This is a Global Player Original podcast.

Three minutes after ten is the time. I don't know whether or not this is yet more evidence of my obsession with bent or biased media.

But George Robertson last week accused British leaders of a corrosive complacency towards defence.

He was speaking about subsequent and successive prime ministers, but inevitably, the country

that we currently inhabit was essentially told by its media that he was talking exclusively

and entirely about Kirstama, which is part of the reason why it became front-page news almost everywhere,

particularly when you add in that very tabloid-friendly insistence that you should take money away

from the welfare state and spend that money instead on weaponry. George Robertson, former head of

NATO and a former Labour defence Minister, currently earning some of his crust from a consultancy to armament firms, an outfit that helps businesses get government contracts in that field, which is not to say there's a conflict of interest, but it is

a bit like the figures on small boat crossings, something that should be contained in any coverage

of the bigger picture. I was going to do the small boat crossing things as a missed information,

but for reasons that I can't begin to fathom, I decided to do it at the top of my introduction

just before the 10 o'clock news instead, down 35% year on year, but absolutely extraordinarily absent from

almost all of the coverage designed to make you angry and fearful with the wrong people.

United States of America. The United States of America the United States of America

America I used to say America

until

I think a Venezuelan lady

at one of my book signings asked me to stop saying that

because it is a little bit

well it's inaccurate isn't it

it's a continent not just a country

...