Tag: Opinion

Levelling Level | The role of the Media in our new world

Whilst many question the validity of the mainstream media today, very few really question or analyse what our mainstream news mediums really do and how they actually work.

As with the case with money, or the new unit(s) of exchange as we go forward, the great correction will define that media sources with influence must tell the truth and therefore be a medium that the public can trust.

We are already at saturation point when it comes to other people’s narratives, and we are desperate to hear leaders and influencers speaking the truth, demonstrating that they are sources that we can trust.

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The Government & Media has already set all of us on a downward spiral. The complete shutdown must be lifted now if we are to find a minimum-pain way out

download (33)FEAR rules everything in life, even though we are not conscious of it most of the time. The greatest fear of all is the fear of death, and when the prospect of a by-pass or a short route to dying comes into view, that fear can push us to do and accept very questionable things.

A little bit of fear can be a good thing. A civilised society does after all need to have and maintain basic rules.

But what the Government and the Media have been and are now doing to this Country goes beyond sense and logic.

The constant flow of negativity and highlighting of personal tragedies framed in a way that makes the idea that this is happening to everyone right now has created mass hysteria. It is only the presence of the walls that surround our homes caging us all in like rabbits in hutches that currently keeps our thinking penned in the same way as our bodies currently are.

The damage being inflicted on the economy by the shutdown is now increasing by the minute.

Across the Country, business owners are contemplating the reality of the Government’s game plan in stunned silence.

Yet the majority obsess about 8pm clap-from-your-doorstep sessions for the NHS that the media would have us believe has become obligatory for everyone to take part in. It will be frowned upon or considered to look churlish if you don’t willingly take part or become involved.

The Government chose to pursue a lockdown as a kneejerk measure, influenced in no small part by sensationalist approach that the Media has been taking.

The Government has made very poor decisions that already contradict themselves. It is clearly failing to think through the implications of much of what it is doing beyond tackling Coronavirus-linked illness itself.

Meanwhile the media is taking every opportunity to sow fear throughout the population by dwelling on what journalists believe it is in their interests to suggest that the Government isn’t doing well, rather than there being even the merest hint that they can, could, would or are capable of holding our political leaders intelligently and considerately to account for what they are getting wrong.

Neither the Public nor the politicians are in control of the direction of public policy as things stand.

The Media is using fear fuelled by subjective opinion to keep people glued to their non-stop Coronavirus Show, whilst the unbridled influence they have means that they have become in many ways the de facto leadership of this Country. It is neither democratic nor can it be in any way held to account.

The fervour that the Media has whipped up and the choices that the Government has subsequently opted to take does not follow any overarching strategic reasoning.

For instance, the shutdown of the kind we are experiencing has seen nearly a million people sign up for Universal Credit in the past two weeks, whilst a not dissimilar number have signed up to volunteer to help the vulnerable and the NHS.

The sheer number of forced-to-be-idle people who are now being put to work going back out to help others rather than doing their own jobs makes a mockery of the whole idea of laying people off because it’s safer for them to be at home.

However, short-sighted, fag-packet-derived policies from the Government and Media manufactured ideas about what people can or should do to avoid Coronavirus – have for no good reason – become accepted as the only way to do things – just because of the source from where the information has come from.

Subsequently, we now have a National workforce which will be reluctant to go back to normal working – simply because so much uncertainty is being promoted about what is to come.

Regrettably negativity of this magnitude does damage that will last.

No matter how positive and constructive the Government and the Media could and should be, from the moment the decision to lift the lockdown is taken, getting people back to work, into the shops, our businesses functioning and transport running anywhere close to where it should be to be considered ‘normal’ is likely to take many months – even if the employers, the businesses and the transport companies still exist at that point.

The latest news today about 100,000 Coronavirus Tests being done daily by the end of April and then the suggestion that once there is an antibody test people will be able to get a ‘Immunity Certificate’ issued – whilst everyone else stays at home is leading to false hope for people and for communities, whilst the long term strategy for both is a short-fused time bomb which is going to go off in weeks if not months.

With Field Hospitals now opening like the Nightingale in London and medical resources coming into place, this is the time to relax the Shutdown, restart the engines of everyday life around the Country and replace what was only ever a suggested need for being shut up at home completely with guidelines and procedures for people to follow if they feel unwell.

If the Shutdown isn’t lifted now, the damage that it is going to done to the economy and therefore to many lives is going to be something that even now it is very difficult for many people to comprehend.

Even with the Shutdown lifted now, it will take time for a feeling of normality to return.

The decisions made by the Government and the stories that the mainstream media has told have already caused irreparable damage to businesses and households, and put the fear of God into people when they simply should have not done so.

People will not find it easy to resume normal living at a restart anytime after this. With the time it will take to accommodate the impact that Coronavirus alone is going to have on society either way, there is no time to lose.

The restart of life after Shutdown is overdue.

 

image thanks to newsthump.com

 

TV Election debates are great if showmanship is the only standard set for Political leadership

download (23)I’ve written about televised leaders debates before and I continue to have doubts about their validity, and whether it is even possible for them to be truly fair.

With talk of another General Elections becoming ever frequent, probably because of Labours obsession with finding a way to cause one, it comes as little surprise that somebody, somewhere is obsessing about how people will feel in a very specific, but what will be painted as being a wholly comprehensive way..

That looking to ‘big up’ a certain point of view is a process of little more than confirmation bias by people with the public ear is no great shock. But it is ironic that the subject matter here is the focus of the media, where a lot of the symptoms or effects causing upset amongst not only young people but the wider population too, was generated in the first place.

No, there’s nothing wrong with young people being in favour with television debates. In fact, I defy anyone to suggest other than it is what we can all safely expect.

After all, TV and all forms of media are now to many representative of the world we live in. From that perspective alone, we would be foolish to overlook the way that to so many people the world of politics is now perceived.

What happens is we all forget or overlook one massive and inescapable truth when when the infinitesimally small, pure, unadulterated level of fact provided through these mediums is acknowledged and put to one side.

Every other bit of content on the news, on TV, on the internet and on social media isn’t real. Its words. Opinion. Spin. Someone else’s way of interpreting events in the world. It’s the way that other people want us all to see AND interpret what is going on around us. And even then what they say and what we hear may be very different things.

We have created the illusion of all illusions. Instead of measuring our life decisions with the facts hidden below the surface of this pretend veil, we are mistaking illusion for fact. We have fallen in to the trap of creating a parallel universe where nothing really exists except the many perceptions that we have differently as individuals. Perceptions that we experience as genuine which are misleading is about everything.

No, I do not blame young people or anyone living a normal life outside the bubble where this is all created for the misunderstanding, the frustration and yes, the injustice which sits in between. I don’t even blame those creating the problem from within it, because these are people who are so clearly lost from the impact and consequence of what they are doing, that they cannot really have any idea of what it all means.

The biggest problem in amongst all of this is that our political classes do not see the reality of what is going on and what this all really is. Despite it not being unreasonable that we should be able to expect all those holding elected office to be savvy enough to see the wood for the trees AND act upon it, they have become obsessed with making all this noise real. They simply overlook the responsibilities that they have to us all and obsess about what looks good when it is presented to us

Watch Politicians on Twitter. Observe them on Facebook. But above all take note of how little sense any of their answers or statements really make when they are asked reasonable question about the work they are supposed to be doing for you.

Our political classes have become so obsessed with playing up to what they think people think, rather than doing the job they are supposed to do, that it really comes as no surprise that things have got as bad as they really are for us all. This is wrong.

The establishment didn’t see Brexit coming. Many of the Politicians belonging to it are still convinced that everyone outside Westminster and London actually wants to remain. They certainly haven’t got any real idea of what it is to be a normal person trying to make ends meet, or to be a young person struggling with the prospect of taking on a lifelong debt to obtain what will probably be useless qualifications before their adult life even begins.

So if we focus only on how a Politician or would-be Prime Minister performs on TV or all the other forms of media, we are overlooking a great many things.

Yes, good media performance is important for Politicians. But it is only just the cherry on a very large metaphorical cake. It’s not even the icing, or the most important part, the middle, which itself needs to contain real quality ingredients. All in one what should really be a many great things.

None of this can really be seen within a televised debate forum. Seeing is believing only if you believe the idea that the camera never lies. And if any of us use this example of judging the suitably of a prime ministerial candidate and the substance of the Political Party that backs them, we should not be surprised when the results are policies which only inflict pain within our lives, because the illusion of credibility that being on a screen gives then wins.

 

image thanks to independent.co.uk

Even if the Government has ‘reports’ on the UK’s future after Brexit, it would remain foolish to rely on expert opinion about an event which hasn’t already taken place

download (9)Brexit has been created by a phenomenon, the elements of which many of us are still failing to understand. For non-decision makers, this is just a social problem between people who are usually friends. But for our politicians it has now become an elaborate game of pin the tail on the donkey which risks much more than a simple prick to the finger if they get their blindfolded judgement wrong.

The exquisite mix of having a government led by people who do not believe in what they are doing, trying to deliver working solutions to problems that they do not understand would in any other situation be recognised for what it is. But politics has regrettably moved on from an age when it really was in some way chivalrous – if it ever really was, and power being all, is all it has now become.

This insidious environment does not lend itself well to the power of original thinking. Trust has become as interchangeable with myth as proof has become with fiction, and unrelated history has become the benchmark of reliability against the future that we can also not personally see.

Measuring the possible impact and consequences of Brexit against such a backdrop is therefore down to either fortune telling – which is at best no more than ‘an educated guess’, or of relying upon economic viewpoints and philosophies which have been developed on the basis of events that have already passed, rather than what will actually happen in the future.

Put simply, nothing like Brexit has happened before and nor will it happen again, as even the smallest difference – perhaps down to the outlook of just one of the key players involved, could deliver an outcome which we could never imagine.

That the Government and Ministers responsible for any part of the Brexit process may or may not choose to rely upon reports which have been devised in this way and within this unique set of circumstances, is perhaps more about their own take on the opinion of others, rather than anything we could really label as setting out to deceive.

Whether they be Specialists, Experts, Economists or not, it is little more than opinion that they actually give and we would all do well to remember that even then, nobody has the ability to offer such ‘expert analysis’ of an event which has not already taken place.

Yes, we all have concerns about what is to come as a result of Brexit. But staying within Europe would not in any way have meant that a stable future of any kind was assured. And it remains worthy of note that whilst Brexit may prove to be temporarily challenging for us, for the UK to have remained a member of the EU may in time have proven to be truly catastrophic.

image thanks to fortune.com