Last week was depressing as hell. Foreigners kept on dying all over the world with no respect for tabloid circulation.It was a week so full of human suffering that the announcement of the budget was comic relief.
The government got pretty much what it wanted from the right-wing tabloids on Thursday when they explained the budget to us stupids. The Mail happily put Osborne?s transparently phrased summary that the budget would ?put fuel in the tank? of the economy on their front page. Do you think the Chancellor wanted our attention focused on any specific aspect of the budget perchance? The Mail were very keen to report on the 6p cut in petrol duty. 6p that consisted of delaying a planned 5p rise and cutting 1p from a price which had already been pushed up more than 3p by the VAT increase. You lucky people.
Anyway, sorry about that- budgets are boring. Creative accounting may be creative but it's still accounting.
Luckily The Sun have less faith in their readers to care about, or understand, the budget so they made pretty pictures for us all to look at! They helpfully made everything black and white by printing big happy or sad faces underneath each topic, although the really useful part was them illustrating the ?green shoots budget? with George Osborne holding a watering can while some green shoots grew from the soil. Never has a man looked less comfortable doing a day?s work than the hapless photoshopped plant-botherer. Weirdly Osborne?s budget moves seemed to perfectly mirror campaigns by The Sun, allowing it to appear that Osborne is in touch with the people rather than working with Murdoch?s press to manipulate public reaction.
The Star didn't think their readers could be trusted with getting worked up about the budget without a sport connection. The front page shouted ?Balls to the Budget? like a back-bencher with Tourettes, and was concerned with footballers earning so much they didn't care about the budget. They had a brief story inside but it was all grunting and spittle-flecked pictures of ordinary people.
The big story of the week was of course WAR! Once again the tabloids, both left and right are perfectly happy to debate the nuances of the political situation in the middle-east but only until ?our boys? get sent in. Then it's all pictures of fire and playground insults (Gadaffi has undergone a 2011 re-brand as ?mad dog?) for fear as being unpatriotic. Then when it's all over the newspapers will start asking ?difficult? questions, which are just ?obvious? questions which may have saved lives if they?d been asked when it counted.
Regardless of your views on whether Gadaffi is worthy of your contempt, you can take solace that Richard Littlejohn is taking aim at the targets that need taking down. On Tuesday?s Mail he started his most righteous battle since he got annoyed about the victims of the Ipswich serial killer being referred to as ?women who worked as prostitutes? rather than simply ?prostitutes?. If there's one thing our Richard hates more than the correct employment categorisation of dead women it's the notion of holding a minute?s silence for the Japanese.
Starting his article
?no-one with a shred of humanity can fail to be moved by some of the pictures coming out of Japan?,
Littlejohn chooses his platform in a national newspaper to talk about how terrible liberal guilt is. Like a victim of impotence referring to his a problem his ?friend? suffers from, he writes about what his
?wife?s PoW grandad?
would think of all of this but in doing so allies himself on this subject with someone who it is implied had a pathological, albeit understandable, hatred of the Japanese. It's arguable that the core opinion that drives the piece (stop emoting in public about something that doesn't concern you, in order to appear caring) is a sound one although other cultural commentators having been making the same point better since the aftermath of Diana. Regardless his timing and embittered headline are far worse displays of attention-seeking than organising a minute?s silence.
Jesus, that was depressing, but this was a week where one of The Mirror?s ?humorous? stories was a series of depressing pictures of a Beluga Whale head-butting the side of an aquarium tank.
Maybe we should think about using The Sun?s smiley faces to denote whether this column sad or happy in future?
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