A good article. But how on earth can the balance be restored when the centre-left mindset that inhabits the BBC is not even recognised as such within the BBC and when it coincides with similar views in the British establishment generally?

This demand for a return to impartiality (did it ever exist?) is what millions of us have been making for some time now but as David says: how can it be achieved? I think that, in the same way as the dangers of some products are advertised on the package, the BBC should be made to advertise clearly that they are NOT impartial and that their editorial and journalistic endeavours reflect the views of the BBC hierarchy which may be offensive to many!

I have to say that I agree with the points made by both David and Henry. I cannot see any wat forward than by getting rid of the licence fee and letting the BBC sink or swim on its own. Melanie makes a good point about the bias of the Channel 4 News (or the Jon Snow Show as it should be called) but at least I don't have to pay for it. The whole idea of funding a media organisation (and that is all it is now) is anachronistic and well past its sell by date. Bin it.

Melanie the BBC was founded because the radio-set manufacturers needed software for their hardware and formed a corporation which was financed by a 10/- levy, which until 1949 was not enforced in statute.

In the USA the radio producers banded together to create a software business, and David Sarnoff's RCA ended up with a company called NBC.

Both had similar origins, bu Britain had experience of public corporations in 1922 the US did not.

Trying now to impose a US solution on a UK institution would be as farcical as turning the counties into independent states in a federal Britain. We have commercial channels introduced by the Tories in the 1950s; they too need the BBC to take a lead, not follow them.

TV audiences are falling across the spectrum; the output is miserable. The technology of plasma screens is unworthy of showing crap like Changing Rooms. We always here the word 'digital' but that describes transmission not content; and content is lacking.

This is a perfect opportunity to rebuild the BBC but it should not be party-political; and it should be in returning to Reithian probity but not Reithian rectitude.

The BBC News & Current Affairs Directorate needs dismantling as does bi-medialism.......in short UNDO the BIRT MESS and his bureaucratic sycophancy towards the politicians. He created this mess.

Gilligan has done us all a big favour; if he had come into the office at 6.07 instead of being at home this might not have happened.....time for a big change.

BTW Melanie, we also get a chance to rebuild the Daily Telegraph into a British rather than a North American newspaper because of another person's sloppiness

Derek,

Yes, you're right. The BEEB cannot by be made 'neutral' - because who would define 'neutrality' and who would impose it? It is bound to reflect the establishment while the establishment remains effectively in control of it!

This problem just cannot be solved by the establishment itself.

There is only one solution to getting rid of the current form of BBC-bias and that is to privatise it.

That would solve the problem and there could then be no more moaning by license fee payers about the Beeb not relfecting their view of the world.

It's a pity though - because it is a case of throwing out the baby with the bath water. However, Greg Dyke's modernising agenda has already turned much of BBC programming into similar ratings-sensitive fare that can be found on the commercial channels. And, anyway, some of the other satellite channels now do excellent documentaries in which the BBC once led the world.

I guess that the only thing that would be truly inimitable would be the great period-piece Austinkensian works - although there is now such a back catalogue of these that people can easily obtain them on DVD....

An excellent article. I would only add that Melanie, in her sixth paragraph, refers to the BBC as the 'crown in British popular culture'.Why omit 'high' culture? Is this role at least of equal importance? [Thankfully, Radio 3&4 has been spared the dumbing treatment presumably because Mr Dyke never found the tuning button]

The main failure at the BBC was viewing the government complaint as a challege to its independence rather than a challenge to the factual basis of a story. An organization not sucking on the government tit would not have made this mistake. That past complaints may have colored their judgement is no excuse for such a fundamental error.

If the BBC cannot make it in a competitive environment, it does not deserve to exist. If it is as wonderful as its proponents proclaim, it will have no problem with competition.

The difficulty with the whole argument espoused by Melanie and all the commentators so far is that it starts from the premise that the BBC is centre-left because the "establishment" is, and that - by implication - the "establishment" doesn't reflect the views of British society.

It does reflect Britain today. Thankfully, most Britons would identify as - and their beliefs would back this up - as centre-left. The BBC, as the quintessential national broadcaster, reflects this.

Those people who see the BBC as biased start from a flawed standpoint - that of the US. To American eyes, the BBC is very left-wing. That is because, thankfully, America is much further to the right than Britain.

The BBC does an admirable job in difficult circumstances. It should be left well alone.

I think that there are several issues where the BBC in no way reflects "Britain today" - the European Union for one. In any case, should it do? Should it reflect what most people believe to be true if careful investigation shows the true picture to be different?

BeefQueen,

"It does reflect Britain today".

I disagree with you on this point and believe that the Beeb represents rather the British establishment's views on politics, social conduct, education, health, law and order, religion, sexual and racial minorities in much of its news output...and not the views of the ordinary citizen, parent, employee, patient etc.

To the people bleating about the
BBC: what would you rather do?
watch cartoons on Sky all day?

Paul David, I do think R3 is worse than it was; and R4 PM is much much worse.

As for privatisation; why has no commercial broadcaster ever surpassed the BBC reputation ? Why does SkyTV make no programmes and why does New International pay no taxes in Britain or Israel ?

Why has no commercial radio station managed to provide a channel like R3 or R4 ? If the affluent listeners are there the advertisers would surely push Classic FM upmarket ?

Why has the Market in the US failed so miserably to provide quality programming or any serious discussion programmes, and why is the US electorate so badly informed about major issues on Planet Earth ?

Commercial TV would survive on hard-core pornography and adverts for Columbian Cocaine quite well. BTW Why can only US Citizens own US radio and TV stations, poor Rupert had to fake being an American to get hold of Fox.......funny how it is so strategic that only US Citizens are allowed to put out the pablum they broadcast, and foreigners are suspected f wanting to raise standards and the cultural level.

Beefqueen obviously finds the BBC reflects the politics of herself and her friends and confuses this with universality of opinion.

As Charles Moore noted in The Telegraph on Saturday, in a discussion between Hezbolla and Wolfowitz, on the BBC, who would get the rougher ride? A discussion, about anything, between a lesbian and an average white male? Who gets more sympathy, not to say sycophancy, from BBC interviewers, Gerry Adams or Michael Howard?

The BBC is institutionally socialist and the non-socialist majority should not have to pay a poll tax to assist it in the destruction of civil society. Let it sink or swim in the marketplace.

Someone above asked why no private broadcaster in Britain had reached the BBC's level of eminence. The BBC has been supported for 77 years by a poll tax. In other words, it was cushioned against its mistakes as no commercial organisation can be.

It's paternalistic and Stalinesque. It has no place in the modern world. And don't hold up the World Service. It's rubbish, as anyone living overseas will tell you. I knew the gold standard had been abandoned forever when, listening to the World Service news some years ago, they began referring to African tribes as "clans". I don't think the British want this "subtle" brainwashing by a bunch of old Trot ideologues.

Caroline

So glad you're back and with an almighty and mind-clearing bang! Stick around, you've been sorely needed.

The BBC has lost its way in the same way as many in society have lost their way. Without a moral code, no one has certainties upon which truth can be measured. The BBC has two functions - to inform and to entertain. Unfortunately it is getting worse at both. Informing the public by presenting the "news" has become speculation about what hasn't yet happened instead of reporting facts. This is followed after whatever has actually happened with more speculation and spouting of opinions as to what the meaning of the facts as reported might be so that the amount of truthful information reported is taking a back seat to opinions and speculation. Informed speculation is not "the news", no matter how well informed, because it is inevitably slanted by the opinions of the commentator. Commentators are usually left of centre and hence unable to even understand the old fashioned certainties because truth is whatever one believes it to be rather than an absolute. There is no right or wrong in a world where it is more important to be a winner than a looser, and so whoever gets his own way must be right and whoever gets walked all over is wrong, unless he/she is a left wing liberal when he/she must be right and be given the underdog treatment of grudging respect. Making sure that a right wing person gets questions which no left wing person has to field in a news interview is part of the subconscious desire of interviewers to put across their own views as much as possible while claiming to be impartial. This is known as the "Dimbleby tendency" whereby a Conservative politician is asked to defend his policies as if he were still in Government against the criticism of his Labour opposites while a Labour politician in Government is asked to explain his policies rather than defend them, particularly as his party were opposed 10-20 years ago to precisely what is now said to be so necessary, and which had the Conservatives dare introduce them, they would have been met with howls of left wing protest!

The dumbing down of news reporting to make it entertaining, with much jokey speculation as what it all really means because the actual facts are too difficult to digest, has corresponded with the dumbing down of entertainment to mindless quizzes where the number of questions answered matters little so long as the badinage and banter is kept up or mindless makeovers are carried out in the hope of capturing the horror stricken faces of the willing participants of these charades. Intellectual content diminishes so that allegedly scientific programmes like "Horizon" are tabloid productions speculating all manner of dark secrets to be revealed when nothing of the sort is forthcoming.

We live in a society where impartiality and disinterest (in the true sense of the word) is no longer seen as a valuable commodity because it is is too boring for the short attention span of the perceived audience of channel flickers. Dramatic pictures and dramatic tittle tattle dictate priorities. There is now more news content in a tabloid newspaper than a BBC TV news broadcast when a "big" UK story of really quite minor world significance can take over half the time allotted and like the parochial US TV news, the rest of the country let alone the rest of the world may as well be Outer Mongolia where nothing happened that day. "Small earthquake in Chile - hundreds die, no Britons affected" still applies though with only four or five real news items reported in a TV news broadcast on many evenings nowadays, even a huge earthquake in Chile without pictures wouldn't be news. Without a camera and dramatic pictures, news doesn't get a mention and for all intents and purposes didn't happen!

How can the BBC change? Very difficult once an organisation gets into the hands of people of a certain mindset who recruit similarly minded people. The BBC reflects the views of a certain section of society which used to take some pride in being honest, well informed, curious about the world, creative and fair but like the rest of the world has become less than honest, more narrow minded, less curious about anything that doesn't generate money and less fair. In that sense the BBC reflects society in general. O tempora o mores!

I'll throw my hands up and say I simply don't know what to make of the Hutton Report. Most of my shouting at the TV (and Radio 4) lately has been prompted by a sense of unfairness to the government, but only because much of our ridiculous media make such a contemptible hash of putting an honest case forward against them. If that what was Hutton endured I'm not surprised he gave the BBC a good mauling. On the other hand, I've read some impressive arguments from conservative commentators that in exonnerating the government the report was indeed a travesty - esp. over the mysterious death of Dr. Kelly, and more broadly the culture of media bullying and spin engendered by Mr Campbell.

I just don't know. I haven't the time (or, to be honest, the inclination) to read the blasted report itself, and the coverage about it seems contradictory and confusing. Different pundits whose opinions I respect and trust (such as Ms Phillips) take such disparate views on it too that I can't even make an informed guess, on the basis of that, whether it hit the mark or not.

I give up. I dunno. Pass.

A bit of a watery generalisation perhaps, but I think the cultures of both media and politics are locked in a self-destructive dance with one another that leaves the rest of us not knowing who to chuck out of the balloon - the politicians or the journalists!

In the context of this discussion I think it's important not to venture into the nature of the BBC's partiality but merely to agree that it is not impartial. That, to me, is the important fact; I really don't care if its views are "left" or "right": they shouldn't be either to justify being publicly funded.

Regarding the lack of ability of the commercial networks to produce anything of comparable quality (ie in production terms, not necesarily in content), I have to wonder how the commercial funding compares with that of the BBC.

BeefQueen: Why should the BBC reflect the "majority" views of Britons? (Or minority views either?)

I thought they were supposed to report the truth, regardless of whose political toes they step on.

What a weird concept: news should be gathered and presented according to democratic fiat. If the majority of viewers think the world is flat, then the BBC should report that the world is flat.

Uh-Huh.

Henry Kaye - You are correct. Bias either way should result in cancellation of the BBC's mandate.

What I also find horrifying - and communist - about them is, funded by a fee payable under the threat of imprisonment, they use their vast funding to encroach on areas which are none of their remit. They are going into the magazine publishing business with, I believe, the launch of something like 20 titles. Why are they being subsidised under threat of imprisonment for non-payment of their Danegeld to compete with real print publishers like News International and Emap? I find this sinister.

Why are they spending licence fee money on digital when most of the people paying their licence fee can't receive digital? Why are they running a totally Alice-in-Wonderland news service called Liquid News which has, literally, no viewers? Or there may be someone watching it in a basement flat in Notting Hill, but by any current means of measuring an audience, it has no viewers.

This is a vast publicly funded organisation with totalitarian instincts and an attitude that the people who work there are morally superior to its constituency and the sooner we drive a stake through its heart, the better.

Can I ask on what basis Melanie
Phillips and others assert that the
BBC's coverage of the Iraq war
was biased in favour of the anti-
war brigade? Is this fact, or just a
'feeling'?

The only two objective studies I've
seen (objective in the sense that
they measured the exact amount
of time covered for various
topics) show that the BBC was, of
all the major media outlets, the
most likely to put across the
Government's point of view, the
most likely to have positive,
unchallenged interviews with
Government spokesmen, and the
least likely to interview those with
an anti-war view. Even the ABC
network in the US devoted over
three times as much coverage to
anti-war material as the BBC.
Indeed, a short survey of anti-war
websites confirms the rage felt by
those you might call peaceniks at
what they see as BBC slander and
its plain refusal to challenge the
Government. As an agnostic on the war, it seems to me that the BBC was, with some exceptions, sympathetic to the case for war. I remember the 10 o'clock news on the night of the big debate in the Commons describing the PM as a 'greater man' for having persuaded us of the rightness of his vision. Equally, ministers are allowed to utter falsehoods on the radio (such as the 'fact' that Saddam threw out the insepctors in 1998) without any challenge. Anti-war voices are limitied to the 'more in sorrow than in anger' types such as Robin Cook.

When watching television and
listening to the radio, it is only
too easy to be stung by things
that are disagreeable, while
failing to register the constant
stream of stuff to which one has
no objection. Some people are
offended by what they see as the
high profile of gay people in the
media. Others are depressed that
the overwhelming proportion of
portayals of gay people confirm
to the most tired stereotypes:
either camp grotesques or sad
losers prone to suicide.

The BBC has a difficult role to
play. But I can think of no other
institution in the world that
comes close to it. It is one of the
many things that makes me
proud to be British.

Caroline, you are out in the left field. "The BBC is institutionally socialist and the non-socialist majority should not have to pay a poll tax to assist it in the destruction of civil society. Let it sink or swim in the marketplace. "

The BBC has nothing whatever to do with Socialism; it is a left-leaning Guardian influenced organisation, but not many of the highly-paid executies or presenters would want socialist tax systems. They voted probably for Blair & Co and have been bitterly disappointed.

As for Charles Moore - "Lord Snooty" - his newspaper was a bit devoid of news and a bit tabloid too; hardly the quality of the Berry years !

The BBC has faults which can be corrected; but noone can say SkyOne is an example to anyone; and satellite Tv is easy to produce...most channels show old BBC programmes or JV productions between WGBH and BBC on History Channel etc........Satellite TV is basically a VCR linked to a transmitter..........no roduction values, no complexity.

The BBC is far more sophisticated than satellite TV; and I am still waiting to hear from your Caroline which channel in the world you consider to be its nearest competitor; or have you been watching Wayne's World too long ?

Romulus - Unless you're American, don't use terms like 'left field', because you don't understand them and it leaves you looking silly. Stick with what you know. I just have a little feeling you don't understand baseball.

I could pay for satellite BBC, but why on earth would anyone do that? What is Wayne's World? Is it a BBC sitcom?

The BBC's faults could be corrected? By whom? And why? What is worth, about the BBC, mired in the class culture of the early last century, preserving? I mean, what does it do that anyone cares about and wants to pay for in the first decade of the 21st Century?

Practically everyone who had a speaking role at the BBC and everyone in the deeply platitudinous Downing St and many sources of innocent merriment commenting on the BBC's admirably impartial 'Have Your Say' have urged a Hillary-esque "Moving On".
So a whole lotta movin' goin' on!

Lefties everywhere unite for that movin'! How is it that Republicans and Conservatives address issues, and socialists "Move on!"? But not before they've "drawn a line" under their latest ineptitude or criminal behaviour.

The BBC's a white elephant. It destroyed itself. The World Service is inferior in impartiality to the Dutch broadcasting company. In a world where crystal sets no longer exist except in the fevered minds of the managers of the World Service, everyone has access to so much information that there is no role for a World Service supported by the British taxpayer. (Yes, tax from the Foreign Office, as opposed to the licence fee, pays for the World Service.)

