A-level successes are a cause for celebration, not a new battle of the sexes

An honoured tradition or a cliche? If you win the Open you are likely to appear on the front pages kissing the Claret Jug.

If you pass your A levels with top grades, you are likely to appear on the front pages jumping in the air and waving a sheet of paper.

What's not to like? A sunny summer picture of happy young people celebrating the fruits of hard work and dedication.

Except the pictures tended to feature pretty girls in spaghetti straps. So the cry went up: 'What about the boys?'

What about the boys? We don't see pictures of the runner-up or token women with the Claret Jug do we? We see the winner. And that's what we were seeing with the A-level girls. They were outperforming the boys and getting the best grades. They were the brightest teenagers in the land - who also happened to be photogenic.

For some reason the fact that girls were doing better than boys at school was regarded as a 'problem'. Goodness knows why, but all the 'experts' said that it was important for the country that boys did better . It was vital that they were motivated and encouraged. That one annual picture of girls jumping for joy was unfair, discriminatory and making boys feel neglected.

Oh dear.

And why were the girls always pretty and blonde? What about the plainer Janes? Why were they always white?

A case of not seeing is believing. Not all  the girls were magazine cover material. But intelligent young people have bright eyes and enthusiasm that shines in their faces, especially when they are happy. They can't help but look lovely. Always white? No. Girls of African or Asian origin are among our most academic students and when their schools were featured, some took their place in front of the camera. Most chose not to.

Photographers all over the country have continued to ask students to leap into the air and the results are almost always enchanting, but they have been banished from the front pages.

Yesterday the papers went into overdrive with A-level coverage on their websites from 7am. There was barely a spagehetti strap to be seen (too chilly), but there were plenty of skinny jeans and naked midriffs. The Telegraph tried to have a bit of fun with the cliche, posting galleries of girls jumping for joy and boys jumping for joy. The trouble was, the boys weren't that keen on the idea and those who gave it a go weren't very good at it.

The comments thread made depressing reading:

'Your attempts at balance are laughable. How many boy photos have you featured compared to girls?  You should be ashamed'

'Girly swot photos are so predictable'

'Why is it always swotty girls? No wonder boys feel alienated from the academic process'

'I think it would be good to see some pictures of heartbroken youngsters looking despondent too. Just for the sake of journalistic balance'

And on the boys' gallery:

'Well done DT, you've got a sense of humour'

'DT joy jumping results: girls 13, boys 6'

'Now the plain ones who failed please'

'Please grow up Telegraph'.

Two other comments on the girls' gallery pointing out the lack of coloured faces seemed justified - but what a shame. Is it so wicked for a paper to indulge in a bit of self-mocking irony?

[As it happens, the Times did once try to escape the stereotype by using a front-page picture of a girl who had failed to get the grades she needed. She was happy to pose and spoke about her disappointment. But when the first editions came up the Times looked so cruel in comparison to its rivals that the night team ordered  flowers, chocolates and champagne to be delivered to her first thing the next morning.]

The Telegraph team must have felt bruised by the response to its bit of nonsense, for today's print edition went with a hamper splash on A levels and a photograph of the Olympic opening ceremony stuntman who was killed yesterday. The inside coverage was restricted to a spread of two half-pages and the small photographs are all case studies, including Alastair Herron, a 7 A* pupil rejected by Oxford, the Narnia actress Georgie Henley, the diver Tom Daley and the Zanzibar acid attack girls.

Back on the website today, the jumping galleries were left to skulk, unpromoted, in the background. There were still pretty girls, though, and this was the illustration for  a story about the resurgence of tougher subjects over 'soft options' such as media studies.

It was captioned 'Students took to Twitter to tell how they have been offered places despite seemingly falling short of offers'.

Oh dear. These girls are clearly not tweeting - and if they were it wouldn't be about falling short of their offers. Eloise Davies and Jess Moxom of the girls' high school in Chelmsford are both off to Cambridge, having each achieved a handful of As and A*s.

MailOnline ran dozens of pictures of smiley girls and hardly gave the boys a look in. But those who did break through were pretty special. There was 12-year-old Andrew Ejemai from Brentwood, who got an A* in maths, and Zohaib Ahmed, who is off to Southampton University in October after getting an A in physics to go with the A* in maths and further maths he achieved three years ago, aged 10. Then there was Daniel McBride, a cancer sufferer who won a double scholarship to the Royal School of Music, and Jeremy Budd, who secured a place at Cambridge with 4 A*s, in spite of having to be taken to his  exams in an ambulance.

