BBC - RE-DEFINING CULTURAL VALUES

 

The contemporary artist and cross-dresser,

Grayson Perry, has undoubtedly set new

standards in the first of his four offerings

in this year's BBC Reith lectures. In an

atmoshere of raucous buffoonery, he

invited his audience to accept his notion t

hat the subjective concept of beauty goes

beyond its being described as to no

complexion is confined, it is of all

colours and by none defined.

 According to Perry, our idea of beauty is

conditioned by Western civilisation's
cultural inheritance, which he seems to
suggest is a social construct, defined by
class and background.

 It comes as no surprise that Grayson

Perry should have been invited to give
the lectures, given the Corporation's
apparent mission of deconstructing
society's existing cultural values. In
their place the BBC whose original
raison d'etre was to act as an

unbiased public broadcaster, is

following a political agenda, which

is having a profound effect on the

nature of our society.

PRESS FREEDOM

The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. Nowhere

is this more pertinent than freedom of expression in

a free and democratic society. It is a right over which
the the deliberations of the Privy Council cast an

ominous shadow.

Freedom of expression is embedded in the First

Amendment of the US Constitution. The incredulity

of those in the United States and beyond will only

grow as what lies behind the Royal Charter, in

whatever form, is revealed.

The view that a Royal Charter would avoid the

illiberal pitfalls of statutory regulation is founded

more in hope than than expection. Even with the

supposed safeguards included in the somewhat

ambiguous aim of the Charter, that of not creating

a regulator, but instead establishing the body that

will oversee one, it is difficult not to be fearful that

this will curtail the ability of the press to expose

and hold to account.

At the Leveson Inquiry, Rupert Murdoch predicted

that in a digital age printed newspapers could

disappear within ten years. Lord Mandelson

suggested that the Inquiry's remit tended to have

an historical, rather than contemporary,

significance, with the printed media migrating

increasingly online, beyond the control of any

regulator.

The majority of the press was not involved in the

hacking scandal and those who were are or are

likely to be serving prison sentences. Driven by

the interests of the Hacked-Off lobby group, with

the press excluded from any negotiations, a

powerful marker has been put down which will

surely affect the ability of newspapers to do what

they have been doing since the abolition of the

Star Chamber in 1641.

Certain commentators have alluded to the

Jesuitical control of press freedom in

dictatorships. The enactment of the Royal Charter

would render the Government similarly responsible

for controlling freedom of expression by

extrapolating from particular instances of press

intrusion value judgements with regard to wider

press coverage, especially in investigative

journalism.These are features of a totalitarian

state.

Had the Royal Charter been in existence, it is

unlikely that press coverage of the illegal invasion

of Iraq, the unexplained death of Dr David Kelly,

extraordinary rendition and MPs' expenses would

ever have seen the light of day.

.

CAMERON SEES CLEAR BLUE WATER

David Cameron's speech at this week's
Tory Party Conference focused not so
much on having delivered the country
from near bankruptcy. Instead, its theme
was more the promised land of
opportunity for all if a Conservative
government were elected with a clear
working majority.

Such an outcome would unfetter David
Cameron, who has been constrained by
the Lib-Dems, from taking action in key
policy areas to address Labour's
catastrophic legacy. 

It  was against the background of Ed
Miliband's speech a week earlier. In it 
David Cameron created clear blue water
between Labour and the Conservatives.
Voters are now in no doubt that the
Labour Leader espouses his father's
Marxist ideology. The Tories,on the
other hand, see only one way out of 
the economic and social abyss: wealth
creation.

In his seventy-five minute offering,
learnt by heart, he abandoned the
political centre ground of Tony Blair's
New Labour. It was a lurch to the left,
in which he used the language of old 
Labour, of the command and control
economy. Price controls for energy and 
state confiscation of land from
developers, who fail to obey government
dictat, job guarantees, higher minimum
wage, yet more taxes on higher incomes
and an unworkable, so-called mansion tax. 

