Only Fools and Politics

In a time when nothing you hear is necessarily true, when all of what you see is suspect and eye-witness accounts depend so much on the ideology of the witness, how do you tell fact from fiction. (I just accidentally typed ‘fuction’; I think it’s a better word.) I mean, did you ever read a newspaper article which was wholly accurate? Or to be more specific, have you ever read a news item written about something on which you are something of an authority and realised that the writer hasn’t the first clue about the subject?

Our media world is full to the gunwales with reporters, wannabe reporters, commentators and so-called ‘influencers’ who care not one jot about accuracy, just so long as they can get their name out there. The report that the US government is (and who can say if this is true or not?) briefing TikTok ‘stars’ on the situation in Ukraine is just one more step along the way to the Orwellian singularity in which the truth is whatever people say it is.

The propaganda wars waged between east and west is just an upscale version of the information wars that have been pressed by governments and oppositions on their populations for many years. The future is bright, the future is shiny. “Jam tomorrow!” cries the party of government. “Lies, all lies!” say the opposition. And then, they swap places, leaving the scripts in place for their opposite numbers.

Given the unknowability of the future, this pantomime is a safe charade, for who can say that had the current opposition been in charge things would have been different? And a catastrophic decision made today is in no way an impediment to ennoblement tomorrow. In this rarefied world our actors in leadership find themselves sucked up by the undertow and swept along into the maelstrom of misinformation. I genuinely believe that those ‘in the know’ are simply in the thrall of different ‘facts’.

How else can you explain how the deafening roar of the usurped electorate goes unheard against the quiet whisper of the Mandelsons, the poison drip of the Grieves, the persistent murmur of the Westminster echo chambers? “British jobs for British workers!” pipes the election clarion, yet in government this becomes permission to open up the floodgates to all who wish to gorge on our largesse. And it matters not which party because as you look from Labour to Tory, from Tory to Labour, you could be forgiven for imagining they are all from the same porcine species.

It is little wonder, then, that so many have turned away from the news, regarding papers, podcasts, panel discussions and the like as mere entertainment. The truth matters little when the prospect of one commentator ‘owning’ another is so much more amusing. Even words like ‘owning’ have become the stuff of headline writers, hyperbole to sell a dreary exchange which results in no outcome of note.

In fact, the news has become little more than a sitcom. An episodic series of pratfalls, mishaps and misadventures in which Del Boy learns nothing, Rodney is still a plonker and Trigger hasn’t a clue what just happened. The news has no real effect on us any more, it is just the wallpaper, the background to our dreary lives, scrawled with the pattern of the day, and it only exists to give us a moment’s vicarious glee at the misfortune of others. When nothing is real it doesn’t matter how daft the plot, and if one punchline fails to land don’t worry, there’s one born every minute.

Coming up...

No news is good news? Who says that? There’s always news, good and bad, but at this time of the year good or bad, it’s pretty unedifying stuff. Articles about who got what or who should have got what, or who would have got what if it was up to ‘me’ for Christmas. Some pretty unimaginative ‘alternate’ Christmas party/food/travel ideas, too late for anybody to do anything about. A million diet articles, all contradictory, yet all saying the same thing: ‘we don’t know any better than you do’. And Christmas fashion, for fuck’s sake. At Christmas the way you look is entirely in the hands of the ridiculous clothes others buy you… for a joke.

Then there are the royals. For crying out loud, aren’t they allowed just one day off? The Queen’s speech is leaked and dissected before it’s even broadcast. The new parents are nagged and nagged and nagged to parade their shiny plump prince for public consumption and in today’s Daily Mail they even manage to resurrect the ghost of the decade-dead Queen Mum – Gawd bless ‘er! All we need is another palace intruder story and we’ll be made up.

Also we await the reviews of the year and the predictions for what is to come. Well don’t bother because I have it all here. Are you ready? Some famous people will confess to dalliances with other famous people, much to their famous associates’ astonishment. Other less famous but fabulously wealthy persons will end up in trouble for variously buying favour/honours/influence and bringing our political/judicial/honours system into pretend disrepute. Others will call for public inquiries and the break-up of our political/judicial/honours systems. Oh and there will be an election, after which a coalition government will deliver more of the same.