Like the Telegraph, the print edition was photographically restrained. The front was an A level-free zone and the main picture on the inside spread was the young Georgie Henley as Lucy in Narnia. That was coupled with an inset shot of the actress as she is now, preparing to read English at Cambridge. After that it was small shots of the same case studies - Alastair Herron, Tom Daley and Andrew Ajemai, plus the dyslexic Penny Banks, who is heading for Cambridge, and a pair of identical twins about to be separated for the first time.

The contrast between exuberance on the web and restraint in print was in evidence across most of the papers. The Express was alone in running a ladies a-leaping picture, while the Independent rather cruelly sliced Gem O'Reilly, a bedroom musician taking a gap year to bid for stardom, down the middle across the gutter. The Times, which these days publishes pictures of comely women at the drop of a hat, went for a clutch of boys from Bristol doing a Usain Bolt on the front - a South Wales News Service photograph that scored for being both jolly and a neat twist on an old formula.

So much for the pictures, what of the words? These, too, tend to follow a formula - grade inflation, too easy, the exam you cannot fail etc. This year, however, there were real news stories in the statistics:

*A new rule allowing universities to take as many students as they like, so long as they have 2Bs and an A, means that half of the 24 Russell Group universities have joined in the clearing game instead of remaining aloof. There are therefore far more places on offer than usual, so that many students may be able to 'trade up' to better courses or better institutions.

*Students are abandoning subjects such as communications studies and PE, and going back to traditional academic disciplines, so there has been an increase in the numbers sitting economics, maths and physics.

*By yesterday lunchtime more than 400,000 people had their university places sorted, a record for the first day after publication of the results.

These three elements, each reflecting on the others, could very usefully be woven into a single story - as the Guardian did with its splash:

Universities' £1bn bid for students

Others gathered random facts and statistics into great rambling narratives that combined the percentage increase in the number of passes, the percentage drop in the number of As and A*s, the decline of modern languages and the widening gender gap in the choice of subjects studied.

Ah, the gender gap. More girls are taking English, more boys are taking maths and physics. Panic stations, everyone! This cannot be allowed to continue if we are to have more women engineers. Teachers must be stereotyping. Terrible. Terrible.

There is no concern about the boys who have moved away from English, mind.

And the poor boys who were being alienated from the education system by all those pictures of pretty girls seem to have recovered for they now reign supreme. On one measure at least: 7.9 per cent of male entries resulted in an A* compared with only 7.4 per cent of female entries.

This excited the Independent papers

 

And the Mail website and the Express

 

First a little point of style. It is easiest for the reader to understand if papers adopt a style of using A-level adjectivally (A level is fine for the noun). The principle is particularly helpful if the words come at the start of a sentence.  'A level gender divide'? Is that like a level playing field - or rather an unlevel playing field?

So we are back to the old-fashioned battle of the sexes. OK, so be it. If that's what is required, here are a few numbers to throw into the mix:

*In 2010 there were 416,000 18-year-old boys and 392,000 girls in the UK. The Office for National Statistics predicted that by this year the respective numbers would be 387,000 and 367,000. Even if the projection was a bit off beam, there would still be more boys than girls.

*This year there were 389,550 A-level entries from boys and 461,202 from girls. So even though there are fewer girls, they took more A levels.

*7.9% of male entries resulted in an A*, giving a total of  30,774.

*7.4% of female entries resulted in an A*, giving a total of 34,129.

*The total number of A-level entries was 850,752. Of these, 0.0362%  resulted in A*s being awarded to male candidates;  0.0401% resulted in A*s for female candidates.

See, you can make numbers say almost anything you want.

Much more clear cut is the difference in the numbers achieving As and A*s. As you can see from the Joint Qualification Authority's chart above, the girls beat the boys in every subject except maths, chemistry, Spanish, French and German. Across the board, 26.7% of girls' entries resulted in an A or A* compared with 25.9% from the boys. Not an enormous difference is it?

So with GCSE results on the way on Thursday, how about we forget about the battle of the sexes and just celebrate the achievements of our teenagers?

Well done to all of them. It's enough to make you jump for joy.

The paedophile, the 'predatory' victim and the Press

Updated August 12

When a man pushing 40  has sexual contact with a girl of 13 there is one person who is absolutely in the wrong. And it isn't the girl.

She can look as vampish as Mata Hari, pout and prance like Lady GaGa and slink as sinuously as Gypsy Rose Lee. But underneath she remains a child and the man needs to keep his trousers zipped and his hands to himself.

