BBC - BETRAYAL OF PUBLIC SECTOR BROADCASTING

One shocking fact to have emerged
from Lord Patten at his appearance
before a Commons Select Committee
was his disclosure that having
sanctioned the payment of £180,000
to a headhunter to replace Mark
Thompson, the BBC Trust then
appointed the Deputy Director
General, George Entwhistle to the
post.

It is entirely appropriate that the
Metropolitan Police should look
into the obscene amount that he was
paid after his brief and disastrous
tenure, together with the manner in
which eye-watering amounts of
licence-fee money were similarly
squandered on departing senior
figures.

This revelation should be viewed
within the context of the deteriorating
quality of programmes. It should also
be considered against the background
that, in the past year alone, some three
thousand people a week are reported
to have come before the courts for the
non-payment of the TV licence fee.

The penalty can be a fine of £1,000 and
possibly imprisonment. Some will, of
course, refuse to pay because they feel
that the BBC is merely the propaganda
arm of the Labour Party and some will
simply not have the money. Then there
will be those who look at the TV
schedules - eighteen repeats today alone
- and come to the conclusion that the
£3.56bn the BBC receives annually
from the licence fee represents
increasingly poor value for money.

We need only look at the still unfolding
Savile scandal to realise that the
corporation's travails are a powerful
metaphor for incompetence, profligacy,
corruption and worse. It is a great
institution that has lost its way.

The BBC appears to have all but
abandoned its role, as Lord Reith
intended :an impartial public-service
broadcaster, educating and enriching
the fabric of our changing society.
Instead, it has become a number of
disfunctional and unaccountable
fiefdoms, contemptuous of any
criticism with regard to how it spends
public money in competing with the
commercial media in a pointless
ratings' war.

The recent appointment from a
shortlist of one of former Labour
cabinet minister, James Purnell, as
head of digital and strategy,
underlines the BBC's admitted
left-wing bias. Westminster watchers
will remember that he was
responsible for Labour's last
election campaign. His undoubted
talents will, no doubt, be used in
attempting to secure victory for Ed
Miliband in 2015.

Mr Purnell's annual salary of
£295,000 will come from the BBC's
compulsory levy on over two
thousand licence-fee payers. This
does not take into account a
generous, two-year salary pay-off,
should he decide to leave for
whatever reason.

As we have seen from other
examples, this is only the tip of the
iceberg with the upper echelons of
a self-serving senior management
safeguarding its own interests, not
those of the licence-fee paying public.

 

 

 

 

FEMINISM AND THE MALE IDENTITY

Baroness Lane-Fox, the new recruit to
the House of Lords, is right to fear that
the focus on Twitter is diverting
attention away from violence against
women.

However, in focusing on the effect of
aggression by some men against women
- the baroness does not mention that
twenty per-cent of domestic violence
is committed by women - she ignores
probable cause: growing male
emasculation and frustration.    

Feminism has and continues to re-define
the identities of young, mainly working-
class men. In doing so, middle-class
followers of the feminist movement
have successfully skewed society to
reflect their own, continuing, anti-male
agenda. Endemic since the 1980s, it is
a process that has been given added
impetus by accelerating economic
and social change. It has happened at
a time when Britain has been
transformed from an industrial to
a mainly service economy, where
different, 'soft' skills are in increasing
demand.

The result has been the greater
empowerment of women in the
workplace over the past fifty years.
They have benefited from improved
educational opportunities and the
ability to control their fertility. It has
meant growing financial independence
from men, not only for those in work,
but also for young, single mothers who
have been prioritised for housing and
receive attractive state benefits.

Along with this has been the changing
perception of what is meant by a
nuclear family. It is a complex and
fluid picture. Marriage continues
to decline with 42% of marriages
ending in divorce.

Serial monogamy and cohabitation
between single-sex couples are
common. Gone is much of the
stability and certainty of family life
in the 1950s.

In its place are more fragmented
environments, often devoid of the
influence of paternal role models,
which are so important in the
development of the male identity.

Feminist opinion-formers in
politics, education, the law and
especially in the media are not
seeking a comapact between the
sexes, but female preferment, in
the form of positive discrimination.

The impact of the corrosive influence
that the feminist lobby has had on
female attitudes to men has been
profound.

In education, where only 12% of
primary school teachers are male,
the predominantly female culture
cannot, nor in many cases would
it seek to, encourage the
development of the male identity
as such.

Female characteristics are seen as
good, male as bad. Many male
graduates are put off teaching
by the threat of being falsely
accused of improper behaviour,
the consequences of which are
often devastating.

