The Policy Blender

So what you mean, Chris, is that the people who accuse the BBC of institutional leftism are a minority with extreme views, and wouldn't know neutrality if it ran up and bit them on the nose (which of course it wouldn't be cause it's neutral)?

Personally, I'd have said 'The BBC was rocked to its very core today following claims made in the Telegraph newspaper. No-one at the BBC had even heard of the Telegraph, yet the Telegraph itself claims to be a 'quality' daily. This so surprised the BBC that the local newsagents, where the Director-General had dropped in to buy a copy of the Guardian, had to hide every copy of The Times in the shop, and by way of an apology, hosted a ritual burning of every copy of the Daily Mail they had. For this reason, the Director General (who is it these days?) was late for work'.

Oh, and you forget - Ben thinks the US media is neutral, as it represents his views. Much in the same way as you think the BBC is neutral, though it could go further, and I think it's neutral, though it didn't have to be so nasty about the dead Pope.

In what is fast becoming a three party system, 33% of the vote doesn't constitute a mess. If the BNP had 33% of the vote etc.

But other than that - ok.

A few of clarifications if I may:

1, I sourced the story from the Guardian. I read both papers, as they are both quality daily newspapers and neatly represent both left and right sides of the political spectrum whilst remaining broadly libertarian (though both do stretch their libertarian credentials in editorials occasionally - the Independent was the only left-leaning paper to stick to their libertarian guns and back hunting for e.g. In fact, in recent times the Inde has cast off it's Blairite shackles and actually become 'Independent' for which it is building respect, in my view. It still seems a bit holier-than-thou pretentious though, I feel a bit uncomfortable when I read it - like it's written for people to be seen reading).

2, Of course the BBC is left-leaning. That's a no-brainer. Just as Fox in the US leans right with CBS leaning left and the Guardian/Telegraph over here lean in their respective directions. Each institution develops a natural bias, it's inevitable. This does not mean that I think the BBC are not doing a great job - they are. They are also professional - they were assiduous as ever in applying the electoral commission rules of spending exactly the same amount of time sneering at the Tories as they did reporting on Labour during the election. Ok, ok, not quite sneering, but I've heard less partial views from turkeys at Christmas. That's life though.

3, And as for the guff about saying this is a left leaning country - that's tosh and you know it. It doesn't take an idiot to work out that Labour was unelectable when they were overtly left-wing. New Labour was about dressing a left wing party up in right-wing clothes. Would they have had to have done that if we were a predominantly left wing country? I don't think so.

Let's keep the discussions on the rails a bit - and by way of concession, of course it's obvious that I would pick up the left-wing bias in the Beeb, just as a left-winger would pick up the right-wing bias in the Telegraph, maybe even referring to it as a 'rag'.

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I'm glad we find ourselves on the traditional and well-trodden left wing ground of class. To me, blaming the ills of a modern society on the feudal system is about as relevant as banning tall buildings because people jump off them.

The class issue has long been used by the left wing to draw popular support and by proxy attain a moral majority (as the lower classes mass more than those at the upper end of the feudal system). This is, of course, not an unusual tactic - Hitler sought to demonise the Jews for the ills of post Great War German society, mobilising the masses to his side very effectively as history shows.

It works too - clearly. One of the reasons why it works is essentially paradoxical. Human nature means that we aspire to better ourselves and our position in life. When it becomes apparent that one doesn't have the capacity to improve one's lot then pointing to invisible barriers often provides a suitable excuse. Raging against said invisible barrier also satisfies the natural urge to do something about one's inability to progress.

So, am I saying that class doesn't exist? Naturally, no. The reason I refer to it as an invisible barrier is because since the industrial revolution capitalism, to an exponentially increasing extent, has meant that those who are powerful in society are those with potential. This may mean that to begin with the potential referred to was the potential to 'play the system' - see the brusque northern mill owner or wily cockney trader stereotypes. Anyway, what I'm saying is that nothing empowers people better than their own potential. Even if it is potential to make money, particularly so, one might argue.

