egafd.com

Smoke and mirrors----the perfect description of political life today, with a press and broadcast media that on the whole tends not to dig too deep.

Sorry, getting depressed again.

One great honourable exception Caractacus. Not everybody might like him but Ian Hislop does sterling work with Private Eye.

Mart

Can't fault you there, Mart.

If you want to see how bad the media can be then take a gander at our aussie program called Media Watch
Check out quote of the day by Hunter S Thompson
Sums up the media to a tee

Only 15 minutes long on our Govt channel the ABC but once you've watched it you realise how much news is anything but real & accurate

I've watched the serious current affairs programs that follow the 6.00pm
news bulletins on the commercial stations turn from being researched current affairs based to nothing but infomercials & lifestyle topics.
I've lost count of the number of times the same stories have been re-used.

Why dig to deeply when the public are more interested in being informed about how to become rich,eternally young ,beautiful & successfull without doing the hard yards?

Bottom line is you've got to find an independent source that hasn't got an angle their trying to push.Not easy

cheers
B....OZ

As far as i know gas fitters and electricians are the only people who can be charged with manslaughter with regards to negligence at work.

And of course the public is much more interested in whether second rate pop star is on drugs, or if two nobodies from a reality TV show are shagging, than it is with the latest terrorist atrocity or political con trick.

So long as people buy papers to read about Beckham and the likes, we're living in a moron's paradise.

Its more then those two fields are you liable for manslaughter.

I know for a fact that within the Rail industry you can be charged with manslaughter if it is proven your negligence resulted in an fatal accident. That's not just limited to the Train Drivers but also those that carry out general infrastructure maintainance, the man in his box controlling the trains, even down to those that design components and systems for the Railway. Usually though its the head of the companies and Railtrack/Network Rail that are charged as shown by the recent Ladbroke Grove, Hatfield, Watford court cases.

So long as people buy papers to read about Beckham and the likes, we're living in a moron's paradise."

Yeah, that's right Carac, fucking morons. I reckon we need to be pouring much more scorn and contempt on tabloid newspaper readers, as well as readers of 'OK', 'Heat', and all that kind of shite. Plus, in the TV arena, viewers of 'Big Brother' 'Search for a Pop Tart' 'Trisha' and all the soaps. All this current emphasis on vacuity is seriously diluting any worthwhile culture we may have had and proving a fertile breeding ground for the monumental apathy and complacency that seems to be prevalent in society at the moment.

You know, I remember, when I was at comprehensive school in the late 60?s ? early 70?s. There was no mindless, chavy, shit entertainment, apart from the odd crap ?novelty? record and maybe a new Newspaper called ?The Sun? (though it was very different then ? it featured real news). There was only 2-3 television stations, so if you didn?t like what was on, you had to ?lump it? - and everyone did lump it. I can vividly remember our gang/clique of young chav lads kicking round the school yard, at break time, one Thursday morning, discussing the Wednesday night ?Play For Today? which, on this occasion, was ?Edna The Inebriate Woman? (A play which, at the time, seemed to create a furore and have a similar kind of resonance to ?Cathy Come Home?). Anyhow, being chavs and being lads we naturally focussed on the more salacious bits of the play, but looking back now, what I see is a group of chav teenagers discussing real culture, being fired up and energised by it. We may not, at the time, have fully understood all the social issues and concerns the play raised or fully appreciated Patricia Hayes performance and Jeremy Sanford?s screenplay, but we were fired up by it and we were talking about it. My point is that us chavs only watched it to start with because there was no other option, no video, no satellite, no DVD, no internet. But once we had got into what we assumed would be a boring play, we were hooked, swept along and entertained. That doesn?t happen now. Chavs can get their entertainment from a myriad sources and vendors. So they don?t have to make that initial effort to grapple with something that might seem complicated, difficult and boring ? things like content, characterisation and plot. There are loads of cynical ?meeja? types undercutting each other to strip all the difficult bits out of popular entertainment - so that the chavs might digest it more easily and quickly come back for another helping. The gastronomic equivalent of this culture and content free diet would of course be the 5 packets of Crisps and one litre of Cola diet.

I guess popular culture (combined with technological advances) is an area where the free market has had a detrimental effect.


Officer Dibble

Sung to the tune of "Spam..."
Chav, Chav, Chav, Chav......and so on ad infinitum.

Mart

Mart, don't you have anything constructive, enlightening or entertaining to say? Don't you have any opinions to share? Why is it you are always sneaking around the sidelines, occasionally slipping in the odd negative or disparaging comment? Are you frightened that you anecdotes won't be interesting enough, that you've done nothing with your life worth talking about? Are you frightened that your opinions and beliefs won't stand up to critical scrutiny and you'll end up looking a right tater? Or are you just lazy? If you actually had something to say or add to the forum then you might have a right to criticise those that do.

Officer Dibble