When truth matters - Jo Carroll
Do writers grow from societies? Or do they shape them? Going right back to Chaucer, writers notice and comment on the lives of those around them. Shakespeare, between the lines, tells us much about social mores in Elizabethan England; Dickens shines a brutal light on Victorian poverty. It is now no secret that politicians tell lies, nor that newspapers nitpick at truths until their stories have only a flimsy relationship with any objective experience. The stories that News Programmes choose to tell succeed in silencing opposing points of view. Clips that float around the internet rarely explore an on-the-one-hand ... on-the-other construct. We write in challenging times. I've never known British society more divided. A friend told me of a sister she can no longer speak to as they disagree so strongly over Brexit. The UN lambastes the levels of poverty; the British Government simply denies the impact of austerity. Some forecasts for the impact of climate change are apocalyptic;...