The Morning Star still shines!
When I lived in Britain in the 1990s, the Communist Party-affiliated newspaper was already an anomaly, barely visible on London’s crowded newsstands.
It was good to discover then, via Eli Lake’s Twitter feed, that it soldiers on, and is still seized by the vital issues of the day.
Like Israel’s national bird.
No, I didn’t know that Israel had a national bird, or maybe I did and forgot, and I’m not going to look it up.
But two readers of the paper are furious that the Morning Star included the bird in its daily quiz. Here’s one:
The Morning Star has always been the newspaper you could rely on to support the cause of the Palestinians, so why of all the birds in the world did you choose the Israeli national bird to include in your quiz?
Maybe you don’t support the methods chosen by the International Solidarity Movement of BDS to assist the Palestinians in their struggle for freedom and justice – a demand that came from them originally.
This includes any reference to their wildlife.
A principled refusal to mention wildlife brings back sweet 1970s era memories of John Cleese, dead parrots and not mentioning the war.
The Morning Star is a repository of such nostalgia; it may be the only daily to have featured Maggie Thatcher on its front page in years, if not decades. (A sure sign they miss her. David Cameron, man up!)
It also has perhaps the most succinct About page I’ve ever seen.
"For Peace and Socialism." Go argue!
