Thread 2. To feel disappointed after reading this in The Observer about the author and her husband from The Salt Path book and film?

[AWanderingFool]

Thread Two for The Salt Path and Raynor Winn/Sally Walker/Sally Winn discussions.

Thread One is here: www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5368194-to-feel-disappointed-after-reading-this-in-the-observer-about-the-author-and-her-husband-from-the-salt-path-book-and-film?

I am the OP who started the first thread when this story broke in The Observer. I think this post goes too far. Until we know the truth about Moth/Tim's health I think you need to tread a little more carefully on this point just like The Observer team is doing. We also know that ill and disabled people can have good days and bad days, good periods of time and bad periods of time. Questioning someone's entitlement to disability benefits like this on the basis of a photo feels a little Daily Mail-like. It is part of the old and still current 'you don't look ill enough or disabled enough' trope and is something that causes misery and discrimination to ill and disabled people.

Patrick Haseldine
@BerntCarlsson
31m
Replying to
@SamCoatesSky
CALLING THE KETTLE BLACK
Chloe accuses Raynor Winn of fabricating information about her book 'The Salt Path'. Don't forget Chloe was the BBC journalist whose reporting of the alleged chemical weapon Douma attack in Syria contained serious inaccuracies.

https://x.com/BerntCarlsson/status/1942324288046129528

https://wikispooks.com/wiki/ChloeHadjimatheou

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9958679/BBC-admits-Syria-gas-attack-report-flaws-complaint-Peter-Hitchens.html

@wellwateris it Night Waking by Sarah Moss?

When did they do the walk - cos there should be several years of interest on the 64K.

Someone tried to school me earlier on why it’s not possible to fact check non-fiction books. I think it’s appalling then tbh. The publishing industry has always moaned about things like Wikipedia because anyone can edit it etc etc, but if no one checks facts in non-fiction books then book publishers have no room to talk. At the bare minimum if the account hinges on a specific illness then that should be very easy to fact check as the person will have lots of correspondence from the nhs etc.

Plus, if you look at LI you'll see that he has liked every thread about this story. (Does LI have threads?)

I didn't mean to imply that pictures of people with disabilities walking or standing or having fun in physical ways means they are fine. I'm sorry.

It was more that here's Tim Walker who's had a degenerative disease for 18 years and should be dead or severely physically disabled by now on top of a large block waving his limbs about.

It was meant to be specific to a man we know is a shyster.

I think we should also bear in mind that the fear of questioning how someone's illness presents, or questioning the fact that they look well far beyond expectations, is EXACTLY why Belle Gibson got away with her con for as long as she did.

Mistral - more likely! I wondered how it could be in such good nick.

Love a bit of mustard moleskin.

I’m now wondering whether Sally’s apparent duplicity is the reason why GA was so uncharacteristically dreadful in the film? It’s as though she couldn’t work her out. No wonder!

But why do such an oddly bizarre thing? To write a non-fiction book based on lies. Sally couldn’t possibly have known it would even be published, let alone become a best seller with a film. Why not just quietly go to their other home in France?

Hmm - 'X' is waking up

Maybe she really wanted to be a writer?

Which bit do you think isn’t true? Who are you suggesting is actually lying?

So now the Daily Mail is a good thing?!

One of the few things my father instilled in me, and something that’s always stayed, came from lyric by The Jam:

“Don’t believe in everything you see or hear.”

It was his way of teaching me to think for myself, and to never take the world at face value. I’m a cynical bastard, but I’d rather be a cynic than a fool.

They couldn’t go to France because they owed people money there too.
i do believe they did the walk but the reason was to run away from their debts.
i think she is an entertaining writer and some minor embellishment is ok. (Poetic licence if you will)
The problem is the scale of it.
As for his illness … well he’s probably got something.

I looked this up & bought this, due to the recommendations on thread. It's currently £0.99 on Amazon e-books.

Which part of the Observer investigation isn't true?

Yes, I think that’s probably about right too. She is a good writer.

The point is that a complaint was upheld by the BBC against her regarding the veracity of a story she was responsible for whether that is relevant in this case remains a moot point.

I would have thought she wouldn't want another blot like that on her CV, so has been extra careful about what she writes and says ever since.

I don't think she's a journalist who regularly is inaccurate. She's not a hack.

And she has done some excellent investigative journalism.

All worth noting though as the story develops.

True enough but an awful lot of damage has been done to brand Winn since this came out, and all Sally Walker has said is that she's taking legal advice and that the articles are misleading.

She had the opportunity before publication to refute the allegations. Her legal team could have got an injunction. She's had almost 48 hours to repudiate what the articles say.

Instead the charity they're involved with has dropped them, their nephew has called them pathalogical liars (again libellous and actionable if untrue), and she's cancelled her engagements.

Thread 3 is on the way - bear with.