ is like a weird pyramid scheme, whereby the more their readers pay, the more the secrets of how to have children and be concerned about the planet are revealed to them

The article waxes lyrical about the many benefits that are used to bribe people into being even more consumptive than they already were. Cheap childcare, subsidised healthcare until the pollutants are 18, massively subsidised housing, basically all the things ‘The Guardian’ thinks this government should do but isn’t and gush about how wonderful everything is, somewhere else that isn’t here.