Let's just draw a line under the 77 year history of the BBC and move on.

It isn't that the BBC has moved to the Left over the last 25 years: society has moved to the Right.

Margaret Thatcher's legacy is a Conservative Party led by Tony Blair, and a Monster Raving Loony Party led by Michael Howard.

Besides that, the systematic bias that Melanie perceives is one that is found to a lesser extent in other media. It's probably because people who lean to the Right are more likely to be attracted to careers in business than to journalism.

The BBC's problem with Andrew Gilligan was not institutional in nature, but human: the error of overstatement, compounded by the arrogance and stubbornness of managers at all levels of the organisation. In the face of the flood of worthless complaints emanating from the Government, no reasonable complaints procedure operated by the same individuals could have done better.

This is why it is important that the guilty parties at all levels of the BBC between Mr Gilligan and Mr Dyke should resign or be sacked: the errors were theirs, not the organisation's. Sackings at every level would also make the remaining staff realise that there is a price to be paid for arrogance. Changes to the BBC's charter would not deliver the same result, but would be more likely to turn the BBC into an organ of Government, or, worse still, of Rupert Murdoch.

Caroline -

Republicans, Democrats and other Americans don't "move on", they "look for closure". This lamentable trend has now spread to our shores.

Melanie sees the BBC as biased on religious matters. Heaven help us if we get US-style religious TV ("Would you like to help God through our ministry? Please dial 1-800-SAVED and have your credit card ready"). No thanks, I prefer the BBC. It's far from a white elephant.

That the BBC is biased is really only aknowledged by those who's worldview and values it is biased against.
Within the organisation as far as they are concerned they are normal their critics not.

It is for this reason that the charter that was clearly calling for fair and impartial coverage was written.
The framers of that knew the potential effect on society and it's opinion the BBC could have both the the positive and negative.
Therein lies the biggest problem the leftist/socialist ideologues in the upper echelons of the organisation have captured it.

What do you do with a city you capture?

You kill off the biggest threats and isolate and emasculate the lessor threats. Whilst running the city and bringing through fresh blood.

That's what has to happen to the BBC,(read sack for kill however much you might prefer the former) anything less and the creeping left will overwhelm the organistion again.

Imperative to this, is a continous close watch on who and why individuals are employed.
maybe a mixture of inhouse and outsourced production is the key.

The most important thing is that NO MATTER whom is in power they should fear and loath the BBC and know it will adhear to it's charter.

If all of this cannot be garranteed then it must either die or be let loose for leftists to pay for it not the ordinary person through the poll tax of licences.

KJN, you seem to be under the impression that American cable TV religious channels are financed by the American government in the same manner as the BBC. They are entirely privately owned and operated. They are also CABLE channels, not mainstream network channels.

The BBC is anti-Christian yet is financed overwhelmingly by people who are at least nominally Christian, who have no choice in the matter.

You are not even comparing apples and oranges here; more like elephants and safety pins.

In other words, your post is a complete non-sequitur.

Caroline you are far too vituperative and I can lay odds that Radio Nederland has nowhere near the reach or audience of BBC World Service which anyway has no funding from the licence fee.

You base your views on News of the World polls on the licence fee, and the proprietor R. Murdoch is not known for his regard for anything British......he is as pro-British as Martin McGuinness.

If you don't know Wayne's World you surely seem to know the script.

THe BBC is not The Daily Mail; and if the choice is between the BBC as is, and the way it would conform to Caroline's wishes; I think it would best left alone.

Anyone who uses words like "Stalinesque" - is this an art form ? I heard it applied to Moscow University architecture and the Palace of Sciences in Warsaw but never the operations of an institution.

Why are BBC journalists inside the BBC so much worse than the ones in government, I name Bill Bush, Lance Price, Ben Bradshaw, to list but three ?

I do not think much of Adam Boulton on SkyTV who sleeps with Anji Hunter I think, Blair's former aide from Downing Street. So I really do not want to give Blair a free hand in re-modelling the BBC;

http://www.bbccharterreview.org.uk/

Instead of clogging up this page with anti-BBC sentiments why not submit an Email with thoughts for the BBC Charter Renewal as the Government requested....the link is above

Romulus!

"Instead of clogging up this page with anti-BBC sentiments why not submit an Email with thoughts for the BBC Charter Renewal as the Government requested....the link is above"

Rather paternalistic of you to try to define the limits of democratic discussion by requesting that we shut up and do what the government tells us. A little like the BBC, or this Government, or old fashioned paternalistic Tories and Socialists in fact!! Not what I expect from you!!

What about some thinking 'outside the box'.

The BBC is an anachronism.

No amount of meddling with it is going to please everyone - because future meddling - and constant arguments about 'balance' - are an inevitable consequence of its current status - and in particular its relationship with the state and the way in which it is funded by the mandatory licence fee.

Part of the 'sentimentalism' that Melanie does NOT mention is the platitudinious crowing from people who should know better about the BBC being the 'best in the world' etc...Best in what way??? Whatever, it damned well ought to be better than it is given the HUGE public subsidies it receives.

No, sadly, the arguments about the BBC are like the arguments about the health service in the UK...real, 'out-of-the-box' thinking (rather than i)harking back to different times; ii) sentimental posturing and iii) vested interest enforced taboos that censor open discussion leads to avoidance of much needed open honest discussion about real problems and real solutions) would lead to solutions that would improve patient care.

No, the BBC is now indistinguishable from most other commercial channels in terms of a large part of its programming: whether it's the breakfast TV presenters' Tabloid TV view of the world (replete with ridiculous attempts at vox pop reading of viewers' emails...YUK), its game shows, its soaps, and its endless make em cheap and flog em to the public home and garden make-over shows...which are normally made by independent production companies!

I say 'flog the BBC' and I don't mean 'birch it' just privatise the damn thing...

This would rid us of all these ridiculous and time-wasting arguments about the role of the BBC about balance about government interference, about PC broadcasting etc etc.

Politicians could spend their times on more important discussions...like improving the health, education and law and order provision in the UK.

Perhaps it may even lead to fewer people leaving that damned flickering box on for so many hours a day like a constant soft drug fix...but that's a different issue...

Romulus - As far as I know, I've never seen The News of The World in my life. I do not know what Wayne's World is, but as you refer to a script, it may be a TV programme I have also never seen. You must stop trying to evaluate the opinions of others within your own narrow frame of cultural references.

The once-great World Service is a stream of politically correct drivel and tuneless, noisy British rock music compered by someone with an accent that dispenses with vowels. So much for the slow, measured reading of yore so that people whose native tongue was not English could follow it. Now, people whose native tongue *is* English can't follow it. They also seem to be living in a time warp, thinking they're bringing bold, daring rock music to people in sad Soviet apartments crouched over illegal crystal sets, longing for the freedom and tuneless music of the West. Ugh.

And then there's the misfits, like Jenni Murray (she probably draws a little heart over the "i" - or at least a circle), sympathising with Third Worlders in a treacly voice because so many in Britain have failed to understand how much their cultures have to teach us. Like female circumcision, having four wives, keeping women dressed in serge bedsheets and masks - all so enriching.

Vituperative or not, and I must say I do rather like the word, the BBC is institutionally anti-British. It should be left to find its own audience to pay for it, but certainly should not be supported at gunpoint by the citizens of Britain, most of whom are proud to be British.

Stalinesque means ruthlessly dictatorial, Romulus. It means imposing a point of view on those not willing to entertain such a point of view of their own free will. Radio Nederland certainly does not have the listenership of the BBC because it is not so well know, and hasn't got a proud 50 year history to trash, but it's very good.

Sadly what has happened at the BBC is indicative of British Society in general, the pursuit of personal gain at any cost, the refusal to accept responsibility for our own lives and those of our siblings, and the negation by the state of social responsibility, and real leadership, disguise by control freakery. Coupled with the ability of Politicians to 'lie' with impunity means we as a Nation are rudderless, much like the BBC. The answer?. Maslow believed the first decade of the Millenium would lead to a return to Victorian values. He could be right.

KJN - Yes, Americans "look for closure" and then they "move on". Hillary Clinton is a great one for moving on. She's moved on more often than just about anyone else in American public life. Every time Bill has a bimbo eruption, Hillary moves on. Tony Blair has also started moving on as have, in fact, the entire British cabinet. I have noticed though, it's mainly women and wimpy socialist men, like Blair, who "move on". Conservative and Republican men don't even seek closure. A great herd of movers on occupies the arid plain of the BBC's Have Your Say. I counted five people who advocated moving on in just one thread. Wayne from Basingstoke and Tiffany from Bristol all also caution that as a preliminary to "moving on", "we should draw a line under this". The latest clattering of the moving on hooves can be heard over at the BBC, where everyone who wants to hang onto their job is moving on in lockstep. So you see, there are rules. This moving on has all the fussy formality of a cotillion.

Robert,

There is a lot in what you say - but then it is surely for citizens through their actions individually and collectively through various communities to change things for the better.

Part of the British problem is psychological - a mixture of the 'blame game' (problems are all someone else's fault) and 'inertia' (people spending too much time glued to trivia coming out of their 'comfort boxes' and NOT i) checking if the elderly couple next door are OK ii) checking if their children are reading and writing well etc etc iii) getting involved in neighbourhood schemes to improve the neigbhourhood...improving you own first before improving other people's is a good start surely...

And the BBC ouput reinforces these 'blame game' and 'inertia' tendencies...where in all its output are the stories about ordinary citizens improving their communities? About 'local heros' who, against all the odds, succeed in doing something truly remarkable that has an impact on other people's lives?

It is meant to be the British Broadcasting Corporation after all and one assumes it has some kind of social responsibility towards at least documenting - if not improving - the quality of lives of its viewers?...Or is this mundane suggestion too 'out of the box', too 'revolutionary'...??

Remove the infant citizen from the government's and the BBC's nipple! Now, that would be a good start to improving society....

Caroline:

"Beefqueen obviously finds the BBC reflects the politics of herself and her friends and confuses this with universality of opinion.

As Charles Moore noted in The Telegraph on Saturday, in a discussion between Hezbolla and Wolfowitz, on the BBC, who would get the rougher ride? A discussion, about anything, between a lesbian and an average white male? Who gets more sympathy, not to say sycophancy, from BBC interviewers, Gerry Adams or Michael Howard?

The BBC is institutionally socialist and the non-socialist majority should not have to pay a poll tax to assist it in the destruction of civil society. Let it sink or swim in the marketplace."

1) I am a man, not a woman. Don't judge a book, and all that.

2) Caroline, like many other people in this discussion room (and I include Melanie in this) make exactly the mistake I am being confused of: they feel that their far-right, neo-conservative opinion reflects the public's beliefs. Thankfully for us in the UK, most people don't share their views.

3) The third paragraph above is just nonsensical rantings. How is it institutionally socialist? How is it assisting in the destruction of civil society (many people would find BBC Four's dramas and art coverage enhances civil society)? And remember that no-one is forced to pay a licence fee - no-one is forced to own a television.

Caroline:

"They are going into the magazine publishing business with, I believe, the launch of something like 20 titles. Why are they being subsidised under threat of imprisonment for non-payment of their Danegeld to compete with real print publishers like News International and Emap? I find this sinister."

BBC Worldwide is a separate, commercial arm of the BBC. It publishes, in fact, over thirty titles. It is not "funded" by the licence fee. It made more than £123 million profit last year, all of which was re-invested in the BBC, for the benefit of licence payers.

Caroline, I would suggest you check your facts before making false accusations against the BBC.

And, as to why it's important that most people in this country hold centre-left beliefs? It puts paid to the argument that the BBC is biased: from what perspective is it biased? To the vast majority of people it's not. It's ridiculous to suggest that ANY media outlet can be wholly "impartial". With limited time, space and resources, someone somewhere has to make an editorial decision: some stories will be covered, some won't be. Some questions will be phrased one way, some another.

The people making these decisions will be influenced by society - in the case of the BBC, UK society. If they were making editorial decisions which were wide of the fundamental beliefs held by most people, then they could be accused of biased editorialising.

But they don't. So they aren't. Not even in the Hutton Report.

Yes, Radio Nederland is very good, it has got a long and proud history, and it is of course funded by the Dutch taxpayer (as noted in their ironic jingle: "Radio Nederland: public service broadcasting you don't have to pay for!").

The reason why the BBC chases ratings is that many of its critics in the newspapers accuse it of being elitist, and cite this as a reason to scrap the licence fee. Many of those newspapers are owned by companies with stakes in satellite TV outfits. Now there's an example of bias you might want to think about.

It is impossible for the BBC to please everybody. I once read a letter to Radio Times criticising the BBC for not paying sufficient respect to a dead duck that was a prop in a TV programme.

BeefQueen,

"And remember that no-one is forced to pay a licence fee - no-one is forced to own a television".

With respect, why should anyone who owns a television and never watches the BBC have to subsidise it?

Why should it be subsidised at all?

there is no British Newspaper Corporation or British Internet Corporation...why should there be a British Broadcasting Corporation?

the fact is that it was established in a different era, has now outlived its original role, is struggling as a hybrid organisation that is partly commercialised and partly public (resulting in unfair competition against its competitors) and is only still in existence for reasons based tradition and emotion rather than the logic in a 21st century democracy.

David - I agree with you. The BBC was founded in another era - an era of patronage and class differences, noblesse oblige and all that. The "little people" expected to be lectured to and taught how to behave by their "betters". That is all ancient history in today's Britain. The BBC's an anachronism, a throwback.

BeefQueen, I am well aware that the BBC has a commercial arm, although what the hell it is doing with a commercial arm is another very important question, and this does not destroy my point. It could not have launched its print titles without the capital - which other companies have to come by honestly - of its licence fee. Real companies have to raise venture capital. I would imagine, although I don't know, that this would be prohibited by the BBC's charter, so it just dipped into its licence fee revenues.

The BBC is either a non-profit making quasi government entity with the remit of broadcasting radio and televisiion programmes or it is a commercial entity. It has absolutely no business quietly slipping over the line.

In addition, Greg Dyke was paid £500,000 a year. Frankly, no one whho is employed in a non-profit making organisation is worth even £100,000 a year. He and the board of governors are leaching money out of the funds that should be properly applied to developing programmes. Ann Robinson is paid £3m a year.

Where does this money come from? The BBC's collection agency, Capita (judged the most intrusive company in Britain) intentionally targets sink estates and single mothers - because these are the people with the least mental resources and are the easiest to bully. Like most people in Britain, I am slightly to the right of centre, especially by today's yardstick, but I find the notion of bullying single mothers to twist £116 out of them under penalty of imprisonment is absolutely sickening - as is the subsequent break-up of the family as the children are taken into care while the mothers does her time. The majority of women in prison in Britain today are there because they owned TVs but they couldn't find the money to the pay the licence fee and then compounded their crime by not being able to find the money to pay the £600 fine. The BBC must go.

Caroline -

"The BBC is either a non-profit making quasi government entity with the remit of broadcasting radio and televisiion programmes or it is a commercial entity."

I am inclined to agree that this should be the case. However, many public-sector bodies in the UK have been instructed to increase their commercial income so that they are less of a burden to the taxpayer. It would not surprise me if the BBC had been given similar instructions.

"The majority of women in prison in Britain today are there because they owned TVs but they couldn't find the money to the pay the licence fee and then compounded their crime by not being able to find the money to pay the £600 fine."

Can you provide a source for this information? If it is true it is horrifying.

Caroline:

"BeefQueen, I am well aware that the BBC has a commercial arm, although what the hell it is doing with a commercial arm is another very important question, and this does not destroy my point. It could not have launched its print titles without the capital - which other companies have to come by honestly - of its licence fee. Real companies have to raise venture capital. I would imagine, although I don't know, that this would be prohibited by the BBC's charter, so it just dipped into its licence fee revenues.

The BBC is either a non-profit making quasi government entity with the remit of broadcasting radio and televisiion programmes or it is a commercial entity. It has absolutely no business quietly slipping over the line."

With respect, Caroline, it does. You either were not aware that BBC Worldwide is a separate, commercial company, or you deliberately spun the existence of BBC Worldwide to make it sound as though the corporation was using licence fee money to print magazines. I suspect, in light of the second paragraph above - "It has absolutely no business quietly slipping over the line" - that you are just ignorant in this matter, though the former - deliberate misinterpretation of the facts - would be more insidious.

