Manipulate the media you muttonheads!

(Thursday blog)

Just a short ramble today.

Today’s sensationalist-generating, clickbait, self-serving, dishonest, news-twisting media has a tendency to brand anyone it features as either a ‘hero’ or a ‘villain’.

All NHS workers, for example, are heroes even though some were complicit in turfing over 15,000 patients out of hospital (without testing them for the Chinese Covid-19 plague) to make room for a flood of expected Covid-19 victims. Some (many?) of these evicted patients went into care settings – either care homes or their own homes where they were visited by carers – causing a spread of Covid-19 amongst the most vulnerable in our society and the avoidable massacre of over 20,000 innocents.

The lesson here is if the media happens to set its sights on you, you have to ensure that you are a ‘hero’ and not a ‘villain’. There is no middle ground. There is no moral ambivalence in today’s simplistic reporting.

This brings me to two fairly recent cases where I believe the people involved made a total hash of how they were portrayed by the media – the coughing major and supposed evil mastermind Dominic Cummings.

The coughing ‘Who Wants to be a Millionaire’ major

When this guy got caught allegedly cheating his way to win a million pounds on Who Wants to be a Millionaire he had, in my humble opinion, a wonderful chance to be a hero. I believe he should have quickly gone to the TV studios and fessed up. He should have sad ‘yup, I did it. I planned to take a million quid from a wealthy TV company that could easily afford it by bending the rules a bit’. He could have appeared as a kind of modern-day Robin Hood – taking from the rich to give to himself. It could have been a great David vs Goliath story – the small guy vs the big TV company. It’s not even certain he committed a criminal offence unless having a friend coughing in the audience is a crime. And even if he did commit a criminal offence, nobody was harmed, nobody injured, nobody dead, no damage to anyone at all. Moreover, the Great Train Robbery robbers are still seen as heroes for many people.

If he had done this, he’d have become a folk hero. He’d have been admired as a cheeky chappie who took on the rich and almost won. There would have been TV interviews, magazine interviews, a book, a film and invitations to appear on brainless celeb programmes like Celebrity Bake-off and I’m a Celebrity get me out of here and so on.

He didn’t get his million quid from the programme. But he could easily have made much more money from becoming a ‘celeb’. He had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to manipulate the media to his advantage. But he blew it. Muttonhead.

Oh Dominic – you’re meant to be a genius

Which brings us to Dominic Cummings. I believe he could have calmed the media storm and been portrayed as a hero rather than a villain if he had just used a bit of common sense. Most of his story held together pretty well except for one thing – the 30-mile trip to Barnard Castle on his wife’s birthday supposedly to test his eyesight after having been afflicted by the Chinese plague.

In my very humble opinion, Cummings should have admitted that yes he did break the lockdown rules by taking his family on a short trip on his wife’s birthday and admitted this was a mistake and apologised for it. I believe that if he had shown some contrition for this minor incident – the trip to Barnard Castle – he could have avoided much of the damage he caused. He could even have come across as a sympathetic caring father and husband by admitting and apologising for this mistake.

Why he didn’t take this simpler route, we’ll never know. Muttonhead.

A message from Xi Pingpong – “Go f**k yourselves”

Meanwhile, a monster has arisen in the East. In the last month, China has threatened any country criticising the Chinese response to the Chinese Covid-19 plague. Australia has been described as ‘a piece of chewing gum on China’s shoes that needs to be scraped off’ and some key Australian exports to China – beef and barley – have either been banned or had 80% tariffs imposed. Germany, France and the EU have all been threatened with economic sanctions by China and have all crumbled and grovelled to their Chinese overlords. And now China has threatened the UK should the UK limit Chinese company Huawei’s participation in the UK’s 5G network.

Meanwhile Chinese companies have been pouncing on businesses weakened or destroyed by the Chinese plague. Large parts of Venice are being bought by Chinese companies with most tourism souvenirs including supposed ‘Murano glass’ being made in China, a Chinese company has become a major shareholder in Norwegian Airlines, it looks like a Chinese company will buy the airline Virgin Australia out of administration, the Chinese have been buying land and water rights throughout Australia and I’m sure there are many other Chinese takeovers we haven’t heard about.

On the military front, China is hugely increasing its military budget, has carried out military exercises in preparation for an invasion of Taiwan, has built more military bases in disputed areas of the South China Sea, China is fortifying airfields near to its disputed border with India (see link below) and President Pingpong has just told the Chinese armed forces to prepare for war.

I think the message from China’s President Xi Pingpong to the rest of us is “we’re the most powerful country in the world now. So do as we order or else go f**k yourselves”

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/satellite-images-confirm-rapid-chinese-military-expansion-along-disputed-indian-border