Christopher Gage

Friday

Christopher Gage

The sad death of tabloid English

From our UK edition

Before we routinely bored our friends to death with our hyper-optimised workflows, Strava personal bests, and alcohol-free lager, British people didn’t take themselves quite so seriously. Not so long ago, you couldn’t step five paces without a tabloid newspaper bunching around your ankles. The Sun and the Daily Mirror, their frontpages splashed in frantic red ink, served up a daily diet of love rats and busty babes often embroiled in something called ‘coke shame hell’.   With them vanished a magnificent dialect: Tabloid English—a compressed, bawdy, semi-literate poetry understood by barristers and bricklayers alike.

Tuesday

Christopher Gage

How the Cardiff riot was sparked by social media

From our UK edition

After a traumatic night which saw rioters torch cars, volley fireworks at police, and indulge in nine hours of mayhem, residents of the close-knit Ely, in Cardiff, are left to deal with the reality of what a rumour can do in the social media age. It started on Monday evening. A tragedy which would usually define such a night was only the beginning of the destruction which followed. On Ely’s Snowden Road, two teenage boys said to be riding an off-road bike or scooter, were killed in a crash. Such a harrowing event was the catalyst for what reporters on the ground described as a ‘war zone.’ As news of the crash filtered across social media, a reported 150 people later gathered at the scene of the crash.

Thursday

Christopher Gage

How Wales was betrayed by its (Labour) government.

From our UK edition

In England, success in life is bound up with where you went to school. In Wales, where I come from, the standard of education can be so miserable that you’d do better to get expelled. I did. I’d just spent three days in ‘isolation’ in my south Wales comprehensive — banished to a cubicle with a CCTV camera — for misbehaviour. As I left the grounds, I lit a cigarette. A teacher accosted me. I got lippy and she smacked me across the face. I was expelled soon after. Thank God. If you want good schooling in Wales, you’d be best to go private. If you’re taken ill, make sure you’re treated in the English NHS, not the Welsh version. If you want a private-sector job, best leave Wales. You get the picture.