Letters
@private-eye.co.uk
Lookalike
Claudia
Pet
Sir,
Did Claudia Winkleman have a cameo in Star Wars – Andor Season 2 – as a pet on the planet Ghorman?
WILL BECK.
Ratio profiling
Sir,
Eye 1658 predictably portrayed the people at the “Unite the Kingdom” protest on 13 September as a bunch of bottle-throwing violent thugs (“Last night of the Toms”, p27, Eye 1658). A few of them were of course; but 26 assaults on police officers from a crowd of 150,000 protesters is a pretty small percentage compared with the 17 assaults on police officers carried out by just 1,400 protesters at the Palestine Action demo the week before. You decided not to mention that, perhaps because you had spent the previous four issues creating the impression that Palestine Action supporters are all a harmless bunch of loveable old age pensioners and Private Eye readers. Reports stated that police at this demonstration were kicked, punched and spat on.
At a previous Palestine Action demo, on 9 August, six people (out of a crowd of 600) were arrested for assaulting police officers, while another person was arrested for a racially aggravated public order offence. Eye 1656 described this event as “a peaceful demonstration”.
Ignoring violence at protests you agree with, while portraying the much smaller percentage of violent thugs at other protests as being representative of the whole, is exactly the kind of hypocrisy you like to point out when others do it.
S. MITCHELL, Manchester.
GMC consultation
Sir, MD describes Dr Aseem Malhotra’s wayward pronouncements regarding Covid vaccines causing cancer in the royal family during Reform’s conference (Medicine Balls, Eye 1658). With the General Medical Council so keen to protect the standing of the profession as exemplified by the sanctions against doctors protesting with Just Stop Oil, I asked them for their view on this doctor broadcasting unexpurgated claptrap. Surprisingly, I have heard nothing.
PETER THORPE, ex of the GMC register, Argyll.
Evans above!
Sir,
Having read all 29 of MD’s excellent Lucy Letby reports at least twice, I’m convinced that at the least her trial is unsafe, and have taken major issue with nothing he has said. In the first paragraph of the latest one, however (Eye 1659), he calls the recent Channel 4 Letby documentary the “Dewi Evans show”, with the implication that Dr Evans comes across as credible, and that this is because of the amount of airtime he was given. I believe it is the opposite: if this was the intention of the Channel 4 team they could have edited out his nervous fidgeting when watching or hearing evidence that contradicted him; paranoid rationalisations concerning the metropolitan elite ganging up on lesser minds such as the Welsh(!); and thousand-yard stares, as if wrestling with inner demons, once he had finished his rambling justifications. MD received less airtime on the show, it is true; but unlike Evans he came across as credible and sane.