Imagine If Politicians Had The Power To License BBC Reporters

‘Hacked Off’….Andrew Gilligan says that they have engineered a ‘coup…..one of perhaps the most important constitutional change yet of the 21st century.’

A ‘coup’….’constitutional change’?  Shouldn’t the BBC be asking who Hacked Off is, and is it fit and proper that they had such influence over such an important and consequential piece of politically contrived ‘legislation’?

I don’t know what you think about Hacked Off’s successful campaign to create that political fix intended to  muzzle the Press but Andrew Gilligan may have hit the nail on the head:

‘This was a sort of coup, by people even more unaccountable and unrepresentative than the average newspaper owner.’

 Hacked Off wants to “force the press to serve defined social and political objectives – at the expense, if necessary, of the right to free expression.”

Who are Hacked Off? And how did Brian Cathcart and a small group of even more obscure allies come from nowhere to write perhaps the most important constitutional change yet of the 21st century?’

He’s not wrong is he?  Three hundred years of Press freedom sacrificed in some sort of ritual slaughter to appease a few washed up celebrities, their secretive millionaire backers and  venal, unscrupulous politicians.

You might have thought that such a historic, momentous and politically significant event would have attracted far more scrutiny from the BBC than it has.

They might be more interested if they found that their own journalists were only able to report when ‘approved’ by a government minister.

Who are the mysterious millionaire backers that helped fund this grubby deal?  Who indeed are ‘Hacked Off’?
Why is it that a highly political pressure group is able to not only influence but sit in on the actual negotiations, in Labour Party offices,  without serious comment questioning the appropriateness of that?

In the end we have to ask, as always, who benefits?  Is it the Press?  The Public?  Or is it someone else entirely?  Was this just a charade exploiting the Millie Dowler story in order to force through a highly contentious deal on Press regulation that would allow politicians, in the end, to say what can and cannot be published…all guided by left wing  concepts of ‘human rights’ and a convenient ‘respect’ for privacy…when it suits?

Janet Daley thinks she knows the answer to that….

The ‘BBC Left’ is using hacking to get revenge
Left-wing politicians and broadcasters do not want to debate ideas but they do want to remove their opponents.

‘….that great edifice of self-regarding, mutually affirming soft-Left orthodoxy which determines the limits of acceptable public discourse – of which the BBC is the indispensable spiritual centre. The influence of the BBC as a monitor of what is politically admissible is almost incalculable: the entire Tory modernisation project was effectively made necessary (as its chief architects often admit) by the need to get a fair hearing on its news coverage.

This is as close as the BBC gets to criticising Hacked Off and its grubby deal set up in the dark hours of the night……by James Landale, BBC Deputy Political Editor

‘There is an old trope about sausages and law. You don’t want to see how they both are made. Here is why.
The deal was agreed in the early hours in Ed Miliband’s office at the House of Commons. The Labour leader was there alongside his deputy Harriet Harman. The Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg was present as were four members of the Hacked Off campaign group whose leading light, Hugh Grant, describes as “a few dandruffy professors…a slightly insane chess champion ex-Lib Dem MP and a couple of threadbare lawyers”.
Representing the Conservatives was Oliver Letwin, the minister for policy, a man who once left parliamentary papers in a bin in St James’s Park.
No one from the press was present. There were bleary eyes all round.
So there was no white paper. No pre-legislative scrutiny. Just rushed, late night law driven as much by politics as by principle.
Thus is law made. Perhaps we should inspect the sausage for horsemeat?

 

So the BBC knows that there is something possibly slightly sinister about all this….but doesn’t want to go to town on it.

These are some of the choicer cuts from Gilligan’s article…but read it in full:

‘Brian Cathcart has become a lot more black-and-white. In his new role as director of the Hacked Off campaign for a controlled press, he now claims that “most British national newspapers ruthlessly chose to exercise their great power for evil”.

