confusion

There are times when I think the world has gone mad and times when I know it has.

A week ago, the BBC lunch time news itemised the Hamas attack and several other stories, ending with yet another promotional piece about its four part series on Jimmy Savile, plus extracted insert with a “real life” victim –  I hope you can tell fiction from fact.    A new low.  I recoiled.

Bad enough the story should be made (to what point ?) and promoted so relentlessly, and by the BBC at that – but on the news ?  On a day of the outbreak of another war ?   No competition between Ukraine and Israel, a war is a war.

War by Paula Rego 2003

  People use increasingly deadly weapons to kill, maim and displace other people.

And the evening news repeated the same running order.   Awful.   

God knows, I know the world goes on.  I live in the part of it which does, occasionally staggeringly but not yet invaded.   And I have nobody to complain to because handling complaint has become expensive, inconclusive (if people complain, they expect some response)

and unpleasant.   Enter social media.

A friend who has just laid out major money for a kitchen refit from a respected store, just round the corne0r from her in a smart area of London..  She won’t be the easiest customer for various reasons, not least because her son and daughter have to intervene at intervals (“they are so much better at this than me”) so you take on one and get three.  Nevertheless, the woman with whom she negotiated the job is no longer available to her.  Her replacement is neither skilled in language nor customer relations. And the young man who was designated to clear up the mess and misunderstandings and get the show back on the road – all this costs money,

her agreement for God knows what, their profit – is based in Manchester.  

I have only heard a fragmented version of this story – the full edition is a long running soap – but weeks into major domestic disorder which is so depressing, there is no end in sight and she took on the project with this company because she though they were reliable.    Who do you call ?

The weekend papers are full of standoff and misery, misunderstandings and accusations,  debacle and demonstration, history and the present  always half the tale, the versions vary is all – it’s what and who is in the wings, waiting, that makes my heart shrink. 

But the newspapers are also full of holidays waiting to happen, clothes to buy, books to read, all sorts of bits and bobs from major interview to new cosmetics, anything to titillate the tired mind – and food, food everywhere – lovingly photographed, ravishing pretty.  Harvest home indeed, season a bit out of whack, but lovely. 

It’s confusing.        

Do I want the broadcast news to be all one note ?  No I don’t.   But the way this is put together has run amuck.   Of course you do better on radio  – no image – because with a camera,  if there is a war, you must have pictures of it.  And the pictures must grab you.   Perhaps you haven’t noticed but only the weather changes in wars. Not much else.   And for the rest – how we are told about it – we depend on fashions of “making the news” (repellent phrase).  And somebody else’s taste.   Hence my retreat to the print where at least I can spend time and distance, making whatever sense I can.

Juxtaposition – what follows or is bracketed up against what, and how it is handled – was always a problem.   What used to be called “guidelines” have been taken over by marketing which has one simple rule: sell.   And that implies that everything is for sale.   What an epitaph for our times.