BBC News As Amateur Dramatics

August 31, 2007 · Filed Under News, Non Sequitur · Comment 

In his James MacTaggart memorial lecture Jeremy Paxman said:

“In the very crowded world in which television lives, it won’t do to whisper, natter, cogitate or muse. You have to shout. The need is for constant sensation. The consequence is that reporting now prizes emotion over much else.

In this press of events there often isn’t the time to get out and find things out: you rely upon second-hand information - quotes from powerful vested interests, assessments from organisations which do the work we don’t have time for, even, god help us, press releases from public relations agencies. The consequence is that what follows isn’t analysis. It’s simply comment, because analysis takes time, and comment is free.”

Yes, up to a point, Lord Copper.

The idea that news may be diluted, tainted or in many other ways adulterated between the event itself and the transmission of the reported interpretation of that event is actually nothing new.

Unless you are actually in the mind of the protagonist and took part in the event itself, you are of necessity relying upon second-hand interpretations and opinions which may or may not be accurate. News always has been like this.

However, the point to be made here is regarding the delivery of the news and whether this has an impact on the way in which it is perceived and received. To a degree, whether the messenger seems trustworthy or perhaps should be shot.

Huw Edwards reads both the six o’clock and later evening news bulletins. It used to be that newsreaders would deliver their broadcasts with stony faces and clear enunciation. That was it. The job description was reading out loud in public, with an authoritative, but neutral delivery.

It is not that Huw Edwards does not uphold this tradition to a great degree and the quibble may be trifling and somewhat churlish. The problem is that everything seems to be said in the way you would imagine a gossipy social worker passing on the slightly uninteresting titbit that the sandwich delivery person has had a minor accident, but is not hurt.

It seems that there is an attempt here to protect us from anything in the news which might be unpleasant. If it is delivered in a slightly mumbled, but concerned way, we know that even when there has been a plane crash, the signal is that we are both all right, so everything is safe.

It is the “Put your feet up and have a cup of tea” style of news. “Oh, I do ache today, but musn’t grumble, eh?” All that Huw Edwards would need to do to be a perfect imitation of Mrs Pike from Dad’s Army would be to wear a headscarf.

He is, however, the figure of immovable restraint and gravitas when compared with George Alaghia. This is a man who has deprived the world of acting, not so much of a Hamlet as a real ham and instead given us the perfect example of hamfisted news delivery.

Every item has to fit within his balletically executed routine of bizarre and distracting hand gestures, which are probably intended to help the deaf imagine what the general theme of the news might be. The up and down upturned palm to show that is is a bit sad and we need to show sympathy. The sweeping downturned palm indicating that this is serious nonsense and we should be having no truck with it. The repeated chopping motion so we know that we need to pay attention to a lot of important facts.

Then, as the news bulletin draws to a close, we get the grinning lunatic impression to tell us that we are being treated to some good news to make our hearts leap and tears start in our eyes.

The only thing lacking in all this - and it hardly matters, as these mime and pantomime signals tell us all we need to know - is for George Alaghia to deliver the whole news dressed as a clown and pedalling around the studio on a unicycle honking  a horn.

It would be nice if we could trust the news and not rely upon often ill-informed opinion and sometimes grotesquely fabricated flights of wildly inaccurate fancy as our sources.

However, returning the televised delivery of the news to something resembling a clear and unimpassioned statement of facts, rather than an hysterical audition for a local amateur dramatic society can only help this process.

Tags:

Britain To Criminalise Poor

August 31, 2007 · Filed Under Lampoon · Comment 

In a new move to tackle the crime wave sweeping through Britain, the government is proposing to make all poor people criminals.

Lord Marmaduke Killejoye, the government minister concerned said this:

“We are really just trying to formalise in law what has actually been the case for many years. Everyone knows that poor people are the root cause of crime and social disorder.

