Matey, can you spare me our taxpayers' next 20p (x 10,000)

Newsnight

I have been trying to grasp the function of debt working successfully in capitalist/banking driven systems.

Seems it can, though I have always personally operated on a 'don't spend it if you cannot afford it' model.

But it seems this mysterious mechanism is mirrored in many ways with our media... at least some of it.

So much I hear is what I 'will' be told, derived from the gossip of 'reputable' sources, interpreted by 'serious' commentators who may or may not know the 'right' folk and/or be able to assess what they are saying is trustworthy.

Hence we seem to be in an era of news futures.

What if the PM did not end up saying what I was informed he 'would'?

Is it not more sensible to have news that goes out based on what 'is' as opposed to what, at best 'might be'?

Are the pols and some media so inter-twined that meeting a broadcast deadline seems to require making things up to avoid dead air: pre-PR PR?

In my business there is a saying: 'better to get it right than in a hurry'.

Though, so far, I am seeing neither promptness or accuracy from the politico-media establishment.

With the only victims being those whose pay and pensions are not under slightly different, and more secure systems.

I have also just had to write to the BBC Breakfast News to make a small but, to me at least, important point following an empathetic statement from Sian Williams:

That's '...how much MORE money the taxpayer is stumping up'.

I seem to recall we have already had our pockets dipped into already.

And Mr. Brown would be well advised to remember that they are not bottomless.

Addendum:

Just a thought (as I learn that 'we' are guaranteeing savings in Icelandic banks as their government isn't - can I get compo for my investing in a Zimbawean veteran's collective a few years back as they were offering 1000%?)...

If a major plank from our major planks is the principle that you don't give bonusses out as a matter of course to senior executives for overseeing p*ss-poor performances, might one wonder if that applies across the board?

Quangos, Local Authorities... a certain competition-free, yet commercially-active, publicly-funded, national broadcaster...?

I guess they couldn't really make a bigger hash than the gilded experts in the City, but I have to say I am not that encouraged that something cobbled together by some civil servant pen-pushers and a few pols of job-experience training is going to be that much better.

Gaurdian - Government to spend £50bn to part-nationalise UK's banks

Telegraph - Financial crisis: we need ministers who understand the City

Newsnight 2 - OK Prime Minister - what about the long term?

How to lose media folk and alienate voters even more...

'I asked them: "As you are the ultimate stewards of the financial system don't you owe the British people an apology for the fear, financial panic and silent bank run of the last 48 hours"

Gordon Brown told me that once I understood the long term aspect, the restructuring of the banking system involved here, I would "rethink the question".

I am none the wiser what all the rest meant, much less what our government is up to and how it will affect my family's future, but that little exchange is deffo joining a now sadly long and growing list I have (including gems such as pure conjecture being deemed 'emerging truths' and downright porkies being 'mis-speaking') of utter tripe ladled with obfuscation that I have ever heard.

As George Washington's Pop surveys the carnage in the garden and asks what the heck has happened, the wee moppet looks back and up, doe-eyed (or is that with a steely glint? Depends on your biographer, I guess) and, 'Poos... in Boots'-style, says: 'Let's just take a moment here, and once it has passed... and you have understood (you simple soul)... I am sure you will rethink the question'.

Don't know about 'sure', but the country is surely in some some slippery sets of hands.. oh... whoops!

Telegraph - Bank bail-out: Gordon Brown exposes the Tories at PMQs

Telegraph - Parliament fails again. So who will get answers for taxpayers?

BBC - Brown makes light of bank worries - It's good to laugh... for some, I guess