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 marriagewas 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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