You will, of course, no doubt accept that a company that makes £123 million profit in one year is not "dipping into the licence fee revenues". If you don't accept this, I suggest you read their annual report - at http://www.bbcworldwide.com.

Caroline:

"The BBC's collection agency, Capita (judged the most intrusive company in Britain) intentionally targets sink estates and single mothers - because these are the people with the least mental resources and are the easiest to bully."

1) Any evidence to back this up? Or is it another falsehood?

2) I'm sure single mothers and the poor will appreciate your sympathy for their stupidity; perhaps a slightly sweeping statement?

David:

"With respect, why should anyone who owns a television and never watches the BBC have to subsidise it?"

Because you would be hard-pushed to find one person in the UK who owns either a TV or radio and who doesn't consume at least part of the BBC's service. Once the BBC is watched, or listened to, or read by few people in this country, then we can return to the argument.

David:

"[The BBC] has now outlived its original role"

Its role is to "inform, educate and entertain". It does this job admirably.

I think many post accept the premise that the BBC got it wrong. As Andrew Neale said on Sunday, they made one small mistake, but does that make the whole story wrong. Does that mean the BBC whilst at times iil-balanced needs to go back to a corporate system of 70 years ago. It is ironic that we talk about, 'morals' and 'values' and yet a glance at the TV offerings shows a almost a complete lack of either. We expect too much of others and not enough of ourselves. We expect to see integrity but act without it. A society in the end gets what it deserves. Corrupt government comes from societies acceptance of degrees of corruption. To take home pens and paper from work without consent is as much theft and dishonesty as the robbing of a bank. You cannot have degrees of immorality.

Beefqueen - confine your drama queen performances to your circle of close friends and try to talk to those of us who haven't been driven away from this thread yet in less heightened, less emotional manner.

A nos moutons! You say "is this another falsehood"? Would you care to detail what "falsehood" I have written on this or any other thread? I am going to charitably assume that your command of English is tenuous - at least, it's a fair assumption, given your previous posts.

"2) I'm sure single mothers and the poor will appreciate your sympathy for their stupidity; perhaps a slightly sweeping statement?"

Where did I extend my sympathy for "stupidity"? I think I articulatd outrage that the single mothers were being victimised by Capita. I write unambiguously. As your points are ill made and based on arguments that you've made up yourself, I won't bother addressing them.

KJN - Yes, I can. Go to Biased BBC (it's either dot.com or dot.net - or you can go to www.samizdata.net/blog and then click on a link on the left hand column) and it's all there.

Also, Sunday Times columnist Jonathan Miller has been campaigning on this point for some time, refusing to pay his licence fee until they promise to call the dogs of Capita off the sink estates. At the website, you can key in post codes and see the intensity of the collection efforts. It is absolutely foul and disgusting. As I have said before, I hold no brief for single mothers, but to break up a family, such as it is, and take children into care because a woman without resources cannot afford to pay Danegeld is nauseating. Apart from the humanitarian aspect, children inside with their mothers watching TV without a licence is better than children out roaming sink estates.

The BBC is a deeply disturbing organisation on many levels and I would like to see its many heads chopped off.

The word Caroline is "Stalinist".

As for your failure to submit your views on Charter renewal; I found it quite a good Website and submitted my assessment of BBC failings and suggested improvements. If the Government is inviting consultation I welcome this; John Major certainly did not in 1995 and created much of the current mess as only John Major could.

Frankly, when I consider the BBC Sound Library and Orchestra Sponsorship I think these are good things; and that they sponsor the Proms and kept them alive I also find very good.

I find this worship of the Market to be facile, it always was. Murdoch is in effect subsidised to the tune of the taxes he fails to pay in Britain; I cannot recall any drama production he has ever made.

David, what is the car tax on a vehicle you drive only at weekends in Belgium, or not at all ? How high is the Belgian TV licence ? do they really have dual bureaucracy for the language split ?

The way people rant here you would think the BBC was created by the Government; it was not. It was sustained by the Government as Trustee and the first Royal Charter dates from 1927. If you know Company Law you will know that Royal Charter predates companies legislation and is how the East India Company was formed. It is merely a question of renewing its Corporate registration.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/keyfacts/stories/licencefee.shtml

The first licence fee - for radio - was issued in November 1922. The amount was 10 shillings (50p).

The first combined Radio/TV licence - for £2 - was issued in June 1946.

Radio only licences were abolished in February 1971.

The first supplementary licence fee for colour TV was introduced in January 1968.

In March 2003, there were 24.1 million licences in force - 20.1 million colour; 0.1 million black and white; 3.7 million over 75s; and 0.2 million concessionary.

Broadcast Receiving Licences: 1922 - 2003

Date Radio TV B&W
(with radio)
TV Colour
(with radio)

November
1922
10s -- --
June 1946 £1 £2 --
June 1954 £1 £3 --
August 1957 £1 £4 * --
October 1963 £1 £4 + --
August 1965 £1 5s £5 --
January 1968 £1 5s £5 £10
January 1969 £1 5s £6 £11
July 1971 -- £7 £12
April 1975 -- £8 £18
July 1977 -- £9 £21
November 1978 -- £10 £25
November 1979 -- £12 £34
December 1981 -- £15 £46
March 1985 -- £18 £58
April 1988 -- £21 £62.50
April 1989 -- £22 £66
April 1990 -- £24 £71
April 1991 -- £25.50 £77
April 1992 -- £26.50 £80
April 1993 -- £27.50 £83
April 1994 -- £28 £84.50
April 1995 -- £28.50 £86.50
April 1996 -- £30 £89.50
April 1997 -- £30.50 £91.50
April 1998 -- £32.50 £97.50
April 1999 -- £33.50 £101
April 2000 -- £34.50 £104
April 2001 -- £36.50 £109
April 2002 -- £37.50 £112
April 2003 -- £38.50 £116

* Excise duty of £1 imposed, not receivable by the BBC.

+ Excise duty abolished, BBC given full amount.

Notes to Editors

For more information about TV Licensing - including who needs a licence and how to pay - visit the TV Licensing website.

Department for Culture, Media and Sport release - Tessa Jowell Announces TV Licence Fees for 2004 - 2005

http://www.ciao.co.uk/BBC_TV_Licence__54770/TabId/2/SortOrder/1

139/03
11 December 2003

"Your BBC, Your Say" - Jowell Launches Biggest Ever Public Debate On Future Of The BBC

Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell today launched the biggest ever public debate on the future of the BBC.

Launching the consultation, she stressed the importance of the BBC to both the world of broadcasting and the wider public – in particular she said it set a "gold standard" in its news coverage that people trusted.

The public consultation, which will give people the chance to put their views directly to Ministers at meetings across the UK, is the first stage in the review of the BBC's Royal Charter - a document that shapes the corporation, setting out its general aims and functions. The Charter is up for review by 1 January 2007.

And she said that the unique challenge of this Charter Review is that it is taking place at a time of rapid technological change - nearly 50% of homes now have access to digital TV.

Tessa Jowell said:

"Rapid change means that we must consider how the BBC should be adapted for the future. The one certain outcome of the review will be a strong BBC, with the courage to be editorially autonomous and independent from Government.

"Previous Charter Reviews have been conducted in a range of ways. By the great and the good. By Ministers and civil servants.

http://www.culture.gov.uk/global/press_notices/archive_2003/dcms139_2003.htm

The BBC was founded by John Reith in 1922 following a vision for an "independent British broadcaster able to educate, inform and entertain the whole nation, free from political interference and commercial pressure", differentiating it from unregulated commercial radio of the US, and the rigidly controlled state broadcasting in The Soviet Union. It wasn't until 1927 that the BBC became public, receiving its Royal Charter which defines the corporations' objectives, powers and obligations"

Since I do not believe Advertising Expenditure should be tax-deductible against company profits, the system whereby I pay for ITV by buying branded goods in supermarkets may not be a viable model. An alternative if for people to subscribe to a television as they do with telephones, paying a monthly subscription to a preferred supplier.

There is absolutely no reason why Advertising expenditure should be deductible against Corporation Tax and it distorts the economy excessively and is a barrier to competition.

"I hold no brief for single mothers,"

So Caroline you are contemptouous of widows ?

Romulus

"So Caroline you are contemptouous of widows ?"

I was enjoying the debate between Caroline and yourself until you slipped that disingenuous snidey in. I think most widows would classify themselves as, well, widows; not 'single mothers'. I'm sure that, agreeing with Caroline or otherwise, most of us understood what she meant in the context that she used the expression. I can't believe you didn't.

Come, come, Romulus - you know better than that. There's a world of difference between a woman who was raising her children - probably sired by the same man - in a two-parent household, with an earned income, and today's flotsam and jetsom who have several children by several men, none of whom contributes a penny of support for his offspring, and who live on the public purse. These children don't know their own fathers, they have no stability and no male presence in their lives, except a series of "friends" of their mother. These women brought their misfortunes on themselves through fecklessness and lack of any clear moral vision. They do not, however, deserve to be sent to prison, which should be a punishment for real, deliberate crime, for failing to pay a levy for entertainment within their own homes.

I find the deliberate targetting of these women of little mental resource to be utterly repulsive. Being sent to prison because you couldn't afford to contribute to Greg Dyke's £500,000 salary, or Ann Robinson's £3m whack just takes the breath away.

The BBC is in a privileged position that was formerly reserved for the Doges of Venice. It's ridiculous. And it has all the power of the state behind it. It is arrogant, its corridors are infested with a lefty Weltanschuuang that conservative thinkers should not be forced to pay for, it is anti-Britain and anti-Western enlightenment. Forcing people to pay for propaganda that speaks against everything they believe in is fascist. So is targetting sink estates and single mothers because they are the easiest to bully. BTW, there's a hyphen between Biased and BBC.

Caroline:

"Beefqueen - confine your drama queen performances to your circle of close friends and try to talk to those of us who haven't been driven away from this thread yet in less heightened, less emotional manner."

- Caroline, I will ignore your personal insults. I think they speak volumes about your standard of debate without me adding any more.

"A nos moutons! You say "is this another falsehood"? Would you care to detail what "falsehood" I have written on this or any other thread?"

- You stated that BBC Worldwide is supported by the licence fee. That is false. Ergo it is a falsehood.

"I am going to charitably assume that your command of English is tenuous - at least, it's a fair assumption, given your previous posts."

- See above re: personal insults. I happen to feel that I articulate my arguments surprisingly well.

"[Quoting my earlier post] 2) I'm sure single mothers and the poor will appreciate your sympathy for their stupidity; perhaps a slightly sweeping statement?" Where did I extend my sympathy for "stupidity"? I think I articulatd outrage that the single mothers were being victimised by Capita. I write unambiguously."

- Indeed you do. You wrote, "The BBC's collection agency, Capita (judged the most intrusive company in Britain) intentionally targets sink estates and single mothers - because these are the people with the least mental resources and are the easiest to bully." I happen to disagree that single mothers are per se lacking in mental resources. Still, you are entitled to your opinion.

"As your points are ill made and based on arguments that you've made up yourself, I won't bother addressing them.

- I have made up nothing. I have given references to my sources. Perhaps once you can construct a response to my clearly-argued points, you can come back to them.

"As I have said before, I hold no brief for single mothers, but to break up a family, such as it is, and take children into care because a woman without resources cannot afford to pay Danegeld is nauseating. Apart from the humanitarian aspect, children inside with their mothers watching TV without a licence is better than children out roaming sink estates."

- Caroline, you are confusing two arguments. The debate on whether imprisonment is a suitable punishment for non-payment of the licence fee is entirely different from whether the BBC is biased. Please try to remain on the subject of this particular forum.

The BBC is a deeply disturbing organisation on many levels and I would like to see its many heads chopped off.

- Perhaps this is a better example of an ill-made point based on arguments that have been made up. Or maybe it's simply a point without any argument at all?

BeefQueen,

Re: my comment:

"[The BBC] has now outlived its original role"

and your response:

"Its role is to "inform, educate and entertain". It does this job admirably".

Its original role was to do those things - and when it was the ONLY British broadcaster then there was a strong case for the implementation of the univeral licence fee.

But, that is clearly no longer the case with other broadcasting companies in competition with one another within the UK and globally.

So, it HAS outgrown its original role but the method for its funding has yet to catch up with the reality of how we inform, educate and entertain ourselves in 2003.

"It does this job admirably".

Well, that may be your belief...but is clearly not shared by many other people. Also, one could argue that other channels also do their job admirably - and without a whopping great public subsidy.

David,

It's wrong to compare the BBC to other channels. The BBC does not operate simply as a TV platform (like Sky) or as an individual TV channel (like ITV, Channel 4 or five).

The BBC provides a multitude of channels, numerous national and local radio stations and a world-leading website.

It also has far more onerous public service obligations than any other channels (look at the amount of scrutiny which went into the launch of BBC Three).

I reject the assumption that because there is a multitude of TV channels (you do not mention websites or radio channels; I'll assume that's implicit in your argument), the BBC's role is no longer necessary. I believe it's equally possible to argue that its role is more crucial than ever.

It's far from perfect, but it still acts as a gold standard to which other broadcasters can aspire. It also provides services which, though culturally necessary and valuable, will never be commercially viable. For example, it sponsors, and broadcasts the Proms. It's ridiculous to suggest that Sky, or ITV plc, would do so.

But just because commercial broadcasters shouldn't do so doesn't mean that the BBC shouldn't. It should, and, because of the richness and diversity it brings to broadcasting in the UK, we all benefit from its existence. And we should all pay towards it.

PS: I notice you didn't contradict my point that most people in the UK still use BBC services.

Difficult to reconcile this article with Phillip's other item here about Hutton and the BBC in which she accuses the BBC of lying and says it is finished ("the BBC is toast").

Is it that she can't keep a settled idea in her mind for more than a day? Or that she changes her tune according to the audience?

People posting in this colunm may find the following article interesting:

Biased broadcasting corporation

A survey of the main broadcasters' coverage of the invasion of Iraq shows the claim that the BBC was anti-war is the opposite of the truth

Professor Justin Lewis
Friday July 4, 2003
The Guardian

The recent furore about the BBC's coverage of the war in Iraq has generated rather more heat than light. But behind the government's attack on the BBC lies the serious accusation that the corporation's coverage of the conflict was anti-war. This claim goes much further than the much publicised attack on Andrew Gilligan - the BBC's critics in the government have clearly implied that Gilligan's stories are part of a more systematic, institutional bias.
So, is it true? The answer has little to do with the work of individual reporters - we know from previous research that people are influenced by the general weight of TV coverage rather than by particular reports. For this reason, we have conducted a more comprehensive survey of the way the four main UK broadcasters - the BBC, ITN, Channel 4 and Sky - covered the war. After careful analysis of all the main evening news bulletins during the war, we have been able to build up a fairly clear picture of the coverage on the different channels.

Matthew d'Ancona in the Sunday Telegraph described how "in the eyes of exasperated Blairites - the BBC whinged and whined, and did its best to sabotage the war effort". But the pattern that emerges from our study is very different. For example, we asked which of the four channels was most likely to use the British government as a source. The answer, it turns out, is the BBC - where the proportion of government sources was twice that of ITN and Channel 4 News. The BBC was also a little more likely to use British military sources in its coverage than the other three channels.

When it comes to reporting the other side, on the other hand, the BBC was much more cautious. Sky and Channel 4 were both much more likely than the BBC to quote official Iraqi sources. The BBC was also less likely than the other three channels to use independent sources like the Red Cross - many of whom were critical of the war effort (Channel 4 used such sources three times more often than the BBC, Sky twice as often).

The government's case for war was based partly on the idea that most Iraqi people wanted liberation and hence supported the invasion. So to what extent did TV news portray the Iraqi people as welcoming US and British troops? This turned out to be a dominant theme of the coverage: across the news as a whole, the Iraqi people were around three times more likely to be portrayed as pro-invasion than anti-invasion. How far this represented actual Iraqi public opinion we have no way of verifying, but it fits happily with the government's version of events. This ratio was remarkably consistent across all TV channels - with the exception of Channel 4, where the ratio was a little less than two to one.

When it came to reporting the Iraqi casualties - clearly a negative for the government's case - we found fewer reports on the BBC than on the other three channels. Again, it was Channel 4 which was most likely to offer a critical note - 44% of its reports about the Iraqi people were about civilian casualties, compared with 30% on Sky, 24% on ITN, and only 22% on the BBC.

