Media News, or is it?

A very happy new year to one and all….

Even though the weather is still very much against my doing the gardening, there is always something that needs my attention, for example; a little pruning here, some tidying there. It never fails to surprise me just how much detritus gathers in all the out of the way places, dark nooks and crannies. These are the left over’s from late autumn and early winter, and they have to be cleared away if next summer’s garden is to look at its best.

With Froggy still in hibernation, other creatures that are forced to live the winter out in the cold have to search for things to eat. That my garden has its resident robin proves that there is food available, even if it does take some ferreting about to find it. For all the other birds, I do my best to keep the feeders well stocked and some standing water free of ice, something that’s almost impossible where the pond is concerned, it‘s just too big.

This week I want to talk about my views of Britain’s media and the news it provides us with. With all that is happening within Britain’s economy lately, one has to seriously wonder whether the media is not making matters worse in their fight to keep it alive?

Take the winter weather for instance. If we get a bit of snow, these reporters blow it up out of all proportion and usually beyond what I, and indeed most around my age would see as being truly serious. Get a bit of snow on the ground, let’s say two centimetres, and today’s young motorists simply have no idea how to drive their cars around in it. The result, it gets news headlines. I can recall winters that regularly saw drifts of snow as high as ten feet or more and presented us with difficulty in getting into work five miles away, but we got there. Today’s drivers would be well and truly jiggered in conditions like that. I think that they have gotten soft and want a relatively easy time of getting around, just so long as it‘s not snowing.

Only the other day, one young journalist ranted on about a pond being frozen over, well, I had to laugh when the older couple remarked that it was nothing, since in their younger days, they would skate over the pond every time it froze, but it certainly wasn’t damned well newsworthy like it appears to be today.

On to our economy. Have you noticed all of this doom and gloom the media keeps on spouting each and every day? Well, I have and I’m damned well sick and tired of it. You know what? If someone keeps on repeating something for long enough, even a lie, in the end this can be made to sound like the truth. This is what the media is doing to us and our economy. Crikey, I can remember that it wasn’t that many years ago when the FT 100 was around 4,500 and the country was getting along swimmingly. Now that it’s at this level today, the economy is suddenly going to the dogs, if the media has its way.

I believe that if this country is going to pick itself up off the ground and get back to profitability once more, then we really must shake off this cloak of doom and gloom. For instance, all of you people out there who enjoyed the rich pickings of your investments before the world went totally mad and announced a collapse in the economy, why aren’t you investing again for the future? Crikey, the tax payer owns the banks and money couldn’t be safer than it is today. If you keep on believing that these same shares will never rise again, then perhaps that’s just what will happen, but I very much doubt it and so should you.

If you are one of those who fall in line behind the media and believe in what they keep on preaching to us, then you don’t deserve to make anything from the stock market or whatever. The biggest trouble with today’s economy is that we have stock brokers who panic at the slightest hiccough in the market. They are more interested in the massive bonuses they can make from their jobs, than to ensure that we all profit from the way the economy is supposed to grow year in, year out.

Another thing that the media is guilty of, and here I speak about certain television channels, and that was to start this whole charade off in the first place. They alone were responsible for driving their viewers to want dreams that weren’t realistically achievable. I speak here about programmes like: A Place in the country. Location, Location, Location. Grand Designs. Houses under the hammer, along with several others. These programmes offered a dream, yes, but to any person with an ounce of common sense, they offered these dreams to those who could obviously afford it, not to those who could barely afford to make ends meet by the end of each month.

Of course, banks were also responsible for lending money that was obviously far beyond the means of the borrower in the first place. I cannot recall any other time in my life where a bank would offer you money, and then not bother to find out if you could afford to pay it back or not. Further, the eventually spiralling price of property fed these impossible dreams like there was no tomorrow. Now, we live in a period where house prices have dropped to an average price of around one-hundred and sixty thousand pounds. From the way I see it, they need to drop to the price they were at before all of this madness began. As froggy once said, a sixty-thousand pounds house is worth just that, no more.

Out of all this chaos, there are many out there, people who don’t get themselves in the news, people who made vast fortunes from this economic mess we got ourselves in. Well, it’s time we kicked back. Nobody ever got something from nothing. How many times do we hear the saying; these’s no such thing as a free lunch? It’s time to accept that this is all true. There are thousands of companies out there in the world today, companies whose future depends upon an influx of cash, your cash. If the economy is left to its own devices, then it will crash eventually and you, all of you who regularly expect to see a dividend from your shares will have lost out, and all because you couldn’t see beyond the news the media keeps on spouting at you.

I well remember a time many years ago, one when the government urged people to back Britain’s economy and buy British. I was one of those who supported this call, and to be honest the result was amazing and the country’s economy blossomed once again. People not only helped British businesses get out of a rut, but it also helped the people themselves. It’s time to consider putting this to the test again.

Well, I’ve got things to do, but one of them isn’t listening to the crap being spread by the media. Bye all…..

Bob, standing in for Froggy until he comes back.