How much to give us a break?

Anyone else getting fed up with the obsession our TV stations and national papers have with the financial meltdown? The lives of the vast majority of us do not revolve around the square mile of the City and, let us be honest, we would be quite delighted to see the red braces brigade, the hedge fund bosses, smarmy bankers and short sellers reduced to selling Big Issue accompanied by the obligatory docile dog.

OK, pensions might take a hit for a while, but most people who don't have director after their name, will be screwed in that department even in the good times. As for falling house prices and share prices, negative equity and all the other portenders of doom being gleefully seized on by the London based media as they predict Armageddon, they only really come into play if you have to sell investments or property this afternoon.

It is not as if negative equity is anything new - it happens every time you buy a car. Once you start the engine you have paid more than you will ever get back even if you sell the next day. In general most people buy property to live in, a long term purchase, with an increase in value a bonus often to be handed on to children when the old mortal coil gets shuffled.

And if greedy fingers were burned buying property to let relying on rent and rising values to pay the mortgage - the same sort of leverage, albeit on a smaller scale, that got the banks and hedge funds in such a mess - then once again there is always Big Issue.

I just have a feeling that our national media with their City editors and prestige offices, friends in high places and vastly overpaid executives with investments and share options and seats on a dozen boards are making things worse. I have said it before that our media are rather like obsessive children. They find an interest which takes them over until they find a new one so we had a spell of dog attacks filling front pages for a summer or so, a summer of Maddy madness, a knife fest and now global economic crisis. When they get bored with that they will move on to something else whether US elections, obesity, binge drinking or cheese rolling . . . who knows. In the meantime the rest of us will just get on with our lives.