There
are many news stories you read throughout the year that get you up on your
soapbox and here are seven of mine.
Firstly,
the subject of tax dodging. It
seemed in 2012 everyone was at it, putting their money into off-shore bank
accounts like the Robinson Crusoe of finance. Amazon, Google, Starbucks and
Vodafone are just four companies accused of cooking the books but who becomes
the poster boy for being a little bit cheeky with their financial arrangements?
Comedian Jimmy Carr.
Now
I’m not saying that Carr shouldn’t be held to account, pardon the pun, because,
though what he did was legal, anyone who uses their power or money to save
money that, ultimately, pays for hospitals, schools and lots more, should be
dealt with. But, in the grand scheme of tax avoidance, Carr is a very minor
player. Instead of Cameron holding him to account perhaps the Government should
spend more time going after the huge companies avoiding paying tax, something
Private Eye has been going on about for at least two years.
There
were also two similar news stories in the press this year. Firstly was the
terrible shootings at a premiere of The
Dark Knight Rises in the summer. What was the response to this? Evaluate
the availability of guns in the USA? Put better things in place to deal with
people with mental health issues and give them support? No, it is to look at banning
late night or early morning showings of films. Well, that’s getting to the root
cause of the problem, isn’t it. Because we all know that people doing things
late at night leads to such things. Does nobody remember the blood bath at the
last Harry Potter midnight book launch? Or the scenes of horror at the late
night showings of the same film in the UK or other countries? What about the
chaos brought about by the midnight fireworks on New Years Day? Oh, that’s
right, none of that happened...
Then,
sadly, we got another shooting later
in the year at the American school where gun sales actually went up in the wake
of it so people could be protected if someone attacked them with a gun, in an
absurd scenario that resembles that scene in Pulp Fiction where everyone holds
guns to each other’s head. Now I’m all for everyone having the right to bear
arms to protect themselves if that’s part of the constitution and that’s what
they want but if every sane, rational person has access to a gun then so will
every irrational, problematic person. You can’t have it both ways. If there is
access to guns then this sort of thing will keep on happening and the USA needs
to evaluate why everyone needs a gun in the first place.
Back
on home soil the on-going Jimmy Savile story
kept rolling, pulling in more people and bringing in more questions. We had the
questionable decision from the BBC last year to not run an expose of the star
to not dampen their memoriam programmes for him. Then they aired a badly
researched Newsnight programme accusing Lord MacAlpine of being a paedophile
when he was nothing of the sort, leading to the departure of the DG George
Entwhistle after just 54 days and then questions over his large redundancy package
(giggidy). This story is annoying on many counts. Firstly, it’s awful that an
individual who was much loved by many people and did lots of work for charity
had such an awful, secret past which has now overshadowed all the good work he
did. Secondly, it’s head-scratchingly confusing of how he got away it for so
long. Jon Richardson put it perfectly on ‘8 Out Of 10 Cats’, and I paraphrase:
usually when this sort of thing comes out everyone goes ‘oh, surely not, I can’t
believe it.’ Here everyone was like ‘Oh, yeah, I knew he was dodgy all along’.
How
he could have gotten away with it for so long when so many people knew about
what he’d been up to or knew he was an unsavoury character beggars belief, but
it shouldn’t be used as a stick to just attack the BBC. Firstly, it was a
different culture fifty years ago – which isn’t excusing it or justifying it –
and it was the organisation then that’s at fault, but also how he infiltrated
other organisations such as the NHS. It confuses me how everyone can go on
about how they found him a strange character and that there was something shady
about him. My parents grew up watching him on television, I remember seeing
lots about him in my youth, and a subtext was never mentioned. It’s like
finding out now they’ve passed away that Sir Patrick Moore kept aliens in
slavery or Gerry Anderson actually committed violence on puppets. The most
annoying thing about this story is the collective not doing anything by lots of
people that meant he never had the chance to be held accountable, or indeed
defend himself, whilst he was still alive.
Also
in the news this year the appointment of
women bishops was voted down with the subject now not able to be discussed
for many years. By all accounts the vote was narrow but it begs the question of
what possible reason could there be not to have women bishops? I’m pretty much
on-the-wall when it comes to the rights and wrongs of religion but appointing
women bishops would have been an incredibly positive step for Christianity and
in this day and age it’s difficult to justify not accepting the change. And
there’s lots of valid reasons to change it, no more so than they’re already
used to wearing dresses! Joking aside, sort it out!
In
a similar area the issue of gay marriage
was a hot topic. Again, I’m not sure what the problem is here. Depending on
your view of life and death, we are only on this planet for a short time and
everyone deserves happiness. And if that happiness is marrying a loved one even
if they are the same gender as you, where is the problem in that?
Those
were seven news stories that were annoying to me this year – what about you?
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