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Taking the Rap - For Everything!
By Andy | December 24, 2007
It’s been a quiet old week as the PM has vanished from the airwaves. This seems to me to have been a perfectly sensible tactic. If you turn up at every opportunity - commenting on almost everything - then you can’t be surprised if the heat is turned on when things go wrong. But I’m fascinated over the last week just how many things are claimed to be the fault of the Prime Minister.
You’d kind of expect the person sitting next to you on the bus or the tube to blame Gordon for everything under the sun. And you’d probably expect the Daily Mail and the Daily Express to do something similar. But the BBC?
I’ve been fascinated by the coverage of the economy in recent weeks, in particular in the rise of the cost of food. On the BBC you can come across some useful and insightful analysis. But you can also come across some amazing stuff on radio and TV that seems quite extraordinary - blaming the Prime Minister for the rise in the cost of food. While Radio 4 analysis tends to be pretty helpful to anyone trying to understand what is going on the world some of the stuff you hear on Radio 5 and over the Breakfast sofa-type programmes, could well have been written by a London cabbie. Soaring costs of fuel? Well, it’s the Prime Minister’s policies when Chancellor that have caused the problem.
We certainly seem to be entering a period of sharply rising food costs and this morning’s Today programme carried a worrying piece on the cost of a pint of beer zooming to £4 in the new year. But can we really attribute this to the PM?
Food prices are increasing for two basic reasons. Firstly, of course, there is the cost - literally - of the floods this year, which simply wiped-out whole crops. And secondly, there is the problem of the increase in fuel charges which is suddenly threatening the whole multi-national food chain. It’s a bit rich blaming the rain on Gordon and the oil crisis seems more to do with the peaking of oil production than a mis-calculation on the PM’s role. Ah yes, the critics say, but 90 pence in every pound sale of fuel goes in tax: but it was ever thus.
As a nation we love somebody to blame. There has to be a scapegoat. If anything goes wrong there is someone to blame. But I wouldn’t expect kind of twaddle from national news gathering organisations.
Of course, there are bigger issues. Is the government doing enough on climate change? What can be done to discourage the worst excesses of international food movement?
These big issues are challenges for government and, perhaps, they are not being bold enough. But it is difficult for governments to more at a much faster pace than their electorates and - in that - the media has an important role to play. However, ultimately, for many of these issues there is a big responsibility for us to play as individuals, so long as we are economically able to take personal initiatives. Do we need to use that car? Do we really need to eat those green beans from Kenya?
The BBC seems to be having a problem with the notion of balance. We must give coverage to the creationists because we need balance. We must give coverage to the car industry because global warming might not be real.
I guess you can always argue that the BBC’s motor-mouths are simply representing the views of ordinary people on the street and for balance we should be reflecting their views, but this seems like plain nonsense.
It seems an odd old world when our national broadcaster shoves the blame on the PM for the conditions that create food price rises, rather than on concentrating on what he does to try and deal with problems. But then this is the same old organisation that pays Jeremy Clarkson to trot out all of his anti global warming bullshit. Sure Clarkson is entertaining, but responsible? Balanced? Not a chance.
Topics: Reflections |
December 24th, 2007 at 1:51 pm
Will Davies has a rather nice post on the politics of forgiveness that touches on similar themes.
As you’ll see I’m slightly less optimistic about the possibility, but who knows…
December 25th, 2007 at 10:03 pm
Well Andrew, a new year is a time for optimism!