Don't shoot the messenger

[wolfie citizen smith]

Lashing out at the blameless bearer of bad news has a long and ill-distinguished history. In war, the chivalrous code of conduct dictates that messengers sent by the enemy should be returned unharmed. Without this gentleman’s agreement it would have been rather difficult to find volunteers to be the bearers of bad tidings and the origins of our postal system might never have been established. “No one loves the messenger who brings bad news” is a phrase coined in ancient Greek literature revisited by Shakespeare as “Don’t shoot the messenger”. Apart from avoiding a needless loss of life, this entreaty is just good manners, thus it is easy for our modern day leaders to do exactly the opposite, lacking as they do any sense of fair play or shame.


The Office for National Statistics is an independent and therefore trustworthy collator of figures that hold a mirror up to the nation. They tow no party line and are not beholden to the Government of the day. Spin and obfuscation is not their reason for being, dissemination of the truth is their goal and as such they send the Labour Party into a frothy convulsion whenever they put pen to paper. For instance, the Government released figures that they had made up that appeared to demonstrate that knife crime was under control. They were delivered to the public by a man with a blade between his shoulders and the Office of National Statistics rightly said “Oh no it's not”.


More recently Gordon Brown announced British Jobs for British Workers to which the ONS responded with figures that showed that the British in work fell as foreign workers increased. UK born workers fell by 278,000; non UK born workers increased by 214,000. Cue the sound of rattles being thrown out of the Downing Street pram. A whispering campaign was started by senior Labour leaders to ridicule the ONS and bully them into reflecting the Party P.R. line, which is the modern day equivalent of shooting the bearer of bad news. If we all did as the Government does, the postman would never make it past our front gate.