How to make up a story

Rosie Boycott's article about the tragic suicide of a mother of three has the headline:

"She was a mother of three and top lawyer who jumped off a bridge into the Thames. What does her death tell us about Britain today?"

This immediately jumps down the normal Mail attitude of - something bad happened, society is doomed - let's not get carried away...

...but Rosie does, spinning a tale of what she thinks might have happened, with no actual research or facts.

"The coroner's report, made public on Tuesday, states that post-natal depression played a big part in her final, ghastly decision. But I suspect many other factors contributed to her awful and untimely death - factors that will be familiar to all-too-many professional women in Britain today."

She manages to ignore the fact that this woman had post-natal depression as a reason for her suicide and speculates about a multitude of other things that could have caused this tragedy. Showing her ignorance, she assumes that the law firm she worked cared little for their employees welfare, something which she has no idea about.

"I dread to think of the levels of stress she must have felt herself under as the school holidays approached: corporate law firms like hers seldom countenance an employee who says she needs to stop work for four weeks to be with the children."

Astonishingly, this gets worse, Boycott recognises that she's made up all these things that could have caused this tragedy...

"I am speculating here"

... but continues to write something completely imaginary, without any research or basis in fact.

"but I wonder whether that desire to display to the outside world the visible signs of success played some part in the stressful life she led."

With that the Mail moves into the frankly astonishing territory of denouncing consumerism, despite being one of the most superficial newspapers on the news stands.

She then ridiculously overblows things again managing to blame you and me for this tragedy.

"For in many ways I believe we are all responsible for Catherine's death."

In what ways, may I ask?

"We have created a world that is monstrous in its demands: to earn more, to buy more, to display our worth to the world through the stuff that we own and the high status we acquire in the workplace."

Who created this world? Was it the media with articles like this, this and this which all display brilliant snobbery against buying cheap things and place a huge value on consumerism.

So there we go, Rosie Boycott manages to take a tragic suicide and turn it into a crass, ill informed rant about the society we live in and about the evils of consumerism that her newspaper perpetuates.