Destroying the BBC hegemony
Today David Cameron finds himself in the “awkward” position of having to back a Labour motion calling for Murdoch’s News Corporation to drop its bid for BSKyB. Of course in the current climate of almost Death-of-Diana outrage (so brilliantly orchestrated by the BBC and the Guardian), there is probably not much wriggle room for doing otherwise. But in fact it all suits him very nicely for the very last thing our pathologically Heathite prime minister really wants is for the BSkyB to go through.
Why? Because the purpose of Murdoch’s BSkyB bid is essentially so that he can set up a UK version of America’s most popular news channel Fox News. Fox News acts as the conscience of the right in the US: it’s one of the things which made the Tea Party possible. A British version would achieve the same over here, destroying the crushing hegemony enjoyed by the BBC, restoring a balance to the political debate in Britain which for decades has been so sorely lacking – whatever the BBC’s supposed charter to commitment to fairness and balance might pretend.
There’s a faction in the Conservative party (red meat Tories – the party’s ideological conscience) who are understandably desperate for the BSkyB deal to go through. It’s not because they love or even trust Rupert Murdoch but because they recognise that – ironic though this may seem – he currently represents Britain’s brightest hope for freedom of speech and the promulgation of the kind of small government, low tax, liberty-loving ideas you almost never hear expressed on the BBC except when donutted by a Lib-Dem, a Socialist, a Green and Fake Conservative telling you how dangerously extreme they are.
But this, of course, is why Cameron doesn’t want such a thing. If Cameron has any kind of political philosophy, it’s a woolly, don’t-rock-the-boat centrism combined with a vague, paternalistic notion that the gentleman from Eton knows best what is good for you. It suits him down to the ground that whenever he’s accused by his party’s right of being a spineless PR man who holds no greater ambition for Britain’s future than its managed decline he can simply wave airily towards the BBC and explain: “Sorry, chaps. But what can I do? We’re basically a left-wing kind of country whose agenda is defined by the values of the BBC….”
If the BSkyB deal ever goes through, Cameron will no longer have that option available. Worse still, he will have a new TV news channel explaining to viewers every day of the week what a limp-wristed, tofu-eating, faux-Tory abomination their supposedly Conservative prime minister really is.
I don’t think he wants that. Do you?
Related posts:
- David Cameron skippers Morning Cloud, conducts LSO, etc
- There was nothing ‘illiberal’ about David Cameron’s speech on multiculturalism
- The Murdochalypse: bread and circuses
- Maybe we’d be better off if David Cameron had gone to Harrow
The solution to the very high cost of todays old technology wind turbines is to replace them with sterling accelerated wind turbines. These jet-speed turbines will operate for twice the annual hours and make 3-4 times the power. Thus making wind electricity cheaper than any other power plant….. and they can’t kill birds.
Intermittent wind energy can easily and cheaply be stored in conventional pumped-hydro schemes in Scotland’s hills and valleys. These can be made to improve the natural environment and make wildlife flourish.
See; http://www.zero-carbon-energy.com/pumped-hydro.htm
If you actually took the time to study it you would see that accelerated wind is the world’s answer to cheap, clean, forever energy independence.
Wind farm developers merely have to move from the propeller age to the jet age to save England from the tyranny of fossil fuel blackmail.
See; http://www.all-natural-energy.com/
You write “And might this have anything to do, perchance, with the fact that – as the Climategate emails made abundantly clear – “unconvinced” scientists were deliberately shut out of the peer-review process by the “convinced” ones?” – and of course it does, but IMO it goes deeper – “Climate Science” (as distinct from meteorology, climatology, etc) is a field invented by and for AGW believers who either choose not to call themselves meteor-/climatologists, because that’s not where the grant money is, or who in addition may not do so because they are in fact neither? It should therefore neither surprise nor greatly impress us if they “overwhelmingly” endorse AGW. It’s just what “climate scientists” do.
I note you hat-tipped WUWT, but do go and have a look at the discussion at collide-a-scape. It’s got lots that you won’t find on the usual denialist* blogs – committed warmies horrified at what they rightly see as a great disservice to their cause, scientifically literate sceptics ripping the methodology to bits, and the estimable Judith Curry deploring the very idea behind this pabulum. And the entertainment is enhanced by the fact that every post defending its publication provides further evidence of the forensic bankruptcy of CAGW theory.
*Bored with the argument, I’m now routinely identifying myself as a “denier”, although if I think my readership will be largely American, I may append a few redundant syllables – e.g. “denialistician” to make the poor dears feel more at home. If I’m posting at the Guardian I use “deniar”, for similar reasons. All part of being unfailingly polite, no matter how cretinous your interlocutors.