Grotty Little Island

My view in the face of the recent media tomfoolery which resulted in the death of an innocent human being is sad horror at the loss of a human life. But my second reaction was 'aaaaaaaaaaaargh'. In a country where morals and morale are holding either end of an ever-sinking limbo pole, an isle described in a glorious diatribe by Andy Salzman of the Bugle as "perpetrating a social culture... of institutionalised police cover-ups, mass corporate tax-evasion funded in essence by cuts to disability benefits a) because they can and b) because it was actively encouraged, political expenses scams rife through parliament, swathes of media not merely plumbing the depths but installing in those depths a fully-fitted moral bathroom... all suggesting that Britain has not only been taking a volcanic mud-bath with itself in a swamp of skewed morality but also turning an institutional blind eye to anyone trying to get away with anything in the field they're trying to get away with it", a country where journalism and politics are both so confusingly, unhappily tethered and yet so gut-wrenchingly unable to agree on anything, one condition is sacred: stay away from our Royal Family, you.
Like comments made in seriousness about your own mother, the playground tactics of the British press still somehow involve the rule 'leave the Windsors out of it.' Even the globally distributed images of Harry in the nip were dished out in England with a kind of gentle chastisement more than anything else. And with the appearance of Golden Girl Kate on the scene, we've regressed into a state of dabbing our eyes with a Union Jack handkercheif. I dread the scene when the God-given, third-in-line, doomed-to-those-ears sproglet pops out.
So shouldn't we be bolstering ourselves in the meantime? This incident has shown that yes, our media are a group of terrorising, backstabbing, bribe-accepting testicle lumps. But there are more laughs to be had, and they're missing out on them. This country has more money than it knows what to do with and in all the wrong places, and we still can't protect our monarchs from being taken potshots at by the Aussies?
The message, I feel, is clear: we need to grow some giant clanging balls, and fast. We need to be that dude in the bar that everyone knows has the middle name Ermintrude, but that no one would remind of that fact, because you know what? Bruiser Ermintrude McKnuckleDestruction is proud of every single syllable of his name. You try and tell him to be otherwise, he'll not only destroy you, but do it with pride.
I have fallen into a hamfisted analogy. I am not nationalist or royalist, but it shocks me that, really, we just can't tell people off like we used to. The Queen used to technically OWN those questionable Australian journalists' ancestors. Now we are left with the sad, shocking mess of the world's most morally empty media, which the rest of the world's media is still out-doing in terms of mockery and envelope-pushing.