Prolonging The Fast

[poliphilo]

 When I'm on holiday I stay away from the Internet. We had wifi at the rental and Ailz and Ruth had taken laptops with them, but the most I did was look over their shoulders once or twice.  It was so pleasant to be away from the English newspapers that I've prolonged my fast and in more than a week now I haven't even glanced at any of their websites- except on those occasions when Ailz calls me to her computer to show me something particularly funny, gross or annoying in the Mail.

(She's doing it now. Apparently Bruce Willis has a daughter called Rumor who looks just like his current wife and Helen Mirren's first night frock got soaked from walking along a red carpet that had been out in the rain.)

I get my news from the TV. I hate how stupid it is- but the basic info is there- and I can do my own editorialising. I'm taking things steady- a day at a time- but I think I may have cured myself of my addiction to political trivia.

(Here's Ailz again: Kanye West has had his bottom teeth replaced with diamonds and Cybil Shepherd is 62).

Comments

[veronica-milvus.livejournal.com]

I get my news from the Radio 4 Today programme between 6am and about 7.30. I don't watch TV news, and I don't buy newspapers or read newspaper websites. Most of what I read I can pick holes in, especially if I know something about the subject, so I end up shouting at the TV etc. that they haven't covered the most important points properly.

I feel that I get better balance from reading "The Economist" which, while slightly right-wing in economic terms, isn't stupidly fascist like the Daily Mail and covers foreign affairs rather like the BBC's "From our own correspondent" programme.

I subscribe to the opinion that while being well-informed is a good thing, hearing the shock-horror issues of the day churned and analysed over and over again (by people who don't understand it and/or are trying to be controversial) does me no good and can actually be a cause of depression, because the media seems addicted to only bringing us bad news.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I've lived under thirteen prime ministers- give or take- and I'm sick of the little buggers. It's a waste of a grown-up person's time to be closely following their comings and goings, their initiatives and betrayals. It might be different if I was being paid to do it, but I'm not

Our latest bunch of leaders- with their fat, young, public school faces- and their fat, young, public school outlook on life: I can't take them seriously.

[veronica-milvus.livejournal.com]

I guess it is not their fault that they went to public school. But it disappoints me that our political maters haven't lived in the real world where most of us make a living, either by living in a poor area in bad housing, or by doing a job in the health service, or industry, or wherever, that would help them understand and meet real people.

Too many of them read PPE at Oxford, wnet straight into politics as "researchers" and are card-carrying navel gazers of the Westminster village.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I went to public school. I like to think I have taken steps to cure myself of the attitudes.

Almost everyone at the top of the political tree- in all three parties- has lived inside a bubble of privilege, connections, inherited wealth and political geekery. When they say "we're all in this together" it's simply not true. In what possible way are the cuts going to impact on Cameron, Clegg, Osborne or Milliband?

[veronica-milvus.livejournal.com]

well, they will be losing their child benefit!