There was quite an interesting item on Newsnight last night about, surprise, the economy. 

They were talking about the recently expanding economies – Brazil, Russia, India and China, commonly abbreviated to BRIC. 

Hold on, that sounds like Brick, so in a stroke of genius they had 4 bricks each with one of the countries names on, surrounded by other bricks. 

There was a mad theory until recently that these countries had already decoupled from the west, in other words their growing middle class was sufficient to create demand for their own goods, and no longer needed to rely on the west (this was a mad theory because for every 1 factory owner there are often hundreds of factory floor workers who get paid a pittance and cannot afford to buy the goods they create, one of the fundamental flaws in the current global economy in my opinion). 

Anyway, to illustrate decoupling they pulled away all the bricks around these 4 whilst they remained in place. 

Then they pointed out that these countries hadn’t really decoupled, and illustrated it by the remaining bricks falling over. 

Are today’s viewers really so stupid that they need this kind of visual clue to such simple concepts, and gimmicks to keep their attention?  I mean i can understand it on ITV, with all these wavy lines behind the presenters and celebrity ranking higher than anything of real importance.  But Newsnight is supposed to be a serious flagship news program. 

If it’s viewers really are that dumb then no wonder the global economy is in the mess it’s in!  Whatever happened to the intellectuals?