Press inaccuracy has become a disease curable only by a state-backed regulator, and the McCann case is Exhibit A in what Hacked Off calls the “atrocities” perpetrated by the press.

Who are Hacked Off? And how did Brian Cathcart and a small group of even more obscure allies come from nowhere to write perhaps the most important constitutional change yet of the 21st century?

Hacked Off did it by using all the red-top tricks they claim to hate – broad-brush condemnations, simplistic arguments, distorted facts, behind-the-scenes political deal making, celebrity stardust and the emotive deployment of victims.
Their key skill was in presenting the crimes of some newspapers as the responsibility of all, and defining the issue as what Gerry McCann, on the Hacked Off website, called “a binary choice: the newspaper barons or the people they abused in search of profit. It is as simple as that.”
It is of course nothing like as simple as that.

Hacked Off is a campaign not just to tame the press, but to claim the country for the authoritarian Left. It does want to stop newspapers victimising individuals. But it also wants to force the press to serve defined social and political objectives – at the expense, if necessary, of the right to free expression.

As its key intellectual inspiration, Prof James Curran of Goldsmiths College, put it: “The problem is that the press was the principal cheerleader of the deregulatory politics that landed us in the economic mess we’re in.
“Our concerns should be confined not only to individual abuses, but to media moguls who distort the national conversation.”

Newspapers to be forced to reflect “a fair selection of the day’s events”; a regulator, in other words, would decide what stories they covered.
At the May 17 event, numerous Left-wing speakers outlined their view of how the “public good” or the “public interest” as defined by a press regulator, should override freedom of expression

Leveson has been persuaded to embrace unquestioningly a profoundly ideological description of the relationship between the British press and democracy, previously held only by a small group of Left-of-centre academics.”

“These are likely to be people you intuitively distrust, dislike and despair of. If they are what we need to win, however, we must understand their value and not confuse their values with our intentions.”

This was a sort of coup, by people even more unaccountable and unrepresentative than the average newspaper owner.

Prof Natalie Fenton, another Goldsmiths academic and a key member of CCMR, is a director of Hacked Off. She co-chaired the meeting with Cathcart and is seen on the platform at most of Hacked Off’s events.
Writing on the “New Left Project” website, Fenton attacked the “excessively liberalised press” and the “naive pluralism” of “assuming that the more news we have, the more democratic our societies are”.

 

Here is an update by Gilligan:

‘Arrogant, entitled, lying and hypocritical, in Brian Cathcart and Hacked Off I think I’ve found my new Ken Livingstone. What fun we’re going to have together!

When Hacked Off talks about making the press “accountable,” what they mean is making it accountable to people like them.

 

Whilst on his blog you might want to read his reports about Tower Hamlets…something else the BBC conveniently ignores, or covers superficially.

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58 Responses to Imagine If Politicians Had The Power To License BBC Reporters

  1. David Preiser (USA) says:

    Who are Hacked Off? How curious that Gilligan neglected to mention his former BBC colleagues.

    Co-founder Kevin Marsh, former editor of Today and executive editor of the BBC College of Journalism. Apparently no official capacity at Hacked off, but describes himself as “still involved”. He was quickly on the attack not long ago when one of Gilligan’s current colleagues at the Telegraph criticized Hacked Off, so not too far removed.

    It’s curious, because Gilligan wrote critically of his former boss back in 2006. Guess who canned Gilligan after Hutton.

    Less important, but still worth noting: Press spokesman David Hass, former producer and deputy editor at Today.

    I realize his point was really to shed light on just how many extreme Left ideologues are behind this whole thing and what they’re up to, but he should have mentioned a co-founder and someone considered to be such a paragon of journalistic integrity that he was head of the BBC’s CoJ. It’s a curious omission.

       33 likes

    • Facts, dear boy. says:

      I realise it can be hard to follow this stuff from the other side of the pond but Gilligan wasn’t “canned” he resigned.

