Sensationalist negativity is hardly workable
IT SEEMS we live in an age when there’s nothing quite like making sensationalist statements to draw attention or to try to make a point, irrespective of the validity or the accuracy of what is being said.
I can’t help but feel that we’ve seen our fair share of such sensationalism in the crescendo of media attention and focus on the COP26 summit.
Coverage of the build-up has been laboriously extensive to say the least. Naturally the summit itself is of great significance. Regrettably, however, it has arguably been turned into something of a PR event.
Due to the media interest in who will be present or not, the summit has the feel of some grandiose movie premiere. It seems, however, that some of the biggest players – the ones who have the biggest contribution to make – will be conspicuously absent and won’t be appearing on the Glaswegian red carpet.
The green agenda is rightly touching all aspects of life recently, not least the actions and decisions of lawmakers and leaders of nations.
It’s ‘absolutely fabulous’ to see celebrities contributing their ten pence worth to the discussion. Joanna Lumley recently called for ‘wartime-like rationing’ of goods to reduce consumption and help tackle climate change, and suggested a voucher system that could be spent on goods and services.
Such sensationalist negativity is hardly workable, neither would it, I suspect, be tolerated by the greater part of the population.
It would probably create a monstrous black market and all that entails, along with further creating a ‘have and have nots’ society.
All that type of rhetoric is very much in contradiction to the more positive and sensible ideas and attitudes aired by Prince William and Jeremy Clarkson.
Prince William wants to change the narrative form being downbeat to actually looking at means and ways of working innovatively and proactively. Clarkson, in the face of the most recent trade deal with New Zealand, urged the governments of the UK not to allow food self-sufficiency to drop any lower than the current 60%.
During THAT televised conference call to announce the agreement in principle of a trade deal, New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern cleverly responded with tongue in cheek to a flurry of rugby metaphors by the UK Prime Minister in his opening gambit – ‘naturally it would conclude with the All Blacks winning’. Bluntly put, it felt like truth thinly veiled by jest.
Despite the plea from Joanna Lumley (among others) for us all to fly a little less for the purposes of short breaks abroad etc, it really beggars belief that on the eve of COP26, after the most recent budget and trade deal agreement, the UK’S air miles from domestic travels and imports of food are set to soar.
Strange times indeed.