On a roll with my rants… or is it sour gripes?

THIS will be all about rants! So, if rants aren’t your cup of tea, why not flick ahead to the sudoku page or go and make a cup of, err, coffee and I’ll see you back here next week …
Hey, me again. Apologies for that short interruption but pleased to see most of you still here! But where to start?
First off, the BBC with reports it ‘hid’ salaries of stars paid more than £500,000 from its recent annual accounts. Stars like Sir Tom Jones, allegedly paid around £1 million for The Voice UK, and James Nesbitt for The Missing.
Yes, scrap the daft shows, but the problem isn’t just the money paid to BBC stars, it’s money paid to management.
A blatant sense of entitlement is rife in this institution as in so many other public bodies.
Charities have also been in the news for the wrong reasons, with the Kids Company founder accused of financial mismanagement, and Save the Children having spent a third of its advertising budget with an agency run by its CEO’s brother. Charities have long been condemned for their excessively high executive salaries. Save the Children has, reportedly, at least six of its executives on more than £100,000 a year.
Back in the day, I attended one or two charity fundraising events in the UK myself, constantly amazed at the behaviour of some of the wealthiest guests who raided whatever caught their eye.
From the gift table – gifts intended for volunteers or other deserving individuals – to the floral arrangements on tables: everything was fair game as they swooped and executed, on their departure, a scorched earth policy the SAS would have been proud of!
And (phew – great to get all this off my chest!) my final rant: all those ‘beach ready’ articles in the media now. Why do we let ourselves be exposed to such body shaming propaganda?
‘Beauty’ editors for instance, constantly promoting the latest products – irrespective of whether or not they’re any good – that have just landed on their desks. Why can’t we just accept our bodies as they are?
So, do excuse me, won’t you, while I totter off to get my body ‘beach ready’ – modelled loosely upon that of the occasional whale washed-up here on Spain’s beaches…

Nora Johnson’s thrillers ‘Landscape of Lies,’ ‘Retribution,’ ‘Soul Stealer,’ ‘The De Clerambault Code’ (www.nora-johnson.com) available from Amazon in paperback/eBook (€0.89;£0.79) and iBookstore. Profits to Cudeca.