The front pages of two papers today summed up the net benefits of the great Blair-Brown project, which of course started with vows of all kinds, to do with getting rid of sleaze, improving education, ending crime, removing inequality, walking on water and so on.
Britain’s best-selling newspaper is the News of the World, a favoured comic among those who somehow failed to get the benefits of the promised education. They devoted their entire front page to tell us that Jade Goody’s Mum celebrated the anniversary of her sainted daughter’s death by snorting a few lines of coke.
(Jade Goody, for overseas readers, was the Princess Diana of latter years – a semi-literate plump strumpet who won notoriety principally by means of making racist remarks on a TV programme – and then gained a nation’s love by dying of cancer and leaving a couple of million to her children. Much of the country- the part that thinks American Idol is better entertainment than Shakespeare – shed bitter tears when she croaked.)
Be that as it may I imagine we shall wait in vain for any signs of prosecution, just as we saw little effort to prosecute Kate Moss after she got caught hoovering away on camera, and the occasional slap on the wrist for her ex-boyfriend Pete Doherty, who has a sort of revolving door arrangement with the courts .
In the Sunday Times the pampered elite were not entirely astounded by the news that former socialist ministers have – no doubt inspired by the boundless avarice of their globe-trotting multi-millionaire ex-leader – been selling the limp shreds of their honesty to the first bidder, promising to pervert legislation, change policies and do anything for cash.
No doubt they will be prosecuted as enthusiastically as all the expenses crooks have been. Come to think of it, they’ve already got away with it once, why not twice?
Meanwhile, the boy Cameron says he is going to tax the banks. This is what is technically known in the political milieu as licking the voters’ arses – a silly idea that (like everything else he does) is aimed at getting votes. One wonders if it has occurred to him that this will have only one certain effect: we, the customers, will end up paying that tax, as the banks will simply put their prices up – just as we, the customers, are paying for loony Gordon’s big bail-out.
Which hasn’t worked that well, by the way. There’s more shit on the way. Now the idea is that, not satisfied with bailing out banks, we’re going to bail out entire countries, like Greece.
Incidentally, I think the News of the World probably knows what is real news better than the Sunday Times. Who would really be surprised that the wretched Labour crooks are on the take? The chief offender, Stephen Byers, was exposed as a damned liar long ago, when he screwed up the remnants of the British car industry.
Whereas I saw Jade Goody’s mum as more of the two bottles of vodka a day type. You never can tell, can you?
Your post reminded of something I heard from Columbus, Ohio advertising legend Artie Isaac (http://youngisaac.typepad.com/). I'm paraphrasing but the gist is:
Almost all of you what you read in the paper or see on the TV news isn't really news, it's just stuff that doesn't affect your life. For example, people killing people in bad parts of the city isn't news, it's statistical probability.
What choice do we have at this election? Well, there’s a fat failed bullying geography teacher and a third rate solicitor or an ex PR spiv and a wall paper salesman as chancellor.
Cameron who has managed to lose a 20 point lead against the most corrupt and inept government this country has ever had, has also failed to take the hint to go fuck himself. Instead we hear today that his wife is pregnant. I really despair.
I never heard of Artie Isaac. Ignorant me. Just went onto his blog. Excellent! Thank you