"Journalists" on strike - so the news improves?

I awoke this morning to one of the more spectacular own-goals by a group of strikers that I have ever experienced.

For most of my working life, indeed probably all of that part spent in the UK, I have woken up to the dulcet tones of Radio 4 - the "grown up" part of BBC radio that is not dedicated to pop or classical music and which does not subscribe to the concept of a "breakfast show" - presumably as it does not want to insult our collective intelligences. On balance I have always felt it to be the best of the best.

The "boiled frog" hypothesis states that a frog would jump out if placed in very hot water but would not notice if the temperature of warm water was slowly raised to boiling and would thus die. This morning I realised I had become a boiled frog.

The "news" is often to be found to contain an item stating that "the government will announce later today that...........". Are we so stupid or has the english language become so corrupted that we are not to realise that the announcement is being made there and then? Is this concept dangerously close to having an Orwellian outlet for what is little more than spin? Having heard the "News", we are often subjected to interpretation and comment so closely interwoven that the announcer might just as well have said - and now some bad news. Often a politician with an axe to grind is sitting in the studio with their highly partisan views to spout. These can range from the clever to (regrettably much more common) the downright stupid and even further down, stopping at Harriet Harman a moment before leaving Homo Sapiens completely. To many of these, erudite is a sort of glue!! Some are sincere in their views, some are simply egregious (and once again on the extreme I see Harriet Harman).

This morning I woke up in a strange parallel universe. There was news that told me interesting things that had happened. I won't pretend I always notice the spin that usually comes - I am as much a boiled frog as the next person - but slowly it dawned on me that something had changed. I was fed information and only that. Somewhere in the echoing caverns between my ears, long-disused rusty cogs ground and squeaked slowly into unwonted action. What was this feeling? Good Lord! I was being allowed to think for myself.

The reason for all this?  - Many BBC journalists have gone on strike for 48 hours to complain about pension changes. In the wonderful, Peston-free (a tautology if ever there was one) Utopia we have been granted for 48 hours we are, presumably meant to storm the management offices at the Beeb and to join the pickets at their braziers outside the studios?

Great idea! I am all for joining the pickets - to stop them getting back in.

Dum Spiro Spero