Warning: Politics ahead
The recent travel disruption at Dover has had me thinking. Last year I was caught up in a similar mess when travelling to Europe. Obviously it’s due to Brexit: when we were part of the EU, the rules were different, checks were simpler; if we’d been part of the Schengen area, there would have been none at all and crossing the Channel would have been just like crossing the border between France and Belgium, say: no checks at all. And if we were sensible, and had a national ID card like every other country, we wouldn’t have to spend £80 on a passport… We left, freely, and the rules changed. Simple.
And this is where the cakeism came in, as vaunted by a certain serial liar who was once our prime minister: we could leave the EU but not notice, enjoy the same benefits as before, we could have our cake and eat it. Absolute lies and utter nonsense, but enough people were convinced.
I found myself realising that Brexit is a perfectly reasonable free choice for a country to make if it wants to accept the consequences. Travel becomes much harder. Trade becomes much more difficult because new and different regulations apply; some businesses can’t be bothered with the red tape and the cost and take another perfectly reasonable decision: they won’t bother trading with the UK because it’s too much hassle. So there are certain things we can’t get any more. Another perfectly reasonable decision is to continue trading but to charge more because of the extra costs involved. So a lot of stuff is still available, but costs more.
It’s much harder for people to come here from Europe to work now, so there are fewer workers in the NHS, fewer carers, fewer fruit and vegetable pickers, to mention a few. This means food costs more, care is harder to get, we have to wait longer to access health care. All of these changes are concomitants of Brexit, and no supporter of Brexit has any right to complain about them: the UK took back control: we are in control. We have the cake; enjoying eating it is a different matter.
The death of Thatcher’s chancellor and henchman Lawson has been reported. Again, I thought about cakeism. In my mind it’s arguable whether they or Hitler did more lasting damage to our society, with the unparalleled greed and selfishness they unleashed. If you want to begin to understand the housing crisis in Britain today, look no further than their forced selling off of council houses. The mess that is our utilities began with the selling off and privatisation. It was all going to be more efficient, everyone was going to be better off, it would all be much cheaper. And the North Sea Oil bonanza that brought massive wealth to Norway and could have done to the UK as well, was frittered away in tax cuts. Once again, we were told we could have the cake and eat it. All the services we had had before, without needing to pay for them. And people fell for that. And I’m left thinking, who stole the bloody cake? Because most of us have been left with a few crumbs, and a few spivs and chancers have scarfed all the rest of it.
On The Guardian or, freedom of the press?
November 8, 2022I’ve been a loyal and dutiful Guardian reader for more than half a century now. That statement immediately places me in a certain age category, and I need to remind myself that times have moved on. But I do wonder what is happening to the newspaper I’ve known and loved for so long.
I read it because it’s liberal/ social democrat/ vaguely left-leaning, and is the only such newspaper we’ve got in this godforsaken country. I won’t give Murdoch’s press a penny because of the bastard that he is, and the braindead and mouldering columnists of the Torygraph don’t bear thinking about (though you do need to know what the enemy is thinking), the Indy is in hock to the Saudis…only the Guardian finances itself. But did it make the right choice in aiming to be free-to-all rather than paywall itself like the Times, relying on advertising and moving into the US and Australian markets to shore up its finances? It used to be able to boast about its European credentials, but coverage of our near neighbours is pretty thin at the moment.
It’s become a lot more trivial and lifestyle focused, like most of the press nowadays, as if being well-informed about the world is too much like hard work; there are too many vapid columns of comment and twaddle: do I really need 250 words on why someone has cut up their supermarket loyalty card? At a quid a word (or more) it’s money for old rope; then I learnt that the writer is actually the husband of the editor. I mean, can’t they manage on her £400,000+ salary?
Now, let’s get a little more serious: comments by readers. This was an interesting idea when it was first dreamt up, and then trolls discovered they could make hay. But there did use to be a decent enough standard of commenting on articles which appeared in the Guardian. But, increasingly, certain articles are never open for comment, and I find myself wondering why. Larry Elliott is an interesting economics journalist, but also a pro-Brexit headbanger, and when he goes on about Brexit still being a good idea, we can never comment. Simon Tisdall I now regard as their warmonger-in-chief with his crazed articles about the situation in Ukraine, demanding ever more intervention, weaponry and I don’t know what else; again, we’re not allowed to comment on this madness. Why not?
And then there’s the gender debate. There seems to be some sort of actual censorship going on at the paper, as far as I can make out from snippets which have appeared in other media, and the disappearance of interesting (women) columnists who have packed their bags for elsewhere, because apparently the Guardian will not allow gender-critical commentary. Although I also find it strange that such writers, after years at the Guardian, can then go off and take Murdoch’s (or Harmsworth’s) tainted shilling. This is just plain weird, to this long-time reader who has followed umpteen complex feminist debates with interest in the columns of the paper over the decades. What is the Guardian afraid of?
If there were an alternative, I wouldn’t be so worried. I’d just read another paper. But there isn’t, and when progressive readers are driven to wondering what is happening with the only vaguely progressive newspaper we have, we are in trouble. We need to stick together, and it’s getting harder… I’ll carry on reading, and paying for the crosswords. Social media as a source of news is a very worrying concept, as is the idea of whole generations not bothering with serious news at all. The way is wide open for distortion and manipulation, and it’s going on before our eyes.
Rant over; I’ll go any lie down now.
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Tags: censorship, commenting on articles in the press, freedom of speech, gender-critical, newspapers, The Guardian