I know it’s easy to criticise the pompous and self-righteous mutual onaism that exists between ‘The Guardian’ and it’s readers, but sometimes they just make it so easy, it’d be rude not to. And one thing I never am is rude. Offensive, maybe, obscene sometimes if I try hard enough, but never rude.

‘The Guardian’ proudly proclaimed in what it hoped would be a cause for celebration from everyone who read its, that basically they were going to cease carrying any gambling advertising on it. Not merely to cease it you understand, but in order to express the gravity of the situation that the same echo-chamber morality that ‘The Guardian’ specialises in, something more was needed. And so;

The Guardian bans all gambling advertising

Ban will apply worldwide to all of media group’s online and print outlets, including the Guardian, Observer, and Guardian Weekly.

The ban covers all forms of gambling advertising, including promotions for sports betting, online casinos and scratchcards. It will apply worldwide to all of the company’s online and print outlets, including the Guardian, Observer, and Guardian Weekly.

Of course, there was no space to detail how much revenue this would lose them or indeed when was the last time any such advertisements appeared in or on any of its outlets. I have Ad Block Plus on my computer so I don’t know. The sums involved could be huge, in which case congratulations and plaudits to them for putting their principles before profit, or it could be negligible, in which case it fully deserves the kind of judgemental opprobrium that it quite happily metes out to others. But instead they get their tube of journalistic lube out;

The decision to exclude gambling advertising from the Guardian’s publications follows the rapid growth of online betting on sporting events, aided by deregulation and the huge increase in the number of smartphone users. The US has recently embraced online betting on sport, following the lead of Australia and the UK, where gambling has exploded in popularity over the past decade.

Many media outlets are increasingly reliant on money from betting companies. British television channels have said their business models increasingly depend on advertising from bookmakers, while TikTok is trialling gambling advertising in Australia, and the US outlet Barstool Sports was bought outright by a casino group.

But not us, we have principles, uppermost being the one that involves amplifying our readers own likes – and in this case dislikes – back at them to make them feel thoroughly virtuous for having those likes or dislikes. I write readers, but then they’re not just readers are they? They’re also the proprietors, well those that keep funding it, anyway. I imagine that ‘readers’ of ‘The Guardian’, aren’t the target audience betting companies want to reach anyway, and that so it’s no great loss to them.

Just as I was about to post this blog, on a whim I decided to google ‘how much revenue does the guardian earn from gambling adverts’ and the first entry that came up was this one, from the Press Gazette. It carries the same sanctimonious waffle from some people who earn big pay checks there, but reading on, came across this

The Guardian’s chief advertising officer Imogen Fox told Press Gazette that globally, gambling advertisements “make up less than 1% of our revenues”, although she added it was “hard to quantify and it has changed over time”.

Mmm, as I thought, so making a big deal about banning something, something that they can use to differentiate their brand from other media outlets and also lift their readers ever higher upon the lofty peak of Mount Morality while doing so, at no great loss to them, isn’t that much of a ban is it?

Maybe it’s me, possibly because I’m brain damaged, maybe because I’ve only had one cup of tea so far today or maybe it’s because of the heat. Whatever it is, it made me laugh like drain when I read the on the BBC that.

A coal-fired power station in Nottinghamshire has been warmed up to cope with expected higher energy demand in the warm weather.

Hang on, by implication that means that we are not currently producing enough energy to meet our needs?

That can’t be right, can it?

It would mean that the dream of achieving Net Zero – U.K producing no carbon emissions -by 2050, as this government has pledged to to, and to which both Labour and the Li-Dems fully endorse is trumpery moonshine? That would mean that the dream of soon turning our backs on coal or nuclear energy and instead replacing them with solar and wind generated power would be a nightmare. Politicians and other virtue signalling agitators would have to own up to the fact that solar and wind generated power is nowhere near being capable enough to meet our current needs, and it seems socially irresponsible to suggest they ever will ever be in the near future. No-one has yet explained how wind turbines will generate power when there is no wind, or how solar will generate power when there is no sun. Instead the public is expected to put their faith some as yet unknown but practical and affordable solution to a problem that is oddly present at the time of writing, when then is hardly any wind but the sun is burning so hot that a river in the Lake District, called ‘the wettest place in England’ is drying out.

