I made it a mission, quite a while ago, to avoid mainstream news and the organisations that transmit it, but I am still out and about in the world so occasionally I have to endure ‘normal’ telly and the guff that passes for information on it.

What I have noticed, when sitting through the programmes on someone else’s telly, is how saccharin it all is. They feign deep concerns and ask probing questions of each other, when really they are on the same side (which only depends upon which channel you’re watching), at the same time as appearing to have no actual knowledge of the subjects they are proclaiming about. The sugar-coating provided by the screen you watch them through cannot protect us from the knowledge that nowadays there’s a better than 50% chance that next week, or next year, we will discover that what we have just been told was a pack of lies. Lies made up by industry, government or even the journalists themselves.

The artifically sweetened waking comas we find ourselves in afterwards seem comforting. We know the world is facing troubles, climate change and political disaster, but as individuals we are told that we are powerless, that fear is the correct response and that doing as we’re told is how to survive.

Sod that.

I shall continue to avoid mainstream media, not because I’m a rebel or I’m seeking a nobler lifestyle, but because I am tried of being lied to and REALLY tired of being told to act scared when what I really am is angry.