Blogs cause Cancer: official

The cautionary revelation of the Apocalypse:

Now we are seeing the first signs of the next stage in this plot to get rid of the free air-waves… And with the resent fall of one of Gordon Brown closest confidants through libertarian bloggers, several lefties is reacting, not only indignant against this sleazy trash-talker that had to resign, oh no, against the blogosphere. Not really open and directly – not yet – but still clear enough that something is wrong when “normal people” can overthrow government officials…I do not expect them to burst thru my or your door and take computers by force – although I do not rule it out either and it is already happening here and there – but they will probably move sneakier.

The BBC’s pre-news propaganda slot this morning was about how local newspapers (which are written by amateurs, local politicians and the local police; which print letters from local people, provided that they are critical only of things other than local politicians, local police and the local Mafia; and depend utterly upon advertising revenue, mostly from local car-dealers, see ‘Mafia’ above) are a ‘vital resource’ which ‘hold together local communities’ and are ‘essential for councils to get their message to local people’.

Now local newspapers are going bankrupt, all over the place. One did it here a couple of weeks ago. The reason they gave was that the advertisers aren’t booking as much space now; simple as that. It was always on a shoestring, and with only a few local Arthur Daleys going from full-page to half-page adverts the balance was tipped.

Not according to the BBC, who maintain that the wanton destruction of this precious local lifeline is entirely due to the internet.

Of course it would be much more convenient if we all just wrote letters to the local paper about things, wouldn’t it?

Rather than running blogs which might actually have some perceptible effect.

Expect local newspapers, with their forty pages of car-adverts and six pages of scare stories from the police, ill-drafted reports by 16-year-old trainees about flower shows, and pompous, self-righteous pontifications from Councillor Mrs. So-and-so, to be state funded within a year.

To ‘help repair the damage done by the internet’.

Next up (since Apocalyspe Nowish hardly ever gets it wrong) I expect a health scare campaign. Already people are told that if they use the internet for anything other than shopping (by which I mean both buying things and reporting people to the authorities) their children will be taken away by social workers (“Paedophiles!”) and their door smashed in at 0300 by Interior Ministry troops (“Terrorists!”) and they will be fined a million dollars (“Copyright!”). This clearly isn’t working.

So expect to be told that computers in general, the internet in particular and blogs in the highly specific are really, really bad for your health. It’s about the only kind of official scare story that people appear to be still gullible enough to believe.