The information is mendacity to you — and Britain is falling aside behind the scenes

Each evening, the lights are vibrant, the headlines loud — however the true information is lacking.

Whereas the media fixates on Trump, Farage and the Royals, Britain’s youngsters go hungry, households cannot afford properties, and carers are exhausted.

On this video, I clarify how the theatre of distraction retains us indignant however uninformed — and why we should reclaim the information for the Politics of Care: meals, housing, well being, and local weather.

Watch, share, and be a part of the dialog: it is time to cease funding the circus.

That is the audio model:

That is the transcript:

If I perceive the readers of my weblog accurately, and you have to be considered one of them, by the best way, then they  are fed up with the information as it’s in the meanwhile.

I get the impression that numerous them, like me, are swearing on the display on their tv too typically for consolation. And that, frankly, very often they’re merely turning off somewhat than face one other information bulletin that could be greatest described as a theatre of distraction.

The lights are vibrant. There’s the noise of relentless media churn, however the fact is the forged by no means actually modifications.

There’s Trump and his newest fiasco.

There’s Farage and his newest ridiculous claims.

And at all times, in fact, the Royals, placing ahead one thing else to attempt to distract us from the truth that, as a agency, which is what they like to consider themselves as, they’re failing.

And while the present goes on and the noise continues, the nation is quietly falling aside behind the scenes. And that is what actually annoys me concerning the information media;  we aren’t getting the information on what actually issues.

There’s a drawback behind our information media. It is crowding out care and fact and accountability and passing us nonsense  dressed up as information on issues that, on the finish of the day, in very many circumstances, do not actually matter. They’re permitting failure to move unnoticed, in different phrases.

And there are hidden crises that they are not speaking about. Take poverty, for instance.  Hundreds of thousands of kids go hungry on this nation, and we’re the sixth-richest nation on Earth. Free faculty meals are nonetheless being denied to many youngsters who want them. Solely the very youngest get them as of proper. And meals banks are serving hundreds of thousands of individuals on this nation who cannot in any other case get a good meal as a result of their households are with out the means to supply them.

That is the true index of nationwide failure, however it very hardly ever will get reported except a kind of media stars, whether or not or not it’s a prince or a politician who needs to get some consideration for his or her good and worthy nature, goes to open yet one more meals financial institution as if that may be a signal of advantage after they have not even realised that what they’re speaking about is the entire failure of the system that retains them in energy.

After which there’s the  entire disaster of housing. Housing on this nation is handled as a speculative asset, and never as a human necessity. Rents and mortgage prices have soared. Households are being pushed to their limits as a consequence. And there are fairly merely far too few social homes.  After which I learn housing market commentators saying, “Oh, the issue is the federal government says it to construct 300,000 homes a yr, however nobody should purchase them, so why are we bothering?”, with out ever becoming a member of up the dots and realising the one one who should purchase these homes and resolve the issues of too many residing in squalor that we face is the federal government itself. They have to be the customer, however nobody is speaking about that as a result of, for  too lengthy, the idea has been that homes are constructed for buyers and never for households, and so a gradual catastrophe is ignored day-after-day by the nightly information.

In the meantime, there is a disaster of care. The NHS is on its knees.  It doesn’t have sufficient cash as a consequence of deliberate authorities coverage, and individuals are nonetheless dying in corridors, which is totally unacceptable. In the meantime, social care is rationed and is sort of invisible to most individuals, and one other spherical of cuts will simply make it more durable to produce from hard-pressed native authorities, the place there’s nothing left to offer.

Carers are exhausted, undervalued, and unseen, and lots of of them are vilified as a result of they’ve come right here as first- or second-generation employees. All of that is about ignoring the true wants of ‘the politics of care’, that may’t compete by way of the brand new spectacle because it’s being created with the flashiness of those that need to be seen however who add no worth, not like those that choose up the aged who’ve merely fallen over.