Neil Wilson failed to obey the rule and is lucky not to be in jail.

As you may know, Wilson was given an eight-month suspended prison sentence at Snaresbrook Crown Court last Monday after pleading guilty to intentionally touching a child under sixteen sexually and to being in possession of extreme pornography.

The prosecuting counsel, Robert Colover, told the court that the girl was 'predatory in all her actions',  'sexually experienced' and that she had forced herself on Wilson. Passing sentence, Judge Peters also used the word 'predatory' and said that the 'facts' showed that she had 'egged Wilson on'.

The language was brought to the attention of the Ending Victimisation campaigners and a petition was set up on Tuesday morning, asking Keir Starmer, the Director of Public Prosecutions, to investigate. By Wednesday evening 45,000 people had signed, Mr Colover had been suspended from handling sexual abuse cases for the Crown Prosecution Service and his profile had been removed from his chambers' website.  His choice of words was censured by the CPS, by Mr Starmer and by David Cameron.

Wilson was back in front of Judge Peters at Southwark Crown Court this morning  (Monday 12 August), not for another offence or as a result of the outcry, but because of a technicality over the sentencing. Two community orders imposed last week for possession of indecent and extreme images  could not run at the same time as the suspended prison sentence. They were therefore rescinded and the jail term was increased to 12 months, but it remains suspended for two years.

It's a troubling case. Troubling because of Wilson's behaviour. Troubling because it is apparently a blatant example of victim blaming. Troubling because it is strange that these words should have come from the prosecuting counsel. Troubling that the judge should have repeated them. And troubling because mainstream journalists seem to have been behind the curve all along.

Only scant details of the court case have been published in the national papers, with most focusing on the petition and the general outcry by various charities and individuals over the word 'predatory'.

The Independent gave the story the most prominence, splashing on it on Wednesday, with the intro:

Equality activists have condemned a judge for letting a man who admitted having sex with a 13-year-old girl walk free on the grounds that his victim was sexually "predatory".

The story then goes into the DPP's promise of a review and comments from assorted campaigners before returning briefly to events in court on the page four turn. The judge, it said, had accepted the suggestion that the girl was complicit in the abuse and had told Wilson:

'You have come as close to prison as is imaginable. I have taken in to account that even though the girl was 13, the prosecution say she looked and behaved a little bit older. On these facts, the girl was predatory and was egging you on.'

The next paragraph gives the terms of  the suspended sentence and mentions almost in passing that  Wilson had eight images of child sexual abuse and eleven involving horses and dogs on his computer.

The article then turns its attention back to the protesters, including one woman's account of her own experiences of abuse, before closing with confirmation that the Attorney-General would be examining the case to see if the sentence was unduly lenient and a statement from the CPS condemning the barrister's language.

But while this was by far the most prominent coverage of the story, it was flawed. The pair did not 'have sex', nor did anyone say that the girl was sexually predatory. Wilson was, in fact, charged with one count of sexual activity with a child, two counts of possession of an indecent photograph or pseudo-photograph of a child and five of possession of extreme pornographic images.

The reader is left in complete ignorance as to what happened, why it happened, how it happened, where it happened - indeed how it ever came to court. The two people involved were hardly likely to approach the police. We are told that the campaigners were angered by Mr Colover's remarks - but we aren't told what he said. There is, however, room on the front page for a recap of the Twitter abuse saga.

The Telegraph - which had been the only paper to report the case on Tuesday morning -  made the story a top nib the next day, focusing on the key Colover quote and the CPS response. It would have been a perfect update had the reader been given the full story the day before.  
       

 

The Times has its own child abuse agenda and with serendipitous timing, its award-winning Andrew Norfolk had come up with a splash about a plan to hand-pick judges for sex abuses cases (shame about the juxtaposition of  Petra Ecclestone in a bondage-style dress). The Wilson story made a basement on page 4 under a backgrounder. Again, the text was restricted to the abbreviated quotes from the judge and barrister, the voice of protest and the official response.

So what's the problem then? Sex abuse cases are two a penny, this one's different only because someone made a fuss about the victim-blamey language and now the top brass are taking a look.

But didn't it strike anyone as odd that this description of the child as being 'predatory in all her activities' was put forward not by the defence in mitigation but by the prosecution? Indeed, Mr Colover went to far as to say:

'There was sexual activity but it was not of Mr Wilson's doing. You might say it was forced upon him, despite being older and stronger than her.'