Nice middle class people who are attractive and dress well and drive nice cars and live in nice houses do not commit crimes. It follows that if we can criminalise and jail the real troublemakers, we can have a more pleasant society for those who actually earn the right to the better things in life.

It also means that we can speed up the justice system and save money, because in a case where a working-class poor person is in dispute with someone who is middle class, we can immediately imprison the poor person without having to waste court time. This actually is how the system works at the present time, but we want to see it enacted as law.

Asked whether he thought the law would actually get passed, he said this:

There is no reason to think not. It is what people want.

It was an idea which Mrs Thatcher toyed with and as she is the spiritual leader of New Labour, we do not see there being much likelihood of this being opposed by either of the main parties.

Tommy Spong, a homeless freelance traditional glue-sniffer said this:

Yeah, seems like the right idea to me. I hate poor people, me.

Tags:

Brazil, Britain, Anywhere, Everywhere

August 31, 2007 · Filed Under Business, Politics · Comment 

Hurrah! Capitalism has taken over the entire world. There is no other show on earth. You are the winner!

Many years ago when visiting Australia (where they have massive roadside signs proclaiming “Next McDonald’s 1250 km”) a friend said that the best thing about McDonald’s was that wherever in the world you ate one, it was exactly the same. Thousands of people in all corners of the planet could be having exactly the same taste experience at exactly the same time.

The problem with this global monoculture is that we are now persuaded to believe that sameness is good, whereas it has been diversity which has propelled human development.

To have a global market, you need global brands and you need a world which thinks the same about everything. To be different, to have a mind of your own, to be a particular individual is actually anti-capitalist.

It is less the police state which will guarantee conformity and more the global one trick pony of capitalism, which may well ensure its dominance through the police state, but it will do so equally happily through your democratically elected government.

The Guardian on Brazil:

At Daslu, a mega-luxury designer store in Sao Paulo billed as Latin America’s most glamorous ’shopping experience,’ customers arrive by helicopter and are ferried in golf carts across marble floors to spare their Jimmy Choo heels. Slim, tanned dasluzetes attend to the sartorial needs of senators’ daughters while uniformed maids, bussed in from the favelas, hover with cafezinhos (espressos) and scoop up discarded garments.

Daslu’s decadence is unnerving. Like the cocaine problem. It’s when you happen to sit on a bus next to a boy with a bag of cocaine whose armed bodyguard, an off-duty policewoman, sits two rows behind, that you begin to see how dangerous Brazil really is. Or when the police arrive in response to a burglary at your home and suggest you buy a bullet from them, which you can fire and they’ll take full responsibility for, the next time you’re in trouble. A bargain at 1,000 reals (£250).

The problem with law and order, or rather the lack of it, is most apparent at night, when packs of feral children roam the streets and drivers know better than to stop at red lights. The problem is poverty as a daily reality, a flood of guns, alienated youth.

What is unfortunate is to be invited to celebrate these inequities, again, the great paradox of Brazil, a soap opera of impunity and greed. God forbid the social hierarchy should ever change. Upward mobility? On taking office in 2002, President Luiz Inacio da Silva was quoted as saying he was ‘fighting to bring the poor of Brazil out of economic apartheid’. The social groups who voted him in demanded a fairer and more egalitarian Brazil. But Lula doesn’t want to jeopardise economic growth. His plans for development are [in] line with the needs of big business.

The problem with this superficial, artificial culture is when you think of its exemplars, its paradigms, perhaps in terms of the immaculately dressed and coiffed wives, girlfriends and boyfriends of the plutocracy.

They look appealing in a disturbingly packaged and processed kind of way, like supermarket food which is enticing on the box, disappointing in reality and, like the McDonald’s utterly Unhappy Meal you waited 1250 km to eat, tastes of anything, of nothing.

When there is something other than nothing going on in the minds of these people, it is only ever one thing: money.

So, is that really what you want to be like? Is it?

Tags:

Next Page »

Bad Behavior has blocked 224 access attempts in the last 7 days.