Class does exist. Though now it's not something you're born into, as it was in years gone by. Class now reflects ones attitude towards our fellow man. A good example of this is that people that are referred to as 'snobs' are not universally those which we would consider 'upper class'. Indeed 'snobbery' in its distain to the perceived social standing of others is now very much a symptom of the success of the left in targeting those that they deem to be the elite. It's excused and even pillared as 'reverse snobbery' but snobbery is what it is.

Class exists in manners, within human relations, traditional practices and within the perpetuation of aesthetic tastes. It does not exist as an identifiable barrier that prevents success to those who possess potential. That is a myth perpetuated by those that stand to gain from the poor being poor - i.e. the left wing elite.

It's a sad fact that most of the successful left wingers aren't the 'umble working men they claim to represent. Sadder too that perhaps without this collective excuse-making and contrived bitterness many other working men could have focussed their energies on achieving their own successes rather than demonising others for theirs.
To answer the questions above:

Why is the NHS so overwhelmingly popular despite its many problems? - Because it's free. Money talks baby.

Why do people moan so much about the privatisation of the trains? - Because it was a botched half arsed job done by a government that shouldn't have been in power. You can't have a liberal market with those government stipulated regulatory burdens, but that's what Majors Government tried to do. Unbelievable.

Why is Ken so popular in London? - because Londoners feel safe that his more extreme leftist inclinations are barred by the prescriptions of his office. And they love a character; Five-Birds Norris never quite cracked that bit.

Why are pensions such a big issue? That's a great one to bring up. We have a Labour Government. Does that government want to help out people that have been able to save for retirement throughout their life or does it raid £4bn a year from the nation's pension savings to piss up the wall of the unreformed NHS? Hmmm…

Why has pro-poor, pro-child benefit reform been so popular in this government? Popular for vote winning headlines, popular with the army of increased number of bureaucrats to administrate the damn thing, not popular with the parents who now fill in a 12 page means-testing form rather than the previous two page form. In days gone by, before Major and Blair and their like, 'reform' used to mean 'simplify', now it means 'complicate'.

I agree that C4 is more left-wing than the beeb, but the thing about the beeb is that it doesn't know it's doing it. That's how institutional its bias is. I heard a story about a journo who worked for the BBC in the fifties. One evening in fifty three he wandered down to the pub after work to drink with colleagues. They were already there and looking glum. "What's wrong?" he asked. "Haven't you heard?" they said, "Stalin's dead". "Great!" he said thinking that a chap who had killed about 30 million people would be no great loss to the world. They never spoke to him again.

I do have to confess that I read that in the Spectator, though it was from the primary source.

You'll be unsurprised to read that I disagree with most of the above post. So, I'll pick out a few things that I do agree with:

"…you don't hear politicians talking about class anyway…" Precisely. It's not an issue anymore not because it doesn't exist, but because people have realised that class (theirs or someone else's) is not the barrier it was once portrayed to be by the agitators and propagandists in the Unions and left wing parties. I picked up on the above point about class ("Anyway this country IS left leaning and always has been. It has also always had a massive problem with class." Thu May 19, 01:52:28 PM) because I agree with the later point that class simply isn't a political issue.

"A lot of the problem is people WITHIN classes socially excluding those of the same class who attempt to 'better themselves'". Again, I agree, and this proves that the problem of 'social exclusion' (bah - terrible term!) is not class driven (e.g. by class divide) but socially driven. This is highlighting a trait of human nature not a consequence of any class barriers. I think this point most clearly encapsulates what I was trying to say - class is over as an excuse, we're more grown up now and the opportunities presented by capitalism to people of all classes have highlighted that ability and potential mean much much more than where you were born or whatever.

"Aspirations to better oneself were not possible for working class people just a generation ago. This problem still exists." I don't agree with this, but I have to point out that if people don't want to 'better themselves' then that's their business - it's certainly not a problem. If every unskilled worker suddenly took a computer course, or whatever, we'd be fucked. I find the distain for people who are happy with their lot patronising and pathetic. Society needs diversity, one of the reasons I support selective schools is precisely this - they select on ability (not class) and push the potential of the more able instead of lowering the denominator to include those who are less able. This doesn't mean those who are less able are less important - far from it - for the reasons I've identified above, we need people of all abilities, of all aspirations equally for society to function. To suddenly try to homogenise society will have catastrophic effects for every nook and corner of our culture.

