Apparently it’s been a quiet week as far as the mainstream broadcast and print media is concerned, presumably either nothing much has happened or the hacks employed by the mainstream have been excluded from the thoughts of their ‘sources’ in the Department of This and That, or Downing Street, or somebody or other who has suddenly been chosen to write or talk about some subject that is of little interest to most people or will just fill what are known as ‘puff’ pieces in the trade.
Some of the descriptions of who said what to whom beggar belief. Apparently ‘Downing Street’ is a force to be reckoned with in the political bubble these hacks inhabit. Maybe it’s just me, but I find it intensely irritating to be told or read that ‘Downing Street,’ followed by some nugget of opinion or make believe that the writer wants the supposed multitude of readers to understand, is an ‘insight’ and only shared with them as exclusive readers of the Daily Bog Standard or the Daily Epistle or something.
I have no idea who came up with this rubbish about Downing Street, which is almost as irritating as ‘a Downing Street insider’, but irritating it is, if they can’t do any better than pretend that we all know that all these phrases mean nothing at all and that we all know that what most ‘insiders’ and ‘sources’ purport to know is kite-flying hogwash, just as uninteresting and pathetic as are all these supposed leaks from Ministerial aids.
It’s about time that all these people stopped playing games with the public and started to play with a straight bat, as we used to say when actually to be a Minister or a ministerial aid meant more than just planting ‘leaks’ in the ears of gullible journalists or coming up with stupid phrases such as ‘the short straights’ when talking about the crossing from Dover to France, or the one that takes some of the biscuit this week ‘granular information’ when talking about students and examinations. But the one that really gets the newspeak phrase of the week is that woman who is the White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki who, when faced with a difficult question or phased by one, responds with ‘I’ll have to circle back to you on that.’
Perhaps she could get Downing Street to give her the information. It comes to something when inanimate objects such as streets and houses can apparently talk to each other. Maybe they do, it would certainly explain some of the statements and policies that have been reported recently. Not that the inhabitants of the fourth estate seem to be able to seek out stories or reliable comments or investigate anything these days. The mainstream here in Blighty seems to have lost the plot. I’ve lost count of the ‘stories’ that appear on Monday and then are regurgitated for the next few days with a new headline and by-line, or even worse to read something in one paper only to find out on paragraph four that what I had been reading was actually a copy of what somebody had actually written in the Daily Bog Standard or had been reported on the BBC.
No wonder the traditional print media is dying on its collective feet, reporting as it does opinion as fact and, worse still, selective and partisan reporting. Can you imagine the uproar in the press if, when in office, President Trump had authorised the bombing of targets in Syria? There would have been acres of comments from all our journalists, both print and broadcast, if such a thing had taken place.
So what actually happened this week after Biden bombed Syria? Very little comment or concern was voiced anywhere. Interesting that, as the US has no right to attack a sovereign country – but don’t let a little thing like that bother you. After all, isn’t the UK having a little local difficulty with the trading bloc known as the EU that thinks it’s a political and military super-power in the making and who are steadfastly refusing to treat the UK as an independent sovereign country? Seemingly then, in this ‘rules based international order’ that Theresa May was always banging on about, to coin a phrase, some sovereign nations are more sovereign than others.
Anyway, for the moment we need not worry about our sovereignty, as Lord Frost (recently promoted to a cabinet post) will soon put those perfidious bureaucrats in their place, apparently still unable to get the ‘trade agreement’ translated from English, an ‘official language’ of the EU, into their various languages so that MEPs can understand a document that they have no say over or ability to change.
But hey ho, not to worry. English is only the world’s most used and understood language (even the US version) and is spoken in the EU bloc’s parliament for most of the time and is actually the most studied and translated language in Europe and taught in schools to 85% of students.
That apart though, now that the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland has told Lord Frost to get working on the reset – you know, the one muted by Michael Gove earlier this month – maybe there will be some progress, not that I will be holding my breath. Given the obfuscation that Brussels produces most of the time, we could thank our lucky stars that Downing Street is not also talking to Paris or Berlin. In that case we would all probably have had to ‘circle back’ to make sense of anything said.
[To be continued tomorrow in Part 2]
Photo by Matt From London 
All very true and well observed as usual Norman but…..The biggest scandal is that politicians have been able to muzzle the press at all! Once upon a time the press would have been up in arms about the loss of freedom and free speech that is now extant in the U.K. but….people don’t buy many newspapers now. (I only buy one now and again to top up my firefighting paper supply)
I dont know whether more people pay for the online access to news but whichever way you look at it, revenues are seriously down on what they were say twenty/thirty years ago.
Additionally, the old political affiliations have merged into each other making it a more or less ‘pinko’ slant from each one!
So, the government has now confirmed their hold over the press by paying big bucks for the very extensive propaganda advertising that we have seen this last year. Thus, the paper owners will fall into line even more than before in order to keep/increase their share of the largesse!
Where does that leave the people? Out in the cold as usual! Who cares about the people? No-one. We are just here for the fleecing!!!!
Franco used football as a diversionary tactic during his dictatorship. It seems to me that Billy Bunter is using the promise of a summer holiday in the sun to divert our focus from now we are being robbed of our liberty.
punditarena.com/football/thepateam/how-franco-utilised-spanish-football/
It would be interesting to know who actually worked in No 10 and at what. Also if there is some sort of Office block orvast underground cavern inhabited by whom and / or doing what. Or How big actually is “Downing Street” and who does what they do and why and titles. or are they actually in Hull or Gateshead etc. Is there a plan of all this so one can actually find them to pin their resposibilities on them. Do people live in the corridors and so on ?
Now then T.G you’re getting a bit carried away again. Colin will laugh at you!
Have you been back in time to WW2, when presumably Winston should have lived there? There could well be an underground cavern/bomb shelter with people sleeping in corridors.
Wonder whether they are all social distancing, 2 meters apart.
TG Spokes…….unless it has escaped your attention , Boris Johnson works and lives there (come on keep up), but how he fills forty hours a week, or whether even half an hour of his work is either meaningful and of benefit to the citizens of this country, that is probably a big round no. We all know by now that unelected SAGE committees have his ear and presently run the country, because he is indecisive and ruddy weak. We need to be rid of Johnson and his style of government, and pretty damn quick as well………….