Gender bias continues into
secondary education. Some ten
years' ago, Jenny Murray, presenter
of the BBC Woman's Hour, asked
a guest why boys outperformed girls
in GCSEs. She was told that boys
responded better to the pressure of
an examination, whereas girls
preferred coursework.

Murray's reply was that if that was
the system, then change it. It was
and the result of less rigour has
undermined the credibility of the
examination system in schools and
further up the learning process in
higher education.

This creates the backgound for the
the root causes of many of the
chronic social problems relating to
young men. They leave school with
inferior qualifications, poorer job
prospects and face unemployment.
Dismissed as potential husbands,
fathers and providers by young
women who are supported by the
state, they feel unwanted and
express growing anger.

Greater tolerance in society for
generalised 'men are useless'
statements, jokes, advertisements
and so on, than would be used to
refer to any other group, reflects a
situation for which there is an
increasing human and economic
cost.

Of course, men who violate
women in this way should be
pursued and punished.However,
at the same time, discounting
original sin, we should question
the consequences of the
defenestration of the male of 
the species.   

 

 

 

 

 

 

BRITAIN'S NEW ROLE

Dean Acheson in a speech that he gave at
West Point in 1962, famously stated that
Great Britain having lost an empire had
not yet found a role. It followed Britain's
last fling of the imperial dice in 1956 with
the aborted anglo-French invasion of the    
Suez Canal.

Half a century later, a new role for
Britain has been in the making. It
reflects the cultural osmosis that
has occurred between Britain and the
fifty-three sovereign states of its
Commonwealth. But forget the
English language, rule of law and
parliamentary democracy
bequeathed by British Empire to
countries around the world. These
are mainly of historical, rather than
contemporary significance.

Not so the more unfortunate legacy
of empire: that of guilt in the minds
of those who run Britain, guilt which
has an undue influence in defining the
UK's role in the world today. It is far
removed from empire, almost
apologising for its past, to one of
mass immigration, squandered
foreign aid and subjugation to a
corrupt, unaccountable and largely
bankrupt EU.

The guilt of empire has characterised the
mission of successive governments. It has
been to pursue lofty, domestic global,
social aspirations, supported by mounting
national debt, sluggish growth and
quantitative easing. Money produced
out of thin air for which there will be
a heavy price to pay in inflation.

The UK fiscal deficit is currently
£120bn, accelerating partly as
a result of 2.5m unemployed. The
Government is currently advertising
800,000 positions at EU job-centres.
Applicants are entitled to taxpayer-
funded expenses for attending
interviews in the Britain and employers
given £1,000 for each person taken on.
Annual national debt interest is now
roughly equal to the amount spent on
defence.

A world of economic fantasy has been
created, in order to pay for the things
that we simply cannot afford, both
for the inhabitants of Britain and,
seemingly, the world. For example, the
NHS - described as the global health
service - with a ring-fenced budget of
£130bn, is on the verge of collapse.

The annual health budget is increasing
at the rate of over 4% while NHS
inflation is running at 7%. Annual
savings of £50bn will have tobe made
by 2020, which points to armageddon.
This is against the background of
increasing longevity, an explosion of
obesity, incompetent political and
operational management, together
with the cost of new advances in
healthcare

Labour's clandestine policy of
allowing 4m foreign nationals to
settle in Britain - Europe's most
densely populated country - has put
intolerable pressure on the social
infrastructure. It is a case of infinite
demand and finite resources, right
across the piece.

In addition to escalating demand for
healthcare, by 2014 there will be a
250,000 shortfall in primary school
places. Many will be for children for
whom English is not their first
language.

There will be a shortfall of 1m in
affordable housing by 2021. The
ongoing consequence of rising
homelessness is the appearance of
immigrant shanty encampments
spreading from inner cities to rural
areas, changing the countryside
and creating a serious health risk.

Thomas Paine, a leading architect
of the US Constitution, wrote of The
Age of Reason. Future historians will
surely view the present as the age of
madness. It is one from which we shall
only emerge when reality imposes its
discipline on a continually expanding
State, which cannot for much longer
defy the economic laws of gravity.






John Barker, MA, accepts commissions
to research and write articles on business,
economics and politics, together with
market research reports.

executiveprofiles@btconnect.com

LOTTERY TICKETS

Briefly, on a lighter note before my
ten-day break: a couple of my
acquaintance will not buy lottery
tickets because they cannot agree
on what to do with a big win.

One solution that I have suggested
would be to commission an
architect to create in the heart of 
the metropolis a Babylonian,
hanging garden of great beauty
and tranquility, where we could go
to reflect on our continuing good
fortune in remaining alive, while
being increasingly taxed to death. 
 

LABOUR - HE WHO PAYS THE PIPER......

