Charlie Skelton brings seasonal news…
As Europe groans, and austerity bites, as defaulting looms, and once proud nations fall to their knees in debt, there’s only one annual conference of bankers and industrialists that can step in and save us all…
A commenter asks a reasonable question: why is a humourist packed off to report on the conference? Skelton has a reasonable answer…
Much as I find your relentless negativity a little on the tiresome side of tiresome, I do actually agree with you on one thing: it would be nice if the Guardian sent “proper journalists” to cover the conference. Or if any mainstream paper did. The day the Guardian sends an actual reporter is the day I hang up my Bilderboots…
To be clear, a group of powerful representatives from the political and corporate elites of their respective nations are meeting behind closed doors to chat about austerity, the “Arab Spring”, the state of European federalism and a host of other jolly topics. (Ah, I tell a lie – they’re not meeting behind closed doors. They’re meeted in a gated enclosure, overlooked by thuggish gunmen.)
Last year the press acknowledged this by mocking anyone who thought such an event might be important. It’s just a bunch “willy-waggling old men“, they scoffed, of a conference that boasted such irrelevant old duffers as, er – the Presidents of Spain, Austria and the World Bank, the CEOs of Shell, Google and the Deutsche Bank and the Chairmen of Barclays, ING and AREVA (as well as such famous blokes as, er – Angela Merkel and the Queen of the Netherlands). No, it’s not unreasonable to be curious; in fact, it’s damned irrational to think insignificant. What do these journalists think such powermongers do in their hotel? Swim? Raid the minibar? Get around the porn restrictions?
Good luck to investigators and shame on the editors who aren’t doing their jobs. (Or are – too well.) Let’s see if they improve this year.
June 4, 2011 at 9:38 am
What do these journalists think such powermongers do in their hotel? Swim? Raid the minibar? Get around the porn restrictions?
All of these, I imagine
June 4, 2011 at 10:36 am
But that, I propose, is not prime among their motivations.
Niall Ferguson was among the guests last year. You can imagine him, traipsing round, eyes as wide as beachballs…
June 4, 2011 at 1:44 pm
Yes it’s especially tricky for right-thinking journos, because it’s a conspiratorial gathering that can’t be denied. So it’s time for the forced sniggeriness that’s used to defuse taboo topics, Carry On Plutocratising, ooooh madam, eh, eh? Lizards etc, geddit? Chortle.
Cf the US where non-rightwing political commentary on TV is basically the sole preserve of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert.
(Except that they at least have the role of Fool/satirist. Comedian reporters are just reporters with low status and no remit for serious comment.
ejh – are you saying they aren’t powermongering? If so is this some of that institutionalist fundamentalism, or the ‘lets not be distracted by what the ruling class are actually observably getting up to’ strangeness?
June 4, 2011 at 2:40 pm
No, I’m saying what I said.
June 9, 2011 at 7:11 pm
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