The picture that emerges from our data is fairly clear: if there was a TV channel that was more likely to report information damaging to the government's case, it was Channel 4. The BBC, by contrast, was often the channel least likely to engage in "whingeing and whining". So, for example, when Tony Blair accused the Iraqi regime of executing British soldiers - a story Downing Street was later forced to retract - the BBC was the only one of the early evening news bulletins that failed to examine the lack of evidence to support it, or to report the rather embarrassing government retraction the next day.

And when it came to the many other stories from military sources that turned out to be false, such as the Basra "uprising" or the launching of Scud missiles into Kuwait, Channel 4 was the only channel - rightly as it turned out - to offer a note of scepticism or caution. The BBC, ITN and Sky were, on the whole, much more trusting of US and British military sources.

The only finding that does not quite fit this pattern was, interestingly, the coverage given to weapons of mass destruction. The government was clearly keen to emphasise the danger posed by Iraq's alleged chemical or biological weapons, so to what extent did broadcasters report speculation hinting at their likely or possible use? While this turned out to be a much smaller theme during the war than we might have expected beforehand, we found that all four channels were much more likely to report speculation that implied Iraq might use such weapons than to cast doubt on their possible use.

But in this case, we found a few more reports on the BBC than elsewhere which allowed doubt to creep in - whether by reporting that such weapons had not been found or by casting doubt on their possible use. And yet, even here, the BBC was more than three times more likely to suggest that such weapons might be used than to suggest they might not. And, as it turned out, the BBC and the other broadcasters all placed much too much faith in the plausibility of such rumours.

Indeed, far from revealing an anti-war BBC, our findings tend to give credence to those who criticised the BBC for being too sympathetic to the government in its war coverage. Either way, it is clear that the accusation of BBC anti-war bias fails to stand up to any serious or sustained analysis.

· Professor Justin Lewis is deputy head of Cardiff University's school of journalism

Funnily enough, since Tessa Jowell invited public input into the Charter renewal issue I was able to make exactly the point about Capita targetting students, low-income groups on estates, and using my taxes to finance criminal rather than civil prosecutions.

I think it is a vast improvement on previous CHarter renewals under Thatcher and Major that my views are actively sought; much as I dislike this administration, I thank them for the ability to make my views known, although I have avoided current (Hutton) matters as I think they have no relevance to the long-term deterioration at the BBC.

The term single-mothers is far too vague, talk about deserving and undeserving poor if you want Caroline; or the feckless, but I may remind you Diane Blood is a single-mother by choice; and sandy Toksvig or whatever she calls herself is a lesbian parent by AI who lives with the Radio 4 newspeader Alice ? in a quite separate lesbian arrangement; Jenni Murray is an unmarried (partnered) mother......so I am trying to disentangle your generic term into a more precise one......you can see Andrew Gilligan's problem with precision in language mirrored in your own inability to bring accuracy into defining the section of the community upon which you wish to heap abuse, while trying simulatenously to evoke sympathy for their victimisation by Capita

Romulus, there are a few high profile professional women who may or may not be single mothers by choice. Diane Blood's husband died and she wished to have his child anyway. She's intelligent, educated and has the money to provide a stable environment for the child.

Again, Sandy Toskvig (or whatever her name is), is well able to provide material wellbeing for a child, although I would question the judgement of being not just a single mother but a lesbian single mother. Most mothers would place the interests of their child ahead of their own, but there is a strand of society now that believes having a child is a right, especially if they can afford it.

I know nothing of Jenni Murray's circumstances, but she's a raving politically correct leftie with predictable opinions and perhaps the world's most irritating voice. Oh, no! Wait a minute! That's the BBC's Lys Doucette! In any event, she sounds desperate.

The elephant in the the living room is, many of these women, whether feckless children of feckless mothers themselves and now with their own brood of children who never know a father, or an older career woman, many men simply don't want to marry them. And won't. I've known them myself. Career woman, missed the marriage bit and raising the family bit, finds herself a bit older and unable to compete with younger women coming up, decides to throw the dice and have a baby all by herself. (Many of the men unwittingly involved in these plans, incidentally, are absolutely livid when they find out they are going to be fathers when it was never a part of their plan - with that woman. There is even an organisation in the US - Fathers Against Our Will - for men who got tricked into becoming a stud for a woman desperate for a child.)

As you know, Romulus, you are talking about two different sets of people. Fiona Millar - Alastair Campbell's main squeeze and the mother of his children - isn't married, but she has money, and Campbell has money, and no matter what you think about him, he would not abandon his children.

This is a different kettle of fish from Traci in Wigan with four children by four different fathers, none of whom ever drop by to see Duwayne, LaToya, Sheree and Clint. Traci lives in a council flat, she receives free money from the state, her children call her boyfriends by their first names (in the old days they used to call them uncle, but these are more democratic times), attend school some of the time and have no idea who their father is. Traci has no skills and no ambition. When she wants to go down the pub, her mum, also a single mother, looks after the "kids" for her. Traci has no education. She is a passenger. She has nothing to contribute. She is feckless. She is chippy. She indulges her children one minute by giving in to all their demands, and becomes a hysterical disciplinarian the next. None of the men who fathered her children has any interest in her wellbeing and never intended to stay with her beyond having a place to kip for a few weeks. Once he's gone, he's gone.

Sorry to be so Hogarthian, but I think to confuse these people with women who, no matter how misguided I personally think them, are perfectly capable of providing a financially viable home for their children is silly, Romulus. They're oceans apart and you would be foolish not to acknowledge it.

I still maintain that no matter how ill-educated and feckless they are, to send them to prison for being unable to find £116 a year for the privilege of watching their own television is obscene. To take a mother, however inadequate, away from her children and place them in "care" because the mother was unable to make a contribution to Greg Dyke's salary is obscene. The BBC has no place in a modern society. The BBC doesn't own the airwaves and it doesn't own the receiver.

Diane Blood is completely wrong; she was indulged and a dying man was raped by medics to serve her needs. The law was twisted to suit her.

Alan Milburn is not married to his concubine; and is subsidised by the taxpayer who employs him, and his concubine.

I do not see that morality is income-related; that brings us to the J B Priestley world of "An Inspector Calls"......and if it is wrong for Milburn, Blood and Jenni Murray; it is wrong for the feckless poor......after all the actions of the woman are no different......after all Cecil Parkinson could well have provided for his handicapped illegitimate daughter, Flora Keays, but refused to do so using a Mary Bell Order to make it illegal to write or speak about her - "Girl In The Iron Mask".

Was it okay for Tim Yeo to have two illegitimate children ? Or for Clare Short to give her baby away though she married the father ? Virginia Bottomley was a student single-mmother who married the father and kept the child.

What about Pauline Prescott as a single unmarried mother ?

You must ask Caroline why women do this to themselves, rather than excusing them if they are bourgeois......noblesse oblige means setting a good example, not having a selective morality according to income and class.

This debate is straying...

But thanks for BeefQueen for posting the facts about the BBC's coverage. Interesting that no-one seems ready to challenge them. The trouble with the anti-BBC brigade is that they state as a given that the corporation is biased. Unfortunately, the evidence just isn't there. Will Melanie Phillips address the Cardiff report head on?

I agree with DaveE. This debate has strayed. A nos moutons, Caroline!

Given Caroline's earlier attack on myself, I would be most interested to hear her replies to my comments.

So far, they do not appear to be forthcoming.

BeefQueen,

"...because of the richness and diversity it brings to broadcasting in the UK, we all benefit from its existence. And we should all pay towards it".

I disagree with your statist and paternalistic view of the way in which the market for broadcast services should operate. We live in a pluralistic society with a huge range of different media options for informing, educating and entertaining ourselves.

Much of BBC TV's output is now totally indistinguishable from commercial channels (ie soaps, game shows, news programmes, sitcoms, home and garden make-over programmes etc etc etc).

The bit that is world class is now a tiny proportion of the total BBC output.

That all citizens with a television should automatically subsidize all of this...and the BBC's moves into web sites and other commercial activities is anachronistic and lacking in clear logic based as it also is on a good dose of sentimentalism and attachment to tradition.

Romulus - You have misunderstood my comments. I think Diane Blood was wrong and warped, although it is not my business to comment. Similarily, if you read my post, Sandy Toskvig.

Prescott's wife was a single mother from another age where there was both shame and economic penalty to being a single mother. As I've said, this is a million miles away from the Diane Bloods. I don't want to get into nit picky irrelevant strands of thought.

Today, most single mothers in any strand of society become single mothers by choice. Personally, I believe it is in large part, and not in all instances, due to the inability to get a man to marry them. Many of the middle class, career types think the man will be so attracted to his baby that he will marry her although he refused to do so before. This is a very lonely, forelorn hope and leads a life of single motherhood. Many middle class women, however, harbour this hope. For Traci in Essex, marriage is what other people have. It doesn't impinge on her life at all. She takes her stroller and two toddlers down the Post Office and collects her money ... the men who fathered them long gone, both physically and from Traci's mind.

You cannot deny that there is an educated - although, in my opinion, equally unhealthy - stream of unmarried mothers and a rushing river of uneducated welfare-dependent unmarried mothers living in a roiling underclass. Their children, some of whom may be extremely intelligent - we'll never know - skiving off school and never getting a chance at education. Their mother never reads to them and is probably a functional illiterate. Recent findings show that many of these children, before they went to school, had never actually sat at a table for a meal. They don't know how to sit at a table and use a knife and fork, because Traci doesn't know. State dependency is encouraged by the welfare, socialist state.

Another sign of a totalitarian state is a state broadcasting company, which is what this thread is about. It is wrong, wrong, wrong to force people to pay a tax for products which cannot find their way in a free market. If the BBC is appreciated and desired, it will be supported by subscriptions or advertising, but to impose it on people who don't want it and require they pay a hefty fee for it although never utilising it is an obscene denial of the liberty of the individual. All those who want the BBC should be free to buy its programmes. No one else should be forced to toil in the vineyards to support it.

The BBC, meanwhile, has egged on the Tracis by taking a wrecking ball to standards of a civil, coherent society that had become established over a thousand years or so. They thought it was rather clever to do so, failing to wonder why no one had done so before them.

How amazing. I've been living in a totalitarian state all my life. Thanks for opening my eyes Caroline!

I look forward to your next post, advocating the privatisation of the Army for it is, after all, wrong, wrong, wrong for taxes to pay for these things. Falklands War brought to you by Sainsbury's. Customs and Excise sponsored by B&H. What a future awaits us in your brave new world.

David:

"I disagree with your statist and paternalistic view of the way in which the market for broadcast services should operate. We live in a pluralistic society with a huge range of different media options for informing, educating and entertaining ourselves."

- That's a very selective distillation of my argument. I explained earlier in my comment that a large part of the reason that we have a pluralistic society with such a huge range of different media options is entirely because of the BBC. Without it, most of the more palatable options for informing, educating and entertaining ourselves would simply not exist.

Caroline:

"It is wrong, wrong, wrong to force people to pay a tax for products which cannot find their way in a free market."

- No-one is forced to pay a licence fee. Only those who have televisions have to pay the tax.

- Would you include in that argument such things as the NHS, education, the police and the army? Of course not. However, they would not be able to find their way in a free market and we pay for them. Your argument is simplistic pap.

"The BBC, meanwhile, has egged on the Tracis by taking a wrecking ball to standards of a civil, coherent society that had become established over a thousand years or so. They thought it was rather clever to do so, failing to wonder why no one had done so before them."

- You have failed to explain why. You may remember that I asked this: "3) The third paragraph above is just nonsensical rantings. How is it institutionally socialist? How is it assisting in the destruction of civil society (many people would find BBC Four's dramas and art coverage enhances civil society)?" I asked it many posts ago. You have provided no response to it.

While you're responding to that point, you may wish to address the others I asked.

Actually, I do believe in private armies.

I'm the furthest away you can get from a statist. I'm a libertarian. Government should keep the law on the streets, protect our borders (which it is currently criminally failing to do and for which it should be called to account - as in trials) and furnish the law for civil contracts to be enforced. That is all.

Speed cameras, a hundred quangoes, a "state broadcasting authority" - aaaarggh! When did you people forget how to be free?

Melanie,

I'm not a regular reader of the Mail (picked it up in a coffee shop). I was SO glad to read your comments on the bias of the BBC. I had started to think I was the only one who could see this.
I lie there day after day listening to the Today programme anti-american propaganda.
Is there some ex-government official, holed up in Idaho, who has an axe to grind against the Bush administration? Bring him on! Just time to squeeze him in before the "Robin Cook" spot.
Keep up the good work.
I want, so much, to feel proud of the BBC. As of now I'm ashamed of their bias.

Steve

Steve

Do we listen to the same Today programme? The Today programme that lets US and UK government officials completely unchallenged while ignoring anyone but the softest anti-war spokesman? Bias is in the eye of the beholder, methinks.

Still, it is hard to argue that the BBC has been anything other than pro-government on the Iraq war front. Just look at the actual facts of its coverage, as cited by BeefQueen above, rather than the 'opinion-as-fact' cited by Melanie Phillips.

"I'm the furthest away you can get from a statist. I'm a libertarian. Government should keep the law on the streets, protect our borders (which it is currently criminally failing to do and for which it should be called to account - as in trials) and furnish the law for civil contracts to be enforced. That is all.

Speed cameras, a hundred quangoes, a "state broadcasting authority" - aaaarggh! When did you people forget how to be free?"

So, in 1910 people were "free" ? No passports, no BBC, no quangoes ?

Or was it in 1865 before the Education Acts ?

Or in 1850 before most of the Factories Acts had been passed, or the Companies Acts, or Sanitation legislation, or most of the Chartered Boroughs had been created ?

Or was it 1649 when Cromwell ran the country with a light touch ?

Just when was this Golden Age of libertarian joy Caroline ?

Caroline:

"I'm the furthest away you can get from a statist. I'm a libertarian. Government should keep the law on the streets, protect our borders (which it is currently criminally failing to do and for which it should be called to account - as in trials) and furnish the law for civil contracts to be enforced."

So, Caroline, you do believe in taxation for products which cannot find their way in the free market - taxes for police and border controls, at the very least.

So how can you argue that the BBC should not exist simply because it cannot find its own way in the free market - neither can police or border controls!

With the greatest of respect, your argument has fallen into intellectually devoid bunkum!

Beefqueen - I don't respond to your posts because they are full of flouncy, overblown drama and hissy pretensions. For example, "your argument has fallen into intellectually devoid bunkum!" What the hell does that mean? (For god's sake, don't try to tell me!) No offence, Beefqueen, but I just can't be bothered and I'm not interested in your ancient arguments. The idea of a state broadcasting company is grim and I will never be persuaded that it is not also dangerous. I hate statism.

Romulus - You are correct that Britain has not been free for around 250 years. But at least until six ago, Brits had a right to defend themselves and their homes against intruders and violence. That one last shred of liberty has been surgically excised from the body politic, and still the British are supine.

I wonder why? I think it is because there are so many paternalistic bodies in Britain that people have become accustomed to doing as they are told. I don't know how many quangoes there are in Britain - I think I read somewhere that there are over 90. Ninety bodies of self-righteous, bossy, unelected people micro-managing your lives. The Human Embryo and Fertilisation Authority (or words to that effect), headed up by the hideous Baroness Warnecke! You couldn't make it up! Britain is full of bossy, officious regulators of every facet of living and I find it nauseating.

The BBC is another essentially unaccountable law unto itself, paid for by a poll tax. They don't own the airwaves and they don't own your television set, but they can charge you for the use of the free airwaves to receive ITV and satellite. It's obscene. If the BBC has anything worth buying, people will buy it without coercion. But to behave as thought the BBC is some holy body entrusted with the faith of the British is absolutely revolting.

Let people pay to watch the Proms. Why should someone who has satellite and watches nothing but sport on television be forced to subsidise someone who wants to watch the Proms? Let him pay for his satellite and his sport and you pay for your Proms. Even if the BBC were any good ... even if it were not politicised ... I would want it to be private subscription.

I feel equally strongly about the NHS. State supported organisations are inefficient and the people who run them do not know - or care - what I, the customer, wants. If you've ever been treated in a medical system overseas, you may have been stunned at what the free market produces in the way of treatment, comfort and convenience.

Almost 1/4 of British workers now work for the government - on the backs of the taxpayer. Not one of them is a wealth creator. Once Britain reaches the 1/3 level, as they have in France, the economy will head the same way.

