Alan Coleman

It’s only been a few days since the it was announced that NOW was finishing with its last edition today, it all coming  amid the phone hacking scandal that is currently gripping the nation. My Tweet Deck has been working overtime trying to cope with the amount of  tweeters and bloggers feeling sorry for the workforce and bemoaning the end of 168 years of British media history.

Which raises question, is the end of The News of the World really such a big deal? It’s not as if we’re losing a great tradition of fine writing, insight and social commentary. No, nothing of the sort, because The News of the World has always been a pile of utter shit.

It doesn’t even look very nice, its overtly aggressive design has changed little since the 70s very much like the conservatism it champions. Awful. All this talk of justice and high level reporting, really? This is the Newspaper that has a history of taking the moral high ground on practically everything, whilst at the same time dragging the conscience and morality of millions through the gutter. Should we really be mourning the passing of an institution that has a morbid fascination with with sexualising both violence and young women at the same time? Sex, children, violence and women, in no particular order and preferably at the same time. Anything to boost circulation, to sell copy,  make money and titillate the nation.

The only aspect of this whole debacle I feel sorry about is that The News of the World didn’t have to face the humiliation of going bust. As for the people who worked there, they’ll have to join the dole que. Just like everyone else who loses their job, like the Miners had to, the people The News of the World demonised back in the early 80s whilst licking up to Thatcher.

Nothing ever lasts for ever.

As the tabloids scream with excitement, “Our boys launch submarine missile attack on Gaddafi”, an important question has to asked. Where is this latest spark of genius going?

We could do what we did in Iraq the first time around in the early nineties. Make a lot of noise with tanks and planes then leave without getting our hands dirty or really achieving anything at all. Or we could do what we did in Iraq the second time around.  Justify a cripplingly expensive military campaign with lies and deceit  in order to satisfy the religious egomania of pious men (and Jesus).

In both cases it’ll be innocent families picking up the tab, both here and abroad. There, it’ll be relatives blown to pieces and ignored as collateral damage. Here it’ll be young men who could have done something with their lives being hyped up as “The bravest of the brave”, by politicians whose own offspring will be tucked away safely at a select school.

Hollywood couldn’t think up a name for the latest campaign, and I doubt even Guy Richie could either.  It’s called Operation Odyssey Dawn.

You couldn’t write it any better.

Perfect for the glorified tabloid cartoon layout of  “Our boys” in action. The perfect fit for the suited man making the chopping action outside number ten. The perfect soundbite to accompany “It is legal and it is right”, just because a public schoolchild tells the foolish poor that it is so.

Yet another military endeavour, another opportunity for men to sprout soundbites on BBC News, to go to church on Sunday and pick up accolades.

Yet another opportunity for waste.

A few years ago I wrote about The sanitisation of war, how our media have come to depict warfare in general as not only just, but as a simple story of good against evil in the manner of a Commando comic.

On page 47 of today’s free Sport magazine, the Royal Air Force have taken out a full page Commando comic style advertisement for staff. It’s taken us a while to get to the point where this is an acceptable depiction of something quite terrifying, but I think we’ve been prepared gently and can now relax, safe in the knowledge that war is not only fun reading, but is also something to aspire to.

The advert features the handsome Flight Lieutenant Sean Langrish, an epitome of the well rounded young man, complete with steely determination and well rehearsed student sneer. (In another advert he’ll be seen relaxing over a few beers with an orange juice swigging colleague, however everyone knows that not drinking in the forces is paramount to homosexuality).

The story is as follows. The lads on the ground in Helmand are cornered, brave Sean calls in some Laser Guided Bombs, he keeps his promise, the enemy is eliminated and he’s got 24 new bezzie mates. No really, that’s what happens! Then we’re ‘all good’! Fucking superb! If only I wasn’t so old!

There’s money to waste on misleading adverts though isn’t there? We know that because there’s cash to be spunked on teaching the country’s two most over privileged brothers to indulge in learning to be Search and Rescue pilots. The Palace must be getting wet thinking about that little number when it comes to fruition. All the tabloid glory, none of the risk, everyone’s a winner! Essentially, it’s this week’s hobby, a well deserved break from playing football with six year old African children with no legs, or from getting cunted in China Whites.

This is nothing new though, The RAF, like the military in general, has a history of outrageously misleading adverts bent on showing that in War, there’s something for everyone. Remember the ridiculous Cinema adverts of a few years ago that suggested that young people could progress from delivering pizzas on a moped to piloting a Harrier? Yes, that’s going to happen isn’t it?

