Friday 30 April 2010

Elections and The Curse of 24-hour News


I would like to say "It’s that time again". But, to be honest, elections don’t come around that often, which would render a statement like that a little redundant. I think my major grievance is with the shear extent of coverage that the election receives.

As somebody who has a pretty serious addiction to 24-hour news, I have to say I am presently at a loss with what to watch. Even if the Beeb do happen to be covering another story, they will cut it short to bring us news that David Cameron, has been caught short and have decided to visit a public toilet. To make matters worse, they even have a reporter following the candidates around, which means you also get a blow-by-blow account of the whole situation. My idea of what news is seems to differ greatly from what the Beeb find interest in:

"That’s right John. I’m standing in the lavatory, where David Cameron has just finished lining the toilet seat with paper. It looks like he has decided not to use the toilet paper and has opted to use his own manifesto".

"Jane, can you tell us what the likely repercussions of this action will be? Well firstly John, public toilets have loo-roll like greaseproof paper, so the pages of the manifesto will probably make for a better wiping material". In terms of Mr. Cameron’s policies, there is already a lot of shit in there anyway, so it shouldn’t make much of a difference in the long run".

Meanwhile, they reinforce the headline by providing a helpful text rundown along the bottom of the screen, which says things like:

"David Cameron stops for crap in Bognor Regis".

Anyway, I suppose the whole sordid affair will be over and done with in another 10 days or so. So all I can really do until then, is suffer in silence.