I tend only to read The Sun newspaper at my local Chinese takeaway waiting for the arrival of what I hope to be a chicken curry and boiled rice. I say ‘hope’ because I am never quite sure about the chicken, but it has done me no harm up to now.
The newspaper not only adorns the waiting room of the takeaway but thanks to the most amazing publicity is now itself on the front page of just about every newspaper in the country - and also lies torn to shreds on the Labour Party Conference floor.
I hate the political conference season, and particularly the sound-bites that promise so much but on examination tell us little about ‘the future that is to come’ or the ‘new initiatives’ that are to be introduced. How can initiatives be anything other than new I keep asking myself - until that is one examines the small print a bit more carefully.
The ending of car parking charges for in-patients may sound attractive (although why the deserving outpatient should be discriminated against defeats me). But this government policy initiative will not be binding on foundation trusts. In a couple of years or so the government plans are that all NHS trusts will be foundation anyway so the poor patient may not see much benefit.
A National Care Service has surely to be welcomed - but where the money is to come from, how it will work, who will benefit and by how much, remains as much a mystery as the ‘chicken’ in my curry.
But there is one thing on which I entirely agree with the Prime Minister and it is that newspapers should not promulgate propaganda. I just wish the same mantra applied to politicians. If what happens in Blackpool, Brighton or Bournemouth is not propaganda then I don’t know what is.
So let’s have a new pact between politicians and the national media. Politicians stop the propaganda - media stop publishing it; and only then will it matter not what I read in the takeaway or use to wrap my fish and chips.