Bearly Newsworthy: Issue Three
A Summary of Things That Happened, Didn’t Need to Happen, and Probably Shouldn’t Have Been Reported in the First Place
Welcome to this week’s edition of Bearly Newsworthy, where we take a little tour of what’s happened this week in the news which can either be described as “Barely Newsworthy” i.e. completely overblown, light on facts, absurd to the n’th degree and / or lacking any meaningful context, or, “Bearly Newsworthy”, which are stories that deserve far more attention than they are getting.
It’s been yet another week where the news cycle in the UK (and the US for one of the stories) feels like a badly written soap opera - a little bit tragic, a little bit surreal and occasionally laugh inducing if you tilt your head just right and squint at it.
From a long overdue electoral upset in Wales to Trump’s latest attempt at turning governance into a tacky Vegas show, and the usual Reform-flavoured chaos that we’re getting used to seeing on a daily basis, the headlines have again this week delivered their usual mix of farce, fury and mostly nonsense.
So, with that said, let’s get into it - the stories that matter, the ones that don’t and the ones that probably shouldn’t have been written in the first place.
Verdict: Bearly Newsworthy ✅
Published: 24 October 2025
In a turn of events that feels somewhat less like just a by-election result and a bit more like a well-overdue midlife breakthrough, Plaid Cymru have finally won Caerphilly for the first time since… well, ever, really.
Lindsay Whittle at a sprightly 72 years of age, and who has stood for Plaid roughly as many times as we’ve had Home Secretaries in the past decade1 burst into tears when the results were announced - and honestly, who could blame him? After almost 42 years of rejections, he’s finally packing his bag to head to the Senedd.
This goes well beyond being just a historic victory for Plaid Cymru, and is a massive humiliation for Labour who have held the seat since 1999 and bloody nose for Reform UK who were so convinced that they would win that they’d already probably drafted their social media tat that reads “Wales Has Spoken.” Despite this, we’re guaranteed that Farage will still somehow claim moral victory from a pub somewhere (not Clacton) anyway.
This was a pretty interesting by-election by all accounts - turnout was well over 50%, which is unusually high and suggests that people in Wales are happy to head out to tell Westminster where to shove it.
The explanations put forth by Labour were predictably funereal - “difficult headwinds”, “frustration with the pace of change” and “the dog ate our majority”, all of which roughly translates into people are fed up to the damned back teeth of promises of jam tomorrow when they can’t even afford the bread today.
There’s a trifecta here in this particular news story, and what makes it Bearly Newsworthy is that it’s not only a massive milestone for Plaid, a long-overdue stumble from Reform and a spectacular face-plant from Labour, but a reminder that Wales can get up, stretch out and remind everyone that it’s not just a political afterthought between England and the Irish Sea.
Verdict: Bearly Newsworthy ✅
Published: 21 October 2025
In general, government press releases are dry, and they’re by and large supposed to be. They should be that - Factual and delivered in what can only be described as monotone professionalism.
That is definitely not what the White House’s release read like on the current demolition of the East Wing to make space for Donald Trump’s physical manifestation of his own self-importance Ballroom (happening during a Federal Shutdown and giving serious Louis XVI vibes2, but the less said about the better).
On the surface, it’s sort of standard issue spin - news that previous presidents have renovated before - but the tone. That is something else entirely. It’s terribly aggrieved, unbearably smug and desperate to prove that the opulence we now see in action is patriotism.
The article refers to “manufactured outrage” and “unhinged leftists clutching their pearls” which is, as far as I’m aware, not the language you would normally expect from a branch of the US government3 and reads more like a TalkRADIO monologue left unsupervised with a thesaurus4.
The absurdity of the whole piece is just amplified by some of the examples used - Theodore Roosevelt built the West Wing, Harry Truman stopped the building from literally collapsing and Franklin D Roosevelt added the East Wing to accommodate war-time offices. All of these were practical, necessary and functional decisions, and none of them involved knocking down a part of the building to make space for chandeliers and a few discreet siderooms in which to have what I’m sure would be completely above board decisions.
The flogging of this ballroom being a continuation of “presidential legacy” is like trying to say the taping system Nixon had installed was an early form of home security.
Beyond the project itself the voice that this release was written in, which sounds almost exactly like a right-wing influencer having a full-blown fannywobble, makes the message clear:
Trump 2.0 will be completely based on grievance politics - in everything from official communications to architecture.
Verdict: Barely Newsworthy ❌
Published: 22 October 2025
Every so often the outrage machine seems to forget exactly who it’s supposed to be angry at and ends up biting its own arse - which is exactly what happened this week when Talk TV’s Mike Graham “stepped back” after an appalingly racist post appeared on his Facebook page - one he is terribly insistent came from hackers who have a suspiciously intimate knowledge of his usual vocabulary and access to his photos.
