Long reign the BBC

If he was not the son of a media giant, the rant of James Murdoch  would be mocked as barmy.

He blamed the UK government for regulating the media "with relish.  The expansion of state-sponsored journalism is a threat to the plurality and independence of news provision,"  Murdoch said.

State sponsored journalism? Like Pravda in the days of the Soviet Union. Or like the Berlusconi owned media empire? This is nonsense. The BBC has the best most objective journalists in the land producing news that is trusted more than that from any other source.

The Murdoch Empire is worried. News Corporation has said it will start charging online customers for news content across all its websites. The web public is very reluctant to pay for any service. It's all been free up until now. It can only work if news sources produce news unobtainable anywhere else. That is impossible while the BBC produces virtually all the news that is worth reading.

What news has the Sun produced that is worth buying? I can think of none. James Murdoch elevates 'profit' as the only guarantor of a free press. That is the profit that fuels the sales of the Mail, Express and Sun as propaganda rags?  The BBC has independence and  a Charter that guarantees political balance. That is the great strength of our main broadcasting organisation. 

That is why the BBC is best news brand in the world. No sane Government would throw that away - even if Murdoch demands it.

Japan Sun

A strange question. But will I have a minute influence on the Japanese election result?

Two weeks ago, I had a call from the Ashashi Shimbun (Morning Sun) newspaper asking for an interview. I readily agreed. They have the second highest circulation in the world and sell 8 million copies every day.

In spite of my protests, they insisted on sending a journalist down from London to do the interview and take a photograph. He was well informed and intelligent. The Liberal Democratic  Party in Japan are in trouble even though they have been in power for 53 of the last 54 years.

The opposition party thought that suggesting that more ministers should be in Government was a vote winner. Their leader Yukio Hatoyama came to Britain  to gain support for his arguments. His visit sadly co-incided with a report from the Public Administration Comittee that concluded that in Britain we have too many ministers.

Our inquiry took evidence that juniors ministers have little to do. Chris Mullin said that he was never asked to take a decision during his years as a junior minister. No comfort there for the opposition leader.

Nevertheless he is likely to win the election. He is a better proposition than the incumbent Government. Comparisons between political situations in different countries are rarely of any value. We on PASC still stand by our conclusions. Japan may well vote otherwise.

Sweet grapes

There are murmuring from Northern regions because I said the Total Politics blog rating were meaningless. I think it was Hen Rech Flin who even suggested 'sour grapes' on my part.  How unworthy of him. He could have read only the Welsh ratings. In the UK politics one I have the very sweet grapes of being included in the top ten. 

Any list of top ten Welsh blogs that does not include Miss Wagstaff, Peter Black,  Ordovicious, Valleys Mam, Betsan Powys, or Glyn Davies is baloney. A UK media list that includes in its top ten a blog written in a language that is unreadable to 98% of the UK population is one that has been rigged with unrepresentative votes. How many people read Vaughan's articles in Glasgow or Manchester?

Am I biased? Yes. In favour of Total Politics (TP). The editor is the daughter of a friend mine. She once did work experience in my office. Iain Dale published one of my books. T P is a great read that has put the House Magazine and Parliamentary Briefing magazines into an embarrassing shade. TP is journalistic : they are not. The blog ratings are a great marketing gimmick by TP by getting their name on hundreds of blogs. But a fair reflection on the quality of blogs? Forget it.

It's good to see the prominence given to a blog in Welsh that I greatly admire but it proves that the ratings are baloney.

Comments

[Adam]

Clearly Paul, those rags that you mention are clearly right wing propaganda mouthpieces. They aren’t news. They are rubbish interspersed with anti-labour propaganda. That’s their role. The Mirror is in fact pro-government but it is as supportive of the war as the others.

I don’t think the BBC is beyond reproach. It has plenty of opinion pieces, and also staying ‘neutral’ between two sets of liars and warmongers isn’t beneficial. If it was neutral it would include voices of dissent of all kinds, I’m referring to the Afghan war of course. Why should opinion be based on what the government and main opposition say if they both voice the same lies? How is that neutral?

[Adam]

Top stories now on the BBC website:

Couple Deny California Abduction

Jackson Death Ruled as Homiscide

Noel Gallagher 'quitting Oasis'

Not particularly important stories are they?