No need to worry too much about it though, when the reality of the cartoon like battle against evil ends up with no arms to have a wank with, there’s always Help for Heroes.

Royal Air Force. Be part of the story.

The expression ‘British jobs for British workers’ is quite simply laughable. The biggest hole in the current argument involving contractors at the Lindsey Oil Refinery in North Lincolnshire is that they are not British jobs at all, in fact they are French. French jobs that have been won, fair and square, by an Italian contractor who has every right to employ whoever it wants. Being British does not entitle anyone to work or special treatment within the EU. Again, they are not ‘British Jobs’ and the locality of an employer in relation to ones abode carries with it no obligation. Moreover, the benefits of EU membership has been carrying our economy for years, which is why the comforting and mythical idea of the British job and the British worker is as laughable is it is ludicrous.

When Clement Attlee created the National Coal Board after the war, he did so with no real intention of creating British jobs. It was just assumed that the coal would continue to be mined by the same communities as it always had. So when Margret Thatcher’s Conservative government closed the coal mines in the early 80s, preferring instead to rely on a cheaper imported product, the communities that had done the work previously had a fair claim to a British job. This is where the double standards start to emerge, and it doesn’t take the brains of an English craftsmen to know who is behind it either.

So what we’re really talking about is British jobs for British workers, just as long as it’s economically viable and certain other considerations are taken into account. Oh, and it helps if the media are on your side. Which is why striking miners spent two whole years fighting the media and the Government for real British jobs, and the argument for non British jobs was settled in a week. Shameful.

And since when has the tabloid press been a supporter of the striking worker? The swap from ‘The enemy within’ to ‘The honest working lads’ has been an overnight sensation, literally. The Daily Mail supporting Trade Unionism, who would have thought it? Strange times indeed, or an alternative agenda at play? Given the press and their historical attitude towards industrial action, it’s a little difficult to reconcile the cosy relationship that has developed without pointing to a common denominator. Foreigners.

Amazingly, they do have trades in other countries. Maybe they don’t aspire to the same level of craftsmanship that built our proud empire, but they probably get by with enough skills to build everything the British do, but somehow far better. Further still, we don’t have a problem with foreign children making our trainers in sweatshops for practically nothing do we? The reason being that it suits the economics of our vanity and is somehow justified by being a luxury item. This where the ‘British jobs for British workers’ argument finally crashes and burns.

And please don’t try and tell me that this isn’t a race issue when the idiocy that is the BNP are using it as their latest nationalist soundbite, and they’re not racist are they? Nick Griffin says so. ‘British jobs for British workers’ is a logical progression from ‘Jobs for whites’, only slightly more politically correct. It’s a shame that the working lads couldn’t have made their voice heard without appealing to the current zeitgeist of nationalism in the same manner as the pro Israel lobby.

It’s just all to easy. The flag, the aggressive rhetorical questioning and blatant ugliness of misguided British superiority. Things are changing, and sitting around watching Jeremy Clarkson tell you otherwise only reinforces the underpinning concept of this entire argument. We’re just not the country we used to be.

I usually stop just outside Blackfriars to survey the days papers, a quick glance across the multicoloured collage of sex, hate and economic meltdown. As predictable as it is amusing, especially last week when I spotted a story about the Saindi family from Afghanistan who’d apparently been housed in a seven bedroom house in Ealing, West London. I don’t know what I found more amusing, the finger wagging fury or the comments Mrs Saindi made about the house being too big to clean, funny as!

It used to be Rock and Roll bands and young people that upset the Tory media, now the papers put their songs on the Sunday edition as a polite freebie. It’s says a lot about the awful state of music in this country when we have to rely on immigrants to upset the status quo.

The thought of Mrs Saindi showing journalists her new plasma screen doesn’t make me feel jealous or envious or even angry, as there’s always something more important to worry about than who’s getting what for free.

That said, when the papers started talking of scroungers and handouts at the weekend, I couldn’t help but think of how a family like the Windsor’s have managed to get away with what they have for so many years. Because when you look at it, the loan of a house and a Nintendo is fairly insignificant when compared to generations of favour, opulence and greed that we have afforded the Royal family. And the Royal family are immigrants after all.

It is they that are the real parasites, standing by with glum indifference as the media celebrate their obscenity, their foolish offspring, and their want. They can’t believe their luck, millions queuing up to cheer their mere existence as someone else bares the misguided anger of those same ignorant subjects.

You make your bed, you lie in it.