         11 likes

      • David Preiser (USA) says:

        Forced out, dear boy. Gavyn Davies and Greg Dyke both also resigned after Hutton, but nobody imagines Gilligan had a real choice. He said it was his choice, but who believes that, aside from you?

        I see you decided not to address whether or not Gilligan should have mentioned Kevin Marsh.

           18 likes

        • Facts, dear boy says:

          “He said it was his choice, but who believes that” Ah the fearless BiasedBBC trope of making up facts to fit personal opinion. Although I guess it’s hard to get a real sense of British news and opinion from American.

             3 likes

          • David Preiser (USA) says:

            Well done avoiding the question about Marsh. And also well done finding one error and claiming everything else is false, without substantiating. And well done for holding a nobody like me to a far higher standard than you do the BBC.

               25 likes

            • Guest Who says:

              Must have taken a few others all in their power to resist chipping in about opting for terms like ‘trope’ given the current ‘Wha’?’ Flokk levels.
              The Farce with this one strong is.

                 8 likes

          • Andy S. says:

            Facts Dear Boy,you are Scott and I claim my £5.00!

               5 likes

            • Guest Who says:

              One ‘bless’ or a can’t resist ad hom, and you claim your prize!

                 4 likes

              • Wild says:

                Scott would never say “dear boy”. It sounds more like the [I hate Jews and Americans] Nicked Emus – who every now and then says he will never post here again [Oh he hates Irish Protestants as well] but a few days later defends the BBC under a different name.

                   10 likes

  2. Ian Hills says:

    The title of this post ‘”Imagine If Politicians Had The Power To License BBC Reporters” is somewhat ironic, given that BBC effectively licenses politicians through its adulation and smear tactics.

       49 likes

  3. Andrew says:

    What we have here is “Real Will Liberty”, for example Rousseau’s paradoxical idea of forcing people to be free, which justifies totalitarianism of Left or Right. The idea is that an enlightened few use the apparatus of the state to constrain the people to do what they “ought” to want to do (if only they knew enough!)
    This idea operates even in free societies. For example, we have to stop at red traffic lights even when, late at night with little traffic about, it would be safe to jump them – for the public good. We require children to clean their teeth before bed, reducing their liberty briefly but increasing their well-being (freedom from toothache and the dentist’s drill!) – for their own good. Free compulsory education is an example, fluoride in drinking water is another. Few would object to these, I suspect.
    The problems begin when you go beyond regulating how people drive or consume alcohol in public, for example, and start telling them what they can read, listen to on the radio or find on the internet.
    The state-funded BBC grossly distorts the public debate in Britain, e.g. on the EU, climate change and mass immigration; the imperfect Murdoch media do at least provide some counter-balance to this. There should always be space for the sometimes raucous “Daily Mail” alongside the often smug “Guardian”. Let “The Mirror” and “The Sun” battle it out too! There is nothing “naive” about pluralism in the media – it is an essential of a free society.

       33 likes

    • It's all too much says:

      There’s nothing wrong with my teeth so why should I have compulsory medication?

         3 likes

      • It's all too much says:

        Oops, didn’t watch to the end – I am quite sure that it is NOT put in water as a nazi mind control plot

           0 likes

        • Mice Height says:

          YES IT IS!
          AND DON’T GET ME STARTED ON CHEMTRAILS! FACT!!!

             2 likes

          • Andrew says:

            My knowledge of the effects of fluoride is limited; please excuse me if I simply quoted it as an example. If you prefer, I could offer instead the chlorination of public swimming pools or compulsory wearing of seat-belts or crash helmets.

               1 likes

            • pah says:

              Harrumph!

              Your two further examples are, like vaccinations, double edged swords and are not done for the public good. Unless, of course, you count reducing the NHS’ expenses as good for the public.