[Richard T]

Rupert Murdoch has made no secret of his wish to convert SKY into a British version of Fox news but he cannot do so because of silly things like the requirement for balanced reporting. Presumably this is what little Murdoch was saying in code when he attacked state sponsored journalism. Do you think that Daddy wrote the speech for him?

Think of a tory government which has kissed Murdoch's fundament and be as worried as we all have been by the previous Prime Minister's Faustian bargain with him.

[Paul Flynn]

It's a hideous prospect Richard T to have a British Fox News. There is still trust in the broadcasters. Even those who buy the tabloids believe little of what they say. But a profit-driven, moronic TV service is a nightmare.

I am sure daddy wrote the speech for him. Baby Murdoch was slavishly reading every word from his tele=prompters.

[Paul Flynn]

Of course the BBc is not perfect. But apart from Scandanavia, I do not know of a better system of getting objective news. I once had a role in this. In the 70s I was on the Broadcasting Council for Wales. that was seeing the beeb from the inside. It was still impressive.

[George Laird]

Dear Paul

It seems that the threat is not just from terrorism.

The murdoch clan represent a greater threat as they attempt to manage politicians to do their bidding.

These people think they are Kingmakers.

Yours sincerely

George Laird
The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University

[HuwOS]

Continued assault by the right wing on workers, with the latest pwc report on pensions.

It's quite fascinating to watch, initially during some temporary setback, start closing down decent pension schemes.
Start the process of "normalisation" whereby you persuade people that what is in fact a basic and necessary cost of business and an employers responsibility is actually some kind of bizarre luxury which has been provided to workers purely out of some spirit of philanthropy on the part of the employer, a generous optional extra which they reluctantly can no longer afford to make.

If government lets you get away with it then lay siege on the only reminder people would have of what a decent employer would do and start attacking the provisions for employees in the state sector, if at all possible, try to create a them and us attitude amongst the workers, focus on telling private sector employees that they as the "taxpayers" are making unreasonable provision for the people working for all forms of government, employees who are of course now getting much better provision then these private sector employees.
Whatever you do, don't give them too much time to think, or they would simply start demanding decent provision for themselves rather than trying to get it removed from others.

So far its close to being a master work.
And to achieve this while a nominally left wing party is in government adds a certain amount of kudos I would imagine.

I personally am always very impressed when in any manoeuvre, the rich and or powerful manage to convince people to view them as the struggling underdog while the actual underdogs, the workers, or the victims get to be perceived as the problem.

To get the government to actually join in by removing even state pension provision from people by raising the pension age is of course an added bonus and to do so under the guise of "saving" state pensions surely merits rounds of applause and shouts of encore.

[Kay Tie]

A pension is neither philanthropy nor a right: it's a part of the employment contract. At last employees are starting to see the true value of such a thing, and employers are seeing the true cost. This is all good news: everyone needs to understand the reality before sensible discussions can be had.

[HuwOS]

Ah KayTie I doubt you and I will ever agree on the reality that is involved here.
As far as I am concerned, if someone or some company wishes to lay claim to providing jobs, those jobs must reward the employee appropriately and that not only includes a living wage, holidays and other assorted benefits but also a pension.
If they are not offering these, they are not offering jobs, they are simply abusing people to line their own pockets, just like the pimps or sweatshop owners, the differences boiling down to merely the degree of obfuscation about the nature of the relationship.

The trouble is, employees are not seeing the true value of this, nor the extremely negative effect these moves will have on them and on society in the years to come.

We will have progressed from the 19th to 20th century and then miraculously back to the 19th, thanks to short term thinking by all and greed by the few.

[Kay Tie]

"they are simply abusing people to line their own pockets"

You might say that Tesco's are abusing their customers to line their pockets. I don't feel that when I go to Tesco's.

You're obviously stuck in a mindset that says if one side wins, then the other side loses. That's not how business works (for if it did, we'd still be hunter-gatherers). The essence of trade is that both sides are happy with the deal: both sides win.

The deal becomes a win:lose when there is coercion and one side cannot freely choose. We see this when companies get together to dictate uniform terms and conditions on a whole industry. Generally speaking, this is illegal (rightly so). We used to see in Britain unions dictating terms to an industry. And what goes on with the UAW today in Canada (for example) is blatant extortion and needs to be made illegal.