The post, which was a racist bleat about “multicultural b****s” on a tube carriage has apparently sparked some sort of internal mutiny within the not terribly hallowed halls of TalkTV with staff from TalkSPORT reportedly being shocked to discover that working alongside a man who once claimed you can “grow concrete” might not, in fact, be the intellectual summit of broadcasting.
Who knew.
The whole story isn’t so much a scandal as it is a post-work-event-hangover - the inevitable outcome of a media ecosystem that’s been purposefully built around cheap provocation suddenly finding out that their in-house provocateur was not, in fact, house-trained. Mike Graham’s career has been thriving on the back of his near constant sneer at migrants, climate activists and anyone with a functioning level of empathy. The sneer has now come full circle and his own colleagues have finally joined us in wondering what in the world this man is still doing on air.
If this is “civil war”, it’s one that’s fought nearly entirely with paper straws, ego and the world’s smallest union flag.
Verdict: Barely Newsworthy ❌
Published: 23 October 2025
In news this week that should surprise absolutely no one, Zia Yusuf has resigned again, this time as head of Reform’s “DOGE”, making this his third grand exit from something in under a year, which I really think should qualify him for some sort of loyalty card.
In what appears to be an active effort by Reform UK to parody itself, Richard Tice has now been installed as head of DOGE - an entity that can only be described as something cobbled together from a third-rate-think tank, a WhatsApp group and a power point deck5. While the “Department of Government Efficiency” sounds terribly official, it has absolutely no legal authority to “efficiency” anything and appears to spend most of its time issuing press releasing stories about “cutting waste” while achieving nothing more than just annoying local council workers.
DOGE which has been modelled on the Trump/Musk initiative (that also achieved what turned out to be sweet-blue-fuckall) has so far managed to only visit three Reform-led councils and has left nothing more than a trail of self-congratulations and some very misleading headlines.
Zia Yusuf will retain his “head of policy” title, though with the way things have been going for him, Reform might as well automate a few press releases for the coming months, because there’s only so many times you can say “stepping down to focus on priorities” before it starts sounding a bit like Yusuf really just doesn’t want to be there.
In short, this is all just yet another instalment of Reform’s ongoing talent show where everyone will eventually storm off stage and the only thing being efficiently recycled is the announcement updates for this.
Verdict: Barely Newsworthy ❌
Published: 21 October 2025
In other news that was presumably supposed to have all of us chasing down “foreigners” and demanding they stop stealing our benefits, The Times reported that nearly 1.9 million “foreign citizens” are claiming UK benefits. It’s a number which sounds absolutely enormous until you realise that:
A) The UK has around 10.7 million people born abroad who live here.
B) A good proportion of UC claimants are actually in work.
C) People who are in receipt of benefits are, by law, people who qualify for them.
That’s the story. That’s all of it.
But, the problem with that is that nuance and contextualisation doesn’t sell subscriptions for The Times, so instead we got treated to some breathless rhetoric about “British taxpayers footing the bill” - a sort of quote that somehow always appears beside statements from Reform and think tanks with names that sound like they were thought up by bad focus groups (Centre for Migration Control for example).
The entire article functioned less like journalism and more like a pre-election leaflet for the Faragist wing of the political spectrum - big number, minimal context and the unspoken suggestion that compassion is dependent on your place of birth.
It was “news” only if you squinted so hard you forgot that benefits are, in fact, a safety net - not a nationalistic loyalty card.
Verdict: Bearly Newsworthy ✅
Published: 19 October 2025
Sticking to the subject of unfounded panic about people who had the gall for not being born in this country,
has once again done the public service of prising fact from froth.
Her piece this week is a thorough debunk of the Express and Sun’s gleefully misleading “£60 million for small boat migrants’ private healthcare” headlines in which she debunks and calmly dismantles yet another case study in synthetic outrage being pushed by tabloids.
As Emma lays out in her piece, the truth is both simple and boring - which is the exact reason that it never makes it onto the front page. The “private healthcare” being pontificated about by The Express is a routine Home Office contract for medical provision at migrant reception centres which is neither luxury treatment or special privilege - literally just basic medical care for traumatised, injured or sick people arriving in the UK. (It’s also about 0.003% of the NHS budget6, which does rather dampen the drama)
The work that Emma does is well and thoroughly Bearly Newsworthy because it goes beyond rebuttal - it humanises stories in our current climate in which empathy is treated like a liability and it reminds people that context isn’t the enemy of patriotism.
Emma herself noted that:
It’s so incredibly frustrating seeing these sorts of headlines day in and day out and knowing that so many people believe them with no critical thought.
The reality behind every one of those “asylum seekers are getting XYZ” headlines is so far from the image being portrayed. They aren’t living the highlife in ‘luxury’ hotels with ‘private’ healthcare! They’re living for months, sometimes years at a time, in cramped conditions, with very little money, nothing to do and no ability to earn their own money.
