When it comes to politics here in the UK, we appear to have weird problems with stating the obvious.
For example, it is obvious that our politicians are so mendacious that it would be foolishly naïve to believe what they say in any public debate or announcement. There is no point – habitual mendacity is by far the most useful default assumption. Political mendacity is as old as politics, but near universal mendacity takes it to another level as they say.
In a more rational world we might expect our media to be tackling this mendacity problem as the only significant political problem. Until they do that, there is little value in performing their role - reporting what politicians say. But in our world the media report what politicians say as if the mendacity problem isn’t the destructive disease which it so clearly is. Which is weird.
In a more rational world we might expect our media to be tackling this mendacity problem as the only significant political problem. Until they do that, there is little value in performing their role - reporting what politicians say. But in our world the media report what politicians say as if the mendacity problem isn’t the destructive disease which it so clearly is. Which is weird.
Or maybe things are becoming weirder and weirder so something must change eventually. Maybe it’s a weirdly unstable situation. Yet if it turns out to be a stable situation - that’s weird too. Probably fatally weird.
10 comments:
Even more weird, broadcast reporters tell us what politicians will say in some upcoming speech, announcement, whatever and then never report what the pollie actually says. So in the time following the report of what will be said, if there is any adverse reaction then the real, actual , spoken by the pollie words can be altered.
After becoming thoroughly disillusioned by the dishonesty of politicians during and after Brexit and the death throes of the Conservative Party I must say the continued daily awfulness of Two Tier has re-invigorated it. Yes, of course he's going to do his best to destroy everything we hold dear in this country like free speech and sparking up in a beer garden.
But it's the guilty pleasure of watching this hapless Mavis being toyed with by the EU and cuckolded by his union paymasters while grubbing around for free stuff I enjoy the most.
He's only been in power for weeks and already he's the emperor with no clothes that haven't been bought for him in the hope of a few favours.
All great fun of course until the shit gets real in Eastern Europe. Then you remember Lammy is our Foreign Secretary and our Defence Minister is he who can't be named.
Because no-one has ever heard of him.
Spoiler alert - it's John Healey.
Precisely.
Doonhamer - and it can be confusing. I didn't want to watch Starmer's speech, but internet reports of it afterwards were mixed with earlier reports of what he was supposedly going to say.
Yes, politicians are disingenuous because what they claim to be doing rarely coincides with what they are actually doing. It would be great if the media could catch them out in this more often; if they did, we would have a better understanding of what is really going on, and politicians might even change their behaviour and become more truthful.
But the problem is that the media are also disingenuous. They are, despite what they say, more interested in revenue than truth. Sometimes the two coincide, and the truth becomes lucrative. A good example is when the Guardian investigated and caught out Jonathan Aitken nearly 30 years ago. Gotcha, and ker-ching!
And, of course, the media have their own biases.
That's why the legacy media are on their way out. The only people to trust are those who investigate and comment due to their own passion, rather than money. It's possible that we will end up with both politicians and the legacy media on the wrong side of the credibility fence. They will be like a weird caste of irrelevant habitual liars who the population just deal with, rather than engage with.
They tell lies because that's what some people want to hear, but everyone, including the lie-tellers, knows they're lies.
It's a bit like the old Soviet joke "we pretend to work and they pretend to pay us".
It can't go on, of course, but as the great man said "There's a deal of ruin in a nation".
Nobby - yes it is a guilty pleasure watching the mess unfold and I didn't know our defence bod is John Healey, or if I did, I've forgotten. We don't hear much of Lammy either, it's Starmer who whizzes off all over the place for the international photo ops. Yes it is a guilty pleasure, watching.
Sam - yes it's about money and veracity has little value to the media unless a juicy story pops up such as the Jonathan Aitken story. There are big stories where veracity would be dramatic, such as the climate fraud, but most media outfits couldn't sell that.
I'm sure you are right, the legacy media are on their way out and some kind of credibility fence does seem to be building. It creates social problems though, talking to people still on the wrong side.
Peter - yes "There's a deal of ruin in a nation" and in a sense we can afford much more of it now. It may be that we get the lies and the antics we can afford because we can afford them. Luxury nonsense perhaps.
In one, AKH ... in one.
It's interesting and puzzling though how some people in the media genuinely believe that Starmer is doing a good job. This was true of the guests reviewing the papers on last Sunday's Broadcasting House. How is it possible that people can think so differently as to be from another world? I fall to considering that perhaps we were wrong to judge the Nazis at Nuremberg. Perhaps they were not transgressors but representatives of the complete elsewhere.
James - thanks :)
Tammly - maybe they see themselves as much the same social class, or they favour luxury beliefs and attitudes because that's what he peddles and anything less would be common.
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