There’s an inherent contradiction at the heart of all this Net Zero nonsense , a vicious circle that’s as inevitable as it is undeniable. Namely, the more the population expands, the more energy will be needed to support that expanding population and the more energy that an increasing population uses, the hotter the planet will become. And the hotter it is, the more energy that we’ll all need to keep cool and the so the vicious circle will become ever more vicious. Or am I missing something here, a something that’ll magically make everything make sense? Are any political parties strongly advocating an immediate compulsory sterilisation scheme, as both an effective way limiting future energy use and also safe-guarding the integrity of the existing energy infrastructure we as well? If, and that’s a big if, we ever get to a stage where advances in renewable energies, their reliability, their storage and affordability are sufficient to allow a cautious relaxation of said scheme, then fine.

But we’re not there yet and as I’ve repeatedly said, while doing less of this, doing more of that and stopping doing the other may salve the conscience, it won’t solve anything. Consumption is still consumption, and the more people there are consuming, the more that the inherent contradiction at the heart of Net Zero becomes even more contradictory.

For years I was somehow convinced that if I didn’t keep abreast of news and current affairs then something, I knew not what, would happen and somehow that something would be bad. That in some unspecified way it mattered that I knew that ERM wasn’t a sound, or a poor mans Nirvana. Until it finally dawned on me, that actually no, the sky wouldn’t fall in, and that nobody cared either way.

The news is like a snobbily virtuous ‘Eastenders’, a soap opera with an ever changing cast of characters, some of whom disappear only to return years later with a new face, some who just vanish, some who are just there since forever. All of whom are involved in multiple story lines some all at the same time and some storylines beings both so implausibly absurd and seemingly never ending. Who is or isn’t a hero or a villain, or if a love affair is either torrid or tawdry and if a scheme is delightful or dastardly is all dictated by what news you read chooses to tell you.

It’s complicated but because you’ve put the hours in, it isn’t. There are things you know, that you couldn’t possibly explain how you know them but you just do, and to explain them to anyone else would be both impossible and take too long. And besides, if they weren’t going to stick with it, what would be the point?

I thought about this yesterday, as I was reading ‘Private Eye’ and remembered the old Chinese proverb, the one that has it that if you sit by the river long enough, you’ll see the bodies of your enemies float by. My take on it is that if one has been paying attention to the news for long enough, whilst the faces might change and so might the details, the seemingly endemic human capacity for greed, corruption and duplicitous chicanery remain as ever present as they have ever done. Think of ‘Doctor Who’s’ regenerative ability put in a ‘Groundhog Day’ style ongoing surreality show, where no-one is David Tennant and most people think they’re Boris’s Johnson.

Specifically, while I was reading about Patricia Hannah-Wood and her Remoaner style carryings-on the local elections held on 4th May. Despite only getting 177 votes as compared to her Tory rivals 242 in the ward of Marsden West, the returning officer read out the names in the wrong order, and thus she was elected. Has she acknowledged a mistake was made? No. Have her local Labour Party insisted that she admits an error was made and let democracy win instead? No. Has Labours N.E.C. either charged her with bringing the part into disrepute or expelled her. No, quite the opposite, unsurprisingly. The Labour controlled council have offered her seats on several committees and to oust her, the Tory party faces a legal challenge. For which of course, the taxpayer will have to pay for.

Stop me when this all begins to seem familiar….

And like ‘Eastenders’, it all seemed so much better in the past, when we were young enough and naive enough to imagine that there was only one Dirty Den,

Now, it seems there are Dirty Dens everywhere.

Huzzah!

Proof, if any further proof were needed, that democracy is in its final stages in Britain, was provided by the constant hounding, political point-scoring and opportunism that ultimately led to Boris’s Johnson removal from office. His offence, well the official one anyway, was that he lied to parliament. Not about something which has required other M.P’s, in other era’s, with different morals, to resign. Not like John Profumo, for my money someone who set the bar very high for political scandals, one involving sex workers, secrets and Soviets. Or John Stonehouse, who gave him a run for his money by faking his own death to avoid a scandal.

