Will Self on the whore of Babylon

Flagellating Sir Fred won't save Gordon Brown

It makes my eyes bleed to read some of the self-serving drivel the commentariat is dishing up at the moment. They drool it over the politicians - they serve it up to the bankers, but by golly they won't suck it down themselves. While it's true that few could have been expected to understand exactly where and when the bubble was going to pop, it beggars belief that quite so many allegedly intelligent people were unable to see that it was a bubble at all.

Perhaps I shouldn't be so surprised; after all, ever since British politicians took to making pilgrimages in order to be anointed by that great Yahweh, Rupert Murdoch, the mainstream media in this country have been setting an agenda based securely on maximising profit.

In Raymond Chandler's The Long Goodbye the reclusive newspaper magnate Harland Potter says to Philip Marlowe: 'A newspaper is an advertising vehicle predicated on its circulation, nothing more and nothing less.' I pity all those readers, viewers and listeners who never grasped that most editorial and comment had no more significance than a discount voucher - and considerably less utility.