Bad News Sells Papers

The statement that bad news sells papers is more true then ever now that we live in an age when stories are boring unless they have an "evil" or horrific twist to them. In the world that everything must have a name that sticks in peoples mind so that can refer to it in everyday speak such as the "credit crunch" instead of mass global recession because lets face it this does not inflict fear in to the hearts of the citizens that the credit crunch does and this means that they do it to gain more profit by people buying papers.

The news papers can also manipulate the data that reaches them to fit in to what ever story they want and it doesn't matter the topic in which it is involved in. This can be used as propaganda in which the editor of the newspaper can tell his/her audience what ever he wants them to hear. Newspapers can also be used to gain power for the people that they want in power even in the "democracy". The picture below was the front page of The Sun newspaper the day before the general election in 1997. This is basically capitalist propaganda and the reason behind this front page is because the owner of The Sun newspaper Rupert Murdoch puts a substantial amount of money in to the labour party

http://static.guim.co.uk/Guardian/media/gallery/2008/jan/25/wapping/SunBlair390-9186.jpg

Private Cars

As the price of petrol increases due to the diminishing natural resources there will become a point where by the consumer will have just had enough of paying extortionate amounts of money for everything under the sun to do with cars. The price of petrol on its own is going up as well as the tax on the petrol that is needed to run the car. Car tax is also on the raise where "gas guzzlers" are charged more for putting more money in to their cars in the form of petrol and therefore giving the state more in taxes on the petrol. Now they have pay more money to the government to allow them to go on the roads.

The increase in this will make the consumer lose confidence in the government and in society in a general. This year i passed my driving test and i was so pleased however it gave me a harsh reality check when insurance was over £1500 (per year) for my recently purchased car (only cost £1250) and the tax on it for one year was well over £100 as well. Not to mention the spiraling cost of petrol which when i was young was hovering around the 75p per litre mark now you will b lucky to get it under £1 a litre.

The alternative to using your own car everyday is of course public transport. As we all know the public transport in this country is shockingly bad in comparison to our European counter-parts and the trust in public transport has also been lost due to late buses and trains or ones that just don't turn up at all. The only solution i can see is to increase awareness in the amount of public transport that is out there and how it can be used effectively. Furthermore the standard of public transport has to improved.