What did Johnson lie about? Some parties, either attending them, hosting them or being in the same postcode where they were happening, its all the same to me, its a manufactured hysteria dressed up as something it so isn’t. He broke lockdown rules. And?

I mean, we all did. Not at first, not for the first few months when we thought everyone was obeying them, but as the weather got nicer, and the rules became more onerous, there began to be a more flexible interpretation of the rules. And the more flexible one interpreted those rules depended on ones own immediate needs and wants. So limited social contact with those in your bubble became more fluid, who was your bubble expanded at the same time that distance required to meet social distancing requirements reduced. When it was people you knew and liked doing it, it was perfectly fine, but when it was someone you didn’t like, it wasn’t. Our landlady would sometimes travel across London just to sit in our garden, and that was fine. But Cummings driving to Durham wasn’t, was totally different. And don’t forget that because of Brexit, because of wanting to commit the unspeakable and actually ensure the result of the EU referendum was carried out, Boris’s Johnson was already public enemy number one.

Even though the pandemic was a rapidly changing, constantly evolving situation on an unprecedented scale, with conflicting scientific advice, some in the media thought it was really helping matters to critcize his handling of the pandemic as a way to express their profound disgust that Brexit had happened. It was rabid, and I’m someone who voted to Remain. But then again, during the pandemic, I was living in a house where Radio 4 was always on, and where ‘The Guardian’ was read, so….

I suppose the thing that bothers me most about all of this is the fact that people who will be shortly asking us to trust them enough to vote them into government, have somehow conflated an inconsequential matter into something serious to warrant a parliamentary resignation. I fervently hope that some of the properly guilty in all of this, the unelected unrepresentive’s of a small minority of the disenchanted, will suffer the same ignominious fate that they have suffered on him.

Because parties? Really?

Remember when business’s were just that, business’s that were simply involved of the business of making things? Things that you would then buy, if another business didn’t make a similar product that was better, that is. Better quality maybe, or better suited to your needs, or simply sold for a much better price. It was really quite simple, they made stuff that we bought. A nice transactional arrangement that suited everyone and more importantly, one in which everyone understood the role they they played.

But now it seems that the bigger a business is, the more profit it makes from whatever it does, then the more it needs the people that either buy or use the thing that they make, to think good things about them, so that they keep on being their customers. And if customers of competitor business’s also happen to think good things about them as well, in time and with enough good things thought, those potential customers might become actual ones.

Google today carry on the homepage of their search engine a link to ‘Discover Ballroom’ where one can explore and find out more about ‘its vibrant culture, history and importance.’ I have mixed feelings about this. Not because I don’t think its a story that shouldn’t be told, far from it, but rather the fact that a business, in this instance Google, is co-opting a ‘vibrant culture’ in order that good things are thought about it. Google aren’t the only business as much as in the business of selling us things as selling us the idea that they’re not just a business at all, that they don’t have a primary legal obligation that maximise returns to its shareholders, but they are in fact on the side of the angels. They’re all at it.

Or maybe, it’s me being cynical, maybe everyone involved is happy with arrangement. That Google are celebrating a hitherto largely unknown part of life’s rich tapestry for no other reason than it deserves to be celebrated. Quite possibly.

Coldplay.

The band you like if you find Radiohead a bit too challenging, a bit too idiosyncratic and a bit less popular with your friends. But hey, what do I know? To me both are guilty of making the kind of jingly-jangily guitar music (JJGM) that I’d hoped dance music had banished into obscurity. To be nothing more than a stark of warning to adolescent boys with dreams of being intellectuals and virgins no longer of the dangers inherent in foolishly believing that their parents weren’t lying about their ‘musical’ ability. So that makes me a hypocrite, admittedly not in the same league as Coldplay, but still.

Is there a sliding scale of hypocrisy? If not, there should be. Is it possible to be only a ‘sometime’ hypocrite, only one on a day with only a ‘o’ in it,? Or else a full-time hypocrite, the kind who bangs on about being a vegan, whilst secretly wolfing down fillet steak cooked rare. I ask because a while ago, in a previous post, in addition to outing myself as a hypocrite, I asked whether it was better to be a hypocrite and know you are one, or to be a hypocrite and not know? Or, is it better to be a hypocrite and not even care?

