Saints and Sinners

By PAT PRENTICE

Some time ago, a young man was killed in a car crash near my little retirement town.

He was driving on the wrong side of the road on a bend when he hit a double-decker bus.

Apparently, he encountered instantaneous doom in a ditch: fire, crushed bones, blood, speed, metal and drugs.

A pause occurred between the incident, in which six bus passengers were injured, and his naming.

At last, he was identified and revealed to have been a saint: the light of life; when he entered the room, his relatives asserted, he illuminated the world. His light would dazzle the firmament for eternity.

It had to be true, because the statement — solicited possibly by a freelance agency from his family — had contrived it.

Good, predictable TV formula stuff: tears onscreen, devastated family. 

Viewing guaranteed.

It was repeated online by journalists.

A dead saint...

Except that residents of the little town which this immigrant son of an imprisoned father had decided to intimidate, did not entirely concur.

Their memory was of an 18-year-old thug who stole motorbikes, rode them recklessly on pavements, through traffic lights, bought, sold and used drugs, bullied, harassed and intimidated. Cambridgeshire Plod, invited to intervene, had declined to take much interest.

But now the truth was out: the light of a family's life had been untimely extinguished.

When he died, at an age when his motorcycle proficiency was highly suspect, he was driving a very fast sports car. Those details were not questioned by any of our new university-inspired journalists.

I had noticed him a few days before his crash, doing a motorbike wheelie in heavy traffic to roar through a red light. I remarked that if he went on like that, he wouldn't live long.

No one should ever speak ill of the dead.

But there is, possibly, still a breath of life in the institution of truth, even though the emotional fakes of visual imagery have gained false precedence.

A former Met officer commented to me recently: "In the old days, we'd have kicked his arse or clipped his lug and he'd never have dared to tell his dad. (Had he not been confined to a cell). Can't do that anymore. We'd have put him back on the right track.

“Now he's dead..."

Another of his once-besieged victims, who wished to remain anonymous in case his gang were still around, said: "It's very sad. But it's karma."

I wonder if the same will be said about the editors who publish statements without checking all the background facts.

The recent inquest recorded that the young victim had not been wearing a seatbelt and had taken cocaine and marijuana. The ownership of the car was not reported.

Of course, we generally agree that we should speak no ill of the dead etc. But we don't have to speak at all if the words are known to be derisorily untrue. Readers and recipients of false facts will simply ignore the outlet in future.

He wasn't a saint, as he was painted. It was all a good weepy account to entertain the public.

And the tribute was greeted with many acid guffaws of mirth and dismissive contempt.

Another casualty of the tragic affair was the demonstrably damaged dependability of the media, which had proven itself to be a purveyor of fake news...

Karma?

As more than a number of townsfolk have intimated, some parish papers are about to reach (SWIDT) the point where they are no longer worth the internet newspaper they are written on.

20 January 2026