20 February 2026
Bedford Ian has been looking at recent goings on across Bedford Borough and tells us what he thinks of it all…
Murdered by words
How could I begin this week’s column without doffing a cap, raising a glass and offering a hearty bravo to whoever is running Bedford Borough Council’s social media account?
Because if you missed it, you missed something truly special.
What should have been simple, respectful posts wishing members of Bedford’s diverse communities well at the start of their religious festivals quickly attracted the usual crowd.
The keyboard crusaders, the “what about me?” brigade, the people who think Facebook is the last bastion of Western civilisation.
And instead of hiding, deleting or issuing a bland corporate response, the council’s social media team calmly and brilliantly clapped back.
One reply in particular has now been shared tens of thousands of times by proud Bedfordians and beyond.
But, they weren’t alone.
Bedfordshire Police also found themselves on the receiving end of the same tired criticism after posting about religious festivals. My personal favourite was the indignant “Concentrate on catching criminals, rather than virtue signaling…… signed a tax payer!!! (sic)”
The force’s response was beautifully simple, “Just to clear something up for you – police officers don’t create the posts on this account.”
And a quiet nod to Bedford Hospital, too, whose social media team posted similarly but switched the comments off. Either they’d seen enough elsewhere and couldn’t be bothered, or the accounts really are managed by surgeons in between major operations.
Obviously, I’m joking, but some people will still need it spelt out.
Council department heads, police officers and doctors are not doing these posts. They all have in-house teams working on their comms, so please, for the love of whichever god you believe (or pretend to believe) in, shut up.
Missing the point
If Bedford Borough Council’s social media team is on sparkling form, then Daoist philosophy would suggest balance must be restored somewhere else.
And readers, I fear I know where.
Whoever is running the Bedford Borough Conservatives’ social media account is giving me mild palpitations.
Last week I criticised our Council’s ruling party for using a deeply serious subject, the Epstein scandal, as a vehicle for local political point-scoring. I was clear: the crimes are abhorrent, those connected should be held to account, and none of it should be reduced to headline-chasing.
Read: Bedford Ian writes… (13 February 2026)
This week, in a post on their social media channels, the response from the Conservatives was to suggest my focus should have been on the “substance” of their open letter rather than its delivery.
Which would be a fair point… had they actually delivered it.
The entire issue was that their so-called open letter wasn’t sent to the MP in question… twice. At least not before sending it to a journalist and then posting it on Facebook.
If you want a serious response, you send the letter to the reciepient first. If you want attention, you send it to a journalist.
That’s not media bias, that’s basic process.
The part that concerns me isn’t that they criticised this column. That’s their right, and long may robust debate continue. It’s the fact that they appear to have missed my very clear point entirely.
Media literacy across the general public is patchy, we all know that. But when a political group seeking to run our Borough can’t grasp the difference between scrutiny of a stunt and disagreement with a policy, that’s worrying.
Read: Media Literacy Project: A guide to how journalism works and why it needs your support
Copy and paste
When the team behind the Bedford Independent launched, they were clear about one thing: resist churnalism at all costs.
Churnalism, for the uninitiated, is the lazy art of copying and pasting the same story across multiple titles, tweaking a location here, swapping a name there, and pretending it’s local journalism.
To be fair, this usually isn’t the fault of the reporter on the ground. Many hardworking journalists loathe it as much as readers do. The problem sits higher up the food chain.
The big publishing groups, Reach, Iconic Media Group, Newsquest and others, have turned it into a business model.
Case in point, spotted by our own sports editor Tom Carr, multiple Winter Olympics stories replicated across titles with the sort of clumsy edits that would make a GCSE English teacher wince.
And readers, I’m sure I’m right when I predict that you hate it.
People are already weary of clickbait, recycled content and stories that feel like they were assembled by algorithm rather than instinct. This sort of thing only deepens that distrust.
Independent publishers work hard to report what actually matters in their communities. They may be a little slow in delivery sometimes but that’s because they’re waiting for that extra quote or killer detail, or their one journalist is too busy on one story to pick up another.
I’m not saying journalists at big publishers don’t work hard, I know they do.
But it makes me really angry when the people in charge of the biggest players in the sector continue hollowing out newsrooms, centralising content, and then lament the decline of local journalism as if it’s a mystery.
It isn’t.
As Tom said on social media: ‘Do better. You’re making local journalism look ridiculous.’
Kettering kindness
Bedford Independent editor Paul Hutchinson had something of a rollercoaster weekend recently.
After a perfectly civilised day out in London with friends, he returned to Bedford, strolled confidently towards the ticket barriers at the station… and realised his phone was still on the train.
There are few modern feelings worse than watching your train pull away while simultaneously realising your entire digital life is heading north without you.
Paul dashed home and opened “Find My iPhone”, only to discover his device had disembarked at Kettering and was, according to the tiny blinking dot, strolling into town without him.
At this point, most of us would be planning for the worst.
But then, salvation. Apple’s lost mode pinged through, the mystery carrier of said phone saw it and rang Paul’s partner to explain he’d been trying to hand it in but the station office was closed.
A quick call, a simple arrangement, and by the next morning the phone was safely back in its rightful, slightly sheepish owner’s hand.
Paul hasn’t named the good Samaritan, but if you’re reading this, thank you.
In a world quick to assume the worst, it’s nice to be reminded that most people are decent, and for absent-minded phone owners everywhere, there is hope.
See you soon, Bedford Ian.
PS: If you see anything Bedford Ian might find amusing, let us know at news@BedfordIndependent.co.uk.
