Snowballs in July

Compromise.  It may be a dirty word, but we're told it's what reasonable people do.  Compromise - a means by which the intelligent can get things done.  But is it possible that as a result of extremist compromise, this week, the whole country has become a grey area?

There is a growing feeling that nobody is immune.  This week and puns aside, our biggest selling newspaper has folded, the wider press undergo trial by media, the police head for the dock and even the Prime Minister has his back to the wall over the compromises he has made.  He and the leaders of the other main parties have all pitched their tents on something called the centre ground.  Compromise HQ.

Britain has not ruled the waves for a long time, longer than many of us would care to admit but rarely has the country seemed so rudderless.  With the success of devolution, even the concept of Britain feels compromised.  The stale taste of financial crisis hangs in the air and with it has come a litany of 'distasteful but necessary' acts of governance.

Tuition fees, pension cuts, cost of living increases in fuel and transport costs, wage freezes, long-term graduate unemployment.  We are in a fight - a vivid, vibrant face smashing fight for the survival of the way of life that has given past generations so much.  Recognisably British society is being dismantled one compromise at a time and we are the frog that sits in the pan as the water heats up around it, and patiently, naively, reasonably boils to death.

Right now, the four estates of British society are caught in a tempest born of moral compromise.  Successive governments have regarded a fraternal relationship with News International as an essential part of governance.  Placating the red topped beasts in fear of a compromised manipulated 'Public Opinion'.  This week, we have seen Cameron, Brooks and serial bandwagon bandit Milliband effusive in their expression of outrage on our behalf.

Perhaps more terrifying is the lack of outrage in the public domain.  We have been conditioned by nature and arguably, by technique on the part of politics and media to be complicit, apathetic, to see decision making of every kind as the arena of 'other people'.  As the circulation of NOTW demonstrates, a sizeable proportion of the news reading population would rather apply their scrutiny to celebrities than the people whose decisions actually effect our lives.  Occasional hard hitting exposes do not adequately compensate for the impact of the long-term corrosive effect of this kind of journalism.