Non-free trade soon withers, as the 1970s taught us in Britain.

"We will have progressed from the 19th to 20th century and then miraculously back to the 19th, thanks to short term thinking by all and greed by the few."

You've never encountered greedy employees then? You don't remember Red Robbo and the feckless BL workers? I'm afraid greed, self-interest and coercion is not restricted to top-hatted bosses: offer the opportunity to extort money legally and many will take it. Just look at, again, the UAW in the US:

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/jul2006/uaw-j12.shtml

[HuwOS]

All people are easily coaxed by greed KayTie.
It is greed that means that a party that states it will raise taxes will never win an election.
It was greed that converted building societies into banks.
It is greed that makes the wealthy elite wealthier, its greed that has the top 1% holding 20% of the wealth and the next 9% holiding the next 30% of it.
It is both the large and the small greeds that will ensure that most children today will be worse off than their parents were
and that most young men and women today will have retirements marked by poverty and want.

BTW business only works in the way you imply KayTie, when tightly regulated nevertheless business will always try to get out from that regulation to allow it to make a win lose situation where it will always be the winner and both the employees and the customer the losers.

I believe that many people, like yourself, learned the wrong lessons from the 70's.

For many years during this free market era people have been kept quiescent with the availability of cheap credit allowing the standard of living of most of the people to rise. As you know, that is over and living at the standard that most peoples wages will support will be a sharp wakeup call to them to the inquities and injustice that the system that has been pushed by this countries right wing governments since the 80's, the question really being can anything be done to stop the inevitable decline in conditions for the majority or are they now so brainwashed and disconnected that we do indeed begin to see the conditions of the 19th century return.

[Kay Tie]

"It is greed that means that a party that states it will raise taxes will never win an election."

Then no-one is going to win the next election. Oh boy are taxes going up..

"its greed that has the top 1% holding 20% of the wealth and the next 9% holiding the next 30% of it."

So talent, diligence, excellence, hard work, luck, none of these things make a difference? It's just greed?

"It is both the large and the small greeds that will ensure that most children today will be worse off than their parents were"

Is laziness a form of greed?

"BTW business only works in the way you imply KayTie, when tightly regulated"

That is arrant nonsense. It's not regulation but competition - or, rather, choice - that is the difference. Regulation is only needed when there isn't sufficient choice.

"I believe that many people, like yourself, learned the wrong lessons from the 70's."

I learned the hard way just what sexist racist exortionists the Left are when uncontrolled. Didn't you learn this? Or did the lights not go out for you?

"availability of cheap credit allowing the standard of living of most of the people to rise."

The standard of living has been rising due to economic growth, which itself comes from innovation (e.g. new technology). Credit merely makes the wheels turn faster (until they turn too fast and fall off).

"a sharp wakeup call to them to the inquities and injustice"

If you mean by injustice "wah, someone took my free spending lifestyle away, I'm going to riot until someone gives me something for nothing" then yes, I agree with you.

[HuwOS]

Business when given free reign Kaytie does not look for competition, it looks for monopoly and if it cannot get that it looks to reach agreement with other businesses to keep prices up, you know that, so don't pretend it is otherwise.

The standard of living for the poor has not risen because they have more wealth, it has risen because they had more credit, without it, it will fall and they will be without it so it will fall.

The excess riches of the wealthiest has been built on the people who cannot afford their products being able to buy their products, and so the situation we now find ourselves in.
The businesses want people to buy their products on the one hand, but do not wish to pay their employees enough to do so. So what do they and their cohorts in government do, allow cheap, easy to get credit and to some extent get government to subsidise their employees, child tax credits and working tax credits for example.

And No KayTie, the injustice is making fortunes from the labours of people who do not receive a fair share of the money they generate, that's the injustice.

The kind of whining pity me attitude you are projecting onto regular people would be more accurately ascribed to the business community.

"Waah if we have to pay people in accordance to the work they do we won't be able to keep our business going - actual translation, if the board cannot get immense bonuses for laying people off and freezing wages while increasing the work load on our happily non unionised work force then we will whine until whichever right wing government in power subsidises us even more than they do now."