Why does the British media not care about government waste

thelawnet

This is American TV, a reporter responding to the Obama's plan to 'help the losers' (i.e. the people that borrowed money they couldn't afford to repay, didn't even have jobs, etc.):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEZB4taSEoA

Meanwhile in Britain, shaft the savers, bail out the liar loans, print money and punish the diligent, and nobody says a word.

baby_boomer

The British Media (or the BBC & Channel 4 at least) are part of the government waste of taxpayers' money.

Reporters in glass houses don't tend to throw stones.

I've noticed that there is no exact equivalent UK phrase for "tax dollars" which is widely used by politicians and commentators on the other side of the Pond.

amcluesent

The socialists have dumbed down education so that the lumpen proletariat don't notice/understand. As long as they have their booze, Corrie and footy and never have to think, 70% of the population is happy.

purch

It may take this current crisis, and the resultant fall out to finally get people to 'wake up' and understand exactly how many billions of £ our Government spends/wastes every year, in ways that we the tax payers see no benefit.

If you read Private Eye (I would never quote anything from it as 100% Fact) they have for years exposed the way that our money is thrown away.

The Billions paid to consultants is a scandal, as are most PFI contracts. :mad:

Why the mainstream media don't cover these story's ??

A mystery, and yet another scandal !!!!

chewmylegoff

what is even more interesting about it is that, with freedom of information laws, the media doesn't even have to do any work to produce stories in this area.

just lob a FOI request to the home office and ask them how much they spent on consultants last year, pre-pack scandal news.

Rochdale_Pioneers

I think a big difference is that media organisations here would never run stories demanding that we throw "losers" out onto the streets to starve. We're a bit more civilised than our American cousins with regards to basic human dignity.

chris_spackman

The Americans aren't afraid to say what they think. Here we are scared sh1tless to say anything so as not to offend this group and that group of people. The Euoropean Court of Human rights costs this country a fair bit of money.

What sort of place do we live in when someone enters this country on a fake passport, rants about our way of life, spits crap that killing Britons is ok, brings his family over, is given handouts woth £k's, housed at our expense, put in jail at our expense as a convicted terrorist in another country and the Gov here spends bloody thousands of pounds to try and get rid of him only to be told by what is a foreign court that we are wrong and have to pay him money and still spend bloody money to try and get rid of him again and feed and house him in the process.

thelawnet

purch wrote: »

It may take this current crisis, and the resultant fall out to finally get people to 'wake up' and understand exactly how many billions of £ our Government spends/wastes every year, in ways that we the tax payers see no benefit.

If you read Private Eye (I would never quote anything from it as 100% Fact) they have for years exposed the way that our money is thrown away.

Private Eye is written from a left-wing perspective. They are indignant, not that the money is being wasted, but that it is going to giant capitalist companies. It's really not comparable.

thelawnet

Rochdale_Pioneers wrote: »

I think a big difference is that media organisations here would never run stories demanding that we throw "losers" out onto the streets to starve. We're a bit more civilised than our American cousins with regards to basic human dignity.

Nothing dignified about borrowing money you can't repay and then getting others to bail you out.

SGE1

thelawnet wrote: »

Nothing dignified about borrowing money you can't repay and then getting others to bail you out.

No, what what kind of society do we live in? Should we punish people for making mistakes by letting them die on the streets?

Addiscomber

Some sections of the media have been talking about waste and excessive Government expenditure for a long time. However, unlike the USA, we were not lucky enough to have an election just as the severity of this economic crisis became apparent. Until we are given the opportunity to vote we can do nothing to convince Gordon that not only is he not saving the world, he is actually making the UK worse.