[Part I was published yesterday, you can read it here]
The media seems to have reached rock bottom as far as the essential requirement of trust is concerned. The ‘man who would have been down the pub’ does not want continually to hear about shortages of this or that, or how many people have died since this week or last. The older person living alone, the single parent with children or those worrying about elderly and sometimes fragile parents are worried enough, without seeing or hearing constantly on TV from some expert or another who wants to either attack the government (personified by ‘Boris’) or purports to have all the answers. Frightened to a certain extent, unsure of how to react, worried about their job and finances, the last thing they want is 24/7 doom and gloom and conflicting opinions from our news outlets.
Finally, the government responds with daily updates and a simple message. Stay home, protect the NHS and save lives. Simple and to the point even if you do not agree with it or the restrictions placed on individual freedoms, most actually comply.
When the Prime Minister becomes ill with the virus, most people are concerned for his health. But not the media who generally respond with more crisis headlines: ‘who is in charge’, ‘cabinet in disarray’ and so on.
As time goes on, the guy now in the supermarket queue is now not so happy. The crisis in the NHS did not take place. Nightingale hospitals, with or without enough equipment, have not as yet been needed, the infection and mortality rates have not been as severe as the ‘model’ predicted and the professor who created it has now been seen to disregard his own advice.
Cue some restlessness by the people who are not protected on full pay, such as civil and local government employees, teachers and others. They are rightly worried about when they can safely go back to work and earn enough to pay the mortgage and put food on the table, visit their parents and so on. In the meantime the media, desperate it seems to control public opinion, and failing miserably yet again to understand its readership and audience, keeps up its fear campaign, resulting in polls that show many are now reluctant to go out of their home, never mind return to work or send the children to school.
We hear eventually that the Prime Minister, now recovered from his near-death experience, is to make a ‘statement ‘to the nation. Millions turn on the T.V. in expectation of some hard facts. His speech though was anything but, just a repetition of what had been leaked in previous days to the media. ‘Disappointing’ said many in the audience, ‘far too long, vague and lacking in substance’ said others, an own goal actually which has lost him a great deal of good will and given the opposition and media an opportunity to create even more doubt and confusion.
Today I was talking to one of the people whom the government is not ‘looking after,’ on a low paid job in the construction industry, working all hours including emergency call outs. He needs to get back to work; for him money is tight and long term job prospects uncertain. Another contact called after seeing Boris on T.V. ‘Do you know what he was on about? – I tell you what, if I’d have wanted to watch a comedian, I’d have watched Sunday Night at the Apollo’ was his comment.
Media and opposition politicians demanded more clarification which duly took the form of a 50-page booklet. Well done Boris and so quickly produced too. I am relieved to know that I can’t visit my parents, but they can have a ‘cleaner’ to tidy the house! One son solved the problem of mom not seeing grandchildren by telling his mother to visit wearing an overall and promising to provide a ‘Hoover’ so as to keep the curtain twitching neighbours happy! Typical. my friend says, the ‘rich’ can have their cleaner back so it doesn’t interfere with their lifestyle of deciding the best way of making avocado on toast, while I have to manage on 80% of what was already a low wage while my job will probably go out of the window.
All is not lost though. We plebs have got another ‘slogan’ to learn, something about ‘stay alert.’ It’s not even original as it does seem to be the same as the others being promoted around the world, particularly France for some reason, a country not alert to the fact that many of their refugees are fleeing their shores in inflatable boats so desperate are they to get here. And so it goes on, confusion, incompetence, vague statements from ministers and experts offering different opinions and explanations.
What the country needed on Sunday was some explanations, not slogans or bonhomie and bluster. In 1940 the Prime Minister Winston Churchill, a man that Johnson knows more about than most, stood in the House of Commons and told the nation what was facing them. He pulled no punches. Many, given the situation we find ourselves in, were expecting ‘Boris’ to do just that, what we got was waffle and another slogan followed by a fifty-page booklet.
This is not the time for government by slogan or government by booklets, it’s a time to know your real audience and for the Prime Minister to ‘action this day’. The only slogan we need to see or hear is the one that sat on the desk of Harry S. Truman the man who you may remember took the decision to use the world’s first atomic bomb on targets in Japan. It read ‘THE BUCK STOPS HERE.’
The government nor anyone else knows the full situation or the exact nature of the problem.
They can’t tell you what they or anyone else doesn’t know.
Do you expect them to make up “facts”? (That’s the realms of socialism!).
There are less certitudes in life at present than normal. Tough luck for anyone who can’t live without a crystal ball.
But pointless the whinge about it.
My own whinges is the endless repetitive conjecture and non-facts on the TV. Driven me to RT and Aljazeera.
I remember way back at school, when Teachers used to write the comment on reports of ”Could do better if he tried”. – Such an unintelligent item of comment, is just stating the damned obvious, but took little time and thought !
Now I wonder if the offspring of those Teachers, all became Journalists ! – Hardly any investigation into facts, ends up as a MSM drivel, and people are supposed to buy and read this drivel !
How long now before we read in one Newspaper or another, ”If PM Johnson could be killed, the Coronavirus would go away”! – This is what the concerted drivel from our MSM could eventually lead to !
What would be wrong with a Newspaper reporting straight news and unadjusted truth on their front page, and then let the drivel merchants have their say, under the head of ‘Comments’, somewhere around page five or six ?
Talking of ‘news’, is anything at all happening around the world but the Corona thing? For all the media has told us over the past two months, would we know if World War Three had broken out? Come on, something else must be happening somewhere!
I normally try and include a few bits of non-Covid-19 news in my daily round-up, Sonya.
I’m disappointed in you Norman. You seem to have joined the Let’s Bash Boris gang. Admittedly stay aware is not a very forceful slogan (though it seems pretty much common sense to me) but let’s face it the odds against Boris are just too overwhelming. Whatever he does the media, civil servants, so called Labour Party etc. will try to pull him down while not even pretending to have anything constructive to put in his place.
Far as I’m concerned he did very well with the slogan Lets get Brexit Done. So long as he remains firm on that one his government has my support.
Pauline, the government IS saying all the right things at the moment with regard to Brexit and not extending the transition period beyond the 31st December 2020, and true they have to be congratulated upon their stance so far. However we must not allow our guard down over this, and we (that is us) need to keep the pressure upon Boris Johnson and his government. It shouldn’t be just left to certain politicians like Nigel Farage and certain news outlets including Independence Daily to maintain the pressure on the government. We all have a responsibility for this as voters. Boris Johnson has made mistakes in his Covid 19 policy (allowing flights to continue into the country from Covid 19 hotspots around the world without testing those who come in, not doing very much to stem the migrant tide coming over the English Channel from France, the PPE fasco, to name but a few. Yes he has done a much better job than the Labour Party buffoons would have done, but he his not perfect. I think we all want him succeed with regard to Coronavirus and Brexit, but we’re not using this platform to bash Boris for the sake of it.
Ok Colin. We are not far apart on this.
Whilst we might accept strap lines or tags for items we buy in shops like washing up powder and toothpaste etc, I really object to the way government ministers have treated the population of this country as if we all small children without any common sense during this Covid 19 crisis, and it still goes on. Most adults know that it isn’t wise to go out socialise in groups like we used to before the pandemic, but the strap line ‘Stay at home, protect the NHS and save lives’ is totally unnecessary. Most of us are old enough and wise enough to know how to behave without being treated like complete imbeciles. Now when I hear this line especially if it is coming from the mouth of Matt Hancock, I just turn the radio off. Do the leaders of other countries around the world treat their citizens as complete idiots like they do here.