"Social status does not equal race". I agree, but that doesn't mean that it's ok to discriminate against someone because of their social status.

The "left wing elite" - surely it cannot be denied that such a thing exists? And yes, my point is entirely that those who stand to gain most from the poor being poor are those who gain political power from 'fighting the cause'. See every old trade union leader that has accepted a peerage or a knighthood, every protester turned media darling, every radical turned New Labour politician. Show me a famous left-winger, and I'll show you someone who profits from the poverty of others. How many of those trumpeted as possibilities for an alternative Labour leader to Brown are born to a single mother on a council estate. Left wing politics is about telling people what do and when and how to do it. Right wing politics is about letting people get on with it. The left wing dislike the middle and upper classes because they are more economically free and thus able to make their own choices. The left wing are not the champions of the poor that they claim to be. They are bullies and manipulators that seek to model society to their own utopian objectives. For the right wing it's about opportunity. Right wingers want to let anyone who has the nuts play ball. To portray right wing economics as simply some kind of pyramid scheme, as the above post does, is simply wrong and naïve. Right wingers know that wealth creation happens at every level of society, and above all, that removing the shackles of poverty is not something that can be only achieved by social engineering such as redistribution, again, that plays on the darker side of human nature: envy and serves to take the onus off the individual to do something about the situation that they dislike and instead blame society and look to the manipulators of the left to solve their problems for them. Right wing economics is not about redistribution there, I think, every left winger would agree. Where the lefties would also probably agree, is that re-distribution is all about social engineering. The righties want everyone to have a fair crack at life, whoever they are, without the state running their affairs, managing their aspirations and limiting their impetus. The disdainful fact for lefties is that hard work breeds success, no matter who you are, and that is something that the left wing elite seek to hide by maintaining that there are class barriers stopping people from succeeding and that only by social engineering such as redistribution and atomic bomb style equality taxation they can provide the mythical cure to the mythical problem they are selling.


NHS: see above, people think it's free but of course it isn’t, as the above post points out it's "state (taxation) funded". That means people pay for it even if they don't use it - how fair is that?

Trains: And the reason for the "spectacular failure in the private sector"? As I pointed out, a market that the government seeks to control is no market at all. The botched privatisation done as a kind of "third way" by a weak Major government meant that such was the level of state interference that the whole project was doomed to failure. It is now a model for how not to privatise an industry.

Pensions: my point is that pensions and benefits are clearly a good thing, but this that government has an ideological conundrum in that those that have a private pension are clearly those that have been able to save for one. Why have we a crisis in pensions? Surely not because the Labour government has taxed £24bn out of peoples savings?

"the overwhelming right wing slant of the majority of the rest of the national and global media" is hardly a defence for the leftism at the beeb. Even if it were true, the comrades at Television Centre would still be biased. I agree that the beeb, as with any other institution, should be subject to criticism - criticism is the sign of a healthy democracy (eternal vigilance and all that). To defend one ill by highlighting the ill of another is madness - to use one of my misinterpreted comparisons - to defend the leftishness of BBC by highlighting the rightness of the rest of the media is like saying that Hitler was a good egg because he killed less than half as many people as Uncle Joe.

Fight! Fight! Fight!

Sorry - I promise to say something sensible now to make up for it. Um - I think the NHS is a good idea. Even if (and I think this is the issue) rich people are paying more for it than poor people, it benefits us all, rich and poor, to have a healthy population. If we didn't blame poor people for using more NHS than they paid for, we'd have to blame them for passing on more infectious diseases and taking more sick days than rich people. I'd prefer the former.

Oh, and as for a TV station that isn't state funded - you wouldn't want five 'ITV's', would you? The BBC makes some cracking programmes, and some of them are right-wing too. Did you hear about Clarkson chaining himself to a bus, claiming it was 'a gas guzzling monster'? I mean, the man is a collossal prick (IMHO) but it's undeniable that he's not a socialist tree-hugger. I also think that the BBc would have benefitted from the bus just driving away as normal, and dragging Clarkson along until he began to disintegrate, but then Hammond would have to front up Top Gear, and he's only little.