"But at least until six ago, Brits had a right to defend themselves and their homes against intruders and violence. That one last shred of liberty has been surgically excised from the body politic, and still the British are supine"

Caroline, you make it all up. It has always been illegal to use more than "reasonable" force in resisting intruders; and it was 18948 that the law became more restrictive...why have you been asleep all these years ?

The airwaves are NOT free as you say. It is the modulation of a signal that is to be paid and it is not 'airwaves' but radio-waves we speak of.

Likewise you can catch rainwater free but to purifuy it for drinking and remove the effluent is not free.

The Proms are not a shop you visit to buy a Mars Bar but a major undertaking which you seem not to comprehend.

The simplistic manner in which you portray life, suggests you live in a Crofter's Cottage in the Outer Hebrides, or are just simply out of touch with the nature of living on a congested little island with a population density the US could replicate if it had another 2 billion people.

"The Human Embryo and Fertilisation Authority (or words to that effect), headed up by the hideous Baroness Warnecke! "

You did make it up !! Warnock has nothing to do with the HFEA, it was Ruth Deech and now Suzi Leather.....and just why do you want an unregulated market in genetic engineering ?!!!

"It's obscene. If the BBC has anything worth buying, people will buy it without coercion. But to behave as thought the BBC is some holy body entrusted with the faith of the British is absolutely revolting."

How do you pay for ITV Caroline ?

I object to buying a premium when I shop to subsidise ITV; I think advertising should be banned as it raises the price of financial services and products in the shops as a form of average costing.

Why should I pay a levy on goods I buy to subsidise a TV channel I never watch ?

......moreover the largest single advertiser in Britain is Her Majesty's Government using my taxes.

Caroline,

"Beefqueen - I don't respond to your posts because they are full of flouncy, overblown drama and hissy pretensions. For example, "your argument has fallen into intellectually devoid bunkum!" What the hell does that mean? (For god's sake, don't try to tell me!) No offence, Beefqueen, but I just can't be bothered and I'm not interested in your ancient arguments. The idea of a state broadcasting company is grim and I will never be persuaded that it is not also dangerous. I hate statism."

- Forgive me if I'm wrong, but I think the reason you are not prepared to respond to my arguments has less to do with my "flouncy, overblown drama and hissy pretensions" (pot and kettle, anyone?) than to do with the fact that you simply don't have the ability to respond in a sensible way to them. Res ipsa loquitur, Caroline.

Start commenting again on this site when you are able to defend your point of view.

Sorry, Beefqueen old girl, but these arguments are stale and dated and they've all been answered many, many, many, many times before. So you're not convinced. Who cares?

Romulus, you raise a good point and one I've never seen addressed before. I don't know. Perhaps don't buy anything you've seen advertised on TV? The choice, after all, is yours. It's not mandated by the government that you buy advertised items - the way it's mandated that you buy the services of the BBC.

But it's a good point.

Personally, I don't mind advertising. It's sometimes entertaining and it sometimes tells me about something new that I may want to buy, or gives me useful information such as price reductions, and so on. But don't you get irritated by the BBC's constant stream of commercials for itself?

Also, given the size of the marketplace, the premium you'd be paying on, say, a sixpack of beer, for the fact that that beer is advertised probably amounts to no more than 1/1000P. Or less. But that's not your point, I realise ...

Romulus,

Just a bit of good humoured nitpicking: In the context of drinking water not being free, I lived in Bermuda for 32 years - a place where there is no natural water supply. The rain is captured on rooftops and channeled into underground tanks whence it is then pumped up for domestic use. No purification is necessary and in all my time there I never heard of a single instance of a health problem.

Caroline,

"Sorry, Beefqueen old girl, but these arguments are stale and dated and they've all been answered many, many, many, many times before. So you're not convinced. Who cares?"

You are rude, abusive and nasty. At one point I would have been interested in your responses to my arguments. Still, you have proved to be too much of an intellectual lightweight to take part in this debate. Your loss.

Caroline -
"KJN - Yes, I can. Go to Biased BBC (it's either dot.com or dot.net - or you can go to www.samizdata.net/blog and then click on a link on the left hand column) and it's all there."

No it isn't. The link from Samizdata is to http://biased-bbc.blogspot.com/ which has nothing of relevance.

http://www.bbcbias.org/ has a relevant page, at http://www.bbcbias.org/html/news_110.html but provides even less detail than you. The sites www.bbcbias.com and www.bbcbias.net do not exist.

Please provide the detailed evidence or withdraw your lurid accusations.

I am sorry to read in your subsequent posts that you have such an appalling and generalised view of the supposed fecklessness of "single mothers"; and that you approve of "private armies". You could enjoy the company of likeminded people by going to live in, say, Sicily.

KJN - The Biased BBC blogspot and one other, whose name I cannot remember, are the two that give some idea of the internal hothouse of paranoia that is the BBC. You could consult Jonathan Miller's articles in The Sunday Times. I don't know whether The Sunday Times charges to get into the archives. However 'lurid' the facts I present, they were gathered from Jonathan Miller's columns and from those two blogspots. You might also Google Capita. It was voted the most intrusive company in Britain.

Baroness Warnecke used to be in charge of something to do with regulating people's private lives. So I'm not up on staff changes in quangoes. The names of the individuals is not my point. These organisations exist and they should not. Surely you cannot really passively agree to be governed by quangoes of unelected busybodies?

I don't care how big an undertaking the Proms are. People pay to get in their cars or get on trains and buses and go there and buy tickets. Those who wish to enjoy them at home can also pay to watch them. What is it about the free market that frightens you BBC protectors? Surely you don't think the BBC would fail if it set out its wares in the marketplace - it being so wonderful and all.

Anyway, I'm out of here. The debate has been going on for decades. Everyone's said everything there is to say.

Henry, did you empty your septic tank yourself ?

Caroline, so you want unregulated stem-cell research and unregulated genetic cloning ? The HFEA has a function to stop the mercenary from abusing human life, but you say "where's there brass, there's morality"

I think regulation is super; if we had had more and it had been enforced I should not have needed to fork out for BSE or Foot & Mouth which probably cost the taxpayer £20 billion + so a few people could indulge their laxity.

I suppose you want de-regulated nuclear facilities too ?

As for advertising, it is not pennies on products.....perfume is all advertising, the content cost is minimal. It is financial services which advertises incessantly; but they cannot pay out on Endowments or Pensions......as I said the Government is Britain's No1 advertiser esp on TV.......but those taxes are extracted 'voluntarily' are they Caroline ?

Romulus,

Get a grip!

BBC = essential service (like water, health , education?)???

Clearly NOT the case.

Should the BBC be funded as if it WERE an essential service on the basis of the mandatory licence fee? Clearly not.

Romulus,

The underground tanks to which I referred were purely for collecting water. I suppose we did have a septic tank but in all the years I lived there we never had to do anything about it. Strange that; I'll have to contact the people I know there and ask them about it!

"Romulus,

Get a grip!

BBC = essential service (like water, health , education?)???"

David, I never mentioned Health; and Education is not an essential service in any sense; it should be fee-paying and if you read my comment it was in response to Caroline who prefers to pay extra for financial services and groceries, and higher taxes, for the Government to finance ITV.

My point wa simply that the BBC has a TV levy on TV-ownership (not radios as in Germany) but ITV has a levy on the things we buy, a sort of sales tax. I merely highlighted the hypocrisy of her case, in that the only viable alternative to a licence fee is subscriber fees like SkyTV; but that without the licence-fee the cable/satellite operators will lack software as the BBC makes most of it.

I am sceptical on the licence-fee but I have made my suggestions to Tessa Jowell; and they are better thought-out than Caroline's, which lack clarity as to where the ITV stations obtain funding.

I object to paying hidden levies for broadcast TV; on Caroline's loic if the TV licence were abolished and it funded through VAT that would be okay, as it is in effect how ITV funds itself, through a sales tax levy

Caroline: 'Beefqueen - I don't respond to your posts because they are full of flouncy, overblown drama and hissy pretensions'.
I note that you've started using terms like 'drama queen' and 'hissy' to describe Beefqueen's comments since you discovered that Beefqueen was a he and not a she, Caroline. Do you always assume that gay men huff and flounce before posting? Personally I always find his arguments to be well-argued and often supported by accurate references, unlike yours and many of the posts on this site. Have you ever actually met any single mothers living on estates, as opposed to sneering at them in the street?

Romulus,

"David, I never mentioned Health; and Education..."

Sorry...my mistake - I confused your comments with someone else's on another thread (too much haste and not enough attention to detail on my part)!;-)

No problem David, I guess I won't need to get a 'grip' now ! Bit of an old-fashioned term for a doctor's bag isn't it ?

Romulus,

"No problem David, I guess I won't need to get a 'grip' now ! Bit of an old-fashioned term for a doctor's bag isn't it ?"

LOL! I refer you to the 'sanity fights back' thread for my response to your post on health services in Europe...we have digressed from broadcasting too much now to continue posting in this vein on this thread...

To get us back to broadcasting....

I've just checked out bbcbias.org. Is this site for real? It seems so much like a spoof.

If it is for real, I find the KGB analogy a mixture of imbecilic and repugnant. Please tell me it's all a (pretty poor) joke...

Firstly, the licence fee is not a poll tax. I recently got rid of my TV and no longer need to pay the fee. If you don't want to pay the fee, you can sell your TV or get around it in other ways e.g. use of a small handheld TV that is not subject to the licence fee.

Politics aside--I don't really think that the BBC is extremely biased one way or the other, but since most people here are probably more sensitive to political issues, you may detect it more--I am in favour of the licence fee precisely because funding an unaccountable body that does not need to appeal to the masses produces high quality, innovative programming that would not otherwise be produced.

With respect to the analogy of quangos that has been raised, I look on with horror at what has happened to the House of Lords. The Lords have done a fantastic job precisely because they do not need to pander to the public. Of course, there can be risks to lack of accountability, but if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Is not the real source of right-wing complaint that that BBC has to adjudicate matters in terms of "cold reason" whereas most right-wing beliefs are a matter of deep-felt instinct or intuition.

The BBC occupies a central position in a secular world in which "god is dead" and rational enquiry is the only way forward. Hence, its tendency to stand behind abstract principles of international law vis a vis Ireland, Iraq, Israel etc and its tendency to be sympathetic towards feminist and gay rights causes.

Right-wing beliefs tend to appeal to instinct and tradition (often for its own sake) and tend to get lost in the fray of a hegemonic Kantian, legalistic discourse.

The BBC cannot adjust its contours to the intuitive, traditional standpoint of many in the UK because that goes against everything it stands for. In other words, it can never embrace popularism as this would compromise its founding virtues of truth, objectivity and impartiality.

And thank god...

guy chambers

"In other words, [the BBC] can never embrace popularism as this would compromise its founding virtues of truth, objectivity and impartiality.

Greg Dyke seemed perfectly capable of embracing populism as he climbed on a table the other night to receive the clamorous applause of his ertwhile BBC colleagues, and, when he returned to his job as teaboy, struttting his stuff outside his drum the next day. But I suppose it's okay now that he's no longer part of the BBC ... and thank God (as you would put it).

Frank, the 'populism' of Greg Dyke acknowledging the support of BBC staff is a very different creature from the 'populism' that Guy refers to - the appeal to prejudice and gut feelings that characterises much of the press.

“With a few honourable exceptions, [the BBC] views the world through a prism of left-wing thinking: against America, against the nation state and against western moral values… The BBC has a duty to occupy the dispassionate centre ground. The problem, however, is that it has shifted that centre ground sharply to the left… Moreover, under [Greg Dyke’s] tenure the BBC further dumbed down as he ruthlessly played the ratings game… The solution is not to abandon the licence fee; commercial outfits such as Channel Four news can be even less objective…”

Melanie all too frequently demonises differing viewpoints as “leftwing”, but surely “the ratings game” and the consequent “dumbing down” (to which the BBC has indeed all too often succumbed) is a function of competitive imperatives, and thus of a rightwing premise? The ratings war, and all of the ills that follow on from that notion, are inherently rightwing ideas, yet Melanie seems mysteriously quiet on the political and social consequences of unmoderated commerce.

Rightwing free marketeers advocate the abolition of the BBC licence fee, in favour of anarchic atomisation and a commercial free-for-all. Yet, as she says, “commercial outfits can be even less objective.”

Many of the social changes that Melanie finds alarming (some of which I too find problematic) are actually the fallout of an individualist ‘free’ market catechism and the solipsistic thinking that results from a nation of ‘consumers’ rather than citizens. The capitalist Jerusalem is here and it is not without its horrors. But perhaps a rightwing bias is impossible to imagine…?

To describe the BBC as “against America” is, of course, a meaningless generalisation which confuses a geographical entity and its enormously diverse population with whatever political regime prevails at any given time. It also supposes that America is an unmoving political constant from which the BBC diverges, and that America’s current administration is somehow interchangeable with that of, say, Roosevelt.

One might note that Roosevelt once said, rather prophetically: “The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism –ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling power…”

It is, of course, inconceivable that George W Bush would offer a similar warning today.

There is much truth in what you say David Thompson, but let us look at Italy where Silvio Berlusconi controls the Private Media.........and through his political office controls RAI, Europe's second-biggest public broadcasting corporation..............

We can see how the masterful Berlusconi has brought his private-sector quality to bear on State TV ?

Anna

Are you certain that the whole is not the sum of it's parts and that the Dyke was not a seeping sewer, the effluence from which polluted the whole of it's landscape?

Romulus,

Well, I think Berlusconi's nasty little free market empire rather makes my point. Unmoderated capital can have enormously destructive social and political consequences, many of which Melanie finds alarming, even apocalyptic. Yet she repeatedly (and rather bizarrely) attributes such phenomena to "leftwing" ideology.

Melanie bemoans "libertinism", solipsistic demands for 'rights', moral vacuity and a shrinkage of social cohesion; yet these phenomena are primarily the result of the 'free' market mindset of the rightwing, and of the acausal infantilism that so often underpins it.

Rightwing market ideology has consistently (and conveniently) ignored the causal links between possession and dispossession; likewise the conflict between democratic ideals and unmoderated greed. (Berlusconi being a case in point.)

Yet the corrosive effects of this worldview go curiously unremarked. Indeed the harm is attributed to "leftwingers", many of whom may -ironically- share Melanie's concerns.

Frank:

"Are you certain that the whole is not the sum of it's (sic) parts and that the Dyke was not a seeping sewer, the effluence from which polluted the whole of it's (sic)landscape?"

Of all the preposterous suggestions I have read in this page, the idea that Greg Dyke is responsible for appeals to prejudice and gut feelings in the press is one of the most ludicrous.

Romulus,

Some further thoughts:

As I’ve said, Melanie frequently comments on the effects of unrestrained self-interest, and on actions by those who are indifferent to the consequences of those actions for others. From reproductive ‘rights’ to social fragmentation, this is a recurrent thread of Melanie’s writing.

But the insatiable egoistic appetite is a rightwing trait, as is the solipsistic worldview it tends to foster and legitimise. Indeed, from a philosophical point of view, it is the defining rightwing trait. The rightwing mind is governed by narrow self-interest and is typically averse to causal complexities, as such complexities tend to reveal the incoherence of rightwing philosophy (if such it can be called).

Thus Michael Howard’s ‘credo’, published in The Times, contains such logical absurdities as: “I do not believe that one person’s poverty is caused by another’s wealth.” Obviously, the interests of the shareholder are generally at odds with those of the consumer and those of the employee; this is the fundamental nature of an unmoderated (rightwing) market.

Mr Howard is, of course, free to ‘believe’ in acausal economics, along with elves and pixies.

Libertarianism is the most obvious and extreme example of this pathology. Despite all evidence to the contrary, libertarianism presumes that one person’s freedoms (for instance, the freedom to listen to loud music late at night) can never conflict with another person’s freedoms (for instance, the freedom to enjoy a good night’s sleep). With juvenile confidence, the libertarian imagines that his freedoms exist in some kind of causal vacuum. Libertarians cling to the delusion that basic moral principles (for example, trying to avoid doing harm to others) will never conflict with -or define limits to- one's personal degrees of freedom.

Unfortunately, in real life, one person’s freedoms very often press against the freedoms of other individuals. This inescapable interaction between competing desires is the realm of civil decency, and of morality itself.

