Superficiality - by Richard... Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Superficiality - by Richard... Tuesday, November 15, 2011

There was a time when I would have thought this piece by Philip Johnston quite good. He writes of an area that few other journalists address, does it well and intelligently, this time complaining about the steady increases in parking fees by local authorities.

It is perhaps a measure of how far we have developed, though, that the piece actually seems lazily superficial. For sure, parking fees are a serious issue, but they are only one small part of a much bigger and much more important picture, the nature of which Johnson does not even acknowledge.

We wrote about that on 9 October, as did Booker, the latter of course being in Johnston's sister newspaper, The Sunday Telegraph. It is perhaps a measure of Johnston that, quite clearly, he has not read the Booker piece - and would not stoop to read a mere blog. He is thus condemned to miss the bigger story – which Booker did better in less space, over a month ago.

But at least Johston does write about the subject. Despite its importance, very few do and almost all do it badly – especially local newspapers who seem incapable or unwilling to understanding the basics of local authority finance, or the issues attendant upon them.

When what amounts to a quarter of all public expenditure, however, is subject to such poor and very often ignorant scrutiny by the media, you can't really say we have a functioning democracy. As so often, commenters are better informed than the journalists and, when Philip Johnston is the best the media can offer, you can see what a long was they have to go to catch up.

Despite Philip's efforts, therefore, you can also see why newspapers are part of a dying industry and observe that they very much deserve to be. If they cannot do the very basics, they do not deserve to exist.

COMMENT THREAD

Share

Print ready

A message from Mrs EU Referendum - by Richard...

COMMENT THREAD

Share

Print ready

Wishing doesn't make it so - by Richard...

In one sense, one would like to think that our political classes were as duplicitous as we all believed them to be, and not simply as stupid as they undoubtedly are.

Such is the case when we learn yet again – on this occasion via the paywall Times - that The Boy is proclaiming that he will "use the debt crisis to help reshape the way Europe does business". One looks in vain for signs of a devious, if coherent, agenda, instead of the obvious moonshine that is on offer.

The occasion of this latest proclamation is the annual foreign policy address to the Lord Mayor's Banquet, where the man-child tells us that the eurozone's chaos presents an opening for the UK to begin loosening its ties with Brussels. "Change brings opportunities", he says, in what the newspaper calls "striking a self-declared sceptic note".

This is, we are told, is "an opportunity, in Britain’s case, for powers to ebb back instead of flow away" Against a pledge by Merkel to "create political union step by step", Cameron says the EU needs "the flexibility of a network, not the rigidity of a bloc".

In more detail, this brain-deficient doctrine is spelled out in The Failygraph, where he insists that leaving the EU is "not in our national interest" but says he feels "very personally" but that now is the time for a fundamental reconsideration of European relations.

For all the headlines, therefore, nothing has changed – not one whit, iota or jot. The Boy is still pushing the same, tired old "reform" agenda, with no material (or any) changes from yesterday, the day before, or ten years before that. In what passes for the "One Nation" Tory brain, time has frozen. It never moves on.

One singular clue to the fatuity of the Boy is, of course, his very platform - the annual foreign policy address. Like so many, including those in the media, the man-child believes (and hasn't the wit to work out otherwise for himself) that the EU is a matter of foreign rather than policy. He cannot deal with the fact that the EU is part of the government of the United Kingdom – in the areas where it has competence, its supreme government.

Needless to say, therefore, The Boy cannot resist his pathetic and unchanged bleating about a new "relationship", demonstrating that it would be easier to communicate with aliens on Ursa Major than the Tory brain.

But this is all part of the pattern. The corporate entity that is the British establishment has never been able to deal with the fact that there are only two options available to the UK – full integration or complete detachment. And unable to admit that the destination is the former, it continues to pretend to itself that there is a middle way.

It is here that duplicity would be nice. Please God that The Boy understands that the only real option is that we have to quit the EU, but is going through the motions of seeking reform in the knowledge that he will fail and will then be able lead us into the promised land of a once-more independent Britain.

Faced with the impossibility of his headline offer ever coming to pass, there are still those who – despite all experience – believe that Cameron will become that latter-day Moses. The media, for instance, are quite content to play this game.

The sad truth, though, is that there is no duplicity. Our political classes are as stupid as they seem. And bizarrely, Cameron has the nerve to accuse the EU of being "out of touch" with European citizens.

COMMENT THREAD