Sailing with the grocer........
When Edward VII was Prince of Wales he loved sailing. Such an expensive habit needed deep pockets and Sir Thomas Lipton the extremely wealthy retailer and tea merchant invested heavily in racing boats to impress the future king, but when Prince of Wales sailed with him the German Kaiser joked that “Edward had gone sailing with his grocer.”
Which brings us to the last week and the humiliating climb downs by the government over Brexit. This has been a week of Tory government backdowns in the face of its own inadequate, ignorant and self harming Brexit policies. But I have not seen or heard much on the TV or radio about this, have you? Why?
Some of you doubtless think the broadcast media are run by No. 10 Downing Street. Certainly when I was at the Beeb people used to ask me when they phoned up to tell me what to report on? Although that was when Labour was in power.
But the fact is they don’t do that, can’t do that and the BBC, SKY, ITV and the government would be destroyed if they were ever caught doing that. It is also true that they don’t really need to.
For instance the BBC has just had a review of its economics and business coverage that found, once again, that there is nothing wrong with its many great business and economic journalists.
The problem is that the mainstream newsrooms don’t understand anything about economics, or business or Brexit and don’t want to. When they can be persuaded to sully their PPE trained minds with thoughts about commerce they cover, almost exclusively, the cost of living and interest rates.
The newsrooms are run by very bright people but they are interested in foreign affairs, politics, including American politics (but never European politics, unless it is a scandal), war, famine, riots, floods, anything else with nice shiny, dramatic pictures and possibly a charming last story about why Jerry the skateboarding stoat won’t be going home for Christmas.
This was not a particularly good week to bury bad Brexit news, every week is. The only coverage of the adoption I heard of the EU CE standards, a complete reversal of Brexit’s mad promises, was in the paper review of the Today programme on Friday, when it was mentioned in an article by Polly Toynbee, in incredulous tones.
Brexit border checks, industry standards and slap downs by the European Commission do not provide good pictures, they are not dramatic, they are hard to explain, they are technical and well, they are about “trade”.
Meanwhile the BBC at least will try to redress this imbalance by its usual method. It will create more editors. When its EU coverage was criticised it just called one of its many excellent correspondents “Europe editor” to add gravitas to their reporting and possibly improve their attempts to get on air. They did the same with economics and business and health and probably a dozen others.
The result is totally inadequate coverage of vastly important subjects, not just Brexit and imports, humiliating climb downs, national embarrassment and wasted billions but serious economic and business issues too.
But don’t worry Jerry the Stoat will be along to distract you soon, on his skateboard, natch.
Just so long as the news programmes don’t have to be seen “sailing with their grocers”.
Economics, trade and Brexit, not necessarily in that order but the dog always comes first.
By Jonty Bloom Media