Good news is exposed for what it is

​Amidst all the gloom comes some good news. It’s OK to give the finger to ‘good posture.’ A widely reported study today purports to show that slouching in your sofa has no identifiable consequences such as a bad back. After a week of slouching on the sofa thanks to the flu this comes to me as a relief. This good posture stuff is probably the last redoubt of the Protestant Work Ethic Party, which sees sitting around doing nothing as a cardinal sin, not unrelated to being a single mother or as ‘Sir’ Nick Clegg might say, not getting up with the alarm clock. There will be a backlash (forgive the pun) since after Brexit more of us will have to go out into the fields to pick our own potatoes, etc. I remember once – just once – getting up early to go ‘tatie riddlin’ in some forlorn muddy wasteland in Yorkshire. I realised within half an hour that being bent double in a field which stretched to infinity was not going to be the quickest route to a fast buck. I never went back. Well there we are. I’ve managed to work in a Brexit angle to a good posture story.