There will be some sort of disease epidemic which everybody will quickly claim to have contracted and shortly thereafter there will be a ‘man’ version in a continuation of the old saw that men are incapable of bearing illness with dignity. The feminists will seize on this with glee as yet further evidence that they have not one amusing bone in their body… including, quite probably, the humerus. In other words humans will show no obvious signs of evolution, no matter how many books are published claiming otherwise; the battle of the sexes will rumble on for a good few millennia yet.

Other wars will wax and wane and the planetary total of refugees will continue to rise and one way or another they will all try to come to Europe which, by then, will have started its own little ‘warlets’ preparatory to the next ‘war to end all wars’ which, in all probability will be fought mostly by drones controlled from angry teenagers’ bedrooms. And on top of that even the weather will – by all accounts – begin dropping ordnance on us. Not content with merely forecasting the weather the climate industry, ever desperate for bigger headlines, will preface every expectation of a bit of rain or snow with the term ‘weather bomb’.

The British 'weather bomb' - same old shit

So don’t bother with the news, there is no such thing. Nothing is new under the sun, as they say. But if you do go in for perusing the headlines and especially if you are inclined to be taken in by what they say, then I have one very British piece of advice for you. Prepare for disappointment.

Famous for... Wait, gimme a second...

Scanning the online newspapers - the ones that most people read as opposed to the proper ones people pretend to read - for inspiration to care about something enough to write about it, in a very short space of time I learned the following:

• X-Factor reject Cher Lloyd had piss thrown at her during the V Festival in Chelmsford.
• One Direction (I still have no idea what they are) were mobbed at the same festival.
• Apparently there's yet another 'Celebrity' Big Brother on at the moment.
• Courtney Stodden is still only seventeen, or is that her IQ? Who knows?
• People I've never heard of are flaunting bare flesh on beaches.
• A picture of a cat has been downloaded more times in a second than all of Leonardo's works in a lifetime
• Kim Kardashian's arse is opening a restaurant or something.

It strikes me our politicians are on a winner. Given the amount of shit and derision people will wade through for the most minuscule scrap of fame is it any wonder they don't generally regard the economic health of the nation, or its sovereignty as subjects worthy of discussion? People in pubs don't really talk about politics in any meaningful way - all they care about is whether they are in receipt of a living, waged or unwaged.

Julian Assange, quantitative easing, the Eurozone, HS2, etc. These issues matter not a jot to most of the population. Even the mention of bankers and bonuses only elicits a low growl of confused anger and not the howl of rage the revolutionaries want to invoke. And it's all because nobody knows anything any more. In fact nobody even wants to know anything any more.

Why strive to become good at anything when the world will contrive to make that accomplishment obsolete? Why become skilled when the skill can be acquired by others who will perform it for a lower wage? And even in the pursuit of fame it's more important that you have a gut-wrenching back-story than any shred of talent.

When middle-aged S&M porn instantly outsells the world's most renowned authors; when the reporting of a selfless act of sacrifice is read by a tenth of those who click on pictures of anthropomorphic kittens (Aaww look! He's writing a book with his little paws! So cyooooot!) when hard graft yields nothing in comparison with lucky chance, what do we expect?

So in place of any thoughtful words today, in my incessant bid for talent-free blogging celebrity, I bring you a taste of the future from an Old Miaowster.

Miaow-na Lisa

A Few Good Men

In a follow-up to yesterday's housing benefit story I offer another view, from The Daily Mail's Stephen Glover. Of course there's a problem right there. As soon as I cite the Daily Mail, there will be a visceral reaction from certain quarters that the DM is only capable of biased reporting which, ironically enough, is exactly what that article is complaining about.

I got into a small twitter-spat last night on similar lines; that from one perspective another's viewpoint will be biased. In this case I was 'chatting' to a lawyer, in my opinion a profession with no more sense of right and wrong than many of the villains it often represents. (Nothing personal, Jane.) It came down to a simple choice - given a vote would you put to the sword all the tradesmen (such as electricians) or could you suffer to live without lawyers?

Survey: Given a choice, who would you put up against the wall?

          A) Bent, scum-sucking, parasitic lawyers, or
          B)  Good, honest, down to earth tradesmen

Do you see what I did there? I deftly employed a certain amount of barely discernible spin to influence your vote, just like the politicos do. (Although in this case there was no need; the lawyers every time, right?)

