Meanwhile, in the real world...
Fifteen months of cataclysmic reporting and no-one has yet noticed that the economy hasn't taken the headline-writers' lead. A puzzled Dougal Paver wonders why.
You know the bloke: the one at Speakers' Corner with the A-board over his shoulder proclaiming that the end is nigh. Forty years he's been at it, yet the daft sod hasn't clocked that the world categorically disagrees.
It's the same on Fleet Street. Somehow, they've failed to notice that the UK economy hasn't folded, despite fifteen months of apocalyptic headlines. In the real world we're still here, adding value, delivering the goods, making money.
It all rather blows a hole in this guff about the media being the fourth estate - the last pillar of democracy, casting the cold light of balance and truth on all corners of civil and business life.
From where I'm sitting balance has been the first casualty in the daily rush for the next doom-laden headline. There has been no collective acknowledgement that, in spite of the journalists' gloom, companies in the UK continue to compete and survive; that employment remains at record levels; that interest rates and inflation remain relatively modest, particularly by comparison with previous 'melt-downs'; and that there are as many winners as there are losers out of all this.
It'll come, of course: there'll be an invisible switch when the group-think on Fleet Street will suddenly decide that people were daft to think the world was ending. They'll lead a cheery charge towards the tills, saying we can all start spending again because things aren't as bad as, er, somebody else has been painting.
We can only hope they make the switch soon - I've had enough of this gloom.
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