Coldplay have provided me me with another possible iteration. Namely is it OK to take a laudably virtuous and principled stance on something, one that you know will have great negative financial implications for you and others, only for a few years later to totally reverse that decision, asserting that the reversal isn’t actually a reversal at all. But merely a realisation that simply by hiring someone to tell you that by tinkering with some eye-catching trivialities, and loudly proclaiming them as evidence of something, then they could resume doing what they did before they so foolishly announced they were going to stop doing it.

Confused? You and me both.

Because back in 2019, they announced to much approval by the right people that they were postponing touring their new album, not because it was full of the sort of JJGM beloved by estate agents and hairdressers, and didn’t want to cause the levels of aural pollution later achieved by Ed Sheeran. No, they cited their concern about the ‘environmental impact’

“We’re not touring this album,” frontman Chris Martin told BBC News. “We’re taking time over the next year or two, to work out how our tour can not only be sustainable [but] how can it be actively beneficial.” Instead of spending months on the road, they played two gigs in Jordan, which were be broadcast, free, to a global audience on YouTube. But what was ‘actively beneficial’ in 2019 wasn’t by 2022. Possibly, their accountants had looked at the financial losses of not touring – no income from ticket sales, merchandising revenues or sponsorship deals -and advised the band that they couldn’t afford their preachy principles. So, to no-one’s surprise, by 2022, it was business as usual. Publishing the bands press release almost word for word, one website fawning so much it thought its mother was Bambi, gushed:

Coldplay’s 2022 world tour will be powered almost entirely by renewable energy, using a rechargeable show battery the band developed with BMW, the band explains on their website. They have teamed up with BMW to develop a rechargeable battery that will be powered by recycled cooking oil, solar power, and the kinetic energy of their audiences. And if that weren’t enough, fans can always hop on one of the electricity-generating bikes that will also be installed at each show, helping to cut mainstream electricity usage down even more. 

I was Glastonbury years ago, up in the Green Fields very late one night and very off my face. We found a tent that not had a DJ playing some awesome tunes, but had the entire sound system powered by loads of tandem bikes producing electricity. No more than 500 people, most in a similar state to me – loads of energy and goodwill – but every now and again, the music would slow because not all of the bikes were in use. But ever the optimists and ignoring the fact that people who like JJGM are not known for their prolonged love of the dance-floor, the BBC tell us that this tour, which bothered earholes in Cardiff earlier this week, is partially powered by a dancefloor that generates electricity when fans jump up and down, and pedal power at the venues.

And just to enhance the whole sex and drugs and rock n roll vibe Their opener on Tuesday and Wednesday night will also play a bilingual video educating fans on the sustainability elements of the tour.

Sounds like fun.

And not to be churlish about things, earlier this year Coldplay were at it again, playing 11 shows in South America, trousering $65.4M, as part of a tour that has 122 shows. What’s the point of preaching principles to others if you can’t get massively rich when selling them out?

This is only going to short post, in part because I’m so furious and in part because if it were going to be any longer, then it would require time-consuming research and time is not my friend right now.

In the Europe of 2023, an independent sovereign nation has been invaded by its much larger neighbour, one that is not only by a considerable margin the biggest military power on the continent. But one that is under the control of a leader also who is easily characterised as a ‘path this or a ‘list that. However, from an alternative point of view, one might reasonably deduce that he might have looked at 20th Century European history and arrived at a wholly rational decision, namely that the other European powers would talk a good talk, but actually do nothing.

For Austria in 1938, see Crimea in 2014. Both were justified on totally self-serving fabrications and both were used to gauge the response it would provoke. Angry words at The League of Nations in 1938 and the same angry words at the United Nations 2014 on both occasions, but both about as much use as a marzipan dildo. Meanwhile, whilst aggressor keeps on aggressing, the European leaders give ever more pitiful reasons to explain away why they must do nothing. What kind of fools are they, spineless or just scared. ‘All it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing’, goes the old saying. The updated 2023 iteration is ‘Evil triumphs when there are not enough good people to stop them.’

