Panic: Panic: Panic: we’re all going to die!

This Monday was a bumper day for over-ambitious TV journalists looking to boost their careers by producing wildly exaggerated scare stories. On BBC1 Panorama warned us that almost everyone over 65 was heading to a premature end because they were drinking too much. On BBC2 Horizon predicted thousands or millions or whatever would die from antibiotic-resistant bacteria. On Channel 4 Dispatches panicked about how poor quality school meals were consigning our children to an early grave. Then a couple of hours later Food Unwrapped sought to terrify us by revealing the horrors that are put into mass-produced food.

If I remember correctly, forty years ago a new Ice Age was going to wipe out millions. Then there was BSE – that should have killed millions too. And we had SARS – again millions were meant to have died (about 30 people actually did).�Plus in 2010�there the supposed Swine Flu pandemic – millions should have died, less than 20 people�popped their clogs�and most of those were in poor health prior to getting the flu. Meanwhile, in our papers, after the most dismal summer in history, a national newspaper predicted that thousands of Brits would die each year because of summer heatwaves.

There’s a great book Scared to Death by Christopher Booker and Richard North where the authors show that time and again over-ambitious�journalists and��self-serving politicians deliberately exaggerate supposed threats in order to further their own careers, often causing massive costs, economic disruption and job losses. But the journalists and politicians couldn’t give a toss as long as they personally benefit.

Now�we’re killing Western industry and crushing consumers with all kinds of completely unnecessary ‘green’ taxes and restrictions because supposed ‘man-made’ Global Warming is supposedly going to kill us all. It’s all rubbish, of course. The earth’s climate changes, mainly due to the effects of solar activity. But once again the only voices we hear in the media are from those whose self-interests are served by yet again bigging up a non-existent threat.