Departed From Reality
There is something deeply disturbing about the publicity the media and political class has given to the supposed phone ‘hacking’ scandals recently.
The sheer volume of coverage has been somewhat staggering, with the broadcast media having given the matter virtually wall-to-wall treatment, with every miniscule new event turned into ‘breaking news’, all reported in wide eyed, breathless tones by metropolitan elite newsreaders.
Likewise, the print media have gone into overdrive, filling hundreds of pages and columns with mindless prattle on the technological equivalent of rummaging through someone’s dustbins (something that, incidentally, our beloved and benevolent state does to us with little comment or complaint by that same media and politicians).
Yet, for all the quantity of reporting then there has been very little in the way of quality, with most articles rarely scratching beyond the surface of the issue and indulging in the typical kind of bubble-journalism which is increasingly prevalent in the mainstream media.
If only the media elite expended as much effort examining Britain’s membership of the European Union, the financial crisis into which we are rapidly sinking, or the way in which (as Christopher Booker weekly highlights) children in this country are let down in the ‘care’ of the state. But, then again, this is the British media…
During this manufactured scandal, the political and media classes have shown the full extent of their regressive and symbiotic relationship, with each feeding off the filth disgorged by the other and revelling in the spectacle: one rotten establishment propping up another equally rotten institution, like two corpses with rigor mortis.
Meanwhile, as our politicians and media vie for the limelight in their race to the bottom, dealings of far greater significance are taking place across the Atlantic. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard tells us:
On the other side, the recovery has sputtered out and the printing presses are being oiled again. Brinkmanship between the Congress and the White House over the US debt ceiling has compelled Moody’s to warn of a “very small but rising risk” that the world’s paramount power may default within two weeks.
This, as he highlights, is an incredibly scary prospect. Whether it will actually happen is another matter, but the spectre of default now hangs over the US economy and consequently the world. After the Wall Street crash in 1929, it was said that when America sneezes, the rest of the world catches the cold – and it now appears that the same or worse may well happen again unless the US institutions can pull the country back from the brink with debt reduction.
Of great interest has been the way in which the price of precious metals has risen as paper currency has receded in value due to the inflationary pressure of printing money. I recall reading an article in the Daily Mail back in May, which noted that the US State of Utah became the first in the country to legalise gold and silver coins as currency. This was a warning sign of events to come, and Evans-Pritchard highlights the increasing flight by the markets to Gold.
Yet, so absorbed in its own sordid affairs is our British media that the crisis that is gripping the world is treated as almost purely an economic rather than political issue. This is the news that should be on the front page of newspapers. This is the news that should be leading daily broadcast news bulletins on the BBC and Sky. Instead though, we have to contend ourselves with the dreary mug shots of Rebekah Brooks and company as the world crashes and burns.
