Post by johnloony on Aug 26, 2023 20:12:31 GMT
I looked up to see who the MPs were in Bedfordshire, and there weren't any obvious ones who seemed old enough to be likely to die suddenly; I checked the TV news headlines, and news websites, and Google, and couldn't find any reports of any MP dying. I contacted my MP via Twitter, and he said he hadn't heard anything.
On Wednesday 11th July *someone* phoned again to say it was a false alarm. I asked who he thought had died, and he said Nadine Dorries (Mid Bedfordshire). It was obviously a false report or rumour, but he told me that he had seen it on a rolling headline on the screen on Sky News - and that other people had seen it as well.
I am now confused because I haven't heard or seen any other rumours about it, and Google doesn't show any results for any rumours or reports or hoaxes that there might have been. I can hardly believe that Sky News would have broadcast any such thing without checking - even for a few minutes - or that a false report like that wouldn't itself have been reported on by other media.
The only other possibility is that my informant is a silly old fool who misread something, or otherwise somehow got completely the wrong idea. I remember that he told me some time last year that Nigel Farage had told him that UKIP reckoned that there might be a by-election in Mid Bedfordshire because Nadine Dorries might have been in trouble with her expenses (or something), but it obviously never came to anything.
The only other idea I can think of is that "Dorries" and "dies" both end in "ies", so perhaps it was misread somehow. Did anybody else hear or see any such rumours at any time on Monday or Tuesday?