Anyway, that's what I think.

Good point about the NHS, though the fact that it's 'free' is not up for dispute as far as I'm concerned. It's interesting to note that, as well as paying more in tax for the NHS, a lot of better off people pay yet again in the true market that co-exits alongside the state monopoly (for the poor) by going private anyway.

I also do not disagree with the concept of the Beeb as the state broadcaster it currently is. Provision of information is, after all, a public service and, contrary to popular belief, us right-wingers wouldn't privatise all including the air that we breathe (just nearly all )

So my point is, sadly, not as radical as would be suitable for a full barnstorming argument. Reform is what is needed. Services are operated by humans who need to be paid real money, used by consumers who should have a real choice, fuelled by resources that cost real money and paid for by taxes that really take money off everybody, not just the rich. Public service reform and tax reform should go hand in hand. Each should be made simpler. When Danny Kruger was ousted from being the Conservative candidate in Sedgefield for saying that "constructive destruction" was required in all public services he was hoist by his language not his sentiment. What we need is a market driven ideology within service provision so that, quite simply, a service is delivered to those that need it. At the moment we have a bloated, top heavy, absurdly bureaucratic public sector that has inflated by over 600,000 (11%) since Labour came to power whilst manufacturing jobs are down by over three million in the same period. What it needs is not more money (though that is often the easy way the dodge the question), it needs money better spent.

The point about Hammond is very perceptive. He is short and Top Gear would be nothing without the oafish anti-hippy and his masculine excesses.

Yeah, but the people who go private choose to do so - probably so they don't have to share wards with diseased poor people. And they don't have to go private. Wealthy people are also entitled to claim the state pension, which many of them do not when the time comes. They're also entitled to ride on subsidised bus networks instead of driving, to shop in Aldi or Lidl instead of Waitrose and M&S, to eat out at McDonalds instead of The Groucho Club, to drink Carling instead of Cognac, to smoke Hamlet instead of real cigars, to wear clothes from H&M instead of by (not from, that would be too common) Versace and to watch the Beeb instead of buying Sky.

If I was but a little wealthier, I'd probably go private too. At the moment it is my plan not to get ill. This is something I recommend to people everywhere, rich or poor. And if they stick to that plan, then no-one will have to pay the NHS anything (once the redundancy payments have gone through anyway).

Ok, I'll be brief:

World

The free world, thank you very much capitalism.


Healthcare

"in America 40,000 people have no healthcare at all" We've got universal heath care that is free on the point of delivery, though as we have discussed, charged indiscriminately by taxation. This is good. The American situation is bad; no one would dispute that comparison. Surely nobody too would dispute the fact that despite increases of spending of biblical proportions the NHS isn't much better than it was before. The NHS is a bucket with a bloody great hole in it, successive governments have poured more and more water into the bucket and the hole has got bigger and bigger. No one has been brave enough to fix what in 1946 was a manageable trickle. It's just not PC.


Education

Of course selective schools work - bright kids get pushed to their potential and the less bright kids get pushed to theirs. Job done. Bung the kids together and the thickest get left behind and the brightest are never pushed.

Of course the government, whist aesthetically supporting this system is doing its best to undermine it by devaluing qualifications and controlling curricula to an extreme unmatched in any liberal democracy.

I'm not one of those that says A' levels are getting easier; there's a far more pleasing answer - kids are generally getting brighter. But this doesn't mean that all of a sudden every kid should have an A' level. Surely the point of exams is to (I'll be curt) separate the wheat from the chaff - tomorrow's nuclear physicists from the accountants from the shop assistants etc etc… Exams are devalued, not because they're easier, but because everyone is, like, cleverer. Init?

The target for 50% of pupils to go to university reinforces the fact that the government has swallowed up the right-wing language, chewed it up and spat it out in a form that's no good to anybody - the above argument applies - how does LifesavingCancerResearchCo know which of the new generation would be best placed to push the boundaries if every bugger has got eight A' levels and a masters'?


