Journalists and Nurses

 Yesterday, I commented on the reports that Boris Johnson had been paid £1 million for giving just four speeches in a month, at a time when the Tories are refusing to pay nurses a decent pay rise, and complain that to do so is unaffordable.  I pointed out that these statements are routinely trotted out on Tory TV, with little or no challenge from the news readers and presenters, many of whom have been Tory student leaders when at university, and appear to have a revolving door into jobs as Tory advisors, press officers, and MP's.  But, a look at the earnings and wealth of those TV news readers, itself, even of the less well known, shows why they clearly know where their interests lie, when commenting about he travails of workers doing arduous jobs which pay only a fraction of what they earn.

Last night, I was watching Sky News' Press Preview, on which the odious Carol Malone was taking part.  Most of the journalists know that attacking nurses is probably not a good plan, because of the level of support they have amongst the public.  As I said, yesterday, polls frequently show the public thinking that its wrong that footballers earn more than nurses.  But Malone's main attribute seems to be that she has a big mouth that she uses to be as obnoxious as possible, rather like a US shock jock.

According to this site, she claimed in 2012, on ITV's This Morning that the death of six kids in an arson attack was partly the fault of the family itself, because they were on benefits, which provoked the anger of neighbours!  ITV had to apologise.  Similarly, in 2009, in a News of the World article, she claimed that immigrants are given free cars!  The News of the World also had to retract the story and apologise.

A Woodward or Bernstein she clearly isn't, and she appears to be one of those celebrities whose claim to celebrity is that they are a celebrity, a fiction maintained by those same TV companies and newspapers that invite her to contribute, no doubt in the expectation of some sensationalist outburst to boost their ratings.  She has appeared, like many of these newsreaders and pundits on a range of other "entertainment" shows, like Celebrity Fit Club, and Celebrity Big Brother, as well as Loose Women, and so on.  Its not despite her obnoxious and fallacious views, like those detailed above that Sky and others invite her to spout her bile, because of it.  She just makes the more tamed down anti-working class views of the Tory media appear more balanced.

last night, she was spouting that nurses were paid an average salary of £32,000 a year, and that the government had made them an offer they should accept, because it is not professional for them to strike, and was claiming that as people die, the current support for nurses would evaporate.  Well a look at the reported $500,000 a year income of Malone for all of these pretty useless contributions to the sum of all human knowledge, puts that into context.

We could ask what is Carol Malone worth, which if looked at in terms of her personal fortune appears to be a reported $4 million, but if we ask what is she worth to society, then especially compared to a nurse or a rail workers, or a postie, the answer is bugger all, if not a negative value!!!