              Chlorinated water has adverse effects on some peoples skin, cause respiratory ailments and, like everything else, has been linked to cancer. Seat belts can prevent people from exiting cars after accidents, or worse, cause fatal injuries themselves through chest loading.

              Thing is they also save serious injuries and therefore save money. If they saved lives but saved no money or cost money then there would be a campaign to stop people swimming or driving …

                 4 likes

              • Andrew says:

                You are jumping from the general to the particular. Seat belts generally spare people from worse injuries, although there will be particular cases where they hinder escape or compress the chest. My point is that Real Will Liberty is already with us; BUT it really would be very dangerous if used to close down certain newspapers or sites like this! Would Harriet Harman, for instance, wish to close “The Sun” (the paper ‘wot won it’ for the Tories in 1992) but not “The Mirror” (‘Tory toff David Cameron’, ‘Thatcher ruined Britain’, etc) ?

                   3 likes

                • pah says:

                  Harrumph! Again.

                  Vaccination saves the NHS money in the long run. If you believe those that run this country give a flying fuck about the rest of us then you are a fool. If it didn’t they wouldn’t do it.

                  Your two suggestions (a&b) are a good indication of your thinking. Anyone who does not agree with you 100% is a deluded moron. Let me illuminate you once again – I’m not against vaccination – I’m against compulsory vaccination. To suggest that vaccination is 100% safe is foolish.

                  I did not mention chlorination of the water supply but the chlorination of swimming pools – which is unnecessary as there are other less harmful means to achieve the same end. Please learn to read posts, you could have saved your self a lot of typing.

                  As to seat belts I always wear one because I know what the cost of not wearing one can be. But that should be my choice not Nanny’s.

                  AFAIAA the partial cost of road ‘accidents’ to the NHS is often paid for by the culprits insurance (assuming he has it), so in a way, what you are suggesting is current policy.

                     2 likes

                  • pah says:

                    WTF is going on with these posts. this is a reply to ‘It’s all too Much’ below.

                       1 likes

                  • It's all too much says:

                    Where does the phrase “swimming pool” appear in your post. You mention a campaign to end swimming. I confess that I didn’t see the connection. Perhaps if you mentioned swimming pools int the first paragraph we would have understood one another.

                    The original post and the point is about mass involuntary medication of drinking water – flouridation

                       0 likes

                • pah says:

                  Whilst I’m here …

                  You are jumping from the general to the particular

                  No, I’m referring to specific points. You mentioned chlorination of swimming pools and seat belts – that’s what I responded to.

                     0 likes

                  • Andrew says:

                    I was making a general point! These are examples of restricting individual freedom for the public good. You can argue with specific ones, but the general point holds: we are forced by law to do things which many people see as in the public interest and would do anyway of their own free will.

                       1 likes

              • David Lamb says:

                Seat belts, crash helmets, bad news for those awaiting organ transplants. BBC might argue for freedom from wearing these rather than encouraging the Welsh Assembly towards opting out rules for organ donation.

                   1 likes

                • It's all too much says:

                  Why is the BBC so obsessed with organ harvesting? the ghouls run a campaign in favour of state ownership of bodies at every opportunity.

                  As organs have a huge value perhaps the best way that the BBC could increase the supply is by campaigning for a legal ‘futures’ market where you can sell your organs, in advance of death, to the highest bidder. There may be problems but I am fairly certain that these could be ironed out.

                  Do I hear the BBC throwing a collective(ist) fit at the mere notion…

                     6 likes

              • It's all too much says:

                If vaccinations are ‘not done for the public good’ why are they done? They are expensive campaigns but have eliminated smallpox, and polio (in most places). Are you suggesting a) that the pharmo-industrial complex has fooled everyone into vaccinating people just to make excess profits? They make more money from viagra
                b) That vaccination is some sort of giant conspiracy to inject us with mind control drugs?

