Category Archives: Statism

ALL IN THE PAIN

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BBC seems disturbed that those who work in the State sector may have to share in the pain of the recession which at this point has almost exclusively been experienced by private enterprise. Whilst no one wishes any person to lose their job the harsh economic reality is that the State sector has grown fat and bloated under Labour and cannot be economically sustained. (Rather like the BBC in fact) So whilst the BBC ponders how it can be that even as the Public sector faces cutbacks, the private sector contemplates modest job increases, it ignores the obvious answer; namely that the Private sector has already contracted and made adjustments. The days of the vast Gordon Brown created state monolith are over. The days of the BBC as a vast state monolith deserve to be over.

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Dirigism rules, ok!

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Well, maybe not that exactly, but something close to the BBC’s heart- the idea that Government should intervene as much as possible in the economy. In this article the BBC gives us a tale of two factories, one in Wales, one in England. One helped by the Welsh Assembly, one not helped by Westminster, you see where this is going?

It would be a neat little comparison were they not comparing a dishwasher assembly plant with LDV van manufacturers. It’s surely apples and pears. Subsidies of the sort offered in Wales may work for light industrial jobs, but probably not for complex manufacturers like LDV. Yet the BBC give vent to their conviction that Government should be helping, and there is no balancing voice.

A second dimension to the article is the free publicity and praise it offers to the devolved Welsh Assembly, which is made without reference to the Barnett formula by which the Welsh get a thousand squid more per head than the English from the central kitty- thereby potentially more than funding the scheme the BBC is set on praising, the so-called “ProAct”.

Naturally I sympathise with the workers who are struggling, and I also resent the Government’s preference for their corporate socialist big banking buddies, but the BBC is trying desperately to pretend that from the crisis there are good socialist lessons to be learnt. There aren’t. But even if there were some, there are other sides which should be considered alongside- such as the question of the long term sustainability of certain businesses (eg. especially automobile) in changing times, and the need for a low tax environment to help swell investment.

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Serious season

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I notice that the BBC is running a headline story about a Government move to stop so-called queue jumping for organ donation.

A couple of points come to mind. One is that Parliament is not sitting, so the Government is spinning. The BBC is playing along with this. Another is that it is a wonderful piece of spin: fears of rich foreigners plundering our virgin NHS system, only to be sent packing by St. State. According to the chosen quangocrat: “Confidence in the transplant system should increase once money is removed from the equation”.

Well of course; it’s not as if the NHS costs money, after all.

Quangocrats, the Labour Government and the BBC in blissful unintermediated union. Ah, those summer trysts- if only the whole year could be summer.

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I know you will love this

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HERE! – Mandelson (Mandy) in cosy sofa chat on BBC news programme declares support for BBC contestant on BBC show (Come Dancing redux); confesses (shock!) to envy at Sergeant’s success. Now that really is a major story worthy of frontpage note and not at all an indication of an inbred backscratching culture and the unfair hybridisation of commercial with state interests.

Aunty Beeb’s Jam suspended

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The close relationship between the BBC and the Government can be seen in this instance which the BBC has seen fit to report, which Tim Worstall has a laugh over.

Of course strictly I shouldn’t say between the BBC and “the Government”, but between the BBC and government generally. That the BBC was even running an online service “in support of the national curriculum” is something I would see problems with, though in fact it stemmed from the BBC’s Charter, which of course I also disapproved of. When can our children be free of this tedious integrated ideological training?

In addition we can see that the private sector suffers from the BBC’s interference- a lesson which ought to ring some bells all across media-land. That the EU intervened on this occasion- forcing a BBC re-think- is symptomatic of their assumed right to say that one country’s statism may not be their kind of statism. It is not at all indicative that the BBC has to regard the EU as a threat rather than an opportunity.

The relevance to bias here? Do we need one? Well, if so, it’s clear that an organisation whose raison d’etre depends on assisting public policy goals will be forever toeing the line on those goals. The fact that they agree with Nanny State almost goes without saying- Nanny is Aunty’s best friend.

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