I worry about the effect of all the bad news we are being swamped with at the moment. Terrorist attacks have sparked demands for action against Daesh. We hear of security lock-downs and increased vigilance. The Prime Minister drives a vote through in Parliament committing us to bombing in Syria and does a U-turn on the Defence Review of 2010 when budgets were slashed and viable kit like the Nimrods scrapped.
I reflect on propaganda in WW2. The only things I can remember clearly are 'Keep calm and carry on' ( a false memory as the slogan was never actually used.) and 'Walls have ears!' News was managed of course but on the whole we trusted what we were told because we were given both the bad and the good news, even when, in the early days of the war bad news predominated. Even then, the tragedy of Dunkirk became a matter for national rejoicing because so many men were saved. Mind you, we were not told that the hospital ship Lancastria had been sunk with the loss of at least three thousand lives. Even today, very few people would recognise the name and the event. On the whole I think this bit of news management was justified, we had enough bad news to deal with.
All this makes me wonder to what extent we are being manipulated now. Could it be that the constant flow of comment and report is seen as a useful tool for bolstering political positions? Is the threat from IS really the biggest thing we should be worried about? Major themes like immigration, climate change and the forecast catastrophe as antibiotics become useless in the face of mutating infections are pushed to the back of the news agenda.
I'm afraid I am a sceptic. The warped aims of the fundamentalists and their cruel actions are terrible and worrying but in terms of potential loss of life and disruption of our way of life, something like the antibiotic problem dwarfs their campaign.
Please can we have some balance in the way information is given to us. Do we really need to hear every detail about the hunt for the perpetrators of the Paris killings while other, far more threatening circumstances loom up in the not so distant future. I saw a lady epidemiologist who seemed to know exactly what she was doing warning that we can expect the resistant organisms to be with us in Barlick within six years of them starting in China and we are not sure when that date was.
I'm sorry to load you with this but every now and again my focus on history is interrupted and current events press in on me every time I think of writing for you. I shall pull myself together, keep calm and carry on! At the same time I shall be very careful in my assessment of the 'news'. I'm sorry to say that I don't take everything I am told at face value. There is often a hidden agenda.... I would recommend that you do the same!
RMS Lancastria in her glory days as a Cunard Liner.
