Across the pond

…….in the most important US election in my lifetime.

But most of the British press has it’s priorities all wrong.

The Guaridan is leading tonight on the Congo. The Times is urging its readres to starve the fat cats of TV like Jonathan Ross. The Daily  Telegraph is finding a glimmer of hope for John McCain in the US election. The Daily Mail is splashing on what a man called Hamilton is doing for people who still think that the future of the world rests with people who can dirve their motor cars faster than anyone else. Irrespective of what they may do to global warming or adding to the toll of people killed on the roads.

More shamefully, The Daily Mirror, is also splashing on Lewis Hamilton. As if their working class readership was interested in nothing but sport. As those Mirror readers are so dumb that they do not connect the troubles they are now facing with the credit crunch, the melt-down and the behaviiour of the banks building societies and credit card companies they deal with.

But, for those who care about journalism this evening’s news is not all bad.

The Financial Times leads with the news that it will take a miracle for McCain to reverse the commanding lead that Barack Obama has taken in the minds of American voters.

Not many of the British working classes read the Financial Times. But what it is saying today is of much more importance to their daily lives than the so-called popular papers are telling them.

Have just checked.

The Sun and the Daily Express are also leading on Lewis Hamilton.

None of the publishers and editors of these papers would think there is anything wrong with this. The working classes are interested in sport. Just like the middle classes and the upper classes. But they know where to find the sports pages.

In today’s crisis, the working classes want to know about the national and international politics even more than the better off. Because they are suffering more.

They all know someone who has got in trouble because they cannot afford their mortgage payments, urged on them by the banks, behaving in the way they have been encouraged to behave by Margaret Thatcher and George W Bush.

They know that who gets the White House and who governs in Downing Street is much more important to their survival than the exploits of Lewis Hamilton.

It is not at all surprising that the Rupert Murdoch’s of this world should peddle sport and sex to the working classes, who are foder to buy his satellite dishes and movies to take their minds off their troubles.

But the really depressing thing is that The Independent, which was created to provide an alternative, has all too obviously given up. It to spashes this evening on Lewis Hamilton. It was started by a bunch of journalists, led by Andreas Whittam Smith, who was a high minded churchly man who believed in decent journalism, ethics and truth. The majority owner is now Tony O’Reilly, who has, and is spending millions of the money he has made from his busines activities to support these ideals.

He is wasting his money.

The Independent is no longer leading the pack. It is shilly shallying between its own idiosyncratic splashes and pandering, as tonight, to the lowest of the low popular newspaper criteria established by Northcliffe’s Daily Mail in Britain.

In the current crisis, all of us want to know, what our political leaeder are going to about the banks and other financial institutions who have led us into this crisis.

Like the Halifax Builidng Society, to which the working classes have entrusted their savings. Now surviving thanks to government bail-outs.

That’s why this US election is important to all Brits. That’s what should be on the front pages.