OK, So I Can’t Spell Armageddon - It’s Not The End Of The World!

I’m taking a lead from our increasingly desperate and emotional media - particularly the TV breakfast shows et al. The requirement to fill 3 hours each day on a single looping subject leads to a lack of manners and diminished journalistic integrity. Please bring back Robin Day. The timeline is depressingly predictable: initially the old chestnut of ‘we are all in this together’ mantra underpinned by heart warming stories to support the narrative, but all too soon the goodwill gives way to petty sniping.

Few are more odious than Piers Morgan who’s idea of interviewing is to ask questions with unnecessary and sanctimonious belligerence, only to then interrupt and hector the interviewee as he or she seeks to reply. Apart from it being easy to carp from the sidelines when people like him would probably shrink from taking on the job in question, but the high minded moral tone is delivered against a background of sickening hypocrisy. This is the same man who asks on air if it would be alright to wash his Aston Martin! Note not his car, but his Aston Martin.

More depressing still is that our politicians now seem moribund by years of PC pillorying. One wants so much for someone to say ‘Piers please shut up and learn some basic manners’. He reminds me of the idiot boy racers who drive like lunatics around housing estates. They clearly think everyone is impressed - seemingly unknowing that in fact everyone thinks they are total prats. Moreover, I’m certain they’d never back their imagined driving skills against others on a real racetrack.

Easy to say you’re faster than Lewis Hamilton than prove it. That rather sums Piers Morgan up. And frankly Piers who cares what you think? He acts as though his role is to speak up for the common man, when anyone with an ounce of gumption should see that it’s just all about him.

Aaaah! I feel so much better now.

Serious, but not Armageddon

I’m tiring daily with the need forensically to sift out all the ‘noise’ and nonsense surrounding Covid-19. Yes it’s serious, but it’s not Armageddon. For three weeks now the subject has been boiled, fried, curried, bottled and fricasseed. It should be titled Breakfast Tautology given the endless ways they find to say the same thing. Yet nothing has changed - stay at home - wash your hands - social distance. Has no one heard of diluting the currency?

O.R.G.A.S.M.

So to O.R.G.A.S.M. - my new acronym - Old Reactionary Gits against Social Media. I’m expecting a flood of prospective members. We need a voice! But having spent ages conjuring up this fashionable acronym, I’m already bored with it and can’t find the energy to fulfil its early promise. The internal fire to shout foul every morning as I rage at the presenters nonsense, is then extinguished by a sense of hopelessness that it’s just the way it is. Life has changed and not for the better. I took to checking WW2 archived news and the contrast was startling. Stories were factual and not sensationalist- even though the subject matter was pretty grisly to say the least. But no longer are facts the driver, especially if the facts get in the way of the sought after drama.

Take poor Matt Hancock. I’m no Tory apologist or a champion of the Health Secretary, but he’s got a stinker of a job, and I’m sure he’s doing his utmost to do the right thing. Put simply, he seems a decent man. But the likes of Piers Morgan rip the guy to shreds acting like St George slaying the incompetent on our behalf. Whatever happened to the ‘niceties’? If I hear someone else talking about ‘holding the government to account’ I shall go insane. Yes it’s deeply upsetting to hear frontline NHS staff are anxious about PPE. But no one seems to accept that the demand worldwide is unprecedented and is the main reason behind the shortages. Why does someone have to be blamed per se?

Reinventing History

But let’s reinvent history here: imagine, say when Theresa May came to power, that the government announced that they believed a pandemic was a future certainty and in order to respond, they would add 5p to the income tax to pay for massive stockpiling. Do we really believe people would have said what a superb thought and yes please? Why do we expect our politicians to be prescient in all ways and never make a mistake. The lack of respect now prevalent is damaging to our democracy since even the slightest error brings an avalanche of opprobrium. It deters people from entering public life and by definition to pool of talent is lessened as a consequence. I did run for Parliament some 30 years ago and lost my deposit. How lucky was I. I’ve since realised that even my Rhino hide might not have been tough enough to survive the continual abuse.

Before long the lunatics will have taken over the asylum. I was shocked to learn this week that Eamonn Holmes seems tempted to join Branch Davidian Icke - remember him? What can have possessed him to think that maybe 5G masts have been spreading the virus. It beggars belief! Surely everyone thinks 'what utter tosh' - but no, there are plenty who believe it! I think he may have rowed back along the lines of being misquoted, etc, but I saw it live and it seemed pretty clear what he was saying.

So as the world seems determined to disappear up its neurotic backside I turn to W.H. Davies - a one time tramp and traveller. Never have we been more in need of his lyric to 'Leisure' - the last line of which seems apposite: