Don't trust anything I read in the media? But you're in the media, so how can I trust you and oh my head has exploded.

I have my finger so firmly on the pulse of modern life that I will be tweeting it’s demise ironically before the first carrier pigeon is devoured. Because of my inherent wisdom and up-to-dateness I was already aware that the “Girl quits her job using photos and a DryErase board” story was a fake before most people had heard of it. Yep, I’m cooler than you. Either that or I’ve got too much time on my hands, you choose.

So some little chaps somewhere in America decided to see how quickly they could make something go viral and create an internet meme at the same time. I’m still at a loss to understand how people make a living out of this kind of thing, but good luck to them anyway. They seem to have succeeded, it certainly went viral very quickly, and there’s every indication that it might become some kind of meme. It might even go down in history as the shortest lived hoax ever created, so soon was it discovered that it almost doesn’t qualify as a hoax at all, except that there are probably thousands of people just receiving it and believing it this morning, so it probably lives on. Maybe it’s the shortest-lived hoax-that-some-discovered-wasn’t-a-hoax-before-others-had-discovered-the-hoax? Maybe, as a colleague pointed out, they’ll be outdone tomorrow by a meme that goes viral, is exposed to be an elaborate hoax, the hoax goes viral, then someone discovers that it wasn’t a hoax at all, but was in fact real so it is, in fact, the quickest non-hoax ever to be discovered as a hoax that goes viral then goes viral again because it wasn’t a hoax at all. I think I’m going to be sick.

So whilst the Internet slowly masturbates itself to blindness, I’m left pondering all this and wondering if it matters at all. It probably doesn’t, but the photo above (nicked from Techcrunch) is interesting, because it has a point. There is plenty of stuff that is fake on the Internet and in the media in general. But the Internet and the Media are also, increasingly where we get the majority of our information. Newspapers and TV occasionally set themselves up as points of authority in an Internet-enabled world gone mad: you may not be able to believe everything you read in Wikipedia, but the print media is founded on sound journalistic principles. Of course, that turns out to be bollocks too, because journalists use the Internet more than anyone. So where is authority, where does truth lie?

No, really, I’m asking because I haven’t got a clue. It might be fun to dupe news organisations, and maybe it will make them more rigorous long-term (or more Internet-savvy at least), and a healthy dose of scepticism and critical analysis is very important, but essentially what we’re now saying is that nobody can be trusted. Even the trustworthy can’t be trusted because the untrustworthy might have tricked them so what they’re being trustworthy about might just be a big hoax.

We’ve only got ourselves to blame, and it’ll all end in tears, you can trust me on that.

Frank Field - fill the whole world with a rainbow.

It looks like Labour’s Frank Field is to turn our coalition government all rainbowy when he heads up a Poverty Commission. Now I’ve no idea what powers he will have, what the Commission’s remit will be and how they’ll approach the issue, but what is clear to me is this: tackling poverty is not simply about making poor people a bit richer, it’s got to be about making rich people poorer too.

It’s deeply uncool to talk about re-distribution of wealth and the concept of social inequality makes some shuffle uncomfortably and talk of “de-incentivising” and other nonsense terms, but at some point we have to face up to the uncomfortable fact that poverty is a relative term. When everyone’s poor, nobody’s poor. When everyone’s rich, nobody’s rich. The very concept of poverty cannot exist without someone, somewhere being rich.

Whilst this may seem like a truism, it’s something that must be dealt with if we actually see poverty as a problem worth solving. Poor people can’t afford to buy houses (I know, I’m one of them) and it’s not because we don’t work, or don’t work enough, or don’t work hard enough. It’s not because we haven’t got access to easy credit (we’ve got access to too much a lot of the time), and it’s not even really because we don’t have enough money. The reason I can’t buy a house is because other people have a lot more money. The market place is competitive by design and definition and whilst I, despite working a full time and reasonably-paid job, cannot afford to buy a home there are many more around me who can. And they can buy more than one home, in fact they can afford to buy lots of homes, and then rent them to me.

The widening gap between the richest and the poorest is the real story of poverty. Whilst people on £25,000 a year and less compete in a marketplace with those who take home £1 million bonuses on top of wages that are 20 and 30 times higher than the people they work alongside, poverty will always be a problem.

Now it’s only a hop, skip and a jump from what I’m pointing out here to Communism, as I’m sure plenty would be keen to point out, but I’m not suggesting forced equality, or a totalitarian redistribution of wealth. I’m saying that the problem of poverty does not lie with the poor, it lies with the rich. I’m asking us to question the mechanisms of an economy that justifies a company director earning 20 times what a normal worker at the same company earns. There is something strange about those figures; they may make some kind of warped economic sense, but they make no ethical, moral or social sense.

Tax credits, benefits, higher employment figures, cheaper, more plentiful food and products: all these things can improve the lot of the poorest, but they will stay poor whilst other members of society are able to earn disproportionately higher salaries. The question is whether we want to improve the lives of the poor, but keep them poor, or actually deal with poverty, in which case, look to the rich.

We go live now to absolutely nothing.

Something that stood out for me from all the recent Election coverage (quite apart from the fascinating 24 hr footage of people waiting for things to happen) was the frequent mention of either the “voice of the electorate” or “listening to the voice of the people”. This came frequently from journalists and from the enormous variety of pundits that were on 24 hour rotation in those heady days when nobody really knew what was going on.

Now I’m more than willing to put such cliches down to the fact that with a Hung Parliament, few people alive that remembered the last one and coalition talks happening in secret, it was simply very difficult to find anything really worth talking about, and at such times 24 hour news is more than happy to resort to hackneyed catchphrases and soundbites, but it raises an interesting question. If the people had spoken, what had they actually said? Of course pundits of every political colour were ready to interpret what the people had said for us: for some the people had said that Labour had lost, others that the Conservatives hadn’t won, and still others that the people wanted a coalition or new type of politics, or to make their anger at politicians heard.

But of course, “the people” said nothing of the sort because “the people” are made up of individuals, each with their own motivations, their own prejudices and their own way of seeing the world. And all each individual did was put a cross on a piece of paper to indicate which candidate they wanted to represent them in Parliament. Sure, some people voted tactically, although as we saw on the night, the swings weren’t where everyone thought they’d be, predicted successes and failures didn’t pan out and the only accurate forecast came, for once, from the exit polls, but ultimately the “people” didn’t say anything. We didn’t all get together and decide we wanted radical change, or more of the same, or voice our anger. Each of us, individually (at least the 65% of eligible voters who could be bothered) went down and made our decisions alone.

Many of us didn’t get the result we wanted, at least 50% of votes cast were for losing candidates, so in terms of the people speaking, actually only 50% were heard, or at least, the other 50% were heard and subsequently ignored.

Now perhaps electoral reform of some kind could remedy this to some extent, and give greater representation proportionally, or at least allow people’s votes to count a little, even if their first choice is a “loser”, but I’m trying to make a wider point here: the “people” are not one homogeneous mass. We do not speak with one voice, actually we disagree with each other a lot of the time.

I live nextdoor to people who drive the most ridiculous cars imaginable. Huge 4×4s that are of no conceivable use in the urban environment in which we live. An old man a few doors away can often be heard complaining to the nearby Asian shopkeeper about the number of Eastern European immigrants in the area. I share a house with someone who voted Conservative. On all these issues I fundamentally disagree with all these people, but I still share a house, a street, a community with them.

In everyday life compromise is a perfectly normal thing, an essential thing, because individuals are all different. We don’t speak with one voice, we disagree, we argue, but in all but the most extreme and unusual circumstances we just get on with our lives as best we can, because we have little choice. And most of us realise that for all our differences and disagreements, the things we have in common are more numerous and more important.

So “the people” didn’t speak on May 6th. 30 million separate individuals put a cross on a piece of paper. That cross was a crude and inadequate representation of their hopes and fears, albeit one that has been long and hard fought for.

As another politician once said “democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time” – let’s not pretend it’s anything else.

Among their hard-nosed, profound changes to our current banking system are the following:-

• A change in the purpose and function of the FSA so it focuses on financial firms’ strategies and identifies when they might get into trouble.

Now I’m curious to know if I’m the only person who looks at that and wonders what the FSA were doing before. Financial Services Authority: that says, to me at least, an authority to oversee financial services, so if they weren’t looking at what financial services were doing, and that surely includes their overall strategies, what were they looking at?

• Banks being required to build up healthy reserves in economic boom times.

Why do we need to tell banks to do that? Seriously, that’s like having to tell a bloke running a fish and chip shop to take the chips out of the fryer when they’re cooked, or telling a bin man to chuck the contents of the bin in the back of the lorry, we assume the person behind the counter in the chip shop knows what they’re doing, and we assume the bin man knows what he’s doing, why do we have to tell the people who run banks, who earn in a year what we’re likely to earn in 20, how to do the basics of their job? More worryingly, why do we have to force them to do the basics of their job?

Going even further, this is just a tacit admission that our current system is inherently tied to boom and bust. Here’s a thought: a financial system that, almost by definition, leads to periods when people lose their houses and jobs through no fault of their own, is not a very good system.

• Risk taking to be discouraged through forcing banks to hold more capital and a bonus system that discourages risk taking.

Again, stuff that banks should be doing anyway. Basically this is saying that prior to this “profound change” in the FSA’s thinking, it was absolutely fine and dandy for a bank to take your savings, quite literally gamble them, and, whether the gamble paid off or not, give a massive sum of money to the person who did the gambling. Oh, and it’s also just peachy for banks to make up money out of thin air with just a tiny fraction of the amount being backed up by actual assets. The very fact that this is being regarded as a profound change indicates that bankers are a bunch of uncaring, overpaid scumbags, and the FSA a bunch of uncaring, oblivious idiots.

• Credit rating agencies to be regulated.

Hang on… you mean they weren’t regulated before? Credit rating agencies basically define the value or worth of packages of debt. That should be calculated according to the interest being paid on the debt and the likelihood of payments being defaulted. It gets complicated but essentially that’s what they’re there to do. I’d say that’s quite a big deal, because the debts we’re talking about are often mortgages, and that’s basically a contractual representation of your house. Basically what they did was rated high risk mortgages as high value because of the high rates of interest being paid on them, and ignored the risk of people defaulting on those payments. That was stupid, but it happened because there wasn’t any regulation, and because the credit ratings agencies basically found a way of making money out of doing it. They found a way of making money out of doing something incredibly risky and stupid, and they did it, a lot. They were able to get away with it because the idea of regulating them was seen as intrusive government.

Now all the above is essentially about the FSA, their changes, and the state of play before those changes. I’m asking why those changes are regarded as profound when they seem to be pretty much common sense, and should have been in place all along, and I’m asking why the services being regulated didn’t recognise and do something about the problems they were well aware they were creating?

The answer is that they found a way to make lots and lots of money by doing stupid, risky things with other people’s money, and the FSA, and all other relevant authorities, were quite happy for them to do it because it looked like that Holy Grail of capitalism: economic growth.

No, argue all you like, but the simple fact is, and what nobody other than Clarkson and a few other courageous Sun and Daily Mail readers are willing to stand up and say is: we need to abolish Health & Safety. History shows us that people do just fine without Health & Safety legislation. Industrial accidents have always happened and always will, there’s absolutely no reason to examine the causes and try and prevent them in future, that’s bad for business and bad for the country.

Jeremy Clarkson for Prime Minister, that’s what I say. Someone not afraid to stand up for the freedom of the average working man (so long as that freedom doesn’t include the freedom to work in a safe environment, drive on safe roads, live in a safe home, send his kids to a safe school and so on and so forth). What the PC Brigade doesn’t understand is that a man is born free, free to do whatever he likes, whenever he likes to whoever he likes without fear of consequences. That’s the kind of world Clarkson envisions, and that’s the kind of world I want to live in.

Should the BNP be given more airtime to give voice to their opinions and policies? Is theirs an equal and valid opinion? No, it isn’t. However they try to market themselves the fact remains that much of their policy and beliefs are based on bigotry and racism. Their clumsy pleas for immigration control and an England for the English are not based on a sincere belief in the efficacy of those policies, but in the mistaken belief that one race or type of people has more of a right to this land than others. They are wrong. I’m not trying to make a moral point, I’m not trying to say that ethically the BNP are wrong, I’m saying that in every sense they are factually incorrect in their assumptions about the world around them. Everyone in England is an immigrant at some point or other. As a person with a fair bit of Welsh ancestry, according to the BNP’s logic I might well be within my rights to ask all the English to please get the hell off my island, as there’s probably a fairly good chance that the Welsh were here first. It’s ridiculous; their policies are based on nothing but an arbitrary unease about people who are different, a fundamental prejudice, on racism. What is more, they are demonstrably wrong. In more subtle areas of politics, for example those arguments between government intervention and free market self-regulation, it’s hard to predict, hard to demonstrate what works best and what doesn’t, it is often a case of perspective, and both sides can be legitimately argued for. The fact that the wealth and prosperity of Britain could not exist without our immigrant population or our historic plundering of other nations is pretty obvious. The fact that humanity as a whole is an immigrant population is a matter of archaeological record. The fact that the land we occupy remains long after we are dust, the fact that borders are arbitrary and ephemeral: all these things are indisputable. If you argue for a particular policy, or your perspective is governed by a denial of these things, then you are wrong. You’re not morally wrong, you’re not an opposing opinion that deserves an airing, you’re just wrong.

Why do we hold up arguments such as these as valid ones that need to be heard? I know that knowledge and proof are not absolute things in this world; that time and time again the consensus is proved wrong in the light of new discoveries, but racism is the consensus that has been proved wrong, not the other way round. It was the consensus before humanity learned what was wrong with it. Now that we understand what is wrong with it, now that we recognise the fundamental errors of assumption, we should be able to move on. This is not a new idea that contradicts our current understanding. It is an old idea that has been contradicted by our current understanding.

Racism isn’t an alternative opinion that needs to be heard, nor is sexism, nor is homophobia. Prejudice is what it is. It is borne from ignorance, and can be defeated by learning and understanding. It can be shown to be wrong. Not morally wrong, not ethically wrong, but demonstrably wrong – based in error.

We don’t need to hear both sides of the story from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; we know that both sides will only see the wrong done them. We can see what they are doing to each other and know that neither side is in the right, that neither perspective is more legitimate than the other. We can look at what is happening and make our own judgements, we already know the judgements of the sides involved, and presenting them again does not give us a greater insight.

Human-caused climate change is a scientific theory, as such the only perspective we need on it is a scientific one, and the overwhelming scientific evidence is that it is happening. We certainly don’t need to hear the perspective of individuals who do not study the subject at a scientific level but who deny the findings of those who do, their opinion is worthless.

Balanced reporting and journalism cannot be about just presenting both sides of the story, because quite frequently one side of the story is nonsense. It’s not often that one can safely refer to the work of a soft-permed, tight-trousered, soft-rock group, but Extreme’s third album was called “Three Sides to Every Story”. The three sides were: yours, mine and the truth. Simply presenting your side of the story and my side of the story will not necessarily provide us with the truth of a story, and providing another side to the story is a waste of everyone’s time when we know that side to be wrong.

The BBC is supposed to be impartial, unbiased, and, particularly in its News coverage, present both sides of whatever story it’s covering. Fairness and impartiality are right at the centre of the Corporation’s raison d’etre, it’s in the Royal Charter that gives the BBC a legal right to demand a license fee from every TV and Radio consuming person in the country. Problem is there’s no such thing. There’s no such thing as impartiality, there’s no such thing as objectivity, and presenting a balanced view of anything is all but impossible.

The latest little debacle is over the BBC’s refusal to broadcast an appeal from the Disaster Emergency Committee for the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Now one of the main reasons the BBC has not broadcast the appeal is that they are unwilling to broadcast appeals for donations from the public when they cannot be sure the money raised will actually reach those in need, and given the current situation in Gaza, that’s not an unfounded fear. This has precedent; the BBC delayed broadcasting the DEC’s appeal after the South East Asian Tsunami until they were sure that the proceeds donated would be able to reach those affected. I think that’s fair enough, the BBC’s not a commercial organisation, it doesn’t broadcast adverts in return for cash, so if it’s going to broadcast an appeal from another organisation appealing for public donations, it needs to be sure of the integrity of that appeal.

Unfortunately the Beeb has also cited impartiality as a reason for refusing to broadcast the appeal. The logic goes something like: we’re still reporting on the conflict in that area, the affects are still ongoing, and the reasons for the humanitarian crisis, those who are responsible and those who are affected, are contentious issues that we have to cover impartially in our News coverage. Unfortunately that kind of logic doesn’t stand up too well to scrutiny. There have been politically contentious issues surrounding many humanitarian disasters that the BBC have broadcast appeals for, indeed, Michael Buerk’s broadcasts from Ethiopia in the mid 80s, became in integral part of the broader humanitarian appeal that sprang up around Live Aid, but you could hardly argue that there was nothing politically contentious about that humanitarian disaster.

The whole Gaza thing is not really about impartiality. It’s physically impossible to be impartial about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It has a history so complex that few people even understand what’s happening there now, let alone how, where or when it all began. I recently went on the march in Central London to appeal for a ceasefire in Gaza, (I would emphasise that the reason I was there was to call for a ceasefire, not for victory to Hamas which much of the crowd seemed to be in favour of) and was amazed to see people there wearing stickers of the BBC logo with a Star of David obscuring the second B. The BBC has long been seen by some as being pro-Palestinian in its coverage of the region, but it doesn’t take much searching to find those who believe that the Corporation is at the behest of the pro-Israeli lobby.

So which is it? Is the BBC pro-Palestinian or pro-Israeli? Well the reality is it’s neither, and yet it is still forced to tread on eggshells to even try and cover what is happening in the region. So are they truly reporting impartially? No, of course not, they struggle to report anything. Impartial does not mean honest, it is more usually associated with presenting both sides of a story. Neither side in Gaza is innocent, neither side can be truly said to be legitimately defending their people or acting proportionally. The abstract concepts of authority, legitimacy, and recognised states and governments are not definitive markers for right and wrong, but some people see them as such. For some it’s very clear cut that Hamas are terrorists indiscriminately murdering civilians, whilst the Israeli forces are legitimately defending their people, for others it’s very clear that Israeli forces are the terrorists indiscriminately murdering civilians, whilst Hamas fight for the safety and freedom of their people. There is no right and wrong to either of these views, both can be and are argued for vehemently. There is no truth to be had in either perspective. If the BBC reports those perspectives they will be seen as legitimising them, whether that is their intention or not. So isn’t it easier just to report the facts of what is happening in the area? Well those “facts” are inextricably linked to those perspectives; report the facts and you are reporting those warped perspectives, you are automatically, in the eyes of those who hold those perspectives, taking sides. The BBC cannot be impartial when it comes to Israel and Palestine, because those involved, or those with an interest, will simply not let them be impartial.

The problems arise when the BBC tries to appease those parties. Trying to remain impartial when it is impossible to do so undermines the honesty that is the true underpinning of journalistic reporting. To be impartial implies giving voice to both perspectives, showing “both sides of the story”. Quite frankly, fuck their “sides of the story”. Both sides are trying to justify the murder of civilians; there is no value in giving voice to that. We all know that they think they’re right and the other side are wrong, we should also all realise that it’s not that simple.

No matter what the BBC does, it will never be seen as impartial on this matter, and on many others, but what it can do is be honest. Report the facts as the BBC sees them. When they change their reporting or methods because of the pressure brought to bear by those with vested interests or specific perspectives everyone loses out.

Ironically the appeal by DEC has probably received far more publicity through the BBC’s refusal to broadcast it, than if it had broadcast it.

I know it’s not news that people around the world, and especially women, are still seen as property. Slavery is still rife, women are still paid less and not proportionally represented in highly paid jobs, and forced arranged marriages still make the news quite frequently. I watched a documentary on the history of BBC Television News recently and was shocked to learn that when the contraceptive pill first came out, it was only available to married women, and only with the written consent of her husband. That was in the 60s. Today, some bloke in Egypt still thinks his daughter is his to give away, and let’s not forget that every blushing bride who walks down the aisle on her daddy’s arm is buying into a tradition, albeit dated and not necessarily the reality today, that she is her daddy’s property to give away. Then over in the good old U.S of A you’ve got teenage girls pledging their virginity to their fathers until their wedding night, the thought of which actually makes me want to puke. Call it tradition, culture, ritual, religion, ceremony, any euphemism you like; seeing a person as property strips them of their humanity, and the rest of us of our dignity. It isn’t harmless, we can’t just laugh it off.

There are a few points to make here. First, and by no means least is the presidency of the last 8 years. It would take a wild stretching of facts and leniency of perspective to look at George W. Bush and say he became President of the U.S.A because he was the best person for the job. The sad truth is that electing the best people for the job in any democracy is a precedent that is far from being set, it just doesn’t really happen. Firstly, there is more than a touch of truth in the saying that those who want power are the last people that should have it; then there is the often blatant corruption or inherent unfairness of democratic systems. Add to that voter ignorance and apathy and it’s clear that we’re very lucky to end up with an even vaguely competent leader, let alone a good one. Clearly both those marks were missed by some way with the election of George W. Bush, indeed much of Bush’s popularity apparently stemmed from the fact that he was the kind of bloke you wouldn’t mind having a beer with, rather than his ability to govern wisely.

So will Barack Obama prove to be a competent, capable President? Well, it doesn’t really matter does it? With the exception of accidentally destroying the entire U.S.A with his own nukes, it’s hard to see what he could do that could possibly be any worse than what’s gone before. He is also faced with a country wedged firmly in the economic u-bend, whilst the rest of the world is left to gaze bewildered at the rising tide of their own filth as it gradually spills over the edge of the bowl and onto their over-priced brogues. Barack Obama will not be able to fix this; the ridiculous thing is that some are expecting him to.

So he can’t fix his own country’s problems let alone the world’s, he may yet prove to be an incompetent, poor leader, and it may not even matter. If all that’s true, why, when I woke to the news on the morning of November 5th, did I well-up with tears whilst listening to his victory speech? Why did I feel a genuine tug of hope and optimism in the pit of my stomach? Why did I feel, for the first time in a few years, that humanity may not be doomed to suffer and die horribly and deservingly as a result of its own ignorance? Why does it matter that Barack Obama won?

It matters because his name is Barack Hussein Obama. It matters because he is black. It matters because, for the moment at least, the U.S. is still the richest, most powerful nation on earth, and it matters because the people living there decided to put him in charge. What happens now is almost irrelevant. It doesn’t matter if he’s any good. What matters is that with his victory one more nail was hammered into the coffin of prejudice, ignorance and hatred. That is far more important than any political policy.

1)    Nearly 600 square miles of rainforest was destroyed.
2)    The situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo has deteriorated.
3)    132,000 children died.
4)    35 Iraqi civilians were killed.
5)    The global economic recession continues to worsen.
6)    We came closer to reaching peak oil production.
7)    45 Afghanistani civilians were killed.
8)    The US continued to base its troops in 150 countries around the world.
9)    The US national debt exceeded $10 trillion.
10)     The US came one step closer to electing their first black president.

Now obviously many of these stories (although certainly not all) have been reported in the UK media this week, but front page space is scarce, and for every day that Brand or Ross gurned out at us from those covers, the faces of dead innocents did not. I’m not blaming the media. I work for the BBC; the Brand/Russell affair has been of great interest to me, as it has obviously been for much of the country. It’s fine to take an interest in stories like this, but it would be nice if they didn’t distract us from the things in our world that need our attention.