Ordinary Gweilo

It’s uncanny how often alarmist stories in newspapers prove to be totally wrong. Thinking back to 1997, I was in the UK shortly after the handover and everyone who knew I was living in Hong Kong asked me how things had changed. My answer was that life carried on as normal, and the only thing that impacted me was that I now needed a visa to stay in Hong Kong whereas I hadn’t before. I still get asked the same question from time to time, and my answer is the same – nothing has really changed.

More recently, one of the stories prior to Euro 2004 was the problems that English football hooligans would cause in Portugal, and the possibility that England might be thrown out of the tournament if the fans misbehaved. In fact the fans were very well behaved and the organizers complimented them on this. Wrong again.

At the start of this week the British newspapers were full of talk about Tony Blair facing a grim week. On Wednesday he would be criticized in the Butler report, and then there were two by-elections and that might finish him off if Labour did badly. In fact, Lord Butler didn’t blame the Prime Minister and Labour won one by-election and lost the other. Tony Blair lives on to fight another day, and the alarmist talk actually makes him stronger (as Andrew Marr points out).

When the European Union was enlarged, there was talk of vast numbers of people flooding into Britain from the new member states. Did it happen? No, of course not.

Going back much further, I recall the alarmist talk many years ago that the world’s supplies of oil would run out by the turn of the century. In fact there are still vast reserves that will last for the forseeable future, and every prospect that more will be discovered.

The moral is simple – don’t believe everything you read in the newspapers!