Have just found yesterday’s letter to the Telegraph (see comments yesterday) in their website edition. It’s an accurate statement by the letter writer – that contrary to their earlier report mistletoe is abundant – but the letter is about growths in Bushey Park, Richmond, and so the Telegraph have headlined it as ‘Parks show no sign of a mistletoe shortage‘.
Which is nowhere near an admission that the wider ‘mistletoe shortage’ they reported is imaginery – and only exists in the mind of Lucy Kinder, their reporter who conflated berry shortages in other plants to berry shortages in mistletoe. A pity – I know it’s only a trivial matter but a correction would be good. I’m not going to write to them about it though – they should, if they had competent reporters, be able to work it out for themselves…
But I like the picture they used – as that bloke with the basket is me – though as it’s in an orchard in Tenbury Wells it doesn’t really illustrate the point made in the letter – a pic of Bushey Park would, surely, be more appropriate.