Behind the scenes, there’s additionally one other disaster, the one which has motivated me for therefore lengthy,  the local weather disaster. The power transition appears to have stalled. The media is attacking it. Each day, I get headlines from the Day by day Telegraph saying how we’re going to mainly go to hell as a result of we’re making an attempt to really deal with the most important disaster that our human race has in all probability ever confronted, which is how we reside inside the planetary limits that this entire ecostructure that we reside inside on earth is imposing upon us.

We all know that the 1.5 levels restrict, which we had been presupposed to adjust to, has now handed. We won’t keep inside that now; the United Nations has stated so. And regardless of that,  ministers declare management on this while licensing oil fields. The contradiction is deliberate. They need to declare the profit for offering us with future prosperity via oil, when truly what they’re doing is condemning us to future overheating of our planet, which goes to make life not possible and deny us the alternatives we would like, or that we would like for these in generations to come back.

Who earnings from all this distraction? Nicely, in fact,  the populist does, the demagogue does, and the courtier does. Folks with energy who need to keep away from accountability do. The Metropolis of London does, as a result of it needs to deflect consideration from what it’s as much as. Our flesh pressers do as a result of they do not need to discuss their failures; they solely need to discuss their coverage bulletins, and never their achievements, or the shortage of them.  They thrive on noise however not outcomes, and on a regular basis that’s the case, democracy withers within the glare of their highlight.

The consequence is that accountability fades as a result of the media will not be doing its job. It isn’t holding these folks to account and asking them, “What is definitely taking place and why aren’t you doing something about it?”

Public companies do,  because of this, decay all too quietly when there must be an unlimited quantity of noise about why they’re within the state that we’re struggling. And actual insurance policies truly even disappear from view as a result of no person cares to offer them consideration.

What is the general outcome?  Individuals are shedding religion in democracy itself, and, in fact, all of that paves the best way for right-wing demagogues to attempt to take over energy.

What should change then? We should look away from these synthetic spectacles created by the information media, via their press releases, via their video alternatives, via their sound bites, via what the media decides is newsworthy, when in actual fact it is not due to its hyperattention to the character of some, and the struggling of some as a consequence of crime, which remains to be a tiny precise menace to the well-being of most of us. And that they refuse as an alternative to focus on the issues that matter, which embrace meals, poverty, housing, care, and local weather, as I’ve talked about on this video.  That refusal to query what is admittedly occurring is their failure in flip to take part in democracy. The media is refusing to ship what we have to maintain the society wherein we reside.

So we should discuss a politics of care. I maintain saying this, I do know, however it issues as a result of  the politics of care begins with one query, which is: “What do folks must reside effectively?”

We all know that we’d like public funding and never austerity.

We all know that we have to tax these with wealth extra and never punish these in poverty.

We all know we’d like an economic system constructed round well-being and never on spectacle, and specifically, spectacle created by the rich to distract the remainder of us from the truth that we’re shedding out as a result of they’re exploiting us.

The pantomime of such a media has to come back to an finish. Information must be related once more. The nation is breaking whereas the circus of this information media spherical goes on, and a spotlight has develop into the foreign money of energy.

We have to cease funding that circus.

We have to cease giving these folks the eye they crave as a result of their very own lives are literally so hole.

What  we have to do is reclaim the information in order that it is about what is going on on once more.  It should not be about undermining us and destroying us, which too typically it’s, as a result of that’s the message that we’re given, that our lives will not be of value in comparison with the people who find themselves being talked about within the information media. And as an alternative,  we have to have information about actual folks doing actual issues for actual profit for one another in a method that ensures a rise in well-being.  That’s what the information media must be speaking about now. And since we aren’t there as but, what it also needs to be speaking about is how we do get there, which is, in fact, the duty of a ‘brave state’, one thing else that I discuss very often.

And the brave state is one which takes on energy and wins, as a result of it may if we wished it to. And my level is that with the information media we have, that is laborious, and so we now have to speak concerning the information media that we’ve not obtained, or at the least the information media that we’ve not obtained which is put out on issues just like the BBC, and as an alternative, discuss how we are able to create that information media ourselves, together with via issues like YouTube.

You may have the ability to vary the messaging on this world. You may partake, you may ship, you may discuss what issues. And if all of us start to do this, then we start to get the information that issues to us all, which is how life will get higher.

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