Wednesday 9 February 2022

C4 'news' scrapes bottom of barrel again

 It's hard to reference TV broadcasts accurately, and I can't be bothered to find them on catch-up channels, but to my recollection, C4's item on Brexit tonight was pretty weak.

It was introduced as a kind of progress report apropos nothing really, a bit late to catch up on news of truck delays at Dover or anything. I couldn't see any of the usual news values in the piece. It did have footage of queues of truck but said these were earlier ones, and produced by an IT problem. Video of queues appeared later as well which were not explained. The main coverage was of a cheesemaker who claimed his products would sometimes take 3 weeks to arrive in the South of France which would make them worthless to his customers - strange sort of cheese I thought.

There was an interview with a man running a truck company who said paperwork had increased. One consequence,apparently was that there would often be delays in sending his trucks on journeys while he still had to pay his drivers, which shocked the interviewer. We were also shown a truck very lightly loaded -- the customer had not wanted to wait to share the truck with other loads. Quite what that had to do with Brexit was unclear.

Then we had the interviewer telling us to camera that form filling had increased dramatically, that many of them had to be completed on paper,, despite the UK's hopes (the EC was not to blame, of course), and that 'trade' with Germany  had decreased compared with other countries -- he was choosing just one country to simplify things for us.

Overall, the triumphant conclusion, same as the smirking introduction, was that the promise of considerable benefits from Brexit was still a long way off -- so there!

I suppose the fainthearted Remainers still needed cheering up? Perhaps they are worried that the DUP will call the EU's bluff? Perhaps the continual onslaught on Boris is not enough for them? Perhaps 'Keir' as the literati call him is not reliable enough to rejoin? As usual, it is not at all clear what they actually want now, so a few final told-you-sos might be enough?

 

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