Capitalism

"Right wingers… want to stitch things up so they and their friends benefit because competition's a pain in the arse"? Are you kidding? Competition is the essence of capitalism. It's how stuff gets done. Capitalism without competition is Communism. I don't know any communist right-wingers, but the Conservative Party is a pretty broad church nowadays so maybe there could be one…


Class

"Class is now based on money" Ah, now we get to the point - so, essentially, the problem isn't class at all, it's money. I can't argue against the fact that those with more money are better off. In fact, I agree.

I also agree that our country has one of the strongest traditions for social policy in the world but what I don’t agree with is that we are not all individuals. We all think independently, make choices, have an idea about what we want to do with our lives. Don't get me wrong, I'm no "there's no such thing as society" kind of guy, but I do think that our society as made up from families, neighbourhoods, communities, etc all full of individuals. Yes, we're all in it together, but our collective plight (without wishing to get too existential) doe not take anything away from each of our number thinking, acting and generally acting independently. A society is a collection of individuals.

Lower taxes, more choice, more freedom, fuck it - if you want to re-mortgage your house you do so matey just understand this - you're the boss and you're going to have to live with the consequences of your own decisions. If people were encouraged to do the latter then there'd be a lot less of the problems that we currently seek to legislate against.

I think my problem with politics is that I want to help my fellow man, especially those who are in a position where they can't help themselves. But I don't want to help people who won't help themselves. The confusing part of watching your conversations is that politically, it's very difficult to distinguish between those sorts of people - if we're talking about one, I'd side with one of you, and if it's the other, I'd side with the other. I guess it depends how much we trust people not to bullshit in order to get a handout.

Here is the today's news in brief from Cloud Cuckoo Land, read by MC Hammer. It's 1990.

World

Enlightened individuals have realised that markets make the world go round. Even the Communist Mikhail Gorbachev has seen the light. Building on his experience as Head of Agriculture in Stravropol where he leaned that the collective system was fundamentally flawed, Gorbachev has in the past been critsised for his western policies of glasnost and perestroika and is despised by the communist party for selling out to western ideals. Gorbachev, once a communist, has chosen to make things better.


Here is the today's news in brief from Cloud Cuckoo Land, read by Vera Lynn. It's 1946.

The Government has set up a National Health Service to treat the nation's sick for free. It is anticipated that by the end of the next decade there will no longer be any sick people so the model isn't intended to be sustainable and will probably leak cash like a sieve if it is maintained over about thirty years because of the rising population, expensive advances in modern medicine and research and the simple fact that people are just plain living longer so incur more costs per individual. Fingers crossed we're all cured by the time the Beatles record Sgt Pepper! There'll be blue birds over…


Here is today's news in brief from Cloud Cuckoo Land, it's 1846

Conservative Prime Minister Robert Peel has repealed the Corn Laws replacing the old Colonial mercantile trade system with something called free trade which will probably mean we're all doomed. It does however mean that the industrial revolution will now actually benefit the many rather than the few as people will be paid in accordance to the value of their produce rather than a rigged market which merely favours the rich under which the poor can't even afford bread. Still, it's capitalism, so we're all doomed.

In other news, we're all doomed, as privateers are ravaging the countryside with satan's new technology known as 'trains'. These trains are transporting goods and produce all over the country building a stronger trading economy and assisting with labour mobility. The sooner they are monopolised by the government, institutionalised to rely on state subsidy and zealous regulation causing inefficiency and an apathetic approach to innovation the better. Then we'll see those rich capitalist bastards try to make money from this dangerous new technology!


Here is today's brief lesson on equations:

Simplify the following equations:

Capitalism - Competition = Monopoly

Communism = State control over everything

State control over everything = Monopoly

Monopoly = ?

My point is that class is not the limitation to success that it is portrayed to be by those who claim to be the heroes of the working classes. If anything has been fudged here it is the point that money and class are entirely different things. But when the left say class they mean money. Hence:

"Class is now based on money" Ah, now we get to the point - so, essentially, the problem isn't class at all, it's money. I can't argue against the fact that those with more money are better off. In fact, I agree.