Sunday, December 7, 2014

The BBC is bias; but George Osborne should have given detail.

I DO NOT LIKE THE BBC. It is an institution with an in-built liberal bias, and I resent having, by law, to pay to even own a television - a situation unheard of outside North Korea. But the BBC's biased (sic) reportage of the chancellor's autumn statement especially by Norman Smith, the corporations political editor; with his comparing the effect of the chancellor's autumn statement to Orwell's Wigan Pier; and describing the planned spending cuts as "utterly terrifying"; not only shows a bias, but a factually silly one. His language was, to say the least hyperbolic. It was a disgraceful episode among many other examples of the corporation's liberal bias.
            
            But having said that, the chancellor did himself no favours for not announcing where the cuts would come from to help level the deficit. In other words there was no blue print, only an ambition intended no doubt to put the Labour Party on the wrong foot. The Tory party may be upset by the BBC's approach; but they allowed such an approach to be summoned up by the lack of detail in where the spending cuts needed to meet their economic outcome would come from. They could have at least tried with the use of well crafted statistics.  
            
             As usual the political party in power used the occasion to try and write the next day's headlines, after which; and after further detailed examination, it all starts to unwind in the media. But the BBC was never going to offer a kindly appraisal of a Tory pronouncement; let alone an autumn statement – but a Cameron liberal led Tory Party might have expected more from the BBC.
            
THE WIGAN PIER EFFECT could never arise in this country again. It does not mean that poverty and unemployment has disappeared; but merely that such a state of impoverished venality described by George Orwell, could never be contemplated again; and no modern politician, including Osborne, would ever contemplate such a 'solution' to our national debt.
            
             To this extent the BBC's political editor overreached himself in his loathing of the Tory Party; and even George Orwell would have disowned his rhetoric. Orwell may have been part of the Left; but he was never of the Left. He was not the Left's captive as many at the BBC are today. His iconic novel 1984 was, after all, inspired by his time at the BBC.
            
             What is needed from George Osborne, as a serving chancellor is detail. It is no good blaming any media institution for misinterpreting his solutions for the deficit. He has to tell the people of the sacrifices they have to make to put this country back on the rails. This government has singularly failed in this purpose after promises made before the 2010 general election. The British people need to be served up honesty; not the rhetoric of clinging to power for power's sake. This is a cul-de-sac down which only further cynicism can flourish, leading to social unrest of the kind (and even beyond the kind) we have already witnessed in Greece.
            
            Our politicians may lack the qualities of their previous exemplars of the type that led this country through the war against Germany. But if we are to emulate such temperament once more, then our leaders must be honest with the people they are supposed to serve.          
           
            Osborne must spell out the ruthless task needed to be undertaken to bring our deficit under control: and his party leader, the prime minister, David Cameron must collaborate with him in such a task: and if the people reject the sacrifices required from them, and chose to elect a Labour government; then at least the British public would have been given a chance to vote into what is needed to vote on as the only way out of such a desperate situation.
           
            The Conservatives must spend the time before now and May to educate the public into the economic realities of the country's financial state; they must not pull their punches in doing so, as they have often found it politically expedient to do in the past; and must tell the people of the sacrifices they must make to engineer the defeat of our  deficit's grip on the nation.
            
           But will they? Enmeshed as they are in the twilight zone of spin doctoring and political advisers; will the Conservative Party take the gamble? Will they ignore political injunctions from the opposition? No they will not; and so the game goes on and the country's deficit will no doubt continue to increases beyond what the markets deem manageable and unable to finance.
           
           The UK politicians, at such a point, will find themselves in a comparison with modern Greece. National debt is not only as important as household debt – but far more important. The principles are the same, but the magnitude is far greater for the nation than the household.

THE BBC IS A LIBERAL CONSTRUCT. This would be fair enough if they lived off the proceeds of voluntarily given monthly payments such as SKY seeks -  but they do not. All the channels, apart from the BBC, earn their profits from subscription and advertising . I am not a liberal. I do not support the BBC bias toward this wretched so-called 'progressive' idiom; and I resent having to have my licence fee deducted monthly from my bank account.
            
            The BBC presents itself as the world's foremost broadcaster, yet are afraid to cut themselves free from the licence fee and spread their wings within the global media market place. They would sooner remain handcuffed to the public tit and continue disingenuously to profess "objectivity"; rather than setting out on their own within the globalising market they worship. If the BBC is as confident as they wish us to believe, the corporation would have no problem surviving without the licence fee.
            
             BBC bias is real. It is of a liberal disposition, unlike the disposition of many of the millions of those who are forced to subscribe to it through the licence fee. Set the BBC free to go their own way without taxpayer's money to keep it solvent. Let the people chose what to watch within the modern media. The BBC is no better than a scrounger living off the state and protected by the proceeds from people in their millions who do not subscribe to the corporation's liberal ethos – let the consumer decide what to watch. Give the consumer back their entitlement to own a television set without having to pay a tax on its ownership. George is right about the bias; but many Liberal conservatives support this stance including Chris Pattern - Osborne has come late to such bias, ignoring it until he is affected personally by it.

            

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