THEY HAVE been described as fools and idiots, by the
British press. They are the intrepid adventurers who are willing to put their
own lives and those of their children at risk.
The
storms that have battered our coasts over the past few months have created a
new phenomenon. Young men getting as close to the treacherous conditions to
make a video and take photographs of massive waves destroying our sea defences.
These weather conditions have so far laid claim to two lives.
Why
do they do it. The thrill? The reward? Something is driving this new phenomenon
of the digital age, when ordinary young men can play photo journalist, taking
risks for the right picture: and what is the right picture?
It
is the one the news networks will show, after our amateur snappers send their
results via their smart phones to the BBC, ITV, and Sky, as well as the
hundreds of other news broadcasters throughout the world.
Our
broadcasters are to blame for these acts of stupidity because of their
incessant pleading for video and photo's of any newsworthy event; such as a
motorway pile-up, or the possibility of a live recording of a plane crashing,
and, of course the latest storms. Because of the information technology
available to 100 per cent of the population, any newsworthy event will be
recorded by someone or other, and the news broadcasters know this, and so make
requests for any video or photo that may have been made or taken.
I
watch Sky News[1],
and whenever a news event occurs the entreaty is made for photos and videos to
be downloaded to them by their viewers. The viewers readily oblige, and are now
taking unnecessary risks to provide these downloads. How long will it be before
the broadcasting companies offer payment for such downloads by the public, in
the furtherance of competition?
Those
who put themselves in danger, know that given the right image or video, they
stand the chance of having their work broadcast all over the world. What
greater incentive do such people need? An incentive encouraged by the
broadcasters themselves.
The
irony of course, is that the very same broadcasters who encourage the stupidity
we have witnessed during these storms, are the very same ones who condemn the
stupidity alongside the press.
* * * *
IMMIGRATION AS
a topic will not go away, primarily because we have a party leader in
this country supported by 80 per cent of the population, when it comes to the subject of immigration
Nigel
Farage has done great damage to David Cameron; and as Ed Miliband's comments on
cheap labour from Eastern Europe undermining the British worker shows, he too
faces a backlash from Labour voters just as Cameron does. Now each of them are
struggling pitifully to re-harvest the voters who have gone over to Ukip.
Milliband has admitted that British workers
"will lose out" from the invitation given to Romanian and Bulgarians
to come among us, and join the hundred or so other foreign tongues that have
been allowed to wag on our streets.
What
is happening is that both the main parties, some 16 months before a general
election, and just four months before a European one; are trying to flimflam
their traditional voters with sympathetic rhetoric, that they hope will
bamboozle their core voters once again.
As
far as their core voter's are concerned, they will always obey their party
leader whatever happens. The core vote within the main parties, have
unchallengeable loyalty to their party. They have, through the generations,
been addicted to one party or another, until the blind hand of tradition has
taken over. Like Manchester United and Manchester City, the core vote comprises
the intractable loyalty of Manchester's soccer
fans toward the city's two football clubs.
But
now such habits are being challenged by Ukip, and both the main parties are becoming
fearful, even for the loyalty of their core voters.
* * * *
BACK TO Nigel Farage. In an interview he gave on Sky
to Dermot Murnaghan, he said
that parts of Enoch Powell's "rivers of blood" speech were accurate,
and he agreed with Powel's sentiments on the way immigration changes
communities "beyond recognition".
In his April 1968 speech, he said
the indigenous population had found their "homes
and neighbourhoods changed beyond recognition.” Many of the indigenous
population today would agree fully with this sentiment - it does not make them,
or Powell, racist. As Nigel Farage pointed out in his interview: in the
sixties, seventies, and eighties, the annual net inflow to the UK was between
30 and 50,000 people. But over the last decade of the 21st century
he points out, there has been a "…
net 4 million extra migrants coming to Britain."
There has to be social consequences to such a large
intrusion; and we are seeing it with our public services where immigration has
become the elephant in the room when discussing the NHS, education, housing,
and the welfare state. This was all that Powell was saying, and when he angrily
and passionately demanded, "We must all be mad!", he was reflecting
the thoughts of many indigenous inhabitants toward their politicians.
For, who today can say our flood of immigration,
willingly and ceremoniously encouraged by the last Labour government, was not
an act of madness? A government which went out of its way to actively encourage
migration to the detriment of the very people who created the Labour Party -
the working class; a class which today is seeing their own living standards
undermined by cheap immigrant labour from eastern Europe.
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