The Court News UK service recognised that it was unusual, and sent out this tweet at lunchtime on Monday, while the hearing was proceeding:

Prosecution describe girl,13, as 'predatory' after stripping for adult man even though he said not to. There's a first for everything...
— CourtNewsUK (@CourtNewsUK) August 5, 2013

Once sentence had been passed, the service sent out this follow-up:

Child abuser walks free as prosecution describe 13 year-old victim as 'predatory in all her actions' http://t.co/2KQZrbKo8q
— CourtNewsUK (@CourtNewsUK) August 5, 2013

This stirred the interest of at least two journalists:

@AllyFogg @katabaticesque yes it's from this afternoon at Snaresbrook Crown Court
— CourtNewsUK (@CourtNewsUK) August 5, 2013

@JaneFae @AllyFogg @katabaticesque will add a quote
— CourtNewsUK (@CourtNewsUK) August 5, 2013

@CourtNewsUK @AllyFogg @katabaticesque is there more for registered users to see...cause i'm having diffculty with PROSECUTION saying that
— Jane Fae (@JaneFae) August 5, 2013

...and of this tweeter, who alerted the @EVB_Now team:

Child abuser walks free as prosecution describe 13 year-old victim as 'predatory in all her actions' http://t.co/hbK0Lb1g6p @EVB_Now
— Lucy_W (@l_wales) August 5, 2013

The agency's Twitter link led them to this:

So by 5pm on Monday Court News UK had made available more quotes, some detail of the circumstances of the offence and the fact that a friend of the girl had gone to the police.

The agency and Jane Fae had both shown surprise that it was the prosecution who suggested that the victim was in some way culpable. So did End Victimisation.

Jo, the group's founder, told SubScribe that they had come to expect that sort of language from defence lawyers, but not from prosecutors. She said they had checked the facts carefully while simultaneously working with John Coventry of Change.org to prepare a petition. It went live on Tuesday morning. 

But newspapers, whose job is supposed to be to point up the unusual, weren't interested. The Telegraph's  single-column story on Tuesday  was pretty much the same as the Court News UK version, but nobody else touched it.  Even the local papers - Metro and the Romford Recorder - didn't post it online until Tuesday afternoon, 24 hours after sentencing.

By Wednesday 45,000 people had signed the End Victimisation petition and won a promise of action from Mr Starmer, who wrote: “The language used by the prosecution counsel in this case was inappropriate. In particular, the use of the word ‘predatory’ to describe the 13-year-old victim is of great concern to me...I will be reviewing this case to decide what action is necessary.” 

Almost all the national newspapers had by now woken up - although they were far more interested in the outrage than the event that provoked it (a too-common failing). The scant detail from the hearing did readers a disservice as they were in no position to reach their own conclusions beyond their personal prejudices - 'vulnerable child' v 'little scrubber'.

Why had Mr Colover apparently sought to absolve the man he was prosecuting? Was there a defence lawyer in court? What did he or she have to say? What was the justification for saying the girl was 'predatory in all her activities'? Had she entrapped Wilson? Was she perhaps planning to blackmail him? Had anyone on any newsdesk gone back to the agency to ask for more information - or was everyone so caught up in the protest movement that they didn't care about the case itself?

The Mail showed why, for all its many faults, it is still the slickest paper in the game with this spread pulling together the Snaresbrook and the Times stories. The Wilson story was split into two, with the lead focusing on the row and the second using all the material available from Court News UK to give the most complete account yet of the court case. The right-hander has a swift catch-up on Andrew Norfolk's story and a retrospective of the dreadful treatment of abuse victims in other courts.

At last we learn that Snaresbrook Crown Court was told that the girl had been cadging cigarettes in Romford town centre while playing truant on March 6 last year. Wilson bought her a whole packet, they got talking and she went with him to his flat. Over the next two weeks, Wilson was said to have bombarded her with phone calls and texts and they met several times at his home.

On March 20 she again went to the flat and Wilson claims to have told her that they had to stop seeing each other. He said that her response was to ask if she could change out of her school uniform. Wilson said that he had left the room and when he returned she was sitting on a sofa wearing only a T-shirt. She had then started kissing him and touching his genitals, but he had pushed her away.

These were the 'facts' of the case that were agreed by the prosecution and defence and which led to Wilson's guilty plea. The girl and her friend were interviewed by the police, but the court was told that the girl did not want to make a complaint and she took no part in the proceedings.

