Posts Tagged ‘nation’
A BBC Preservation Order
TAKE NOTICE
This noble institution should be preserved.
It is not perfect but it is better than any alternative.
It contributes enormously to the culture of the nation.
It is our BBC
This notice should be nailed to the door of Broadcasting House and all BBC premises. Damaging or cutting off parts or branches of the institution is not allowed. Adequate space must be given to the institution’s roots which must not be interfered with. Severe penalties will be applied to anyone who knowingly or recklessly damages the institution in any way.
Then David Cameron, Nick Clegg and a heavyweight team need to take Mark Thompson aside and give him a good talking to. We want to preserve the BBC and its unique qualities but we need a hard pruning of dead wood and unproductive growth. Preserving the roots and fundamental strength are the most important objectives. Cutbacks in the right places will stimulate stronger new growth elsewhere.
I agree that Sky should contribute towards those commercial channels that it broadcasts free-to-air. It ties viewers into its subscription packages because they are comprehensive. This is gives it an unfair advantage throughout the market, as does its coverage and bandwidth.
Sky is a parasite on traditional TV companies. Its unfair advantages have enabled it to develop the best user interface and experience in the market. Even so, it is expensive and has a reputation for appalling customer service. Its relationship with Newscorp means it is part of a monstrous media empire which requires much more regulation in the interests of consumers and the community at large. It should be required to invest more in original programming and production. If necessary, a new media tax should be introduced to enforce appropriate investment and safeguards.
The BBC’s biggest mistake is the level of executive pay. There is no justification at all for anyone in the BBC to earn more than the Prime Minister. It is public money. Anyone unhappy with this should resign today. No one is indispensable. The BBC has always been the best in its business at bringing on new talent.
The Licence Fee should remain unchanged. It is fantastic value for money and shows just how expensive Sky is. The BBC Trust should be strengthened in its primary role as regulator and it should enforce cost savings, efficiencies and executive pay. It should also ensure that the BBC becomes more responsive and closer to its audience. Its complaints and feedback system is fundamental to this. It needs to be brought back in house and given real priority. See here.
Britain adores its BBC. Let’s ensure we preserve it and allow it to flourish.
Pakistan Synonymous With Corruption
Disgraced
Look at the chaos and evil that this country is causing our world!
From the most wicked international terrorism to the genteel sport of cricket, the pernicious and evil influence of Pakistan is everywhere.
It is a flaw in its culture and the character of its people. Not all Pakistanis are wicked but too many of them are and evil influence has been allowed to flourish in its society.
This is not racism. It’s not about the race of the Pakistanis. It’s about their nation.
Pakistan is a failed state and a pariah.
Its only hope is new and radical leadership.
“No More Obvious Waste” Than UK’s £19 Billion War On Drugs
A Wise Lady
In the House of Lords on 15th June 2010, Baroness Meacher announced a “radical shift of policy” from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. The UN’s “war on drugs” has been an abject failure creating an illegal trade worth £320 billion and financing civil war in South America for the last 25 years. British soldiers die almost every day in Afghanistan fighting an enemy financed by the illegal opium trade.
The UK spends £19 billion annually on the costs of drug law enforcement.
According to Baroness Meacher there is “no more obvious waste” of public money. When will our leaders have the courage to grasp this nettle, to liberalise our pointless, self-defeating laws and free up billions of pounds of our money for more sensible purposes?
In addition, expert research indicates that a legalise, regulate and tax regime could contribute at least £6 billion annually in additional tax revenue. How can we afford to ignore these huge sums of money which we could make available to the country at little more than the stroke of a pen and with only a beneficial effect on the health of the nation?
Dying For A Stupid Law
Five years ago, while campaigning for the Tory party leadership, David Cameron called for “fresh thinking and a new approach” towards drugs policy and said that it would be “disappointing if radical options on the law on cannabis were not looked at”. Nick Clegg has promised to repeal “illiberal, intrusive and unnecessary” laws and to stop “making ordinary people criminals”. There can be no better example of this than the laws against personal use and cultivation of cannabis, particularly for medicinal reasons.
The coalition government’s new Your Freedom website launched only this morning is already inundated with proposals to legalise cannabis and to end the futile war on drugs. The site is crashing under the strain of a massive outcry from British people for the state to back off and give us back our freedoms.
We don’t just want our freedom back. We want our money back too.
