8 Responses to THE PERFECT BBC PROGRAMME

  1. Derek Buxton says:
    March 12, 2013 at 2:03 pm

    I seem to have read this weird article in i think the Telegraph some days ago. I also commented on it. What a surprise, a bureaucrat praising bureaucrats, totally missing the point that it is bureaucrats who are causing all the problems. Look at the “horsemeat scandal” caused solely because the EU adopted a bureaucratic method to solve a problem that was already under control. But they insisted that “forms only” were the answer, no testing if the form was correct, so it started. It now comprises fraud on a worldwide basis.

       18 likes

    • Wild says:
      March 12, 2013 at 2:38 pm

      I wonder why the BBC has not commissioned an “In Defence of Free Markets” three part series explaining why free markets work better than a State bureaucracy? It is a puzzle.

         22 likes

  2. David Preiser (USA) says:
    March 12, 2013 at 4:21 pm

    The BBC’s recent shenanigans, and Alan’s apposite reference yesterday to Kipling’s “Gods of the Copybook” have been reminding me of sci-fi author and former rocket scientist Jerry Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy, and now this seems like a good time to quote it in full:

    In any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people:

    First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration.

    Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc.

    The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.

    They’re all working to preserve the bureaucracy. In cases like Donaldson’s, it seems because regardless of the outcome, they believe it’s a just cause. Intention is all. Similarly, the BBC does whatever is necessary to preserve the bureaucracy, and all must bend to meet its needs. Worse, it’s clear from their recent mandarin-shuffling, the relentless expansion into overseas markets, and the sheer chutzpah of spending gigantic amounts of money on a new facade while cutting jobs due to “budget constraints”, that the BBC exists for itself these days, not for you.

       15 likes

  3. Richard Pinder says:
    March 12, 2013 at 6:22 pm

    I believe that there are five times more bureaucrats in the NHS than in the more humane and caring private hospitals. No wonder the system was to blame, it’s a socialist system, so the management would not have noticed anything wrong if they where deliberately gassing the patients with Zyklon B.

       10 likes

  4. Ian Hills says:
    March 12, 2013 at 10:03 pm

    Quote from DV’s link page – “tradition of fairness, impartiality and accountability”. No, it’s about the civil service. Maybe.

       3 likes

  5. chrisH says:
    March 12, 2013 at 10:05 pm

    The perfect BBC programme eh?
    That would have to be the BBC doing a real-time live re-enactment of the Jonestown mass suicide.
    I for one would happily pay a £5 to Red Nose if I could nominate 100 Guardian, BBC talent types like Russells Brand and Howard, Polly and Owen etc to do themselves in in a caring compassionate way so that a Guatemalan pigmy might get a chance of a new tofu toaster, or some thug from Kirklees gets that final Subway stamp for his card, so need not mug others for the same.
    Shall we call it “Jimstown”?…where 100 guilty creeps, cringers liberal apologists and regular toadies from the BBC and Guardian get to challenge Jimmy Savile on the next astral plain up from here….and no need to wonder about reporting it back to us all.
    Bit of mystery never hurt anybody!

       5 likes

  6. Framer says:
    March 12, 2013 at 10:17 pm

    Would that be the same Gus O’Donnell who instructed the Palace that there was to be no option of a minority government and that Gordon Brown must not resign until a coalition had been constructed?

    Thought not. It wouldn’t be like GOD.

       8 likes

    • johnnythefish says:
      March 13, 2013 at 9:52 am

      And wasn’t it Gus O’ Donnell who kept popping up on R4 to denounce the cuts to public sector jobs, instead advocating more support and encouragement for civil service staff so they would be motivated to do their jobs better?

         5 likes