Richard Lutz’s Blog

OLD NEWS

10-11-2008

A recent encounter with weekend “news” has Richard Lutz wondering who calls the shots when it comes getting good publicity for major politicians and stars.

I was on the M6 car park the other Sunday locked between an Eddie Stobart behemoth and something juggernaut-like from Poland and wondering if the road south would ever let me crawl more than 10 mph. Man, week end traffic on the UK can slowly kill every melody in your catatonic heart.

Anyway, I knew every song on the IPOD, all my CDs were encrusted with jam and I stopped counting the last remaining insect remnants on the windscreen.

The unending journey would finally descend into that long deep hole - Radio Four on a Sunday afternoon. Forget Ross and Brand: the major mistake BBC bosses have made is forgetting that Sunday afternoon exists.

In fact, if you look at the BBC website under Jobs you will see the post for Controller of Sunday Afternoon (Radio Four) has been advertised for the past fourteen years without a response.

Well, at least there’s the news and it made for interesting listening. The second lead after the appalling craziness in the Congo was Gordon Brown shaking hands with some suspected terrorists in the Mid East. Wait a mini-macro-Mid-East type of second.

Is that news? No, it’s a photo op that passes for news and which every news organisation has agreed will pass for news.

The government wants to get the heck out of two pestilential wars and wants to show the Prime Minister looking warmly towards the torrid zones of Iraq and Afghanistan in a conciliatory but ministerial sort of way.

The FO gets on the blower and tells Saudi despots to round up some lukewarm suspected terrorists who’d been banged up in the Guantanamo hellhole for six years and have them shake hands with Brown while cameras, hacks and microphones are coincidentally on call.

Wow. What a story. PM reads the script and shakes hands with them- and one even says he is going to be a dad. Or at least a suspected dad. And while you’re at it Brown, why didn’t you get down on your knees and apologise for our close allies, the Yanks, for throwing suspected terrorists in that Cuban concentration camp for more than a half decade and still not come up with trumped up charges?

Anyway, while we’re at it, what exactly is a suspected terrorist? And why couldn’t the Saudi’s find a real jump up and down terrorist for Brown? Now that should have been the story and one worth sitting on the M6 for:

“International Furore as Brown Spurned over Real Terrorist Photo Op.”

Imagine the Daily Mail sinking its rabid teeth into that one. Imagine Cameron and that guy from the Lib Dems raising that one in Parliament. Imagine the Eddie Stobart guy and the Polish lorry driver blocking me in near Junction 17 pondering that one and texting their loved ones about the dismay they feel in their soul because Brown hasn’t the international weight to meet a bone fide bad guy.

So, how do you feel out there in cyberland? Are you angry? Email The Stirrer now.

Or else use your time more efficiently and watch This Morning where suspected D grade celebs show you how to cook something their agents wrote down for them in large non-joined up letters as they talk about their next CD or forthcoming chat show appearance where they will cook something their agent wrote down for them in those large non joined up letters.

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