And the more the narrative of Asylum seeker luxury is pushed on a population who are all undergoing their own genuine struggles, the more polarised and divided we become.
If you want to hear more from Emma directly, she’ll be presenting a workshop at QED Con in Manchester this weekend on “How to Debunk”, helping more people learn how to push back against media hysteria with calm, evidence and humanity.
Tickets for QED Con are available here.
Verdict: Bearly Newsworthy ✅
Published: 21 October 2025
I can’t believe that I’m actually writing this, but it’s finally happened. We are now, by the looks of things, finally allowed to openly criticise Brexit.
Rachel Reeves in the past week has finally done what the entire political establishment has spent nearly a full decade tiptoeing around7 - she’s said it out loud.
Brexit has been even worse than its critics feared.
It’s been worse for growth, productivity and for the economy full stop. She’s also linked Brexit to what seems to be the now inevitable tax rises that we’re likely to see in the Autumn Budget, making this potentially the first time a sitting Chancellor has publicly admitted that the “sovereignty dividend” has turned out to be complete and utter nonsense.
I honestly feel a bit jolted at the fact that a politician has been able to say the word Brexit without following it up with a milquetoast explanation about how it was the “will of the people” and that global Britain is, honestly, just around the corner, and we should see it now-now8. The large majority of the UK’s press and Westminster has until now treated even the most basic economic reality and daring to blame it on Brexit as treasonous heresy, but, it appears that the curtain is finally slipping, only to show that the Wizard behind it was just a man in a tweed suit zealously waving a flag and hoping that nobody notices the empty coffers, shelves and promises.
Whether this new semi-realism actually leads to anything is, of course, another matter entirely, and one that the cynic in me isn’t so optimistic about. The Chancellor’s talk of “rebuilding relations with the EU” sounds like it could be positive, but, we have been here before, and have terribly little to show for it. Still, even the faintest murmur of accountability does feel like we’ve reached a milestone9.
Verdict: Barely Newsworthy ❌
Published: 24 October 2025
To end this week’s round up, I wanted to finish off with the political gift that keeps on giving - specifically, Nadine Dorries, who recently traded her blue rosette for a turquoise one and is now out spreading Reform UK gospel and, as it turns out, still struggling with the basic concept of how things work.
Taking the dedicated Reform UK seat on BBC Question Time, Dorries did her level best to explain the grand immigration plan cooked up by Reform - a plan that, like most other policies cooked up by right-wing populists, could fit neatly on a pub coaster and instantly collapses the moment you apply even the lightest scrutiny.
Her claim that the UK couldn’t “protect our own borders” without leaving10 the ECHR was rebuffed by Fiona Bruce11 who politely reminded her that every single other European country manages to do precisely that while remaining a member.
When she was asked exactly how leaving the ECHR would actually help, Dorries responded with what can only be described as an emotional shrugged draped in nationalism saying that “Help or hinder is totally irrelevant. Our job is to protect our borders.”
In short, it was the exact modus operandi deployed by Reform UK on any attempted explanation of policy - loud conviction, low comprehension and a severe allergy to any sort of follow up question.
And with that, I’ll end my reporting on this week’s events in British politics, where once again performance got mistaken for policy and outrage for governance.
Between Reform’s ever-spinning revolving door, the tabloids’ active crusading against any sort of empathy and compassion and Nadine Dorries clearly auditioning for “Yes Minister: The Sequel”, it truly does feel like a miracle that the country even slightly functions anymore.
Still, in between all of the chaos and absurdity, there are people - like Emma - doing the work that actually matters, and there’s the faintest sense that maybe the absurdity is starting to wear thin.
Then again, this is the United Kingdom, and we do bloody love a farce.
Have a lovely weekend, all,
Best,
Bear
Previous Issues of Bearly Newsworthy:
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Which, if anyone is keeping count, is somewhere between “far too many” and “probably a sign of structural failure.”
If Versailles had Wi-Fi and merchandise drops.
I could be wrong, I don’t live there.
You can almost imagine a producer whispering “say it louder for the algorithm.”
Which is also pretty close to the title of most governmental digital initiatives since 2012.
Equivalent to about half a Downing Street wallpaper budget.
Somewhere a BBC producer just fainted straight into a Union Jack cushion.
Fellow South Africans will know what that now-now entails.
Which should tell you absolutely everything you need to know about where we are as a country and our politics.
This is the go-to action for right-wing populists when they’re stuck for solutions - leave something.
Which should in and of itself be a news story, since Reform just doesn’t get corrected on these things.
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A well rounded summary of the week Bear. Hoping next week, which ends with fantasy ghosts, witches and orange pumpkins, rather than real life ones, will be better x
On the "Hellsite" where they do the blurb for the QT quests Nadine Dorries was not described as a former (failed) Torie MP who has gone over to the even darker side of Reform, but as a newspaper columnist! Did they think we have the memory span of the proverbial goldfish?