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.

The Dividing Line

If the broadcast and printed media were your only sources of material for current affairs and news, you might be forgiven in thinking that the upheaval at News Corp was the most important issue of the day.

Yet, while the liberal media and Westminster village continue to absorb themselves with the fantastically important matter of News Corporation’s aborted takeover of BSkyB and supposed phone hacking, those of us still residing in the real world have to contend with the prospect of an Italian debt crisis, as the credit agencies again downgraded the country’s credit status.

Meanwhile, our wise, hardworking MPs have rushed like brain-dead sheep to condemn Murdoch’s various organisations, presumably in the vain hope that it would divert attention away from their own scandals, the most recent of which took place on Tuesday night when the House of Commons kindly donated £9bn of our money (or at the least money borrowed at our expense) to the International Monetary Fund, who, in turn, will pass that money to Greece which will soon default on its debts. Excellent work gentlemen. Well done.

Thus, the divide between the political class and electorate widens ever further, and yet more of our money is poured down the drain. In all probability, once the liberal media has given up flogging the Murdoch horse, they will return to the ‘nasty cuts’ agenda, blissfully unaware that their world is collapsing around them.

Return From Hiatus

Two years. It really doesn’t seem all that long since I gave up posting on this website. At the time I had planned to just give blogging a rest for a week or so, but without quite realising, the weeks turned to months, and the months turned to years.

Never mind though. It’s not as though I’ve missed all that much, since very little on the British political scene has changed in that time. Yes, we may have had a General Election last year, but the Government’s policies have remained largely identical.

And so it came to past that the electorate were duped into believing that voting out New Labour and voting in Blue Labour – sorry, the Conservatives – would constitute a real and perceivable change in the way the country was run. Sadly though, they were wrong.

No longer does the ‘terrible’ and ‘awful’ Mr Gordon Brown head up our Westminster administration, but instead that nice young man, Mr ‘Dave’ Cameron, who in contrast to the great clunking fist seems unable to do wrong in the eyes of much of the liberal media. Such was the negative media frenzy at the time, people blamed Mr Brown if their train was late, or they dropped their coffee on the floor, or their shoelaces snapped while they were tying them, or if it rained.

Quite why Mr Brown was apparently so ‘terrible’ and ‘awful’ very few people remember or care. They’re just glad that he’s gone, and anyway, isn’t the new Prime Minister so much better looking than the last? He just looks the part doesn’t he? And hasn’t he got such a lovely, well dressed wife? She has such nice hats. And doesn’t he make such good speeches (though one can never quite remember what they were about)? And so on and so on.

In the meantime the steady process of our MPs giving away yet more of our sovereignty to the EU has quietly continued without opposition. State expenditure and borrowing has continued to rise at an even faster rate than under Labour, despite boasts of ‘putting the finances in order’ and talk of those nasty, evil and increasingly non-existent cuts. Crime has gone up. So has immigration. And our taxes too. Yet some people just fail to notice, so distracted are they by the bread and circuses of modern British politics and media.

A great storm is approaching though, one that even those caught up in the usual media circuses of the moment won’t be able to ignore forever. The crisis in Greece is likely only the beginning of it, and quite where we will all be in another two years time is anyone’s guess – but I think we can safely predict that it’s not sunlit uplands which lie ahead. It’s going to be downhill from here on in.

A Thousand Years Of History

Our late Indian summer is at an end and the first chilled winds of October bring with them tidings of Ireland’s eventual capitulation to the unceasing machine of European integration.

Despite a valiant rejection of the Lisbon Treaty by the Irish last year in the face of overwhelming opposition from their entire political class, the media and big business, the nation that once sought independence from British rule has been bullied into accepting rule from distant Brussels.

Only Poland and the Czech Republic have yet to ratify the Lisbon Treaty, and it will likely not be long before they do. As the Czech President Vaclav Klaus sadly noted to waiting journalists:

The Irish had the last chance to say something about Lisbon… because after today’s Irish referendum there will never be another referendum in Europe.

And slowly but surely, as day turns to night, the EU’s slow motion coup d’état takes effect. Our sovereignty has been strangled, our independence dissolved. Squandered are centuries of hard won liberties, rights and freedoms – so often without our knowledge or even a care. It is, as Hugh Gaitskell so accurately predicted, to be the end of a thousand years of history.

Yet, there is hope. We, as a nation, are still capable of saving ourselves from the jaws of defeat as we have so many times before. Perhaps it will be that resilience of character and spirit that sees us through again – but only if we will it to be so. For there will be no-one else behind us to catch us should we falter or fall; no foreign intervention to rescue us from our fate.

That decision is up to us now. Either we wake from our delusions of a benevolent European Union, realise that our future as a truly democratic nation lies in grave danger, and resolve to act – or we slowly subside into bureaucracy, and foreign rule by an unelected state, a fate for which we will only have ourselves to blame.