Having been alerted by the friend, the police visited Wilson's flat and found the indecent images. The former policeman Mark Williams-Thomas claims in his blog that they included pictures of the girl in the case - although this was not mentioned in court.

If there were pictures of the girl on the computer, they may have had some bearing on Mr Colover's response when the judge asked for clarification of the relationship between Wilson and the girl. The barrister had conferred with the officer in the case before uttering the fateful phrase about her being predatory.

By reading all the tweets, blogs and various newspapers, it becomes possible to piece together some of what happened - but most of the country is still in the dark. Why on earth would a prosecutor say such a thing and almost exculpate the defendant? Why would a judge reinforce the view?  Are our senior lawyers still stuck in the 18th century? We have also yet to hear from the (official) defence. Maybe with such a sympathetic prosecutor it doesn't matter. But it does.

Somebody must have asked the question because Court News UK sent out this tweet on Wednesday - 48 hours after the hearing.

Paedophile in 'sexual predator' controversy could pose a risk to youngsters - according to his own lawyer http://t.co/3VKpitKSla
— CourtNewsUK (@CourtNewsUK) August 7, 2013

The Mail quickly updated its online story, changing the heading and including this from the defence counsel Rebecca Blain: 

Police came to his house and he made lengthy admissions. 'He said he watches pornography and then told police he does watch hardcore porn but he had deleted them as they were not on his computer. He poses some risk but not an imminent risk and his treatment should be in the community and not in custody.'  

It would be interesting to know why this was not included in the original report sent out by Court News UK. Judging from his Twitter thread, the reporter, George Pavlou, was dismayed by the attention his story was getting and frustrated by what he saw as misreporting. 

So my 13-year-old 'sexual predator' story has blown right up. Attorney General now reviewing the case...
— George Pavlou (@G_Pavlou) August 7, 2013

Would really bloody love all this to blow over sooner rather than later. Judge shouldn't be punished for being led by prosecution...
— George Pavlou (@G_Pavlou) August 7, 2013

I CANNOT BELIEVE HOW WRONG SO MANY JOURNALISTS ARE GETTING THIS STORY! Embarrassing...
— George Pavlou (@G_Pavlou) August 7, 2013

It was two hours after this last tweet that Court News UK sent out the update with the defence quotes. By 7 o'clock Pavlou was exasperated:

The key in the whole story is that SHE did not come forward. She told a friend who came forward. She had no interest in being a complainant!
— George Pavlou (@G_Pavlou) August 7, 2013

You can sit there and say she is only 13 but surely that says a lot about her attitude towards what she did. Facts agreed between pros+def
— George Pavlou (@G_Pavlou) August 7, 2013

I'm not saying the decision to use the word 'predatory' is correct, just that it was a reasonable description of her ON THE FACTS
— George Pavlou (@G_Pavlou) August 7, 2013

And that's not to say Wilson is the victim but a man like him, clearly with issues, could easily be led by a 'predatory' young girl...
— George Pavlou (@G_Pavlou) August 7, 2013

Eeeeven if she is only 13.
— George Pavlou (@G_Pavlou) August 7, 2013

As for the shed-load of mis-reporting of this, stick to the facts you know, stop dressing it up to something it was not. Utter despair...
— George Pavlou (@G_Pavlou) August 7, 2013

The next morning he commends a blogpost by the barrister Matthew Scott as brilliant and factually correct. It is a calm and reasoned piece explaining sentencing policy and has this gem on the role of a prosecuting counsel from Mr Colover himself in a video art installation last year:

People often say 'You’re the prosecuting barrister, you’re representing the victim, and the victim’s your client'. No, that is wrong, the victim is the state’s witness as to what happened but they’re not represented by the prosecution barrister.

Crime stories pour into newsdesk computer feeds like rain, and journalists have always had to be sharp-eyed to spot those that are going to have wider ramifications. In this case the pressure groups were swift to react to the almost jokey initial tweet from Court News UK. But not even the local paper was on the ball, let alone the nationals.

Understandable, perhaps, given the mountain of stories about bullying, abuse, suicide. We can't publish only gloomy news. And this screen grab shows how fast the stories flow, even in August:

All this serves to demonstrate that newspapers are not only struggling to set the agenda - they are also struggling to keep up when someone else sets the bandwagon rolling. Politicians, film stars, musicians, scientists have all realised that they can reach directly to the public - and interact with interested people - without having to issue press releases or subject themselves to newspaper interviews. Special interest groups are also catching on fast. They can spot a gap, set themselves up and build a reputation fast. 

