The other night I switched on the TV and found myself watching a Sky News programme called The Pledge. I've no idea what it's about or why it's called after furniture polish. I only stayed long enough to realise one of the people on it was Carol Malone. She's a journalist.
She's one of the journalists who are happy to call MPs who vote against Brexit 'traitors' and accuse them of 'betraying' the Tory party.
She's also thick as a brick. Her debating technique involves talking...and talking...and talking. And if anyone else gets a word in, she talks over them. She regularly reduces Stig Abell of the Times Lit Supp to total silence on the News Review, just by talking.
This all started when the Torygraph printed pictures of 'rebel' Tory MPs - 'mutineers' against setting a firm date for leaving the EU.
If you haven't seen the front page, here it is:
https://inews.co.uk/opinion/telegraph-went-far-calling-tory-rebels-mutineers/
One of the MPs featured is Paul Masterton who 'serves' my constituency. I have to admit I was impressed: Paul is not known for so much as taking a breath without checking with Tory HQ.
So what is Carol's problem with Brexit? She and newspaper people like her have insisted that Brexit is Brexit and must go ahead. Most Remain voters have just given up trying to argue that one. So they too are reduced to silence. Brexit voters, like Carol, have completely forgotten that 48% of the people who voted in the EU referendum were against leaving the EU. They don't want to hear the Remainers' reasons and they certainly don't want to consider whether they're happy with things so far and what they might want to have happen next. As far as British democracy goes, Remain voters are out of the picture.
And we don't seem to be getting much news on the negotiations. Frankly that's unacceptable.
For one thing, it gives rise to all sorts of rumours: there will be unification of Eire and Northern Ireland to sort the border issue; Grimsby will be allowed freeport status; the City (London, of course) will be able to bring in EU workers but nobody else will. And that's just this week.
We hear all the time that print media is doomed: newspapers will soon be no more. Sooner the better, in my opinion, and the anxiety over losing newspapers is such a British thing: nothing must ever change. We must always have 37 (British) 'national' newspapers, churning out crap about the Royal Family, the dangers or benefits of statins, warning about mega-storms approaching or being knee-deep in snow, and telling made-up stories about Big Brother or that shower of chancers in the Australian jungle, depending on the season. And the circulation falls and falls.
We almost always have that great big gap in newspaper coverage: nothing about 'abroad' unless it's the USA or Zimbabwe, nothing about Catalonia, nothing about the UK economy currently tanking, no analysis of what's happening in places like Russia.
It's enough to drive you to internet news - and it does! A lot of us are pretty clued-in these days about online news. We treat it all with a pinch of salt, just as we do with print media.
The mainstream media's response is to become even more right wing (apart from the Guardian and the Mirror) and more outrageous in its stories and presentation. Frankly, if newspapers die in the next few years, hell whack it intae them.
PS Thank you to Bella Caledonia readers for your support for my blog. It took me about 7 years to pluck up the courage to post a blog - and I only recently started to share it to Bella. I enjoy reading your views, even when I don't necessarily agree...but that's the nature of the big discussion we're engaged in - and the big journey Scotland is on. There are more original ideas on Bella than in the whole of mainstream media!
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