Obviously, a contradiction arises in the rightwing psyche. The rightwing personality generally likes to think of itself as ‘decent’ and ‘traditional’; a bastion of civil standards and elevated discourse. Yet the rightwing economic model, now gone into global overdrive, undermines such ideas. The unmoderated market forces that were celebrated by Mrs Thatcher and lionised by her protégées are, in practical terms, anathema to notions of reciprocal decency and moral reflection. Instead, we arrive at a worldview that is brutal, opportunistic and unrestrained by moral expectations.

A more comprehensive examination of this contradiction can be found here: http://fp.ignatz.plus.com/false_profits.htm

Given Melanie’s obvious interest in moral issues, why, I wonder, does she repeatedly overlook the rightwing cause behind so many of the problems she identifies?

Again David Thompson, I see much merit in what you say. Howard's remarks are predicated on the word "caused" nothing more. In fact it is relative positions that matter which is why people speak of Pareto-Optimality where one person's improvement is not at the cost of another person's loss.

You are correct to my mind in pointing out that an individual optimising his own position imposes 'externalities' on others; it used to be the right of the mill-owner to pollute without regard to the washing on the line......but nowadays we lack factories, and pollution controls are strict.

The Government used to act as a market-regulator preventing the creatio of monopoly or of malpractice, but in recent years Government has evolved into a profit-maximising corporation seeking to lay off its citizens are recruit cheaper ones.

Almost on the lines of Berthold Brecht's coment on the 17th June 1953 in East Berlin: "The Government has lost faith in The People; time to elect a new People."

Melanie gets carried away and often fails to see internal contracdictions in her arguments; it is rare that people expounding such views think othat they might be the underdog, most tend to assume it is only natural they will be, and remain, top-dog.

Or as some disabled people say, you are only "temporarily able-bodied".

David Thomson,

Agree absolutely on the errosion by neo-liberal economics of the very moral foundations Melanie claims to cherrish.

Rather than constantly dismiss "the left" (I am constantly bemused as to who precicely she is refering to)she, perhaps, should engage properly with their lamentation of the demise of social solidarity.

The "postmodern" world she attacks - in which moral Truths are all but dead and each only operates to his or her advantage - is the perfect ideological accompliment to the triumph of the market and the defeat of socialism.

Guy,

The contradictions between 'free' market economics and conventional rightwing social morality are difficult to ignore, and seem impossible to resolve. Perhaps this is why Melanie and other ostensibly rightwing commentators confine their commentary to the social realm, abstracted from economic causes.

Which, of course, renders such commentary incoherent and all but meaningless.

The billionaire speculator and philanthropist George Soros is a particularly vivid example of this "postmodern" contradiction, and a comprehensive critique of his moral evasions can be found here: http://fp.ignatz.plus.com/questionofbelief.htm

Perhaps you'll find it of interest.

Lord Weidenfeld has an occasional column in Die Welt...and he knows Soros. He described him as portraying himself as a great humanitarian; but says Weidenfeld he does not like people, and prefers them in the abstract, being very cold in his interpersonal dealings.

Guy & Romulus,

Well, the contradiction between ‘neo-liberal’ (rightwing) economics and conventional social morality has a number of unhelpful consequences. One of which is the tendency of morally-inclined commentators to resort to double standards.

By way of example, on two occasions, my partner’s car has been broken into and the music system stolen. This violation of our property is, in the great scheme of things, relatively minor - though nonetheless aggravating and inconvenient. Doubtless, such routine criminality would be cited by many commentators (and perhaps by Melanie) as yet another example of our social decline.

Yet when parallel acts of violation take place on a much vaster and more serious scale –say, when Soros and other currency speculators topple entire far east economies, leaving tens of thousands homeless and stripped of their livelihoods – such violation is widely regarded as “just business.” Free marketeers generally sneer at any attempt to impose moral values on their activities as “naïve” or “sentimental”.

The perpetrators of this ‘free’ market violence are even hailed as “titans of finance” and inspirational figures. They are rich, and so we are expected to admire them as “successful”. They are the heroes of our new capitalist Jerusalem and we are expected to aspire to their condition.

And, one could argue, this is precisely what the small-time car thieves, benefit cheats and other petty criminals are doing: See it. Take it. To hell with everyone else… (Monkey see, monkey do.) The amoral egoism and disregard for others is identical; the difference is merely one of scale. (And, judging by the state of our car, perhaps finesse.)

Yet the small fry are pilloried as anti-social degenerates, while the most vicious predators (who certainly cannot claim poverty or ignorance as an excuse) are lionised.

As I said, a double standard.

David Thompson -

"Thus Michael Howard's 'credo', published in The Times, contains such logical absurdities as: 'I do not believe that one person's poverty is caused by another's wealth.' Obviously, the interests of the shareholder are generally at odds with those of the consumer and those of the employee; this is the fundamental nature of an unmoderated (rightwing) market."

I don't see the logical absurdity here. The shareholder, employee, and consumer all need each other. We no longer have mass unemployment in the UK, so even employees have choice about who they work for: the "hidden hand" helps us all. It is most unlikely that even Michael Howard believes in an unmoderated market, and moderation gives consumers and employees even more protection.

The example that you give in the longer article on your web site is particularly inappropriate. The housing market in the UK is indeed a major public scandal, but one thing it is not is an unmoderated market: it is heavily regulated by the planning system, which severely limits new building, thus causing an inadequate supply of housing and the problems that you mention.

Some excellent comments this evening. Great stuff.

To return to the inherent bias in the BBC (if such exists), the problem for the right is that the creative arts will always tend to attract those of a more socially liberal bent. This is in their nature. Artists tend to be progressive.

Take Jane Austen (whom some like to cite as conservative). Who reads Pride and Prejudice and sides with Lady Catherine de Burgh? That's the challenge for the 'right' or the 'socially conservative'. Make Catherine de Burgh attractive.

It used to be that Christian Faith provided a check on unlimited greed by imposing a moral standard. The people who built much of the industrial base were Nonconformist Baptists, Quakers, Congregationalists and Methodists with strong Faith which acted as a brake on sheer greed and produced Social Reformers like Shaftesbury.

Today we have an Advertising-driven Media which worships Money, and is enslaved to Materialism.

The housing market is fed by excessive credit. German house prices are at 1995 levels; Britain has household debt greater than the combined Eurozone........it is excessive credit creation and liquidity which has caused rampant house-price hyperinflation.

Building on every piece of land at will is a typical response to keeping credit booms going......in manufactured goods you build huge trade deficits as with Britain and the US.....in land you merely supply more for more houses then more credit to keep the spiral going.

The other way is to tax house profits with CGT or VAT and use the proceeds to subsidise lower cost housing for essential workers.

I find the idea of letting rapid expansion of the money supply feeding into house prices as the reason for building ever more houses amusing.......why not just control the money supply; or relax the bankruptcy laws so lenders do more credit risk assessment.

When the Crash comes it will be interesting to see in which postcodes people face the biggest collapse and negative equity

"Take Jane Austen (whom some like to cite as conservative). "

Writing just after the Napoleonic Wars and the excesses of the French Revolution, I think you can take it for-granted that Jane Austen was Tory rather than Whig, even though she could not vote.

KJN,

My point regarding Howard’s claim is (as outlined in my longer article) that, taken in broad terms, possession and dispossession cannot be neatly disentangled, however much one might wish that it were so.

Throughout the nineties, stock prices were rallied by news of redundancies and lagging wages. Conversely, news of even marginal wage increases undermined ‘market confidence’. One person’s dividends can often mean another person’s unemployment, or wage freeze, or firing and rehiring on a short-term basis with fewer benefits. There is no free lunch.

Howard’s eerily acausal claim is disingenuous. Shareholders, employees and consumers may be mutually dependent, but that doesn’t mean there is no conflict of interest, or gain by one party at another’s expense.

And Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” is widely misunderstood and often perversely applied. Smith’s model presupposed the existence of a social contract and reciprocal decency, rather than the predatory nihilism favoured by libertarian free marketeers. Smith also noted the unmoderated market’s inability to address moral issues. (“No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the greater part are poor and miserable…” Wealth of Nations, 1776.)

With regard to the housing market, which is arguably the most overt cause of social alienation (particularly as it rewards those that already have at the expense of those who do not), it is scarcely regulated in terms of social equity and need. And were the housing market ‘free’ of planning constraints, would a ‘free’ market really be an adequate means of fulfilling this most fundamental human requirement? Are we willing to walk through sprawling cardboard shanty towns housing the poor on our way to the shops, or the theatre?

There is also a conflict between the notion of housing as a means of rapid profiteering or nest-egg investment and the notion of housing as a fundamental requirement for all members of a so-called civilised society. The political aversion to challenging those who benefit from the explosion in house prices is also a significant factor in the scarcity of affordable housing.

Again, I would argue that the most pernicious and widespread influence on the socially marginalised is the acceptance of an amoral market paradigm as some universal panacea, a silver bullet for all ills. As I’ve said, do we want a ‘market democracy’ in which freedom and democracy are based exclusively on a person’s spending power -and in which those with little or no disposable income themselves become disposable?

And how does that brave new economic paradise sit with ideas of civil society and morality?

KJN,
To claim that very few people actually call for an entirely unregulated market seems to miss the point somewhat.
The problem is the underlying tension between the drive towards instrumentalism (the treatment of human beings as cogs in the attainment of an ever more efficient market system) and the sort of absolute moral commitments which were previously held up by the hegemony of religious belief systems. Morality becomes unhinged once (as Max Weber describes it) we loose sight of any substantive ends and become obsessed with efficiency and productivity for its own sake.

Now, whilst we cannot (and should not) return to a world in which we blindly follow religious doctrine - it does seem as if the left has the upper hand in at least trying to contextualise the alienation and disenfranchisement of individuals in the modern world within their socio-economic context.
The brighter conservative thinkers (eg Alastair Macintyre) at least acknowledge this debt and situate their demand for meaningful moral foundations against the prevailing tide of instrumentalism.

It seems difficult for self-proclaimed moralists such as Melanie Phillips to make any headway without at least identifying the ultimate drive behind a world in which money, celebrity and materialism are the only idols. Instead we only get such facile explanations as canabis use, pathological anti-semitism or sexual licence as lying behind our current state of moral decline.

The Government is in the same position as the 1834 Poor Law Reform in England. They want to be 'efficient' but that means starving people into work; yet if they provide any safety net they create a 'moral hazard'; on the other hand in an advanced society you cannot invest in training if the employment is unstable, because noone will invest in R&D or education/training unless the system is stable; then again the GOvernment thinks a pool of highly-trained unemployed will revtialise the economy as they spontaneously create new multinationals to employ the rest.

It is fantasy, but we have a fantasist 'leading' a group who think they can set planning targets in social policy and produce feedstock in human capital into a footloose market economy; but they increase the cost of labour here while allowing China to compete at 0% tariffs, thus defeating their object as they have no employment alternatives for the un- or semi-skilled and are going to watch a brain-drain to the US of others - - the public sector has been soaking up these people many on tax-credits which is why tax-revenues now fall as employment increases !

KJN misses the first rule of Property Development -

LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION

There are thousands of empty houses in Newcastle and Burnley and Bury.....but they have no impact on house prices in Tring or Potters Bar or Henley or Salisbury for some reason.

The only way to increase supply there is to seize larger properties and subdivide them into maisonettes; or to tax the individuals at say 10% Market Value each year in place of Council Tax so they sell them for flat conversion.

Take a large Victorian house I know - Business Rates are £24.000 pa when it is used as offices, but £2200 when used as a home; and it is probably worth £600.000.

The only way to do what KJN proposes is to increase housing-density in the Southeast and built more high-rise and ban so-called 'executive-homes' in favour of multi-family units. Time to recognise that the housing shortage is in the Southeast, as is traffic congestion; and they pay too little in property taxes to compensate for the costs being imposed.

Property is a unique product because it is fixed on land specific to one location.

Guy,

Melanie’s omission of the broader economic context and its social influence does seem to undermine her position as a soi-disant moralist. I occasionally agree with her choice of target, though rarely with her estimation of the underlying causes. As you say, shrill warnings about cannabis use or sexual preference seem misplaced and rather trivial when compared to the destructive behaviour of currency speculators and the moral autism of market gurus, whose reach is global and influence far greater.

(Indeed, when faced with an economic world in which piracy, predation and the wilful ruination of entire communities is routine, getting stoned may be a necessary relief from perpetual outrage and moral indignation…)

Perhaps newspaper moralists should be required to study global economics. And, I think it goes without saying that economists (who are, incidentally, overwhelmingly rightwing) should be required to study rudimentary moral philosophy.

Of course, the education market that this government finds so alluring will ultimately marginalise such philosophy even further, since it will offer no obvious “income premium” to those with an interest in moral ideas. And, according to market evangelists, optimising one’s income is the only conceivable function of education.

Which rather illustrates my point about the corrosive effects of the market mentality.

"I think it goes without saying that economists (who are, incidentally, overwhelmingly rightwing"

You must start to get out more David and move in wider circles. You are completely wrong on this: merely because the Media now calls in Economists from Banks rather than Universities for comment does not reflect reality; nor does your attempt to paint all economists into a corner; though nowadays few people seem interested in Thinking at all but prefer to follow the Sam Rayburn dictum: "to get along, go along"

Romulus,

Thanks for your concern about my inadequate social life.

I believe it was the Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz who pointed out the political bias among economists. (http://www.project-syndicate.org/home/home.php4)

Stiglitz also made the following observation, reported in The Guardian, December 20th, 2002:

"Among the more amusing results that have come out of experimental economics are those concerning altruism and selfishness. It appears that experimental subjects are not as selfish as economists have hypothesised, except for one group - the economists themselves. Is it because economics attracts individuals who are, by nature, more selfish, or is it because economics helps shape individuals, making them more selfish? The answer, almost certainly, is a little bit of both..."

David Thompson -

I am not arguing for planning constraints on quality to be removed, but that constraints on quantity are the source of most of the problems with the housing market in the UK. Of course I don't want to walk past a shanty town on the way to the shops; but I would like the people who serve me in those shops to have a wider choice of high-quality housing, including the possibility to buy their own home. The fact that a house is an investment as well as a place to live is a feature of the UK, and is not the case in all other capitalist countries. The way to reduce the attractiveness of housing as an investment is a large increase in supply over a period of several years. And, of course, as Romulus says, the supply has to be provided in the locations where there is a demand. Green-field development may be necessary.

If I were a large investor in shares, I would indeed look out for news of redundancies, wage levels, firing and rehiring: not so I could move my investments in the way you describe, but so I could move them out of companies whose employment policies reflect 19th-century attitudes rather than the needs of their business: companies who have the best grasp of the latter will perform the best in the medium term. If less far-sighted investors push the share price up whenever they hear news of redundancies, that is an even bigger reason for me to sell. Actually, since your examples are from the 1990s, perhaps that is because investors have become a little more sophisticated since then.

"possession and dispossession cannot be neatly disentangled"

The word "dispossession" is significant, since it implies theft, and also that the sum of things to be possessed is constant, which is not the case. If you believe that "property is theft", then you are a utopian who has not taken account of the strong constraints imposed on our behaviour by the fact that we are not abstract socio-political engines, but members of the species Homo sapiens.

Perhaps what you mean is "possession and non-possession cannot be neatly disentangled"; but it is also true that "possession by A and possession by B cannot be neatly disentangled", particularly if A is an employee of a company and B is a shareholder. All that's left is to argue about how to divide the spoils (and it is the employees who usually get the lion's share).

I agree with you wholeheartedly about the immorality of some of the situations that you describe. But it is notable that you are not proposing solutions to any of these problems - merely arguing that they are the result of "right wing" thinking.

Tell us your solutions.

Joseph Stiglitz is not to e taken as the arbiter of such things; he fell out with Michael Moussa at the IMF, but I defy you to label Amartya Sen.......I doubt you could name many academic economists; however, it was a sad time in the 1970s when people like Joan Robinson and Stuart Holland were espousing some of the wacko Left ideas.....you might tell me just how far Right you think Wynne Godley or Mirrlees are, and ignore Stiglitz' fishing into econometric models.

I think KJN you forget the herd instinct. If one company manufactures in China so must its competitors because the cost advantage is so great. Look at Glen Dimplex in Ireland which has to manufacture kettles in China; or Braun, Remington etc which all source in China.

There is no radio-manufacturer which can afford to maufacture outside China.....most handies now come from China.....it is no contest.

The Government used to lay down minimum standards but China can undercut them. If you impose a minimum wage in Britain, there are plenty of Chinese who will work for less fishing cockles in Morecambe Bay......perhaps the Minimum Wage has increased immigration to undercut it ?