                Chlorination is along with vaccination the most important contributors to public health. I challenge you or indeed anybody to drink a pint of un-chlorinated water from a nice slow moving part of the river Tigris. The effects will be spectacular and potentially fatal. Vaccination and chlorination are triumphs of Western civilisation and are policies of mass medication where there are real benefits. Vacination protects you as an individual by reducing your risk of infection from an infected individual. One of the reasons (not recognised by the BBC) that there is a spike in transmission of infectious diseases (esp TB) is that the herd immunity has been diluted by unvaccinated and infected people arriving in the UK in large numbers. (btw anybody ever explain the cause of the increase in heterosexual HIV patients in the NHS – anything to do with the increase in the sub-saharan African population of London?)

                I object to fluoridation because it is a completely unnecessary involuntary mass medication. If I really feel that the tetanus jab is going to rot my brain I can refuse to have it (and potentially die of lock-jaw) but it is damned hard to avoid drinking treated water. Luckily only 10% of Britain ‘benefits’ from this policy. As for seatbelts people should make the choice themselves provided that they are entirely liable for the full economic cost (to themselves and ‘society’) of any injuries. They will need to have a significantly higher insurance premium if they want to drive without a seatbelt and not risk bankruptcy as well as serious injury

                   6 likes

    • Richard Pinder says:

      I wonder if it will be illegal to buy newspapers from the US, Canada, Australia under the Levinson laws.

      They could try to print the newspapers in the Republic of Ireland or do what they did 300 years ago, by posting illegal pamphlets.

      So we now need another Civil War, ending in some more Putney debates about chopping the heads off left-wing authoritarian liberal morons, and then replacing them with a Swiss style direct democracy.

         0 likes

  4. Smell the glove says:

    If Leveson were around in the 60s would the perfume affair have come to light ? And furthermore what would the pound in the pocket have done don’t ask for things that won’t happen and that roussow didn’t they cut his head off or was that Disraeli

       3 likes

    • Wild says:

      Rousseau was a Swiss psychopath whose florid writings about love and equality greatly inspired the Left. He treated his wife like a servant (I say wife but he never married her) and put all their children into an orphanage as soon as they were born, where as far as I know they all died. He inspired the French Revolution but it happened long after his death. Disraeli was a Jewish politician who became leader of the Conservative Party, and was twice Prime Minister. Much revered by some on the Right as an advocate of “One Nation” Conservatism he lived after the French Revolution.

         14 likes

      • Andrew says:

        Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1712-1778; so he did die before the Revolution in 1789. He had five children by Therese Le Vasseur, with whom he lived from 1749 for a time, but he did not look after them. In his book “Du Contrat Social” (“On the Social Contract”, 1762) he stated in Chapter 7 that “In order for this social pact to be truly meaningful … … whosoever refuses to obey the general will shall be constrained to do so by all the others; which means nothing other than that he shall be forced to be free; …”

        Of course this begs the question: who decides what the general will is? The BBC? Professors Natalie Fenton and James Curran? The Eu? The Labour Party?

           10 likes

        • Amounderness Lad says:

          “He had five children by Therese Le Vasseur, with whom he lived from 1749 for a time, but he did not look after them.” No wonder Rousseau is a Poster Boy for the left.

          Oh, and Wild, that was very naughty of you, you know Lefties get very distressed when people make “judgemental” comments about different relationships. Fancy commenting on the status of his relationship with the mother of his children. Tut, tut, such fascist attitudes, you should be ashamed. But, of course, fathering countless children and leaving it to others, especially the State, i.e. us, to provide for them is perfectly acceptable to the afore mentioned groups, they think it’s so terribly modern.

             3 likes

          • stewart says:

            “No wonder Rousseau is a Poster Boy for the left.”
            I think that is entirely true of bourgeois left at least.
            Their ideology has less to do with vindicating the rights of man than validating their indolent life styles.

