John Ward July 14, 2010 Mammon, Mandelson, Maxwell, Mirror, Moat, Morgan, Murdoch

ANALYSIS: Getting things slightly out of balance

“No really – it’s this big”

The Editor offers a calm audit of exactly where and how our culture has gone wrong.

In today’s Daily Telegraph, there’s a piece suggesting that the UK’s balance sheet is £4 trillion worse off than we thought. It’s a bit behind the music, as an nby piece in 2008 (not archived, sorry) gave the off-sheet civil servant pension liability alone as £2.1 trillion….a sum dismissed by the totally unmissed New Labour No 10 Press Office as ‘a right wing fantasy’.

I was confident then and remain so now, because I got the figure from a senior Treasury contact with a public-spirited sense of duty. However, the point I’m veering towards really is that the Torygraph piece had attracted 7 (seven – count them) comments by the time I got there. In my view, a story of this magnitude should be the banner headline of every title, 24/7 news station and website around the globe, but that’s just me being a drama queen. I got a bit queenie about the civil service pension fibs in the first place, so what can you expect? I’m clearly just a mincing hysteric.

In the same edition of the Telegraph was a why-oh-why piece by Fatty Heffer on the subject of Raoul Moat, and why he’d been turned into a hero. I hadn’t noticed that he had been, but there you are – the piece attracted 177 comments – and was rising steadily as I left.

Obviously – and I use that word advisedly – it’s a dreadful indictment of our culture that a piece of meaningless distraction provided by a self-pitying thug rather cack-handedly covered by a young fogey should get 25 times more comments than another, better-researched analysis. Especially when that latter article is pointing out with admirable clarity that the whole superstructure of our rotten Establishment has been lying its unpleasant scrotum off for the last thirty years about what an unmitigated horlicks they’ve made of the national finances.

I actually do have a few friends left who would berate me for that view, explaining in a patronising drone that I am merely forcing my own values onto others. Bollocks. The next three generations of my DNA output being sold into slavery (because greedy onanists unfit for proper employment defrauded the taxpayer) is infinitely more important than a tattooed pillock blowing his under-resourced brains out. That is an absolute value, and anyone arguing with me is clearly an idiot or a senior civil servant, and very probably both.

A thick exhibitionist proves more important and interesting than a jolly good reason to start building guillotines: how did this happen?

Murdoch is how it happened. Murdoch and Mammon and media Moguls and many other ghastly turds beginning with M like Maxwell and Mirror and Morgan and Mandelson. And lots of words beginning with C that I couldn’t possibly reproduce in a family column, such as Cowell and Campbell. That’s how it happened.

11Comments

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1

Anonymous on July 19, 2010 at 12:39 pm

What's a propagoose? And is what's sauce for it sauce for the propagander? I think we should be told. (I imagine that it won't be long before we hear from Sid Lexic with the post-modern raffia defence. Educayshun, educayshun, educayshun.)

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Anonymous on July 19, 2010 at 12:32 pm

Lenko, The BBC does not need to 'turn a profit'. Nor does it have to pander to any low common denominator. And should it choose to report according to genuine news value (e.g. informative, of value to society) it might set itself properly apart from every other failing medium, thereby serving those who pay for it.

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Johnnyrvf on July 19, 2010 at 5:08 am

Hmm, thin blue line and a nutter, oooh! oooh! don't panic, someone 300 miles north of where I live, who has no conception of my existence is going to come around to my house and blow me away…….. yeah right Cassandra, how about getting a life and realising that maybe you are not important enough to be on any nutter's radar. Talk about a propogander coup d'etat, RAF Tornados being called in because the local plod were'nt smart enough to work out where he was hiding for how ever many hours and some thicko in charge in a blind panic because a thug has made them all look stupid ; (they had been warned by the prison service before his release of his mental state but the police chose to ignore it), then frantically tries to shift the blame for their incompetence by trying to turn the whole tragic story into a action man epic where the police, one of whom was a victim of his own superiors incompetence, try to cover this up by mega macho theatre.

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4

Matt on July 15, 2010 at 11:44 am

Oh John – come on, YOU a mincing queen? Hardly!

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Anonymous on July 15, 2010 at 9:34 am

I could not even find the story on the front page of the Telegraph's website.

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lenko on July 15, 2010 at 9:04 am

I do agree with your comments, especially about the pieces of human waste who begin with M.However, in fairness… (a) Papers and TV need to turn a profit. (b) To do that they have to cater to the violent and prurient urges of their readers, who include you and me… (c) which means printing sex-and-murder stuff their readers can relate to… (d) rather than the intricacies of finance, with the H-U-U-GE sums involved, which mean NOTHING to them, whereas most of them have come across a whack-job like Moat.I'm fairly well educated, but my knowledge of ECONOMICS is a bit limited. I understand about thirty percent of your excellent stuff, but the rest is beyond me. So imagine what your average Sun reader makes of it.What we all need is education. And though I am not usually in favour of forcing things on others, we need forcible education in economics and science, etc, when we are kids. Only then will we produce adults who can grasp these esoteric subjects.And not thicko's… like me.

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7

Ed P on July 14, 2010 at 7:38 pm

So when pensions cannot be paid and many retired people starve to death, there won't be such a burden on the state…result!It's just a shame that all the culpable bastards will survive and the little people will have the hardship.

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Silly Kuffar on July 14, 2010 at 4:56 pm

I find it strange that every time a major piece of news, in regards to the state of our country, manages to get buried because some nutter has killed someone, or a tragic accident etc.How come these storys and incidents suddenly appear a few days before the "REAL" story comes out (such as the true state of our countrys finances)and ends up buried ?Very convienient, but for who ?

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Demetrius on July 14, 2010 at 1:03 pm

So there it is. The "right wing fantasists", the oddballs, the loonies, the mad old blighters (my category) the deep thinkers (you) who were saying the debt liabilities were huge and becoming too big to deal with were right. And all those clever people, politicians and economists were hopelessly wrong.

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Cassandra on July 14, 2010 at 1:02 pm

Steady on John, taking a pop at Mr Heffer for writing a very cogent piece about how a section of British society supports the thug Moat is a bit OTT. He is showing that there is something wrong in society when characters like Moat get such support and airtime. The BBC for instance kept plugging his brother's ill informed and ignorant point of view while saying little in support of the police who were literally in this case the thin-blue-line between us and a nutter.However, I like you also expected more comments and news on the black hole of public pensions. But it seems to be one of those strange items that doesn't attract sufficient concern. For instance I am close to many local councillors in Surrey and we have a huge pensions black hole to fund. But it seems that they think it is for the government to manage, and they should concentrate on 'real life improving things' like; local bike racing and hiring of a cycling coordinator. When asked why they give more prominence to bike riding than pensions management they are visibly affronted that such a question should be put. I think it comes down to – bikes they can manage pensions they can't so just ignore them. Keep pointing this up please. John Redwood is doing the same and getting little thanks for it.

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11

PT on July 14, 2010 at 12:29 pm

Come on John, out with it, stop beating about the bush and say what you really mean.But yes, you are right. Now that the rest of the world, namely the British Empire, is no longer available to the Establishment to pillage, they are now pillaging British Serfs and their as yet unborn descendants. The party's nearly over.

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