Thank God For The Prince Of Wales
Otherwise our country would be littered with vainglorious, egotistical self-monuments to architects – individuals like Richard Rogers who persist in the delusion that they know best.
Site Foreman
A Cluster Of Carbuncles
Prince Charles speaks with wisdom, discretion and for the conscience of the Nation. Those who understand the unique place that the monarchy holds in British society know that he speaks for a Britishness that transcends politics, fashion and the vicissitudes of architecture. To use their own, pretentious expression, architects create our “built environment”, the very space in which we live our lives. What other profession charged with such a grave responsibility has failed so miserably over the last century? Where is the great architecture of the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s and up to date? I can think of none but I can make you lists of the eyesores, slums and ludicrous mistakes that scar our towns and cities.
Thank God for the Prince of Wales! To the architects, the planners, those lawyers and judges who know no respect, I say take them to the Tower! Let them languish there until their own mistakes have crumbled into dust. Then we might give them another go. Until then let’s stick with the proven classics of design. Innovation and experiment may be valid in modern art but in architecture there can be no equivalent of Damian Hirst or Tracy Emin. They may thrive in private view but not in public. No thank you!
The Oil Spill. The Bottom Line. What Obama’s Forgetting.
BP hired them so it is taking responsibility but…
Catastrophe
…the oil rig was American.
…the crew was American.
…the blowout preventer and other safety equipment that failed was American.
…six of BP’s 12 main board directors are American.
…40% of BP’s shareholders are American.
So when the first black American president suddenly starts calling it “British Petroleum”, a name it moved away from 12 years ago because it simply wasn’t accurate anymore, what is it but blatant racism?
This is shockingly grubby behaviour from a man who I was trusting on his platform of integrity.
He’s blown that idea just as sky high as Deepwater Horizon. He’s also forgotten who are his and his country’s most steadfast friends in the world.
If the Yankees, who squander the world’s resources and pollute the environment more than any other nation on the planet, think they’re going to stick this one on us, they need to think again. They need to get their collective brain into gear and start doing something useful. The anti-British rhetoric that has been coming from the States, from whining journalists and politicians as well as Obama, is ludicrous, disloyal and not worthy of them.
We are entitled to expect much, much better from those with whom we stand shoulder to shoulder. When the chips are down we are the only ones you can always rely on. You are a young nation in the history of the world. Now is the time to grow up and take responsibility. Stop passing the buck.
A Very British Bobby
Good Cop
Deputy Chief Constable Stuart Hyde of Cumbria Police is the sort of man I would want around when the chips are down. He has done a magnificent job fronting Cumbria Police’s reaction to the Derrick Bird killings. He’s not only done his employers proud. He has been a great force for good and of comfort for the people of Cumbria and the nation as a whole. He has been professional, calm, dignified, accurate, understanding – everything that we could possibly have wanted from him. He is in the very highest traditions of the British police.
What a stark contrast from the out of control, lying, scheming thugs in the Metropolitan Police TSG, responsible for multiple assaults at the G20 and Gaza protests and the death of Ian Tomlinson. Only last month, 30 years after the event, they finally admitted responsibility for the death of Blair Peach at the Anti-Nazi league protest in 1979. How can there be such a contrast in the conduct and behaviour of our police officers?
I am sure that DCC Hyde still manages to fit in well with the canteen culture of the police. The difference is he is obviously a fundamentally decent man. He’s not from the sort of neo-Nazi, violent, fascist subset of the police that Sergeant Leroy Smellie and the rest of the TSG belong to.
When I first wrote about Smellie’s acquittal I came across Inspector Gadget, a blog written by a serving police inspector. The memory of what I read there has stayed with me and it disturbs me greatly. It offers an insight into the murkier corners of that canteen culture that should be rooted out and destroyed. Just like the appalling, scandalous predominance of Masonic culture in the police, it astounds me that Inspector Gadget is allowed to continue his rantings and provide a forum for police officers whose attitudes prove they are unfit for the job. Don’t anybody try to tell me that the true identity of Inspector Gadget can’t be established. That would just be another police lie.
I cannot let it pass without calling yet again for charges to be brought against the TSG officer who was clearly seen to assualt Ian Tomlinson shortly before his death.
However, I want to end on a positive note and say, once again, how much I admire the conduct and professionalism of Deputy Chief Constable Hyde.
Peter Reynolds 