KJN,

It’s heartening to hear that your own investment criteria would be more elevated and long-term than I suspect is the norm. Perhaps investors have become more sophisticated and morally perceptive in the last four years, though data to support that supposition is not, to the best of my knowledge, readily available. I am, however, open to correction.

Regarding possession and dispossession, I’m speaking in broad terms. As I said, one person’s share dividend is often another person’s unemployment or job insecurity. This is not invariably the case, though it very often is. As the Institute for Policy Studies neatly summarised: "CEOs of firms that announced layoffs of 1000 or more workers this year earned 80% more, on average, than executives at 365 top firms surveyed by Business Week...” Likewise, in 1997, George Soros famously converted the homes and livelihoods of Thai and Malaysian workers into his personal wealth. In this case, Soros’ possession does equate with the literal dispossession of the Thai and Malaysian workers.

Clearly, new technologies and gains in productivity can ‘create’ wealth, rather than simply relocate it. But this does not account for anything like the bulk of corporate wealth or stock market gains. Nor do gains in productivity correlate with wealth diffusion.

I’m not sure why you suppose I would believe “property is theft”. I’ve just been grumbling about having my car stereo stolen. Nor am I a utopian, not by any means. I do, however, suspect that there could be an alternative to the amoral resignation and sense of powerlessness that free market ‘inevitability’ tends to foster among politicians and the electorate as a whole.

I fear we’ve departed from the original topic of this thread, but possible solutions might include commentators making reference to the moral dimensions of economic practice, for which I’ve already argued.

Other options come to mind, including redressing the tax bias, which is currently in favour of unearned income over earned income (housing prices, again). Around 80% of the income of the very wealthiest Americans is unearned, in the sense that it is derived from stocks and other property ownership. This seems at odds with notions of ‘entrepreneurship’ and ‘rewarding hard work and innovation’. (Again, a rightwing double standard?)

I suppose I’m ultimately concerned with generating a more comprehensive commentary on socio-economic matters, particularly with regard to restoring a causal context. Surely this is a prerequisite for any informed modification? Perhaps then our society can work towards achieving a broadly civilised balance between individual desire and causal responsibility, or, if you prefer, between ego and conscience.

Anyone else have ideas?

"one person’s share dividend is often another person’s unemployment or job insecurity"

"unearned, in the sense that it is derived from stocks and other property ownership"

Sorry David Thompson, I disagree fundamentally at Crude Labour Theory of Value.

The rewards to shareholders are rewards to risk. Equity Capital is the riskiest finance available to a company, and dividends to shareholders are rentals on their risk capital.

Huge amounts of capital have been squandered in Eastern Europe and Africa because they never thought of risk or return; and to think in such old fashioned terms that only men digging coal are creating value is farcical.

The basis of Capitalism is Capital; and it is the basis upon which companies are created and services provided; and those who lend money expect a return rather than to be told they are not really 'working' for their money.

You have no concern for Life-Cycle Theory or Permanent Income Hypothesis that the aim of a human is to convert human capital over their lives into non-human capital so when they start of decline physically they have a stock of capital from which to live.......

Romulus,

Well, I did try to clarify my “old fashioned” terms, though you obviously disagree with them. Perhaps I didn’t make myself sufficiently clear. I note, however, that you didn’t disagree with the statement that “one person’s share dividend is often another’s unemployment or job insecurity.” Validating financiers and shareholders as legitimate, even necessary, does not alter the fact that a question of morality remains, as does a question of relative power between shareholder and employee.

Is a company simply a device for funding shareholders, irrespective of the social fallout, or does it have some broader value and social importance? And what kinds of business practice are acceptable to the conscientious investor? Put in rather crude terms, how many jobs is a dividend worth?

Yes, a return on a loan is customary, but I doubt that the expectation of interest is the central issue here. And I don’t presume that coal digging is the only definition of “real” work. (Why, I wonder, do you persist in polarising the issue? Whatever the intention, the effect of such polarisation is to exaggerate and misrepresent what is actually being said. It may make for combative exchanges, but it rarely advances the discussion in any meaningful way.)

From an investment point of view, does day trading constitute a morally justifiable action? Can it be justified as ‘investment’ in the broad sense of a mutually beneficial long-term arrangement, or is it merely opportunist profiteering? Can a company make any serious plans and investments of its own (in new technology and personnel, etc) if that fleeting ‘investment’ is likely to be withdrawn the next day? Or minutes later? How much long-term commitment is to be expected from the investor?

From the perspective of social morality, these strike me as relevant questions. I don’t have definite answers to many of them, but there is a moral dimension to whatever answers are arrived at.

Well David Thompson there is as I have said much I agree with in what you say. I am looking for precision in language so we know what we are agreed on, I am always wary lest it turns out someone has only a vague idea of what they mean.

I do not believe in Shareholder Value as a concept, but know it was derived to stop Managerialism where companies wasted Capital by undertaking luxury headquarters, or silly takeovers. We both agree it has not worked.

I just do not like the polemics of the term 'unearned income' and anyone trying to build up a business knows his start-up capital is so precious.

So, I am looking for accuracy and precision not woolyy thinking, so if I polarise as you put it, it is to force refinement of language.

Evening Standard shows how No10 is interfering already !

Now Caroline Thomson, the BBC's director of policy and legal affairs, has encouraged a debate on how the corporation is regulated. She questioned whether the governors can effectively supervise the BBC and protect its independence.

When Ms Thomson spoke with Peter Mandelson in July, it was reported this week, the former cabinet minister warned her that the whole apparatus of government would be thrown at the BBC if the corporation refused to back down over Gilligan's allegations.

Ms Thomson's husband Roger Liddle works in Downing Street's policy unit. And she will be in charge of the review process for the BBC charter, due for renewal in 2006.

Ms Thomson said: "We will have

After reading the fascinating and fact laden debate above with increasing interest, I've struggled to boil it down to what my simple mind can grasp. Is what you are all saying that there are two kinds of people in this world: those that work for money and those that make money work for them? And isn't it a fact that unless each of those groups injects a modicum of morality (just interaction) into the process, the interaction will foul up because the success of each group relies on human ingenuity, dynamism, honest dealing and fair access to natural resources? Back to truth and integrity, I guess, the least prevalent human attribute these days, it seems. Which could bring us back to the theme of the thread, if you so desire ... but if not, forgive me for interrupting, I'll just sit back and try to keep up.

Romulus

Sorry, seems you had already jerked us back on to the rails as I was typing!

Frank, our track is not straight, but the journey by the scenic route is much more interesting, and I doubt we shall be too late for a conclusion; and i suspect those who travelled on the express train to the terminus may well have missed out on the experience we can bring to our discussions

Romulus

The journey is far more important, particularly the scenic route as we all know what's waiting at the terminus ... or do we? No. don't answer that, the meandering will go on forever. Nonetheless, thanks to you, Keith, David Thompson, et al for allowing me to look through your windows on the world for an hours or so this morning; my mother, in her teens worked as a housemaid for John Maynard Kenynes after he had left the India Office and returned to Cambridge. In my teens she tried to encourage me to become an economist. After reading your exchanges this morning, I wished I had. On the other hand I probably had more fun as a copper, than I would have done studying "The Economic Consequences of Peace." - !!

Sounds good Frank, she was fortunate - he was certainly a polymath. The book to read is The General Theory - it reads as fluently as a novel, which is why he subsidised its publication with Macmillan (Harold Supermac) so it would be widely read.

Too many quote Keynes, too few read him.

guy chambers wrote: "It seems difficult for self-proclaimed moralists such as Melanie Phillips to make any headway without at least identifying the ultimate drive behind a world in which money, celebrity and materialism are the only idols."

I don't think that you have read any of Melanie Phillips' books. She is as harsh on Thatcherism and the unregulated "free-market" religion as she is on "progressivism." Try starting with "All Must Have Prizes" before commenting.

Funny how you complained upthread about "The Left" being stereotyped as monolithic, while engaging in the same kind of behavior yourself.

Susan,

I have never stereotyped the right as being monolithic. In fact, I have been trying to unravel some of the contradictions underlying right-wing thinking in terms of its diametric pull towards both social conservatism and economic liberalism. The many strands of right wing thinking are caught within this paradox.

My worry is that these strands cannot be reconciled given the tendancy for the irresponsible values engendered by economic liberalism to colonise all aspects of life.

BTW - If Melanie is so concerned about the disasterous consequences of Thatcherism upon social solidarity (eg mining communities) then I've seen no evidence in her journalism or web posts. It obviously doesnt not bother her too much.

Furthermore, I don't see any evidence of Melanie treating the "left" as anything other than a strawman - relating not to any individual, group or movement. Instead, we get some paranoid conspiracy theory about "left-wing" hegemony. Not too far from Frank Pulley's incredulous tales about "Gramscian's under the bed".

Sorry to those who think that this thread has deviated somewhat but is does seem as though some of the ludicrous strands of opinion underlying the debate need to be challenged.

"BTW - If Melanie is so concerned about the disasterous consequences of Thatcherism upon social solidarity (eg mining communities) then I've seen no evidence in her journalism or web posts. It obviously doesnt not bother her too much."

Okay, a long-winded way of admitting that you haven't read much of her work.

"In fact, I have been trying to unravel some of the contradictions underlying right-wing thinking in terms of its diametric pull towards both social conservatism and economic liberalism."

You could just as easily try to unravel the contradictions underlying left-wing thinking and its diametric pull towards both extreme statist control of economic activity and extreme social liberalism.

No point in bothering Susan, it is phasing. Soviet Communism combined State control of thev economy with a rigidly conservative social policy under Stalin and Brezhnev.

David Blunkett as Leader of Sheffield (Soviet) Council was a Loony Leftie but given a reverse-polarity re-wire by Tony he wants to be Judge Dredd. Yet he proves incometent at dealing with asylum cases, and bizarre on drugs: the simple fact is that he is incompetent.

There is no ideology, that is the point...it is the exercise of power and prejudice, not a coherent body of thought on Left or Right....it merely optimises the one thing they want above all, and comprises on the rest so long as they have power.

Thatcherism deconstructed society and its supporting pillars; Blairism is using the centralised power to pursue your own goals and ignore the rest.

Romulus

“There is no ideology, that is the point...it is the exercise of power and prejudice, not a coherent body of thought on Left or Right....it merely optimises the one thing they want above all, and comprises on the rest so long as they have power.
Thatcherism deconstructed society and its supporting pillars; Blairism is using the centralised power to pursue your own goals and ignore the rest”

That may or may not so, but to return to the theme of this thread and the BBC’s autocratic role in any of the politics, either to the right or to the left: what of its manifest determination to feed the hoi polloi with overt or, more often subliminal, political messages through the whole gamut of it’s ‘entertainment’ output, and to apply culturally destructive leftist bias through it’s news and current affairs programme? So much so that the government placemen at the top of the Corporation turned on the very people who appointed them, because their mentors were seriously straying from the ‘road map’ they had been handed when they were appointed and because they didn’t much like the diversions set up by Blair and his cronies, or so it seems.

It is unnecessary to impose leftist policies through the Parliamentary process, if it can be achieved through a propaganda agency that imposes it stealthily under its own volition, even to the point where it will steamroller over the PM because he has developed his own quirky agenda of supporting 'The Great Satan' and stopped taking orders from the Gramscian puppeteers behind the government.

Guy Chambers

“Not too far from Frank Pulley's incredulous tales about "Gramscian's under the bed".

Though I hate pedantry, I must ask you to clarify whether you mean ‘incredulous’ or incredible. Because I believe the ‘tales.’ If you don’t – your prerogative! But then is not incredible is the word? Moreover I would say that the Gramscians are in the bed, not under it and we're all being screwed by them in every orifice.

Having recently read some of the late Antonio Gramsci’s advice to his students, I think that it’s more than likely that his philosophy of striving for cultural leftist hegemony, rather than the more difficult economic undermining of capitalism, is being implemented in many institutions that were once the pillars of British society and in some of which I once served. I see it vividly and hear it loud and clear in the BBC’s output. And it now seems that have succeeded to a great degree because in the recent punch up between the BBC and the government, a majority of punters are reported to have stated that they prefer the unelected BBC to the government they elected.

Thatcherism (or Friedmanism as it was once called before Maggie hi-jacked it) didn't deconstruct society. Maggie fearlessly challenged the leftist drift and wiped out the subversion of the communist moles who had captured the trades' union movement. It took the traitors in her own party to get her in the end. Hence the return to the drift, with Blair purporting to use some of her economic polices as camouflage. Now it seems he's become entangled in his own camouflage and the rest are going to proceed without him. And the BBC prevails, as evidenced by their defiant output over the past few days despite the Hutton Report.

TV licence rules are so unfair

SIR - My friend lives in a flat on Swain House and only pays £5 a year for her TV licence because they have a warden, so I'm told. I understand some people in the flats are under 60 and at least one person works full time.

I am 70, the same age as my friend, on income support, live in a bungalow for the elderly and disabled, and have to pay £116.

There are hundreds like me and I feel it's time the government made all pensioners alike.

The elderly mainly use the TV because most live alone, and it's company. The age doesn't matter, as we all get lonely.

Eleanor Dean, Highfield Grove, Bradford.

l EDITOR'S NOTE: The rules state that people over 60 living in sheltered accommodation are entitled to pay only £5 a year towards the cost of a TV licence, while all people over 75 should receive their licence free of charge. It could be that Mrs Dean's bungalow, while being for the elderly and disabled, is not classified as being "sheltered". However, if Mrs Dean believes she is paying too much she should contact either Age Concern

Frank,

There does seem to be concerted effort afoot to ridicule, discredit and sneer at nearly every bit of cement that once held our society together: charity workers; Christians and Christianity; police; married people; chaste people; child-rearers; sober people; the middle-classes; and on and on. To say that "economic liberalism" is responsible for the disintegration of this type of social cement rings pretty hollow to those of us who remember a cultural different era, if however dimly.

A few weeks ago my husband and I showed up for a Saturday morning volunteer project to help maintain one of our public nature parks. I was amazed to see that almost all the volunteers were people in their 60s and 70s -- in other words, the pre-1968 generation. My husband and I - and some Chinese immigrants who obviously didn't grow up in the West -- were the only ones from the "Sex Drugs and Rock 'n Roll" generation to show up.

I fear the day when the pre-1968 generation dies off. Then the West will be held even more hostage to the '68ers and their cynical and damaged children and grandchildren.

The two words can be used synonomously Frank. Read your Shakespeare.

I don't know where to begin with your claims that the BBC now occupies centre stage in achieving some sort of Communist hegemony. I'm sure Gramsci would be extremely disapointed that such an innocuous and rather dull institution had been accorded such a task.

I'm not sure of the precise sense in which you think the BBC is Gramscian. Is it trying to encourage the democratisation of the means of production? Is it building a mass revolutionary movement? The BBC I watch decries even the mildest leaning towards nationalisation or progressive taxation as "Old Labour" and thinks that politics exclusively means the Westminster village.

Gramsci was a revolutionary, who famously compared reformist politics to a bowl of soup in which flies drown once they are attracked to its aroma.

If you're thinking about moral subversiveness then (a) the BBC seems far more restrained than its commercial competitors and (b) this has nothing to so with the advancement of the left. More to do with feeding the entrepenurial spirit of capitalism which tries to satisfy every conceiveable fetish and perversion. I'm sure Marx did not envisage the revolution taking place off the back of sex, drugs and rock 'n roll.

"Thatcherism (or Friedmanism as it was once called before Maggie hi-jacked it) didn't deconstruct society."

Who said "there is no such thing as society" ?

The name eludes me.

Susan,

Glad to see you have a grasp of the different strands of left-wing thinking, unlike Melanie. I would add further dimensions of social conservatism (the "old labour" vote) and anti-statism (the anti-globilisation anarchist types). They are torn in all sorts of directions.

No, I haven't read any of Melanies books but I have been studying her columns for some time now with fascination and disbelief.

guy,

I sort-of gathered from your posts that you were not here for any true attempt to understand what Melanie or anyone else is talking about.

I gather you think we here are more like a trip to the zoo that you can snigger about later on with friends in Islington.

Let me rain on your parade - I do not think the BBC staff have a master-plan to demolish the core values of our society - I do not believe there is any coordinated effort Frank, Gramsci or Dutschke or whatever.

