Journalists and recessions don’t get on well together.
Sooner or later, a downturn becomes an exercise in standing around, waiting for things to get better. The constant drip-drip-drip of negative news is problematic. And the ebbing away of economic activity means less novelty, fewer stories, a national life lived more slowly.
For most people, the downturn is only about two months old. But already, you can see that attitudes are getting a bit brittle in newsrooms. The search for a new angle is becoming neuralgic.
Editors get led down blind alleys under such circumstances. Take, for example, this afternoon’s front page splash on the Evening Standard: “Queen hit by credit crunch“.
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Brenda, it seems, has been hit by the spiraling cost of maintaining her many royal residences. Oh, and there’s the doubling of Prince Andrew’s travel bill to £800,000 to take into account, too.
Under such circumstances, should we think of the Queen as a cost on the national P&L? Or as a consumer pressurized by rising costs like the rest of us?
Naturally, the Standard knows where it’s going with this one. The destination is visible in the simpering headline: “Rising costs and not enough cash. . . just like us, your Majesty.”
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Almost certainly, a mountain goat with Alzheimer’s would cringe at the parallel. So far as I know, Brenda doesn’t have a mortgage to repay. Or a job to lose. Nor will she ever need to sit nervously in a plastic chair at the local Citizens Advice Bureau and discuss her credit card habit with a debt counsellor.
You could probably add a few differences to the list yourself. Lord knows, there were enough of them the last time I looked.
Trying on the old line that we’re in this together with Brenda and her brood is simply cack-handed. It won’t butter any turnips for Viscount Rothermere on the 5.15 from Charing Cross.
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