               3 likes

  5. Doublethinker says:

    The understandably aggrieved victims of hacking have been exploited by the liberal left media, Guardian, BBC etc , who have seized on their grievance as a weapon to beat their centre right rivals with.
    As usual when the BBC start one of their crusades in conivance with Labour the Tories are cowed into submission because they think that if the BBC says so the majority of people must agree.
    Firstly , I wonder why can’t the Tories realise that the BBC is a special interest group and that the majority of people don’t necessarily agree with what it spouts and that it can be safely ignored?
    Secondly, if the Tories are so scared of what the BBC says that they dare not upset it, when will it occur to them that they are allowing the democratically elected government ( in coalition of course which will be affecting things) to be bullied into submission by an unelected elite which amazingly they allow to be funded by the state!
    We are witnessing the death of democracy in Britain. Further curbs to press freedom will only hasten this process which of course is what the liberal left establishment, and their cheerleader the BBC, want.

       39 likes

  6. Deborah says:

    The fact that any unelected organisation like Hacked Off could be involved in the middle of the night (on behalf of whom?) in agreeing future legislation stinks. Is this like Germany in the 1930s or USSR and eastern bloc countries in the 50’s and 60’s? Whichever it should make us all sleep less easy in our beds.

       38 likes

  7. George R says:

    “That’s enough on Hacked Off, Eds.
    We need to focus less on the private machinations of the anti-tabloid lobby, and more on making the public case for press freedom.”

    By Mick Hume.

    http://www.spiked-online.com/site/article/13515/?

       4 likes

  8. George R says:

    “A truly independent regulator of the Press.”

    By DAILY MAIL COMMENT.

    Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2314987/A-truly-independent-regulator-Press.html#ixzz2RYU2NLE4

       1 likes

  9. George R says:

    “Hacked Off chief stonewalls requests to name secret donors”

    By John Glenday.

    [Excerpt]:-

    “Brian Cathcart, head of the vocal press reform group Hacked Off, has refused to name the financial backers who are underpinning the lobby groups operations – despite repeated requests to do so.

    “Cathcart faced an angry crowd at the Aye Write! Literary festival in Glasgow, when he repeatedly dodged requests to spill the beans during a debate, prompting frustrated members of the audience to shout ‘answer the question!’”

    http://www.thedrum.com/news/2013/04/18/hacked-chief-stonewalls-requests-name-secret-donors?

       15 likes

    • Richard Pinder says:

      I guess it is because its taxpayers money from the EU and left-wing quangos.

         0 likes

  10. Mice Height says:

    Does anyone know the reason why Telegraph Blogs have closed comments on any story that may stir up strong emotions? Is it increased regulation, or just a declining industry with less money to spend on moderators?

       12 likes

    • Guest Who says:

      Sadly, no.
      But it is pervasive, going now beyond ‘sensitive’ (ie: ‘ism industry territory) to pretty much anything that may see a few trolls stirring the pot (Thatcher funeral).
      And it was already being noticed, not getting appreciated and getting commented upon (on the few still ‘open’) before the paywall, which of course left the blogs as the last areas of free exchange to those not prepared to stump up to get Lean or Riddell’s nonsense as ‘articles’.
      As with many BBC Editors’ efforts (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs/the_editors/ ‘To join in, add a comment on a story’ – Well, try posting one first, and avoid closing before lunch, berks), why they pretend these are interactive blogs as opposed to broadcast-only editorial opinion is a daft conceit.
      It will be interesting to see how ‘trust’ in the Telegraph is rewarded on this, as they at least are subject to market forces.

         8 likes

      • Roland Deschain says:

        Be fair. They would have had to close comments lest the rapidly burgeoning number on that page overwhelm their servers.

           3 likes

  11. JimS says:

    Hacked Off complained about the recent proposals from the newspapers that , “they go against the will of parliament”, their code for ‘tawdry backroom deal with a special interest group’. Welcome to the New Democracy.

       17 likes

  12. GCooper says:

    No mention of the profoundly undemocratic Common Purpose, yet – though clearly they are up to their necks in this ‘coup’.