It was a move that obviously delighted
Len McClusky, militant  boss of trade
union UNITE, Labour's paymaster and
the one who orchestrated Ed Miliband's
appointment as Party leader, over his
more talented brother, David.

Miliband's puppet-master, course,
welcomed Labour's sharp change of
direction, back to its ideological roots
of the 1918 Clause 1V: common
ownership of the means of production,
exchange and distribution.

Miliband's dog-whistle appeal to
Labour's core supporters and the
left-leaning immigrant vote cleared the
crowded centre-ground of UK politics.
This has had the effect of defining
Labour and Conservatives at opposite
ends of the political spectrum, bringing
a new clarity to politics.

In doing so the Labour leader gave
David Cameron the kind of ideological
room for manoever that had not existed
since the time of Margaret Thatcher. It
was an unexpected gift which the Prime
Minister accepted with relish. 

He contrasted Labour's disastrous tax,
borrow and spend policies with those
of a future Tory-majority government.
The Tories' key objectives are to
achieve a budget surplus by 2020 and
create wealth by promoting business
in a free-market economy.  

This will only be possible if the UK
either leaves, or has a very different
relationship with the EU, as it moves
towards a federal state. Here, voters
remain uncertain whether David
Cameron will deliver on this most
fundamental of issues.

Miliband's energy policy points to UK blackouts

The average UK household energy
bill rose by 60% from 2004-11,
compared with 17% in general
inflation. Almost one third of the

increase was due to government
policies to fund investment in
low-carbon energy, which Labour
supported.

 The UK continues to struggle to
persuade energy companies to
invest in nuclear and other aging
energy systems. It is therefore

difficult to see how the prospect
of price controlsand threat of
corporate break-ups will encourage
energy companies to commit money.

Ed Miliband's proposals on energy,

together with his threat of state

confiscation of land, mark an

important turning point in political

consensus on the market economy.

 

His conference speech will be

remembered more for his ability to

remember a long repetitive script,

rather than establishing his prime

ministerial credentials. No wonder

that he disappered for the summer.

It points to an ideological watershed

and a return to a command and
control economy. which will bring
to an end any hope of Britain's
recovery.

Ed Miliband's father, Ralph, 

is burried yards from Karl Marx
in Highgate Cemetery and it is
marxism that informs his thinking.

 

THE EVIL THAT MEN DO

Tony Blair's unwelcome intervention
over military action in Syria
merely compounds the obloquy
heaped upon him as a narcissistic
politician, who took the UK into
the illegal invasion of Iraq. It was
a war based on the false premise of
the imminent use of weapons of mass
destruction The cost to the UK was
£4.5bn and 6,700 casualties.

The Blair government made the
the disingenous assertion, that the
2003 attack was justified by UN
Security Council Resolutions
relating to the first Persian war,
subsequent ceasefire (660 and 678)
and later UN weapons' inspection,
which it said authorised the invasion.

The much delayed Chilcot Inquiry
on the Iraq war, due to be published
next year, will add to Britain's
humiliation at the G20 summit, when
heir to Blair Cameron's desire to
poodle up to Barrack Obama in
attacking Syria was frustrated
by a last week's parliamentary vote.

Cameron's wish to stand shoulder to
shoulder with the Americans was
denied by MPs voting against being
drawn into another war, which the
country could not afford and could
not win.

Russian President, Vladimir Putin,
displayed his diplomatic credentials
and rubbed Cameron's nose in his
manifest impotence, describing
Great Britain as a 'small island
nobody took any notice of''.

The Syrian humaniterian crisis
contiues to deepen with over 4m
displaced people and a further
2.3m crossing the borders into
Jordan and Lebanon, Hans Blix,
chairman of the Weapons of Mass
Destruction Commission, has said
that the only solution to the conflict
is the cessation of the supply of
weapons to both sides.

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.