This is the ten o'clock news

It isn’t.  In actual fact, it is only 19.32 and this isn’t London...it is ummm some place up North.  That is the North of England.  The place of the Bronte’s, luscious green hills, cute villages, tumbledown mills and relentless rain.  Aaaah.  Anyway, I digress.

I have given up on watching the news.  Not because I want to become some ignorant drone, quite the reverse.  My reasoning is somewhat more pathetic than that: to put it simply, I don’t want to get depressed.  Seriously, all of this doom and gloom about recession, people killing each other and oxygen causing new fangled illnesses is starting to get me down.  This is quite a bitter realisation for somebody who prides herself on being up to date with the world and all that goes on within it.  I have always been disdainful of people who don’t have any desire to engage with the world around them.  Every time somebody reiterated the excuse of not wanting to depress themselves by sitting through yet another news report about kids gunning their parents down with AK47s and pensioners mugging bankers at knife point I always got annoyed.  I was always thinking “yeah but no man is an island dude.  One day it might be you who is being rugby tackled to the floor by a crazed toddler for your Samsung Galaxy.  Then what?  Surely you’d like to think that somebody would care.”  But now, I’m feeling jaded by it all. 

I feel like a lot of the news is aimed solely at telling us about how ultimately shit human beings are.  One minute it’s recalcitrant teens.  The next it’s teenage mums.  Then it’s demonic protesters nicking a pair of shoes from Footlocker (or whichever low class establishment it was).  Whatever it is, it is usually a negative or dehumanizing portrayal of the lower classes, much of which is unjustified. 

I think it was Maggie Thatcher who claimed that we were now living in a classless society. I am normally a stickler for correct referencing but I will let the citation slip in this case because whoever said it was clearly talking out of their backsides.  A not too close look at news reports and the difference in the way that the deal with people from different social classes is more than enough to confirm this.  I will give an example: Bob Diamond (ex-exec of Barclays Bank and all round bad boy) is revealed to have fixed the LIBOR rate, resulting in untold damage to the economy.  OK, this was reported.  BUT THAT WAS ALL.  He wasn’t hounded by reporters.  Apart from being asked a few questions by disgruntled MPs, he wasn’t really forced to provide answers.  As far as I am aware, no criminal charges have been brought.  The guy is still wondering the streets enjoying his multi-million pound payout.  Compare this to people who have been hunted down for trying to evade paying council tax, claiming too much benefit and other financial misdemeanours that have had the government pacing the floor in self righteous indignation.  Don’t get me wrong, these things are naughty too.  We all use government funded services and we are all responsible for their upkeep.  BUT what these people did, although wrong, pales into insignificance when compared with the antics of Mr Diamond.  It strikes me that many of those who have been prosecuted for things such as claiming too much benefit are much more vulnerable than the likes of Bob (I’ve mentioned him so much that I now feel that I am on first name terms with him).  Yet, they are the ones who are not only being imprisoned but are also being made to pay back money that they probably claimed because they felt they needed it in order to live.  Yet, Bob and friends have done much more damage to the economy and they seem to be getting off scott free.  Why?  I don’t know.  Maybe it has something to do with the fact that they, the government and the media all live in each other’s pockets and therefore protect each other when the chips are down.  I don’t know.  It’s quite an accusation to level at somebody but in the absence of proper investigative journalism, what is a girl to think?

So, in a nutshell: I am completely tired of viewing the demonization of the working classes and seeing it repackaged and regurgitated as news.  Yet, I do not see this state of affairs changing until we have a radical overhaul and get rid of the corrupt element of society whose job it is to oppress and take advantage of the working person.  This realisation, coupled with the relentless scare mongering that seems to be prevalent in today’s news reporting, is more than enough to convince me to switch off in the interests of my own emotional equilibrium.