I think there has been a crop of Guardianistas who recruit in like image, and after a while the Birtists and their ilke have eradicated diversity and lateral thinkers from the organisation, so 'creatives' are outside the organisation, then a monolithic culture of conformity creeps in and you try to fit in with the guy one rung higher on the ladder to keep your short-term contract in the renewal box.

Birt shredded the structure and created a managerialist system which required conformity, but in a sort of technocratic manner rather than espousing any strategy.....he was the man obsessed with 'digital' but forgot that this was transmission technology not content; hardware not sofware.

So the organisation lost any variance or diversity and could not allow programme autonomy; so in place of a mix of producers or editors, you ended up with a new generation loyal to career and hierarchy, rather than anarchy and creativity.

I really think the organisation is a very unhappy place, has been for years; I do not see some great hydra plotting to take over the minds of the children of the nation........it is a sad and neurotic shell where once there was a creative organisation proud to innovate and experiment......now it is dull conformity and short-term contracts

"More to do with feeding the entrepenurial spirit of capitalism which tries to satisfy every conceiveable fetish and perversion. I'm sure Marx did not envisage the revolution taking place off the back of sex, drugs and rock 'n roll."

no, sorry guy, you are quite wrong. I lived through the era of the Great Social revolution of the 1960s and 70s, and it certainly wasn't "the capitalists" who were urging everyone to turn on and tune out. After the revolution was well on its way, a few smart folks like the Rolling Stones and most of the entertainment industry decided to make money off of it, that is all. Yes, I am sure that Marx did not envision that happening but then Marx got quite a few things wrong, didn't he?

The Left never wants to deal with its own shit, that is the gist of what I am getting from your posts. This is not news to me. Just ignore the wreckage and move on to the next fad, the next fashion, the next opportunity for social engineering.

Rom, I wasn't talking about the BBC specifically in my post above. I was talking about the general drift of most of the media and academic institutions in the West.

It always amazed me in the GDR that every town had a cinema - Karl Marx Lichtspielhaus - I thought this was so strange for an author like Marx to own a chain of movie-theatres like Loews of General Cinema........still it was a shrewd investment !

BTW Rom, I noticed from the Torygraph the other day that there are moves afoot to free Maxine Carr. Weren't you and Caroline telling me only a couple of months ago or so that it would never happen?

Susan,
I think you're being disrespectful towards Zoo animals.

BTW I've never been to Islington. A Northern lad born and bred.

tsk, tsk,

guy. Where is that love for your fellow man and "cultural diversity" so beloved of the Guardianistas?

Someone's got to wrap this up, and what better way than with a showbiz-style awards ceremony. With all the popular culture fanfare and tabloid razzmatazz that goes with it. Are you ready ? I said: ARE YOU READY ? (crowd driven to a frenzy)

Most said in the fewest words: David

Most eloquent and correct arguments: Caroline

Greatest use of non-arguments: BeefQueen

Most intelligent comments: guy chambers

Least coherent evidence-based arguments: Romulus

So that's how it goes. As far as I can tell, we're going to have to give £2,600 million p.a. of our money to David and Caroline from now on. I say we should let them run a public service broadcasting cartel, if we have to have one. They've demonstrated that they can be trusted to be accurate, and that's good enough for me.

We may have to send some poor people to jail for not being able to finance this plan, but if you can't victimise the defenceless, then you don't deserve any respect, not in my book anyway.

Susan

"Rom, I wasn't talking about the BBC specifically in my post above. I was talking about the general drift of most of the media and academic institutions in the West."

Forgive me for interjecting in your exchange with Rom, but I too was addressing the TV media output generally, it was just that the BBC happens to be in the barrel this week and that's mainly why I focused on it in my posts. Until recently, it was a stanchion for my sanity, now it's a constant challenge to it.

And there is something else: ITV has no public institutional status like the BBC, which has always been there in my lifetime and is an establishment organ, though of course it purports to be apolitical - apartypolitical, anyway.

ITV is an upstart whore in my book and always will be, so I doubt that anybody expects to take any moral sustenance from it, just a quick bang for bucks. It's only a bit of telly, as they say in the trade. And, as has been pointed out by many on this thread, we aren't compelled to fund it under threat of legal sanctions if we refuse. The BBC however is still generally held in high regard, so subliminal leftist propaganda is likely to be more successful from this source, unless it is challenged every time a presenter or a programme tries it on.

You say:
"The Left never wants to deal with its own shit, that is the gist of what I am getting from your posts. This is not news to me. Just ignore the wreckage and move on to the next fad, the next fashion, the next opportunity for social engineering."

Couldn't agree more. And during my work in Notting Hill, during the 60s particularly, then progressively onwards in many other places I came across deep-rooted left wing subversive political activity that was being funded by criminals and in return providing political back-up for certain sections of the criminal fraternity as a quid pro-quo, particularly in the field of drugs, vice and racial agitation.

Notting Hill in that era was a hotbed of subversive political ferment through the complete spectrum from fascist to extreme left - and anarchist cells too.

Underground pamphleteering was at it's peak and during raids on various criminal enclaves we often seized literature that laid out the aims and objectives of numerous communistic cells that were funded from sino-soviet sources or militant US Black Power groups. Some of the stuff I read and passed on the Special Branch clearly indicated that cultural revolution was being planned through infiltration of government at both central and local level and all establishment institutions, such as the civil service, universities and schools, the police, etc.

Part of the creed was that marriage, sexual mores and all cultural givens of the period were to be challenged and ridiculed. Planned race riots were another ploy. To be honest, I found it risible at the time as it seemed unlikely that Britain, England in particular, would stand for any of it and that the nonsense would dissipate as soon as the Westway Extension was finished and the squats were once again occupied by respectable tenants. My complacency was misplaced given developments since then. If someone had told me at that time that Jack Straw, Peter Hain, John Reid and Ian McCartney would, by the turn of the century be Cabinet Ministers, I would have guffawed and probably chocked on my pint.

Anyway police and government cannot intervene in militant political actiivity unless it contravenes the laws of subversion, which are hardly ever enforced because subversion is difficult to prove, unless an unlawful militia attempts a putsch. Otherwise all democratic opposition to government would be impossible. Perhaps you can correct me if I'm wrong but even the IRA was never dealt with for subversion or sedition, individuals were inevitably dealt with for violent crimes or conspiracy to murder, etc. or special statutes applicable only to the Irish 'troubles'.

Now, many of the people who occupied those enclaves in the squats of the late 60s are in place in government and the institutions as planned and many of their objectives already achieved. And I have watched the the plan emerging according to the blueprints that I saw in the mid to late '60s.

Guy's remark about Thatcher and "There is no such thing as Society" is out of context. It is easy to point out inconsistences in the behavioural patterns of politicians and the BBC and the overweeing ambition that runs through the whole circus as an indication that there is no master plan. But if the the hearts and minds of the young in schools and universities are being bombarded with leftist propaganda; if 'politically correct' dictates are being enforced in all areas of public life and the media has been infiltrated by those who embraced the leftist cultural revolutionary ideology that was rampant in the sixties and has simmered beneath the surface ever since, then a modified form of communism is on the cards one day. Particularly if and when a majority becomes brainwashed. Now that may be regarded by some as a valid and peaceful democratic cultural revolution. And I may be dead by the time it is fully achieved. But for those of you who are likely to still be around when the 'Gramscian' phiosophy of a new order of leftist international cultural hegomony comes to pass, then think of me when orders are barked at you from the European Socialist Republic's Broadcasting Secretariat loud hailers and England is no more.

As for Shakespeares use of incredible and incredulous, Guy, methinks the gentleman doth protest too much and I'm only credulous when it comes to Gramscian conspiracies. Perhaps I should consult Dot Wordsworth. As I said, I wasn't really being picky and I hate pedantry (particularly when BeefQueen picks me up on typo apostrophes in an attempt to detract from the gist of my posts ). I just wanted to be clear about what you meant.

"BTW Rom, I noticed from the Torygraph the other day that there are moves afoot to free Maxine Carr. Weren't you and Caroline telling me only a couple of months ago or so that it would never happen?

Posted by: Susan at February 7, 2004 09:00 PM "

No Susan, I do not believe I did. My comments were probably restricted to Ian Huntley; I very much doubt Maxine Carr was found guilty of any crime for which incarceration required any long sentence......or do you disagree ?

Romulous/Susan

Didn't Blunkett recently change the rules so that he could block Carr's release under a tagging scheme? There was a hoo-hah about it a couple of weeks ago. It will be interesting to see whether he will overrule the prison governor, given that flurry of fury. He does tend to talk hard but act soft. It might be a good idea to release her into psychiatric care, given that she stuck with Huntley despite his 9 or 10 (known) escapades in Humberside, prior to decamping to Cambridgeshire and changing his name. She's not as naive, but more wicked than she pretends, I fear, but who would want her life from hereon, in or out of stir; with or without a tag. Perhaps if she takes up Christianity she can eventually be redeemed and then apply for selection by her local Conservative Party?

Frank, don't bracket me with Susan on this. I couldn't care less about Maxine Carr...she can do whatever she wants...just don't ask me to pay for it......Blunkett is such an incompetent he should be visiting his Cabinet colleagues in jail, never mind telling prison governors what they should do

Romulus

Didn't really mean to bracket you, just addressing both at once. Can't argue with the rest of your post.

It seems difficult to reconcile Frank Pulley’s view of the BBC “striving for cultural leftist hegemony” with a contemporary world that appears overwhelmingly driven by market forces, gravitational capitalism and solipsistic individualism. Whatever the BBC’s faults (and I don’t doubt there have been many, particularly in recent months), a leftist striving doesn’t seem particularly evident to me.

One might, for instance, tune in to Radio 4’s “Money Box” programme and listen with disbelief as callers are given tactical advice on tax avoidance of the most questionable kind, or marvel at a programme devoted to exploiting the house price explosion, conveniently devoid of any broader historical and causal context, and thus devoid of any moral considerations.

Elsewhere in this thread, the phrase “social engineering” is used, pejoratively, to describe “leftist” ideas. This association of “social engineering” with “the left” is commonplace; though why attempts to give structure (of whatever kind) to society should be exclusively “leftist”, or viewed pejoratively, remains oddly ill-defined.

The social and legal infrastructure on which all western societies depend is the result of “social engineering.” And of that infrastructure, I suspect only a small percentage could be construed as “leftist” or anathema to capitalism; though it might be construed as anathema to hardcore free marketeers with eugenic sensibilities.

The “economic undermining of capitalism” seems an unlikely outcome of any BBC conspiracy, however dark and mysterious one’s view of the BBC might be. Surely a more likely cause of widespread disaffection with capitalism, in the sense of the unrestrained market as universal panacea, would be the practical consequences of unchecked atomised self-interest and the solipsistic worldview that such a model would foster among the population?

David Thompson, the real gem is that You & Yours on Radio 4 where whiners get a whole 60 minutes to unload their obessions......and a toll-free number......i think that is the only BBC programme with an 0800 number and I wonder why.

Whatever task the BBC thinks Gramsci set it has not worked, because with The Simpsons and other high-brow comment on Sky and Channel 5 with soul-uplifting fare the great BRitish public has stuck to Mozart and SHakespeare and resisted the plunge downmarket into Consumerist Dystopia

You seem very optimistic Romulus. I wish this were the case. We live in an age in which classical masterpieces are reduced to 3 minute snippets on "The Greatest Classical Album in the World ever" and in which the only classical artists to gain any genuine commercial success are those whom flaunt their cleavage on their album covers (e.g. Bond).

I take your point that Sky One takes the lead in high-brow comment via the Simpsons and that Channel 5 is producing some pretty good stuff. Surely it would be decent if the Beeb scrapped its "dumbed down" material and went back to unpopular but worthwhile public service material. Better than privatising it.

Leave the dirge to ITV and Men and Motors.

David,
The lack of historical context in the BBC seems particularly prevalent in relation to international affairs. As I've posted on before, the coverage of the Middle East focuses so much on individual "events" to the extent that the majority of the British public simply treat the conflict as mad people blowing each other up for no good reason (see the research by the Glasgow Media Group on the issue).

On "social engineering" - I take anybody who raises this term pejoratively to deny any societal role for forging decent, moral human beings. Social institutions (whether it be communities, religious institutions, families etc) have an immensely important role in developing qualities in people that allow them to engage in the world as fully developed members of society.

David Thompson

I'm not saying that you are, but if you were a Gramscian gremlin you could use those arguments to camouflage the revolutionary cultural hegomony that is already underway.

What I'm worried about is what will replace Capitalism when it collapses, as it has almost done in the past and may well do completely before too long. It seems to me that the New Socialism placemen are already in position, many having telegraphed their intentions in the Sixties, and the BBC has more than it's fair share of the moles, because of it's potential as an organ of propaganda. As for the admittedly excellent output from some areas of the BBC, well, in any poison sandwich, the bread and butter looks and tastes fine. No one would bite into it if it didn't. It's the arsenic inside the lettuce that gets ya!

Guy, I'm afraid I was being ironic, though it might have appeared sarcastic about the British public.

Actually Frank, I thought the Millennium such a joke...they failed to think of 1900, and the wonderful new vistas the century offered......Stalin was just 21 years old, Lenin 30 years old, Adolf Hitler just 11 years old, Mao Tse-Tung just 7 years old......as the new century dawned and just 14 years later the world's biggest war broke out until it was superseded by yet another 25 years later.........

The Twentieth Century had all the major actors alive at the turn of the century ready to plunge expectations and destroy optimistic forecasts.......just what lies lurking in the woodwork ready to burst onto the scene......frankly, I don't think bin Laden is it......something much bigger awaits us; possibly the passing of US power and a new 'multipolar' world of regional wars, some nuclear, some not.

Frank & Guy,

I wouldn’t regard myself as a gremlin (of any unshakeable persuasion), though I’ll remember to note the difference between lettuce and arsenic, metaphorically speaking. I don’t think anyone here is advocating a return to more primitive modes of existence, except perhaps the libertarians.

I do, however, suspect that there are a significant number of morally perceptive people with no arch political agenda and no reflexive axe to grind, who nonetheless find the moral and practical ramifications of a ‘market democracy’ (on which we seem hell-bent) appalling.

The growing disaffection with global capitalism is, I think, in large part a reaction to the excesses (and inherent tendency toward excess) of capital when left unchecked by customary ideas of reciprocal decency. As I said in an earlier post, Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” presupposed the existence of a social and moral framework which would counterbalance such excess.

Capitalism is, generally speaking, an enormous improvement on what went before; but its merits depend upon a social infrastructure that appears to be being corroded by unchecked avarice and a lionisation of ego over conscience. To quote the former city trader and author Michael Lewis: "People who work in financial markets do not suffer constraints on their private ambitions..." (One might note that Lewis is the author of Liar’s Poker, a tale of “his own rake’s progress through the jungle of a powerful investment bank.” For those unfamiliar with the term, liar's poker is a game played in idle moments by workers on Wall Street, the objective of which is to reward trickery and deceit.)

We seem to have arrived at a point where market dynamics and competitive imperatives have, in many instances, overridden basic civil norms in influence and importance. The broader social context is often being subtracted from the economic equation, narrowing the frame of reference and distorting judgements of “efficiency” and value. The outsourcing of first blue-collar, and now white-collar jobs to India, then most likely Africa, come to mind as problematic measures. Capital is now free to move instantaneously, but people are not. Likewise, sufficiently large corporations can now claim the legal protections of individuals, but with few of the associated liabilities. Again, a double standard?

To use a physics metaphor, capitalism is gravitational in nature, in the sense that the more capital you have, the more tends to accrete, ultimately giving one enough ‘mass’ to distort the playing field on which transactions take place. One can rewrite the rules to suit one’s position of advantage and eliminate alternatives. In practice, this can mean privatising the profits while socialising the costs (which may be environmental, political or in terms of social upheaval). In effect, a double standard arises, along with an amoral and insatiable predation. And double standards are corrosive to notions of civil equity and justice; hence the disaffection and feeling of regression.

In order to compete effectively in an increasingly predatory marketplace, companies very often have to disregard customary standards of behaviour as “inefficient”. (Economies of scale will tend to disadvantage any “ethically guided” alternative in the marketplace.) If the behaviour of many trans-national companies were translated into one-to-one interpersonal terms, this behaviour would widely be considered rude, immoral, even obscene.

Again, as I’ve posted earlier, if financial success is the overriding barometer of aspiration and merit, indeed if it is the only yardstick that matters, surely the means by which such success is achieved is of no importance. And therein lies the rub.

David Thompson.....that is an excellent posting !