       15 likes

  13. pah says:

    Serious question.

    Are Common Purpose really a threat to democracy or are they akin to David Ickes ‘Lizard men’?

    I ask because it is difficult to find any serious examination of the organisation that is from sources I trust. That in it self could prove either case.

    So Common Purpose. Shadowy democracy assassins or Lizard men? What does the panel think?

       8 likes

    • Deborah says:

      I think I understand what Common Purpose wants to dismantle (possibly) but I am dashed if I know what they want to put into is place. Whilst images of Animal Farm pass through my head so too do images of King Tony and Queen Cherie. Plus la change, plus la meme chose?

         11 likes

      • It's all too much says:

        Personally I think CP members are still in love with the 70’s. They have utter contempt for the opinions of the population – because they are ‘wrong’, after all the population oppose the EU, are xenophobes and above all some of them do not do what they are told. Bastards. CP believe, and are implementing, 70’s ‘Technocratic Dirigisme’ (sorry that is pretentious enough to be worthy of a Brown/Balls economic directive’) which is the governing model for the EU, in which, you will have noticed, democracy plays no role.

        CP appears to power sharing network for the public sector ‘administrators’ that preserve and enhances their positions individually and satisfy their desire to direct society. They want a ‘planned society’ and a ‘planned economy’ – with them doing the planning. Inconvenient things like public opinion expressed in a free press are obstacles to be overcome.

        I will stop posting now as I have already bored commentors enough today!

        http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/165105/dirigisme

           7 likes

    • GCooper says:

      If it is to be believed (and on this occasion i think it is) the Daily Mail has fingered CP as a (possibly even the) prime mover behind Hacked Off

      I think your confusion between Icke’s ravings and the genuine concerns about Common Purpose suggest a want of logic.

      Even if CP was not essentially anti-democratic, its existence is beyond doubt. Icke’s Lizards, on the other hand, are the product of a deranged mind.

         8 likes

    • Andy S. says:

      A list of graduates from Common Purpose “Management Courses” is available online. You’ll have to Google it and the list is far from complete. There are about 3,500 names on the list and they are from ALL areas of the Public Services – Police, NHS, Local Government and large corporations. In fact it looks as though C.P. drones have infiltrated all areas of the establishment and business – very worrying!

         8 likes

    • Richard Pinder says:

      “Common Purpose” are trained to serve each other in a Common Purpose.

      It replaces the democratic idea of serving the public as “Public Servants“.

      In authoritarian societies such as National Socialist Germany and Soviet Socialist Russian, the bureaucrats had a common purpose in serving each other as part of the socialist state.

      But in a democracy, the bureaucrats serve the Public.

      For instance, in Britain, you are compelled by law to pay to watch the television, even if you do not watch the BBC on the principle that it has a left-wing authoritarian bias.

      While on the other hand you are “at the moment” free to buy the Newspaper of you choice.

      If no one wants to buy the newspaper because it is a bland, truth censoring left-wing newspaper like the Guardian, then it would go bust and close down, unless a left-wing regime had a common purpose in propping it up with state funded advertising.

      “State funded” means that you are compelled by the state to pay for the Guardian newspaper, through taxation.

