AIBU to be furious at the scorn Giles Coren shows towards grieving parents?

[AllergiesMum]

Since she was diagnosed as a toddler, DD (12) ha suffered from serious food allergies. If she consumes even a tiny fragment of a peanut she will go into anaphylactic shock and must carry an epipen at all times. She is also allergic to other nuts, eggs, and orchard fruits. Every time she attends a birthday party, play date, school trip I have to brief the supervising parent and also when she was little I had to watch her vigilantly. It has been stressful and terrifying, especially now that she is getting older and more independent although she is extremely sensible and cautious. However, so many lives have been saved thanks to the tireless activism of other parents whose children have died tragically, and specifically because of Natasha’s Law (after the death of Natasha Ednan-Laperouse when her parents campaigned to change the law to demand increased transparency in the listing of ingredients for packaged food).

So it boils my blood to read in The Times today, Giles Coren’s column about how “baffled” he is that parents who’ve lost a child campaign against the “terrible 10,000 to 1 piece of bad luck that killed them.” As an allergies parent, unlike the contemptible Mr Coren, I have the utmost respect for grieving parents who lose a child to a preventable death and then try to save others from the same tragic fate.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/caitlyn-scott-lees-father-can-teach-us-all-how-to-handle-grief-jdhdspxbd

He’s disgusting

I didn't know anything about his wife till now, and I wish I didn't. What godawful people.

Well I can see this man is popular 😂

Why does he have his own column then?

I feel sorry for him given that he has BOAT syndrome

Does anyone have a share token please?

He’s absolutely rotten to the core and writes such stupid, third-rate shit. He’s one of the reasons I don’t buy The Times any more - they should be embarrassed continuing to commission someone so awful.

I didn’t know he had a police caution over a parking row - but doesn’t surprise me. He comes across as so full of anger.

^AgnesX
Giles Coren is an arse generally and utterly embarrassing at the best of times. He's seems to have become worse with age^

IFollowRivers *
He is indeed a first rate arse but I find him disturbingly sexually alluring.*

That you Esther?

Go to this site https://archive.ph/ ignore the first box, put any article URL into the second box, and it usually comes up (sometimes you have to wait a bit for reasons I don't really understand).

I'm not even slightly shocked. He is vile.

Being 'controversial' is all he has got. Like Laurence Fox he has zero talent, and nothing to offer, so this is the only way he stays 'relevant.'

I used to like him when he was on Supersizers go... (Insert historical period here.) But I love history and food (I watch a lot of YouTube channels dedicated to historical cookery these days) so not really a suprise. That he's such an arse and a deeply unpleasant one at that kind of surprised me.

He is an utter, UTTER cunt, so no surprise his rantings are so often goady and ignorant.

I thought Jon Ronson proved Giles Coren was a psychopath in his book “the psychopath test”.

?

Victoria Coren Mitchell is a world class poker player. No slouch, our Victoria.

OK, I’ll bite.

My stepfather was murdered by a teen with a knife when he intervened to stop a car theft. The Daily Mail journo who interviewed my Mum asked her if she had any views on knife crime and knife carrying. She looked her dead in the eye and said “I don’t care, nothing will bring my husband back”. It’s now seen as almost compulsory to Race for Life when your brother dies of cancer or campaign to bring down Boeing when your sister dies in a plane crash. All GK is saying is that he is baffled why this is such a common reaction to an avoidable death, and that he does not think he would get any solace from campaigning in such a way. I get it. Indeed, some might think it unhealthy to fixate on altruism at such a time, especially as this often carries with it a focus on blaming a “guilty” organisation or system. Each to their own but perhaps no bad thing to make it clear that being selfish is a normal human reaction too.

Oh and my father died of leukaemia in his fifties. I’m afraid that my family and I have never fundraised for leukaemia research either. Frankly, we all just want to forget all about leukaemia forever.

Every family is entitled to react differently to the death of a child or parent. I just find it odd, as an allergies parent, that Giles Coren’s column implicitly criticized bereaved parents who choose activism as a consequence of their own children’s preventable deaths. As if this is an annoying and over reactive response.

Also, Giles’ praise for the “dignified” and stoical response of Jonathan Scott-Lee whose autistic daughter took her own life at boarding school is odd since after the inquest, although he did not blame the school or NHS, her father did call for increased awareness of autism and the fact that autistic people are seven times more prone to suicide than neuro-typical people.

Giles’s posited at the end of the column that autistic people’s emotionless response to tragedy is something “we can all learn from” as the alternative (parental activism) is a “hysterical reaction”. The idea that all autistic people are emotionless is a gross and offensive generalization.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/jonathan-lee-buckinghamshire-b2537939.html

@Unopenedpackofmenssocks I'm sorry for your family's losses. I wouldn't describe not fundraising etc as being selfish and I think wanting to forget about it all is a wholly reasonable reaction.

But from what I saw of the article, Coren isn't just arguing that. He's saying that to campaign is somehow wrong or misplaced and that the right way to grieve is to simply accept. As amply demonstrated through Natasha's Law and others, that simply isn't true and is a massive undermining of people who have fought bloody hard to make the world a bit better.

Victoria Coren Mitchell is not married to Giles Coren!

She is married to David Mitchell. From. Mitchell and Webb

Christ, it's her brother. I had no idea. Poor cow. Blood related.

Does anyone know why Giles Coren isn’t on TV any more? Didn’t he used to be on quite a bit e.g. in the amazing hotel programme that is now hosted by Rob Rinder? Has he been cancelled?

He supposedly left that programme to pursue an amazing opportunity he just couldn’t turn down. Which is yet to be revealed, years later.

I think he has some personal links to the people at the Times, who now provide all his work.

Giles’s posited at the end of the column that autistic people’s emotionless response to tragedy is something “we can all learn from” as the alternative (parental activism) is a “hysterical reaction”. The idea that all autistic people are emotionless is a gross and offensive generalization.

That's your interpretation. I didn't read it that way. The phrase "hysterical reaction" isn't actually in the article either.

I hope his rabbit dies , and he can’t sell the hutch.

It’s an opinion piece though, isn’t it. You don’t have to agree with him, he doesn’t have to represent anybody’s feelings. He’s just talking about him himself.

If he lost a child, he wouldn’t have the strength to campaign.

Surely this is a subject that needs respect and compassion. I can understand why bereaved families might campaign to prevent further avoidable deaths. I can equally well understand why others want to move on and try to forget. It’s pitching one against the other that is so inappropriate.