As SubSist noted last month, Jo had the idea for Ending Victimisation in May, started building the website on the 21st and went live on the 24th. Less than three months later she was able to muster 45,000 supporters and secure a promise of action from the DPP in less than three days.

Should we celebrate that, or worry about kneejerk politics? Should we despair that most of our newspapers have still told us only half the Wilson story or say 'it doesn't matter, he's just another two-bit paedophile'?

There is much resistance to the Twitter society. It is ridiculed as a middle-class playground. Newspapers loved the trolling story, yet consistently failed to make the link between what was happening to the feminists and what has been happening to vulnerable teenagers for the past five years.

This isn't Facebook. It is public and it has astonishing power to get people motivated, for good or ill. 

Old-fashioned news organisations know that Twitter is important - reporters and online staff are required to tweet out puffs and links to their work constantly -  but they don't 'get' Twitter. If they did, they would by now have recognised that their newsrooms are inadequately staffed if they do not have a Social Media Correspondent.

Have you seen such a byline yet?

No, neither have I.

SubScribe

@gameoldgirl

Kate and Maddie, health scares and house prices - the Express keeps faith with its losing formula

Well it had to happen. Groundhog Day dawned at the Express this morning, with publication of the front page on the right, which pretty well mirrors the one from April 23 on the left.

In April, Jo Willey told us:

A simple operation which could effectively cure high blood pressure is being tested on British patients. 

Today she is excited about another treatment:

A simple skin patch to treat high blood pressure could dramatically slash deaths from heart attacks and strokes. 

This one has apparently been licensed in Japan, and could be available in the UK 'in the next couple of years'. In case that is too long, or you don't fancy wearing a patch or a bit of keyhole surgery in your lunch hour, the paper has had some other ideas about what you should or should not do. 

       

People have been saying for years that the Express is selling to a dying readership - but the paper is doing its damndest to keep them alive. 

It seems to have a clear vision of its typical readers: a retired (or soon-to-be-retired) couple hankering for the Britain of the 50s. They have more than a few aches and pains between them and worry about how they are going to finance their old age. Their home is their biggest asset, so they constantly check estate agents' windows and every market report to see if prices have recovered from the 2008 crash. They have a pension and find life on a fixed income tricky in this era of low interest rates. 

The Express couple are convinced that Europe and immigration are to blame for every ill in the country and they give thanks daily for our wonderful Queen and the delightful Wills and Kate. Harry's a bit of a handful, but he's learning. They are even coming to see Camilla as a good egg - though of course she can never replaced the sainted Diana. If they have a conversation with the neighbours, there is only one topic: the weather. They are unlikely to talk about the news because only the biggest events penetrate their cocoon.

Do such people exist? Perhaps there are a few 20th century outposts  dotted around the country, but surely not enough to keep a newspaper afloat? And those middle-class, middle Britain, Little Englander hypochondriacs that do survive are not -  as the Express appears to suppose - middle-aged, but well into their seventies and eighties. 

People in their fifties and sixties are still hard at work, and when they have time off they climb mountains, sail, fish, play golf, watch football, go to festivals, theatres, cinemas, concerts - or simply down the pub. They are internet savvy, fashion conscious and run almost every village or small community in the country. They have no intention of reaching for their slippers and pipe.

Whatever the readership, the duplication at the top of this post is unforgivable. Readers and casual observers may get a feeling of deja vu every time they pick up the paper - is this today's, yesterday's or last week's? But what were the editor, night editor, chief sub, picture editor thinking? Don't they remember their own work?

In a spirit of helpfulness, SubScribe has gone back over the Express front pages since April 1 - for some reason it seemed an appropriate date - and sifted them by subject matter. Over the past four months, hard news has intruded on a handful of occasions: the Philpott case, the Boston bombing, the death of Thatcher, the murder of Lee Rigby, the arrest of Rolf Harris, the birth of Prince George, and the proposal that patients should have to pay to see their GPs. There have also been the developments (if you can call them that) in the Madeleine McCann case.

The Express has splashed on health stories 32 times in the past four months..so here we go:

The paper has cottoned on to the idea that there are certain lifestyle choices that may determine how long we have on the planet. These can be summarised as:

Keep slim, stay active, drink alcohol in moderation, don't smoke, choose oily fish over red meat, eat five portions of fruit or veg every day, avoid sugary and high-fat foods and drinks - and breastfeed your baby until he/she is six months old.