         0 likes

  14. It's all too much says:

    Pah,

    A double haruumph hmm – I didn’t mean to be rude, I’m sure that you are not a deluded idiot, this is a polemical site hence the pompous and didactic tone. Sorry. Anyway a bit more pomposity from me… If you read my post I make it clear that vaccination IS voluntary but water flouridation is not (that was the point I was trying to make anyway); and I do not think that we disagree on much – I am 100% with you on seat belts and if someone decides not to wear one I couldn’t give a damn as long as I don’t have to pay for any unpleasant consequences of their decision. As for the NHS saving money, I am all for it*, but a) That is not their primary purpose and b) I would rather not have to sit next to someone with TB (or smallpox, diphtheria, polio etc) coughing her lungs out, on the train to work. Vaccination materially reduces that risk to me, at least in theory. I agree that there are risks with vaccination but that these are pretty insignificant, and were manipulated by hysterical and illogical single issue people in the case of MMR. These compared with the individual and population wide impacts of mumps, measles and rubella (have a look at the comparative risks of brain damage from measles cf an asserted risk from a vaccine) far less a flu pandemic for example, or the bubonic plague. There is an epidemic going on in Wales at the moment and one person has died and hundreds of others have a pretty nasty illness. When did you read of a death from a MMR vaccination? I’m sure that we would have been told.

    Personally I believe that you have to trust some people, even when I am not in a position to know if they are telling me the truth. This is galling but I simply don’t have enough knowledge to give an educated challenge to everything. I tend to trust epidemiologists and those who develop vaccines (you are free not to) in the same way that I trust a train driver. He is, ultimately, in it for the money too but I believe that he will stop at the next red signal even though, in the past, there have been train crashes….

    ***********************

    And CP is a real cell based special interest group of public sector ’empoyees’ who have a common agenda.

    Idele thought; “CP” sounds a bit like “CPGB”

    No lizards involved

    *a massive reduction in pointless management structures and ‘playing shops’, an end to lots of elective surgery, a recognition that if you want million pound drug treatments then you should pay for them, an end of health tourism – I could go on.

       2 likes

    • Andy S. says:

      It doesn’t do anything to allay suspicions of the motives of Common Purpose when its creators and management are all self confessed Marxists and authoritarians to boot.

         8 likes

  15. chrisH says:

    I think that Common Purpose don`t like their initials anymore now that the Communist Party weren`t able to quietly creep through the institutions of British life, whilst honourable socialists like Callaghan and Prentice were around.
    I think therefore that they prefer to be seen as “Secular Scientologists” instead-whose initials seem to be more akin to their ” mission vision”.
    Masons without a Bible or any other notion than doing good for themselves alone…truly creepy bunch!

       5 likes

  16. Sir Arthur Strebe-Grebling says:

    Today’s bBBC News Quiz showed the loony lefties for the hypocrites that they all are.
    Jeremy Hardy says that he’s really an anarchist/ libertarian/ socialist but he wants the press to be regulated to force them to print only what he thinks they should.
    And Sandi Toksvig’s script said that the problem with the revised Royal Charter put forward by the press was that Rupert Murdoch was behind it, and it would be better if it were backed by someone more moderate like Robert Mugabe.
    It’s in their DNA.

       3 likes

    • chrisH says:

      Only heard a couple of random minutes, but did hear the rare sound of a pop at Labour and Miliband.
      The image is of them having no policies(true), and of Miliband having no charisma or clue what to do(true on both charges).
      Once the Labour luvvies are onto you with these “impressions” of their beloved Leader and The Cause…I see an end to the charade of an electable Labour Party.
      Let`s hope so eh?

         1 likes

    • Richard Pinder says:

      The only right-wing person present at that restoration of the “Charles I” Royal Charter for state regulated Press, was that dandy Lord Protector, Oliver Left-wing.

         0 likes

  17. George R says:

    “Let the Leveson Lovers pursue their passion – as long as the press can too”
    By RACHEL JOHNSON.

    Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2315922/Let-Leveson-Lovers-David-Sherborne-Carine-Patry-Hoskins-pursue-passion–long-press-too.html#ixzz2RkXdv7yM
    Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

       0 likes

  18. Uncle Tim says:

    What I find intriguing is that Asperger Rusbridger, who calls his so-called newspaper ‘the world’s leading liberal voice,’ has been one of the leading advicates of Hacked Off’s press regulation. Do the Guardian’s journalists understand where their nutty editor is leading them? When the censor is looking for targets, do they think they will be exempt?

       1 likes