In the movie, Colonel Jessup said "You can't handle the truth!" But what IS the truth? I know what I think - and so do you - but there is always more than one way of looking at any issue, to wit:

• Did the government just generously increase pensions or viciously slash them?
• Did they cut their wealthy chums a nice tax break, or will the 45% rate actually increase the overall tax take, which is far more important for the country? (The reaction of wealthy Français to proposals to increase theirs to 45% suggests the latter but only time will tell.)
• Have we actually had any real cuts in public spending yet, or is everybody just reacting the way The Guardian and the BBC tells them they should?
• Living standards falling is not the same thing as true, harsh austerity - many people live beyond their real means anyway. For the greater majority, life continues pretty much the same with a bit of added thrift. Sounds sensible to me, but to some it's like stamping on the heads of babies.

Both sides let their political affiliations affect their judgement, which makes rational discussion and debate almost impossible. To the left any reductions in public spending are a calculated assault on the very poor. To the right, those in work cannot be expected to forever pay for more and more poor - they breed, you know.

But worse than that, it makes it nigh-on impossible to even know what the truth is because those who deliver this important information may often be biased themselves. (Take a bow, the popular news media.) Then it all comes down to perception and acceptability. While the last government were spending every penny they could to buy acceptance, riding the wave of worldwide fiscal madness and impropriety, nobody cared because the world looked like they thought it ought to look.

Truth or Beauty?

I have a feeling that what we are experiencing right now is nothing more or less than naked reality. And while the truth doesn't have to be ugly, it often falls short of what you might want to be told. But, as Paloma Faith asks, "Do you want the truth or something beautiful?"

Please feel free to vote on the lawyer thing by casting your vote in comments, below.

News Blindness

I suffer an affliction, a cross I've had to bear for many years. I am partially news-sighted and cannot see what others see. So-called news items which engage the British public often leave me cold and disinterested. I also have a compassion-gap, for which I am extremely grateful. So those two ‘qualities’ make me react rather differently at times to the great unwashed out there. Here are a few of the kind of news stories that regularly fail to move me either way:

I am largely unmoved by stories of babies with ghastly diseases. First, it is not national news. It’s sad, it may even be tragic, I’m happy when they pull through, but I’d rather not hear about it at all, and the overuse of the adjective ‘brave’ devalues the whole story.

Similarly, animals. Animals do things out of blind instinct, not through any humanistic sense of nobility or justice... or bravery, for that matter. The same lack of nobility and justice also applies to many humans. Why then, is everybody mock-surprised when people in positions of responsibility and power and driven by natural human acquisitive instincts turn out to be corrupt, venal or just downright dishonest? So, I really don’t give much of a toss about the Leveson enquiry.

Not all foreign news is of any interest either and this especially applies to American primary elections. Why Twitter glows red-hot with indignation when one religious nut-job wins over a gun-toting redneck in a three-way competition with a climate-change apologist when none of us will ever hear of any of them ever again is beyond me. I bet the Yanks don’t follow the Lickhill ward bye-election.

In the UK we get a lot of weather. We’re bound to, plonked betwixt some pretty disparate confluent air masses and the vagaries of the Gulf Stream gyre. Sometimes it's cold. Sometimes it's hot. Often it’s wet and windy and sometimes you’ll get lots of different weather in the same day. But it’s not news for goodness’ sake and if you can't cope with that maybe you should just leave. Which sort of brings me to the only bit of news I could manage to give a stuff about today

Nobody is struggling with 'grinding poverty' in the UK, no matter how desperately some people yearn for that to be the case. Sure, you might need to reconsider replacing your telly or taking a holiday this year, but you won’t starve. Neither will you be put out of house and home. But if working people can’t afford to live exactly where they want, why should you be able to remain in accommodation those same working people could never afford? I don’t see why poor old benighted Stoke should suffer you, but the principle of moving your unproductive flesh somewhere cheaper is sound enough.

The Hanley Hillbillies - There goes the neighbourhood

Whatever else it is it is not ethnic or social cleansing as this article claims. it is simply the husbanding of scarce resources The working give enough to the unwaged as it is and nobody owes you a living. If you are over here on a benefits raid then maybe it’s time we opened the door so you can return to your former life. Pay for you forever or pay your airfare home? If I were you I’d shut the fuck up, before somebody puts it to a vote.