Mary Reid

Reporters often find that their finely crafted words are spoilt by an inappropriate heading when the paper is published. It's usually a sub-editor, not the reporter, who writes the headline. Sometimes the editor doesn't read the story too carefully and just goes for an eye-catching shock/horror slogan which contradicts the actual text.

This must have been what happened to the front page story in the Surrey Comet this week.

Actually, it's two stories, described quite accurately by the reporters, and then topped with the lurid and deeply inaccurate headline 'Care bloodbath - Young and old will suffer as council wields the axe'.

So let's look at the stories properly.

The second half of the article is about Magic Roundabout, a highly valued charitable organisation that gives advice to young people. As the report says, Magic Roundabout has decided to close after struggling to recruit trustees who can do the necessary fundraising.

The report also states that Council has NOT withdrawn its regular grant of £30,000 - so the headline suggestion that the Council has 'wielded an axe' is highly inaccurate.

Now this story may reawaken memories, because Magic Roundabout hit a similar crisis over two years ago. Young people set up a petition to save it, and who should come to the rescue but the Surrey Comet. They launched a campaign to find new trustees, and were successful in finding eight new ones. But as the paper reports in its own article this week, at least five of them have since dropped out.

Perhaps 'Charitable organisation folds through lack of trustees' doesn't sell quite so many papers as 'Care bloodbath'.

The rest of the article is about the closure of Yew Tree House. This was built as sheltered housing for the elderly at a time when it was considered appropriate to provide hostel-style rooms with shared bathrooms and toilets. I'm sure you would not want an elderly relative to live in such an undignified way these days.

In fact, Kingston's housing stock is unbalanced, with too much sheltered housing, some of which is standing empty, and not enough family homes.

The number of elderly people in Yew Tree House has dwindled to six. Some of the remaining rooms are used as emergency hostel accommodation for the homeless. This is not a satisfactory arrangement at all. The building cannot easily be converted into something better, so the best solution is to sell it off and use the proceeds to improve the rest of the sheltered housing in the borough.

The existing tenants are all being offered much better accommodation elsewhere in the borough. Of course, I do appreciate that it is unsettling for an old person to move. The alternative is to leave them in sub-standard accommodation, and just wait as the numbers dwindle over the years. This will not provide them with the quality of life that is offered by a sheltered housing community.

Again, hardly the 'bloodbath' referred to in the title, but an opportunity to plough some capital into the housing stock, remove an old-fashioned and unfit block, and to provide suitable and appropriate accommodation to a small group of elderly people.

I do hope that the Surrey Comet will apologise; first, to its own two reporters, whose writing was seriously misrepresented by the headline; second, to the Council, to Magic Roundabout and to the local community for grossly distorting the truth.

But somehow I don't think this will happen. You see, only last week the Surrey Comet again made a huge error in the main headline. They claimed that the May Merrie had been cancelled. It hadn't. What had been cancelled was one of the components of the May Merrie - the May Fayre on the Fairfield - which was washed out by the dreadful rain last year. But all the other events (music, craft fair, bands, dancing, street entertainers, sailing etc) will carry on as usual on May 5th.

So have they published a correction on the front page, encouraging people to turn up on the day? Of course not; it's tucked away on page 2.

Update

I've just received my copy of the local Guardian, which is the free version of the Surrey Comet. The two stories are presented as two completely separate articles, with quite reasonable headlines: "Magic Roundabout gives up its battle for survival" and " 'Life in limbo' after council agrees to housing unit sale". 

I wonder if the two reporters complained.