Today is June 6th, 2023.

I’m not a parent myself so I can’t even begin to imagine the overwhelming sense of dread one feels when one’s child goes missing. Most of those missing children are thankfully found, however that still leaves parents whose children are never found with a loss that is so enormous it defies description.

But this post isn’t about that. Its about those parents whose child is missing, not only from their lives, but also in the media. Its about the scar in those parents lives that is ripped open anew, when some other theory that might lead to a clue about Madeline McCann is reported in the media, or a new computer generated image is produced of Ben Needham, showing how the two year old toddler who went missing in 1991 might look now. The media landscape is growing both more fickle and rapacious with every news cycle, it needs newness to sate it, so when a child goes missing, initially there’s interest. But it soon passes as more newsie news pushes it further and further away from editors attention.

How must they feel? Is their torment the price they must pay for not having as photogenic a child as the media demands? If no heart-wrenchingly cute photo exists, how, in this increasingly online world, are they to be kept alive by the media? Since Madeline McCann’s disappearance in 2007, 1.5 million UK children have gone missing. It could be much much more. These people think so. But between 70,000 and 120,00 children every year, of whom roughly 80% are found within 24 hours. Which still leaves an unbelievably large amount of anguished parents, unanswered questions and lives not lived. And forgotten by the media.

One can’t, of course, lay all of the blame solely on the media, tempting as it is to do. Editors are aware of which stories their readers are drawn to, what will keep them clicking, and the more they click, the more content is produced to keep them clicking. So, you, yes you, are all to blame as well, complicit in keeping other peoples misery alive, but not me, because I don’t click on those stories.

This post isn’t about Phillip Scofield. Well, it kind of is, and it isn’t, but what it definitely isn’t about is the scandal that has engulfed him, causing him to lose his jobs, his reputation and well everything. Because I know as much about all of that circus as I do about the weather on Mars.

Gordon Brown, remember him? The dour faced misrerabilist who was inexplicably our Prime Minister a while back? Scottish chap, permanently looking like he’d just been given some bad news, and when he tried to smile it was as he’d read how to do it in a book but had never quite got the hang of it? Coming back now?Couldn’t answer in an interview what his favourite biscuit was? Now you do!

The reason I mention him is that he immediately came to mind when I read that Scofield had said in, an interview on the BBC with Amol Rajan,

“I fully appreciate there is a massive age gap, but that happens in life. I think there is an enormous amount of homophobia that it happens to be male, but if it was male-female then it wouldn’t be such a scandal,”

See what he did there? Possibly, just possibly, it was a combination of him lying about the fact that the affair had even happened, the bosses at ITV being worried by all the negative press that this created and their urgent need to be seen to take immediate action, that they were more of the causative factors here. But Phillip thought, instead of seeing a downfall largely created by himself and the consequences that ensued from them, saw homophobia. A nicely self-serving swerve, where he sought to reframe the narrative and muddy the waters in which he’s drowning by giving the media yet another angle to discuss. Exactly how homophobic is is the British media? Classic swerve, hinting at the shadowy motives that only he imagines can explain his accusers actions.

Anyway, Gordon Brown. On the election campaign trail in 2011. Meets Gillian Duffy. Now you remember. When he is safely back his the car, forgets he is still miked up and calls her a bigot. So that became the story, not her concerns about unchecked immigration from Eastern Europe, not the fact that the previous Labour government had been politically naive enough to imagine that it wouldn’t be a problem. Instead, call her a bigot and when that leaks, make the story all about that and not her concerns that lead to the story in the first place. And the media will be so thankful as well, it being a lot easier to pontificate about how a politician should behave, is someone a bigot or not, rather than to seriously discuss the problems of unchecked immigration.

Granted, it might have been an accidental swerve, but it served the same purpose. And although history is no doubt littered with other swerves, I always think this one the best, because not only did it immediately dominate the campaign for days and act as distraction from more weightier issues, it was the media themselves that leaked the story and made more of it than it deserved.

