BAD PRESS

After returning from a 2 week holiday in Thailand, I couldn't understand why I felt so good. Ok, you always feel pretty relaxed after a good holiday, and no, before anyone asks, it's wasn't the calming and relaxing after effects of any massages.

Well, the good weather played a part, and the food was fantastic, but, it was something more than that, that strangely Zen-like feeling of being at peace with the world. Was it the lingering after effects of visiting too many temples and contemplating all those reclining Buddhas?

No, it was none of the above. I discovered what it was when I walked into the first News Agent the very day we got back.  There they were, all lined up on the news rack....the British papers. The therapeutic effects of being largely separated from these vile publications had been immeasurably positive.

Shattering all my inner calm were those headlines, randomly screaming, choking, fuming and fulminating about everything and anything. Winter was too wet...winter wasn't cold enough….but Arctic freezes were being predicted (the worst for years).  Elsewhere they were ranting about Government austerity. Savage cuts to the welfare state, inhuman and cruel ministers deliberately targeting the poor and unemployed, fumed a couple of red tops. At the same time another rag raged and wept about welfare cheats being paid too much benefit and the Government's totally pathetic attempts to cut the deficit by insisting on paying excessive money to these lay abouts. Balanced, sensible reporting? Forget it.

Others choked and fumed about Europe.  “Too much of it” howled some. “Not enough of it” shrieked another, with such anger I could almost imagine the foam flecked and rabid editor hammering at his or her keyboards with their clenched fists. A couple made furious and indignant demands for a referendum so we could all leave the Eurozone for some imaginary red-tapeless free-market nirvana. In response others made loud and dire, horror-filled warnings about what would happen if we did and that economic Armageddon waited where we should surely abandon all hope.

Almost every story, subject matter regardless, it seems is reviewed through the most twisted, miserable of prisms; facts are used as selectively as possible so as to mislead, confuse and depress the reader. Everything is subject to maximum distortion, skewed through the politically myopic lens of the publication regardless of which end of the political spectrum it finds itself. And the irony of it all, is that every day they are served up for us, as regular as breakfast, their captured and well cultivated readership-fodder, who in our near bovine-like state, cough up the pennies or pounds required to buy or download then read their despairing and twisted content.

Yes, I know the price of a free press is having to put up with all the bile and nonsense they churn out incessantly. But, for a New Year resolution, I thought I would try to avoid these wretched and poison spreading feasts of misery for a bit. I'll stick to the sports section (as long as it’s not Arsenal winning) and read Private Eye instead. Anything to extend that lingering, post holiday calm for a bit.....