The op/ed department at The Leader is like Basil Fawlty of Fawlty Towers fame, in the episode with the German guests. Fawlty is determined and keeps saying to his staff, ‘Don’t mention the war!’ But the temptation is too great and he does bring it up, again and again, and things go from bad to ridiculous in short order.

So we’ve been saying to ourselves: ‘We will not bring up (the single most talked about individual in the world)! We will not touch that subject!”

Why not, you might ask.

One reason is because it’s so hard to maintain any sort of dignified detachment. Many commentators seem to descend pretty quickly into partisan sniping or (even worse) gleeful whatshisname bashing, quickly losing their credibility. When that happens, you become indistinguishable from the person (or political party or whatever) that you are trying to make look bad. So it goes.

So for now at least, we will attempt not make the same mistake as Basil Fawlty. We’ll continue to focus on the local situation, where things seem pretty sane, on the whole.