Nowadays, it seems that live in an increasingly reframing of the narrative – swervey – times. Been accused of something and are as guilty as fuck? Why not swerve the whole thing, make out that your the real victim, that the whole thing is fuelled by an ‘ism, a ‘phobia, a toxic this, a misogynistic that or something, anything, that’ll give the Twatterati something else to froth over instead? Indeed, we live in times when we almost expect a swerve to happen. I mean, can you recall the last time when someone embroiled in a very public scandal didn’t try and swerve out of it, but instead said ‘Yeah, fair do’s, I’m bang to rights and I’ve only myself to blame.’

Swerving doesn’t work all of time, but throw enough mud, and who knows? Maybe even Gordon the Gopher will believe it?

I know, yet another post having a swipe at ‘The Guardian’, and I wish I was sorry, but not only am I not, I’m also aware that it won’t be the last. Don’t blame me. If they persist in printing contradictory tosh that perpetuates the breathtakingly self-serving notion that their readers – or proprietors/owners/tune-callers/ – can keep on having children and be concerned about the climate emergency, what else can I do? Ignore it, pretend it never happened, or possibly follow their example, because it isn’t hypocritical if ‘The Guardian’ doesn’t say it is?

Anyway, the lead story on on Monday screamed;

More than 90 English primary schools to close or face closure for lack of pupils

Guardian analysis lays bare effect of dwindling pupil numbers and associated funding amid rising housing and childcare cost

Wait, was that 90 schools? Is that a lot? How would I find out? I mean I could always do a search on google, I suppose, to find out exactly how many primary schools there are in the UK, but that would take me all of 0.17 seconds. Here goes.

The answer, surprising to any Guardian readers continually told how bad things have become after Brexit, is just over 16,000. So, far from warranting the screaming headline it was given, and yet further still from deserving of a lead story. But yes, it was an ‘exclusive’, in the sense that no other newspaper wasted their time on it and yes, it was ‘news’, albeit in the very narrowest of definitions of what we understand the word to mean, inasmuch as no-one was aware of it.

But wait, it gets worse;

The analysis showed 88 primary schools in England were more than two-thirds empty last year, leaving them in danger of closure. On average, the vacancy rate – the proportion of unfilled places – recorded by the 156 schools that have closed since 2009-10 in their last year of operation was 66%.

A further four primary schools were already proposed to close.

So only four schools, four isn’t that much, and hang on… 156 schools that have closed since 2009-10…but that means fifteen or so have closed each subsequent year since then, and that’s not much either, is it? But the message was clear, it wasn’t as celebratory, that the birth rate is declining, as it should’ve been. So much such so, in fact that, we were told that primary school admissions are predicted to fall by a percentage that may be either large or small depending upon what the original figure was. No, it was all doom and gloom, that somehow people having less babies is a bad thing, a source of concern worthy of a screaming headline. It was their top story on Monday. No mention of the fact that no schools have closed. Never mind though, a story reporting that nothing has happened although it might happen at some future date, for entirely logical reasons, isn’t much of a story, is it?

Thinking again of their readers – or proprietors/owners/tune callers ‘The Guardian’ couldn’t leave it at that, all hand-wringingly sad face, no matter how much they wanted it to be the fault of Brexit, partygate and Boris’s Johnson. They need the donations to keep coming in after all, so therefore they had this, to cheer their paymasters up. So further down the homepage was this;

Baby boomtown: does Nagi hold the secret to repopulating Japan?

Fertility rate is more than twice the national average and nearly half of households have three or more children – thanks in no small part to generous daycare and an all-in approach to raising families

It seems utterly bizarre that a family having three or more children is seen as a good thing, something to be admired. To me, it makes no sense, the notion that you can have children, yet still be deluded enough to think that recycling this, driving an electric car to there or eating the other is somehow doing your bit to help the planet. Perhaps ‘The Guardian’ is like a weird pyramid scheme, whereby the more their readers pay, the more the secrets of how to have children and be concerned about the planet are revealed to them

The article waxes lyrical about the many benefits that are used to bribe people into being even more consumptive than they already were. Cheap childcare, subsidised healthcare until the pollutants are 18, massively subsidised housing, basically all the things ‘The Guardian’ thinks this government should do but isn’t and gush about how wonderful everything is, somewhere else that isn’t here.