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News Zealot

Do you ever wake up in the morning and feel that the world is spiralling out of control, that your grip on life is slightly less-assured than the previous evening? This seems to be happening to me more frequently of late, and whilst I realise that any notion of the world being under our control is an illusion, there is still the overriding sense that I am merely a passenger in the grand scale of things. The older I get, the more I come to realise that the world would function perfectly fine without me.

The stories appearing in our newspapers seem to become more ludicrous by the day, to the point where I regularly find myself in a state of absolute despair. Only last week I came across an article regarding the monument that was recently opened in memory of Princess Diana. The article wasn't focusing on the beauty of the fountain, nor was it detailing the opening ceremony, or who from the current it-list attended. It was actually claiming that the Queen had used it as a log-flume, sliding down it on a toboggan, closely followed by Charles and one or two other Royal freeloaders. The sad thing is that even though this was clearly a joke, somebody had taken the time to produce a Photoshop-ed image of the Queen abusing the monument, and it was featured in the 'news' section of a Sunday paper. Is there so little happening in the world that they find room for this irrelevant rubbish, or have we become immune to images of starving children that were so shocking in Bob Geldof's day?

According to the newspapers we all live within five minutes of a violent salivating sex offender, there are ten asylum seekers waiting to leap over the fence and steal our beloved possessions as soon as we leave the house, Osama Bin Laden is planning to fly a plane into our office building because he hates Bruce Willis movies, and a six year old kid is aiming an M16 Assault Rifle into the lounge window from a stolen car - all before our low fat Coco-Shreddies have gone soft in the organic milk at breakfast. There is no point going to the dentist as you can see the queue from the end of your driveway, and if you break a leg or develop a medical illness, you may as well do the NHS a favour and cremate yourself, as our hospitals reached breaking point sometime during the Major years.

We rely on newspapers (and their websites) to keep us informed of what is happening in the world, and yet they often cause more harm than good. Several years ago The News Of The World decided to publish a list of the addresses of convicted child-sex offenders, resulting in self-righteous vigilante mobs destroying the homes (and lives) of several innocent people who were the victims of mistaken identity. Newspapers pick subjects which are important to their target audience (the broadsheets are just as guilty as the tabloids), often in the aftermath of some kind of disaster or particularly sick crime, and blow any resulting stories out of all proportion, to the point where people are taking Prozac with their morning coffee in order to face opening the front door.

In fairness the papers do have their uses; they help raise national spirits by promoting a feel good factor about certain events, for example the England football craze that swept the nation this summer, and they do keep us informed of any celebrity gossip so that the Beckhams et al are never far from our thoughts. This summer we were taken on an emotional rollercoaster ride throughout Euro 2004: one minute we were going to win it, cue endless Wayne Rooney inspired superlatives and a Saint George's flag on every car; the next we are a nation of sorry losers because David Beckham mis-kicked a ball on a piece of uneven turf.

Society is obsessed with the notion of celebrity, a problem which is made many times worse by the papers in my opinion. Anybody who can entertain other folk, be it on the football pitch, on television, or by simply wearing a low cut top over a cosmetically inflated chest, is granted instant fame and fortune, while the rest of us are simply fuel for their egos. Wayne Rooney entertained the crowds at Euro 2004 with his enthusiastic style of football, and scored some great goals to boot, but he was only doing his job in the same way that we all do each day. The problem is that he earns £50000 per week due to this ability to manoeuvre an inflated pig's bladder with his feet, and yet the average elderly carer doesn't earn this amount in three years. Money is not the only thing that matters, but it does make a hell of a difference in life if you don't have to worry about it.

Come Armageddon, when the most important members of the human race are selected, their precious backsides seated in a rocket, ready to be blasted off the earth minutes before it explodes, it wont be Stephen Hawking, Nelson Mandela or the old timer next door (who lost three limbs keeping the Nazi's out) who are chosen. It will be Robbie Williams and Tara Palmer-Tompkinson who are the distinguished bums of our time.

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