So much for revolutionary thinking. But worry not, there are plenty of wonder drugs, magic pills and miracle cures - and advice on how to avoid nasty things we don't want.

I'm particularly keen on the proof that statins save your life on April 4 being followed up on July 7 with statins really do save your life - as though anyone could disbelieve the Express. And everything is so simple - a simple jab here, a simple operation there, a simple test for this, a simple change in lifestyle to that and we'll all be feeling simply wonderful.

It's all very well to joke, but this approach to health matters is worrying - and remember these are just the front pages; there are many more such stories inside. 

Thousands of researchers (aka scientists or even boffins) are conducting experiments in laboratories all over the world. They learn a little bit at a time about what causes a condition and this gives them a clue as to how to try to combat or prevent it. Many months or years of work are then needed to devise a drug - and there's no guarantee that it will work. 

Saturday's splash Alzheimer's cure is close is a case in point. The story explains that clinical trials on two new drugs had to be halted three years ago because of serious side-effects, including internal bleeding and skin cancer. A Swiss research team now believes it has found a way to overcome such problems. But that doesn't make a cure 'close'. The drug has to be developed and undergo many tests before it gets anywhere near a human being. 

But the Express doesn't deal in maybes - everything has to be a risk or a cure.  Genuine breakthroughs that will revolutionise treatments are rare, yet to look at the Express you'd think they were happening every day. Of course every step brings you closer to your target - just as reaching Exmoor after heading out from Land's End indicates progress, but it doesn't mean you are anywhere near John O'Groats.

So much for health issues. Next on the list of favourites is the weather, and our stick-in-the-mud readers obviously won't want any of this celsius nonsense. Good old-fashioned fahrenheit is what they need so they can sizzle at 100 rather than a lame old 33. Then, of course, they should be shivering 32 instead of  0, which also seems odd. Still, there's nothing to beat flexibility:  the -12 we experienced over the coldest Easter for however many years was (thankfully) C not F.

Off we go then:

The predictions were all over the place in the spring. At the beginning of April people were moaning about drought warnings, which seemed reasonable after all the rain and flooding that had gone before. The downpours in the middle of the month seemed to prove the point, but by the 30th we were again looking forward to drought. We had a lovely warm Mayday bank holiday, but soon we were being warned to expect yet more rain. And yes it came.

In the middle of June we were promised a tropical heatwave, and then when summer really arrived last month, the Express wasn't sure whether this was something dangerous or something to savour. The one thing that was certain was that it had to be the splash. The paper led on the weather every day from July 12 until the 23rd, when the royal baby intervened. Little George was given three days, the GPs with their £150 charge popped up on the 26th and then it was back to the usual diet of weather, health scares and house prices.

But hang on, what about pensions and foreigners and benefits? Yes, these are the other staples of the Express diet, but they were all given a rest for most of July. Apart from the weather, there were a couple of days of Madeleine McCann and Andy Murray won at Wimbledon. But there had been plenty of money matters earlier.

The Express is more consistent on scroungers and nasty foreigners than on anything other than house prices - apart from the hiccup between April 27, when migrants were to get more benefits and June 3 when they were facing a ban. Maybe the Government took note of the paper's concerns. Anyway, the pages speak for themselves, so I shan't go into the detail of the content. Except...

Oops, there's another case of deja vu...with the same heading in the same shape on April 6 and 15. 

And not only that, they've contorted the type. This is a crime. We have the same wording on both pages, but we need more room to get both Kate and the doll in the picture slot - so the bottom two lines have been squeezed. And, while I wouldn't swear to it, it looks suspiciously as though those two lines have been stretched on the second page.

This is a sin being perpetrated day in, day out (it's not entirely SubScribe's incompetence with picture cropping and positioning that's to blame for the uneven display of pages). Take a look, for example, at the EU guide to British benefits a little further up the screen. The Cat Deeley picture is only slightly narrower than that of Vordemann, so there's really no room for an extra character in the final line of heading - but there it is. Is there a font in the world in which the word 'BENEFITS' occupies a similar space to 'BRITISH'? I might have a little try:

BRITISH

BENEFITS

BRITISH

BENEFITS

BRITISH

BENEFITS

BRITISH

BENEFITS

No, I thought not...

Never mind. Our ageing couple don't need benefits; they've been brought up to stand on their own two feet, but they are concerned about whether their savings will cover their outgoings.

