The Tabloid Press in the UK has a, shall we say, coloured reputation. Much derided and dismissed by many in the country, the so-called Red Tops are nevertheless key to holding the government to account and exposing wrongdoing in high places.
They are known as the Red Tops, because of the paper’s masthead with its distinctive red background to the papers’ name. The Sun, The Mirror, The Star and the now defunct News of the World are the main ones. The Daily Mail and the Daily Express also fit in the category, but to a lesser extent as they break far less stories, and are altogether less impressive.
Often called the Gutter Press, because of its pre-occupation with sex and scandal, but say what you like about the Tabloids, they are supremely good at uncovering hypocrisy, lies, wrongdoing and incompetence at the very highest levels, but only really when it suits them.
Matt Handcock, the Health Minister, being a case in point. He was the Minister who, in his position as Health Minister told the public to …. Stay at Home, Don’t Go On Holiday, Don’t Attend Your Mother’s Funeral, Don’t Visit Your Girlfriend, Don’t Kiss Your Grandmother, Don’t Go to Social Gatherings, Don’t Have Parties, Don’t Have Your Neighbours Round for a Drink...don’t don’t don’t. All said in his role of the safety first Health Minister.
But, apparently it was OK for him to snog someone he’d known for 15 years since University days, but not OK for you to do anything so outrageous and break the lockdown rules he’d imposed on people. He was the lawmaker, and can tell people what to do, but apparently he was above such things and can do as he pleases.
What this simple minded Government Minister’s tiny brain did not recognise was a CCTV camera hanging from the ceiling outside his office or that this would not be a good place to stick his tongue down the throat of his ‘advisor’ and fondle her bum. This, of course, was an ‘advisor’ employed by Handcock at the taxpayers expense. The hypocrisy is mind boggling.
In a nutshell, this is what happened to a Minister of the Crown, only one step away from being a candidate for Prime Minister. What an untrustworthy, lying, moronic, two-faced, shallow and untalented person he turned out to be.
So do we in Taiwan, have to worry about being dictated to by such unscrupulous individuals lacking in basic morals and happy to break their own rules?
This is obviously open to question, but as an outsider, I can honestly tell you I would have scored the UK Health Minister a low four in terms of trustworthiness, while I would still rate Mr Chen a strong 9.
For a moment, let’s all time to contrast what we as individuals experienced in Taiwan during Covid, remembering, of course, Taiwan is an island, like the UK and has one-third the population of the UK. Both are developed economies, have a high standard of living, both have a national health service and both are democracies. In case you didn’t realise, in the latest Standard of Living Index, Taiwan ranks one below Singapore.
Here are the crudely adjusted figures ie. just cutting the UK numbers by 66 percent to adjust for the population difference. I know it’s not very scientific and I’m happy to be called out on the methodology, but purely working out that the UK has three times the population of Taiwan...you get these figures.
UK cases 1,609,487
Taiwan cases 14,853
UK deaths 42,720
Taiwan deaths 661
So on the one hand we have a so-called developed nation with a now disgraced Health Minister vs our own Health Minister. Maybe I’m being naive, but at the moment I’d be more inclined to trust Uncle Chen than anyone else with the handling of the pandemic.
His track record speaks for itself, unlike Matt Handcock’s which is all too evident in the figures above. I’d say that is a clear measure of success where Taiwan comes out near the top of any global league table of who fared best during Covid.
Having been a professional journalist for the bulk of my working life I am by nature a cynic. Many, and here my immediate family would agree, that I’m too cynical and tend to mistrust anyone in a position of political power. There are just too many who have political power over ordinary people who misuse their position, or make laws they then don’t think applies to them.
I love to see such hypocrisy exposed and the media plays a vital role in doing so. Sadly the media in Taiwan is not sufficiently evolved and not enough attention is paid to the training of young journalists to yet establish a media that can properly hold politicians to account.
I am guided by the Health Minister track record on Covid to make my judgement on his expertise and sincerity. I’ve watched the grey flecks in his hair develop over the last few months and it would seem, on the face of it, he is a man under pressure and doing his level best for the people he represents and is trying to protect.
The barrage of pointless and banal questions he faces from an inexpert media pack on a daily basis makes my heart bleed. I’m not only embarrassed for the reporters who are turning up every day with clearly little training or much knowledge of what it is to be a proper journalist, but for him.
You can see he struggles to be diplomatic and patient with what seems little more than a pack of ill-prepared robots asking repeat questions or questions with zero relevance to the matter in hand.
I have long held the view that the media here is woefully trained and does a shockingly bad job at holding political leaders here to account and that the current government is way too gentle with them.
For example, asking journalists to identify themselves and the publication they represent is a standard procedure in pretty much every country around the world, but oddly it is not done here. Why not? Would it not help to spark some sensible questions if the journalist had to give their name and the name of their publication before asking a potentially idiotic question?
If Taiwan’s democracy is to flourish, the media here really needs to get its act together and stop just reporting in a robotic way and simply regurgitating what people say without it going through some kind of thought process.
Simple reporting is something a nine-year old can do, proper journalism with analytical thinking and the formulation of proper questions to dig out facts and the truth is quite another.
Sadly, the bulk of the media here is ill trained and robotic, muchless capable of the kind of investigation it takes to uncover the kind of massive hypocrisy we have just seen with the ex-Health Minister Handcock in the UK.
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