The Curmudgeon

YOU'LL COME FOR THE CURSES. YOU'LL STAY FOR THE MUDGEONRY.

Tuesday, January 18, 2005

News 2020

Five times winner of the BBC Award for Nautical Non-Destabilisation

Britain is in danger of becoming a culture of "spin patients", a report by the National Institute for Political Studies said today.

The independent think-tank, which receives financial backing from both major political parties, the Conservatives and the main news agencies, says that the public must take a "substantial proportion" of the blame for the state of Britain's political culture.

"Political consumers today are not nearly as active as they used to be," said researcher Mogadon Twiglett. "Membership of political parties has been falling consistently for decades. Membership of pressure groups - the legal ones at least - is even lower."

Voter participation in national elections has also reached a low point, the report says. Even the installation of domestic voting machines which make it possible to vote without leaving the house, and which emit a variety of patriotic melodies to remind consumers to exercise their democratic rights, has made little difference.

"It is possible that the media must take some of the blame," said Guardian columnist Preston Kettle. "Reporters who take pride in doggedly presenting unbiased, non-opinionated news stories may be barking up the wrong tree. People are so used to being spoon-fed by us in the media that they may not be able to digest the undiluted facts."

Another problem may be that the media spend too much time reporting on traumatic events which cause consumer upset without facilitating effectively targeted action.

"Reports of earthquakes in Asia or another urban terrorist enclave being de-rodentialised may be all very well," said columnist Bunter Maudling; "but since nothing can be done about any of it, I sometimes wonder why we bother. Perhaps the serious papers are becoming too serious for the market to handle; perhaps we have too few sports pages and not enough colour supplements."

Mr Kettle added that he, for one, intended to mend his ways in the future. "I'm through pandering to those bastards," he concluded.

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