Panem et Circenses

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All but two of the main daily newspapers available at our local shop (I can't speak for The Times as it was sold out when I went) led with the Harry/Meghan/Oprah [non] Royal Celeb axis: The Mirror, The Daily Telegraph, The Sun, Star, Express and Daily Mail. The soap opera begins right on cue for Sunak's budget, the NHS component of which has rightly aroused a furore amongst those affected and any right-minded folk not-so-directly-affected by it. No prizes for guessing which two papers led on this actual - somewhat rather important - news: The i and The Guardian.

The rest of the media are content to provide bread & circuses for the masses in the service of the Government, providing smoke for the Chancellor's pitiful offering to the NHS staff who have been and continue to be the backbone of our well-being, particularly throughout the current health crisis. One percent. Pathetic and insulting only scratches the epidermis of an apt description of that figure. And to cite the Economy's parlous state as justification for it is grinding rock-salt into the wound: there's money aplenty to feed the private sector at the moment, amply attested to by the last twelve-month having been such a State-sponsored beanfeast for the connected in the business world.

Whether you take the Juvenal or the Cicero line depends on where you stand on the political spectrum: my take is that cynicism on the one hand and the desire for an easy life on the other are both equal factors in what amounts to the same end. Again, we're more in Huxley territory than Orwell today; the forces of normalization and satiation more effective than those of direct oppression and State violence; although Orwellian Doublethink is practised routinely and with insouciance by our Government and Prime Minister.

All throughout this year we have been rightly encouraged by the Government to support the NHS in the job it does so well, whilst they continued blithely ignoring the plain fact that successive Tory Governments have hacked away at it like carrion crows at a still-warm corpse, picking off the choice bits for privatization and leaving the rest to rot. And now this pay 'offer'. Pass the pitchfork, Martha.


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