Labour leader, Ed Miliband, clearly
should have have used a longer spoon
when supping with the devil. He who
pays the piper invariably calls the tune.
Len McCluskey, General Secretary of
UNITE - which provides 80% of Labour
Party funding -  swung the power of his
union behind Miliband's bid to become
leader of Her Majesty's Loyal
Opposition and now it's payback time.

MccCuskey, the £125,000 a-year,
former docker and left-wing throw-back
from the 1970s, is in the process of 
taking over the Labour Party,
allegedly through electoral fraud and
corruption.

News of Unite's growing infiltration
emerged this week in Falkirk, where it  
is claimed that the the union is
attempting to rig the contest to select
the party's candidate for the
forthcoming by-election. Members
of Unite are being signed up to
Labour, some without their
knowledge, in order to manipulate
the result, in favour of the union
candidate.   

The police have been called in to
investigate suspected wrongdoing
and there are reports of malpractice
in some forty-six other constituencies,
where McCluskey's malign influence
is being felt. He has  countered
allegations that Labour membership
details have been passed to Unite
illegally, in breach of the Data
Protection Act, by accusing Labour
headquarters of a smear campaign.

This is the most serious threat to Ed
Miliband since becoming leader of his
party three years ago. It leaves him
impotent to challenge Unite - Labour's 
main means of financial support - in its
intention to take the party to the
extreme Left, rendering it unelectable.
Setting aside these travails, this may
already be the case. In terms of weak 
leadership, Ed Miliband is not
dissimilar to Michael Foot, the
1980s' Labour Leader.

Taunted by David Cameron for being
in the pocket of the unions, he will find 
difficulty in his ongoing battle with
Mccluskey in being seen as capable of
running his party, let alone the country.          

Apart from calling in the police,
Ed Miliband's only response so far has
been to accept the resignation of
Shadow cabinet member, Tom Watson.
He was Labour's 2015 election supremo
and is a former flatmate of Len
Mccluski. 

Unite's preferred Falkirk candidate,
Karie Murphy, latterly Tom Watson's
office manager, and the constituency
party chairman have both been
suspended.



 


 

EU - THE ALTERNATIVE TO A FEDERAL STATE

Any critical analysis of the

eurozone crisis does not have                         

an obvious solution beyond that

of greater fiscal and political

integration. While this may indeed

come to pass, it would not address

the disparity in productivity

between the countries of northern

and southern Europe.

 

In the absence of a cultural change

in the work ethic, which is hard to

imagine, the inevitable consequence

would be Germany keeping the

southern states on extended  

financial life-support.

 

It will continue to fund
accelerating social cost, until such
time as the German economy ran
out of money. The strategy will
merely prolong, perhaps for a
generation, the misery to which
millions will continue to be
subjected.

The only practicable way
forward is for insolvent
eurozone members to rebalance
their economies through the
re-introduction of their former
currencies.

This would, of course, be
extremely painful in the medium
term. However, exhange rates 
reflecting competitive performance
rather than a single currency, would
enable tourism and other activities
to flourish and economies to grow. 

Such an outcome would not satisfy

the federalist deciples of Ardanauer,

Monet and Schuman, the founding

fathers of the EU. It would, however,

bring hope to those countries that
would prefer economic and political 
self-determination with all its initial
pain, to a slow but remorseless
descent into even more dystopian
misery. 

David Cameron's speech at Davos
articulated the need for change. The
EU has 7% of the world's population,
generates 25% of global GDP, but
spends 50% of GDP on welfare, which
is unsustainable. The question is does
the EU have the political and economic
will to change, or will reality impose
change upon it?   

 

 

 

GORE VIDAL - POLEMICIST AND LITERARY TITAN

This month marks the first                                 

anniversary of Vidal Gore's death.

He was of our age but, in a way,

not part of it. In his passing we

witnessed the departure of a

literary titan, whose like we

shall not see again.

 He was a thinker and political

polemicist whose natural milieu

would have been the Age of

Revolutions. Then and as more

recently, he would have used his

gifts of scholarship, penetrating

mind and wit to articulate

fundamental truths about how

society should function by

deconstructing the established

order of things for the betterment

of man.

Vidal's views on morality and the

political process were not

accepting of pragmatism, but

more a reflection of the broad

sweep of history.

These tended to set him apart

from the ephemera of

contemporary society and the

fragility of its mores and beliefs,

where political and moral vision

have been displaced by a

growing democratic deficit

between government and the

governed.

A true torchbearer for democracy,

Gore Vidal is quoted as saying

"The genius of the ruling class is

that it has kept the majority of the

people from ever questioning the

inequity of a system where most

of the people drudge along paying

heavy taxes for which they get

nothing in return." His views on

events in the EU do not appear to

have been recorded.