On pensions, the Express doesn't know whether it's coming or going. There's a windfall in the air on April 11, then a crisis less than two weeks later with payouts slashed. But worry not, by June 10 they're soaring. Oops. Spoke too soon, there's a blow for millions the next week, followed swiftly by assaults on the state pension and by July 4, the paper is resigned to the 'chaos' lasting for months. Still, at least the weather picked up around then.

And so we come to house prices. The Express is quite restrained on this front if you think about it. Every month there are four big surveys of house prices - from the Nationwide, the Halifax, the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors and the Land Registry. They all put a number on that mythical 'average house' - but it's never the same. The building societies and banks produce their figures on the basis of loans approved, RICS focuses on estate agents' asking prices and the Land Registry on the prices achieved in sales that have completed.

All of these figures and portraits of a market in recovery are distorted by London, where vast properties costing many millions are sold to foreign billionaires - largely from Qatar and Russia. If you tried to come up with an average house sale price on the basis of a few hundred semis across the country and a dozen West London mansions, you are unlikely to reach a sensible number.

The Express adds in its own complications. It not only runs statistics compiled monthly by accepted industry sources, but it also conducts ad hoc straw polls of its own. Last Friday's splash, House prices to rise £33,000, is an interesting example. 

Simon Ward, chief economist at Henderson Global Investments, told the paper that he thought property was undervalued by about 13 per cent, based on rental yield. In other words, someone looking to invest in a house to rent out could afford to pay a fair bit more than current sale prices and still get a reasonable return. That is not the same thing at all as buying a house to live in.

On the basis of one analyst's view of the rental market, the Express has gone away and added 13 per cent to the £162,000 being paid for  the 'average three-bed semi', based on Land Registry figures of completed sales. That put an extra £21,000 on the value of the house. But couldn't that be made more dramatic?  

What happens if you try the same sum using 'average asking prices' - which will, of course, include our London mansions and the pipedreams of sellers with unrealistic expectations of what their home is worth. This way we have an average price of  around £253,000 and the promise of an increase of £33,000.  

Remember, nobody anywhere along the line has actually said they would go up by that amount. Just that landlords looking to enter the buoyant rental market could stand that sort of increase and still make money.

SubScribe has gone round the houses on the matter of property surveys in the past, so that's enough for this time, other than to point out that missing from every such story are the key facts readers need to know:

1: you won't know what your house is worth until you come to sell it

2: estate agents will tell you to market it at more than they think it will fetch - and there will then be upset when they tell you to reduce the price and not to be so greedy

3: even when you've agreed a deal there are a dozen things that can go wrong. These are compounded by the shortage of houses  for sale and the unaffordability of property for young people who need to have enormous deposits even to contemplate putting a toe on the ladder.

Then there was Kate. Everyone made a fuss of little George when he was born, but the Express could hardly contain itself throughout the pregnancy. Aside from the three days around the birth, the Duchess of Cambridge was the subject of the paper's main front-page picture 17 times between April 1 and August 5 - including six times in eight days at the end of April. She also made a few guest appearances in the puff. 

The Queen appeared ten times as the main image, plus a few puffs, Camilla three times,  Charles  and Harry twice, while Sophie, Zara and the Duke of Edinburgh were on the front once each.

Madeleine McCann was the lead to the paper three times, the front-page picture five times and in the puff twice - with the same image used every time. Other picture choices included Nigella Lawson (5),  Andy Murray's girlfriend Kim Sears (3), Angelina Jolie (3), and Laura Robson, the Beckhams, Gwyneth Paltrow, Joss Stone and April Jones, who each appeared twice.

It's easy to mock.  If you have a winning formula, by all means stick to it. The Express has struck on a losing formula and won't let go. It is losing readers to the graveyards, to the internet, to rivals. Circulation has fallen by half to just over 500,000 since the beginning of the century (Although as an esteemed former colleague has pointed out, that is still more than the Guardian and Independent combined). The Crusader logo remains on the titlepiece, but the paper no longer shows any crusading spirit. It cheats its readers every day with that red roundel that suggests they can buy it for 10p, when what it is really pointing to is how much cheaper - in cash terms -  it is than the slicker Mail. 

It is all a great shame for a once-great newspaper. And even more so, because when it dares to put the Health and Beauty Express template aside, it is still capable of coming up with front pages to challenge the best.

 

Here's the rundown of the past four months' Express front pages:

One final thought

The Express is far from the only paper to stick to a formula. SubScribe will be looking at some of the others next time.

Front pages from paperboy.com.

SubScribe

@gameoldgirl