Helen Bach
26 February, 2025
Opinion

Helen Bach Column: Anyone else miss John Craven's Newsround?

Hopefully I'm not in a minority here, but I have to say I miss John Craven's Newsround.

Television photo by Erik Mclean on Unsplash

I grew up watching it, and it told you the important news without scaring the bejeezus out of you.

He appeared every night, after school, wearing his cosy jumpers and told us what we needed to know, including bad news like when the Falkland Islands had been invaded, and we were at war with Argentina, but in such a way that we could still sleep at night.

Any chance he can come out of retirement to present all our News bulletins please, because at the moment I can barely bring myself to tune in?!

Every day I have to brace myself for the latest outrageous suggestion to spew forth from the mouth of Trump - for example, in the last couple of weeks he's said he wants to move all the inhabitants out of Gaza, and that President Zelensky of Ukraine is a 'dictator'.

Can I also ask, out of interest, does President Trump have any PR or communications advisors who could perhaps have a word and suggest he filters whatever appears in his brain before it pops out of his mouth?  Or are they on holiday, or on a coffee break or similar, and he just takes to the airwaves without mentioning to them what he's going to say next?

As for the excuse that I've heard bandied about that he's a 'disruptor', who likes to throw people off their game to get what he wants - I'm sorry, what now?!  He's the leader of the so-called free world, not a contestant on The Apprentice!  This isn't a game, or a reality-TV show - this is real life, with real life consequences for all of us, whether we live in the USA or not.

We all thought, hoped and prayed, that things could only get better, didn't we?  At the moment, it certainly doesn't feel like it.  In fact, things feel more precarious than ever.  Let's hope for all our sakes that changes, and soon.