My granny was old, and I mean old like Victorian-old. She remembered ‘the
Old Queen’ dying. And in case you think I am talking of Quentin Crisp, I mean Queen
Vic and if you think by Queen Vic I mean the pub in East Enders, I mean:
Her Majesty Victoria, by the Grace of God,
of the United Kingdom of
Great Britain and Ireland
Queen, Defender of the Faith, Empress of India.
Strange syntax, but Gawd bless ‘er nonetheless.
Anyway, the thing is, my granny lived through some of the Boer
War, two World Wars, the Great Depression and a whole load of other
difficulties, most of which were instigated by politicians, bankers and arms dealers who stood to make a lot of money. The end result for ordinary people being the usual: premature death for some and poverty for most of the rest.
Like most prudent Victorians, Granny was very wary of borrowing money. Had she not died in the 1970s she would have tut-tutted
loudly about the ease with which people were getting credit in the 1990s – and
she would not have been alone.
After
the second world war, she also experienced the growth of American influence on the world stage including the Korea and Vietnam
wars, most of the Cold War, the creation of Israel, and a whole array of US based events such as race riots, the shootings of Kennedy and Martin Luther King, the moon landings and much of Watergate. US cultural imperialism did not pass her by and she was as swamped as anyone by Hollywood films and imported TV shows and the new language they brought with them, and more. And no doubt at
some point she may well have thought ‘they are making trouble for themselves’.
What these things had in common was an element of
predictability. Many of us thought ‘almost unlimited credit will end
in tears’. Most of us probably thought that ‘someone’ was keeping an eye on the
apparent folly of the finance industry. Few of us expected that it would involve the banks, financial
institutions and regulatory bodies behaving quite as badly as they did, and (at the time of writing) the near collapse of
the Euro.
And I think many of us have thought at some time or other ‘those American cousins are getting a
little pushy, there’ll be tears before bedtime’. Though, having avoided nuclear war with the Russians, none of us expected it’s
most brutal realisation (to date) to take the form of the spectacular destruction of the
World Trade Centre and the emergence
of suicide bombings as a regular feature of the news.
Which brings me to the point: The News. I find news coverage is making me more concerned about financial and political issues I can do nothing about. The sheer number of hours of news devoted to pundits picking over 'events' is going to have unintended consequences. It must effect the thoughts of those with power and influence as well as those egregious tossers speculating on the financial markets with greed as their only motive.
And what effect will it have on rest of us who so often feel we can do nothing? In the short term people will just become more paranoid. The long term tangible result is likely to be that most people will become poorer and gap between those who have and those who have not will continue getting wider. This is seldom a good thing.
So what are we doing about reducing the amount of bad news? Sod all, that's what. In fact BBC Radio 4 has just announced
that it is extending its lunchtime news programme, The World at One, by 15 mins. I listen
to a lot of Radio 4 (you can tell by the very little information I have on a
lot of topics) and the thought of yet another 15 mins of daily misery is little short of depressing.
Radio 4 already has three hours of Today, half an hour of lunchtime
grimness, 60 minutess of the PM show, followed immediately
by another 30 minutes of much the same at 6pm (but this time the presenter is wearing a suit), and the 3 minute news hits every
hour. To those you can add the regular current affairs programmes including
Question Time, Any Questions, Any Answers, Today in Parliament, The Westminster
Hour, The Week in Westminster, What the Papers Say, and a load of one-off political
and news based shows.
There is also the print press, other radio networks, innumerable bulletins and rolling
news channels on TV, Internet news and campaigning sites at home and abroad - a veritible tsunami of (mostly) bad news. All these channels need to fill their schedules with something, but as there is not enought factual information, much of their content is 'speculation' or what most of us would understand as unfounded tosh.
We have all heard the fanatical probing of
interviewers, fairy-footed evasions of politicians, denials of bankers, distortions of industrialists,
speculation of pundits, arguments between experts and the plain bollocks contributed by anyone who just happened to be passing the broadcaster’s microphone. And most of us must have thought ‘just take a break, give
us some breathing space’ or maybe ‘this
is not helping’ or possibly ‘stop picking at it, it’ll never get better’ or
even ‘this is going to end in tears’.
Our media cannot generate all this information (think of it as
light) without producing a lot of nonsense (think of it as heat). One day it will ignite. No one knows how or when the news-introspection-misery-bomb
will go off or how the detonation will manifest itself, but it is likely to be
in the political or financial sectors triggered by a significant number of people
looking after number one... leading to a societal breakdown brought about by
mass public discontent with the unfairness of it all resulting on some form of
anarchy. And I don’t mean the fun sort
of anarchy with a nice logo...
which relies on a functioning brewing industry, dogs on string and the welfare
state in order to exist, but a rather more unpleasant one where a big bloke takes all your stuff, kills
your family and enslaves you to work in his salt mine.
Or it could be a very scared political class, led from
behind by a wealthy elite closing ranks and instigating martial law. Or both.
But whatever and whenever, most of us will say ‘I knew that was going to happen.’
I know I will.
