Fed up with doom and gloom headlines

Nine times out of ten I've agreed with them, but it's a criticism that should be levelled far more at the national press than the local, and the paramount reason is the pressure national newspaper editors are under to create the headlines which will blare out on the shop shelves and entice people to buy papers.

That pressure is still there for editors of local papers, but nothing like to the extent, and for free newspapers like mine, I'm not judged on how many newspapers I sell, thank goodness, because I'm creating a community paper contributed by the community.

It's during this current financial crisis that we have seen so many doom and gloom stories, and the danger is that to an extent it all becomes self-fulfiling.

As shop-keepers locally have said to me, you can read all the stories and become so depressed you start to believe there is no hope left.

But get out of it we will. It's going to be tough and people will suffer. But we will survive. It's nothing to what people went through in two World Wars and the majority survived.

Just before Christmas, headlines screamed at us, this time telling us that the was reaching parity with the euro, and at airports people were receiving less than a euro if they changed their money.

The result of this publicity was to discourage people from going to the eurozone; travel companies jumped at the chance to impose surcharges and people thought that they would have to take out a second mortgage to have a trip to the continent.

I was in Spain over Christmas and found the cost of things was on a par with the UK, except wine which was still much cheaper, and eating out was still less than you would pay in the UK.

After all the doom and gloom headlines the 1 put on about 10 per cent against the euro, so once again things started to cost less for us. But did newspaper headlines scream the good news? No way. Not a mention. Nowhere!

The next scare was over interest rates. Many people with mortgages have found they are enjoying big payment reductions now. But do newspapers report that? Oh no, all they focus on is the bad news that it's still difficult to get mortgages and that people with savings are getting next to no income on their nestegg.

Again, they ignore in the doom and gloom that people can still get a fair return on savings if they shop around. There are accounts still giving 5 per cent if you move away from bank current accounts and savings with passbooks.

Last week the media jumped all over Baroness Vadera, the Labour government's business minister, for saying she could see "green shoots" of economic recovery.

The only thing she was guilty of was not choosing her words particularly well, considering they came on a day when newspaper headlines were screaming about thousands more job losses.

But perhaps, and I may be accused of putting words in her mouth here, she was trying to say that things were not all as bad as the media would have us believe.

Yes, things are horrible, yes, people are still going to get hurt before the economy turns round.

But let's start thinking positively, shall we? The homes of all those people dispossessed are still there. Much of the money that bankers in their stupid, irresponsible greed-frenzy which started this recession, is probably still stashed away, hidden in tax havens around the world.

There are still people around the world with fortunes beyond our imaginings. There are still institutions with so much money sloshing around they can play monopoly (the cash still available for football players is just one example).

We just need institutions with the courage to start lending again and those green shoots will soon grow '“ unless, of course, the national media fail to report it in favour of the next doom and gloom headline.

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