No Place For Moderation

On returning from holiday I thought I'd take a look at the 5Live News Boards and see what the current topics were and guess what, like Heavy Metal, Big Macs and Jim Davidson's jokes nothing changes or gets better. Muslims, Polish Immigrants, Big Brother, Nu-Labour, BBC - you could pick any of the summer months and the subject matter would be the same - where's the Protein amongst all the Carbs?

If you have slightly moderate views forget it. You can't be a woolly liberal anymore you're either with us or against us - pro Islam or pro West - you can't say "Well, actually there are only 1.3 million Muslims out of a population of 60+ million and yes, whilst 1% of those might be potential terrorists I actually have enough confidence in the rest of us to believe we can defeat terrorism."


It's the sort of attitude that prevails in the Middle East - you either think Israel are the good guys or the bad guys - they can't be a democratic state protecting their citizens whilst demonstrating an over zealous desire for killing Arabs.

If you read through the Messageboards one thing that shouts loud and clear is how little trust we have for each other when it comes to receiving information of which we had previously been unaware. "Source?" is used as a reply so often I wonder whether some posters every read anything beyond the Internet news pages. If your Doctor tells you have an illness you don't usually reply "Nah, don't believe you, where does it say that on Wikipedia?" or "Typical Guardian/Daily Mail, left/right wing propaganda - give me a paracetemol and I'll go home."

I was talking to a couple of the younger members of my team recently, discussing how, in an age where we have more access, more information and more sources than ever before in the history of, well history - that people are more sceptical about governments, the media itself and each other. The old adage about the bigger the lie the more people believe it is truer than ever.

We are also a nation of monumentally ill- informed people, I've given up getting involved in discussions that mention the NHS and how it is funded, try telling one of the numpties that the 10/- a week their Nan and Grandad contributed in the 1960's doesn't actually contribute at all to the £16,000 an hour costs of their hospitals A & E department and you'll get called a left-wing traitor.

Bloggers are derided in some quarters as being anti-democracy, the sad anorak wearers of the Internet - I think the opposite is true. Okay, some of what we write is naval gazing, some profound, some very funny, it's opinionated beyond the control of government - unless of course you use certain phrases that are interpreted by the CIA as being anti-USA, in which case your blog will be monitored and closed down, but it's us broadcasting to the world - sometimes with sound and pictures.