Nangle Natters: Apocalypse now?

Politics is baffling me. We’ve just had the presidential election last week and I’m still reeling. If there’s one thing we have learned in the last year it’s that polls cannot always be trusted and that unrest is a bit global at the moment.

It wasn’t always this way. I did an A-level in Government & Politics and used to follow the news avidly. Always a keen fan of satire, from Drop The Dead Donkey to The News Quiz, I’ve found it a useful and entertaining way to get a different perspective on the mixture of dry facts and wild panic often presented by the mainstream media.

Like a Hollywood newsreel of the end of the world

The thing is, recent news pieces – and by that I mean in the last twelve months at least – are reading like a Hollywood newsreel of the end of the world. I put it down to viewer attention spans getting shorter and so a more sensational grab-you-by-the-throat delivery started, developing into a one-up-man-ship of Fox News-style reportage. News is being spread via short clips on social media and someone spewing Katie Hopkins-style bile gets you a lot more hits than a Channel 4 Dispatches 45 minute detailed investigation.

It’s not helped by the fact that when I popped Rik Mayall’s outrageous political lampooning from the late ‘80s and early ‘90s ‘The New Statesman’ on the other day, it was all filled with expenses-fiddling and cash for questions gags. Maybe protagonist Alan B’Stard gave them the ideas…

We are in times of change with very few clear voices coming through, which is why I’m baffled. There are exciting good changes, like the growing ecological awareness and wave of new feminism. It’s not all bad. I’d just like someone to send me a history book from the future to tell me how it all turns out.