Oh damn, still in this dream.

Interesting Guardian editorial today:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/may/27/eurozone-crisis-christine-lagarde-morality-tale

Obviously it's all the fault of the undeserving poor. They have brought us to this state with their health care needs and pensions. Now we must wait for the noble bankers to help us out of our misery with their graciousness. 


This was followed by a revelation that BoJo's former communications chief, Guto Harri, an ex-BBC man himself, threatened the Beeb over an interview with a biographer of the philandering Mayor of London:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/may/27/guto-harri-press-campaign-against-bbc

Harri is a man who has championed the integrity of NewsCorp.

Ye gods above.

It's one thing the Beeb nursing folk like Jeremy Clarkson, whose neo-libertarian views can rightly be regarded as the comic outpourings of a deluded tosspot with a vocabulary considerably more extensive than his understanding: but when they start nurturing folk like Harri you really have to wonder if, within the very environs of Broadcasting House itself, there isn't some secret self-destructive inner cabal working strenuously for the beeb's demise: undermining from within, as some sort of "fifth column".

Never mind, when Roops has persuaded the Tories to dismantle the BBC and asset strip the bits, and all we shall be left with is pay-per-view and Fox, maybe we can download everything we want to watch from the bit-torrent sites. Of course, by then we shall have no in-depth unbiased news reporting, or analysis: but what do the common folk need of such fripperies when they're holding down two or three jobs just to pay the rent? That is if they can find two or three jobs…or even one.

You see, it is my contention that, in the media, a strong private sector needs a strong state sector to balance it. Each keeps the other virtuous. Some of the lunatics who call themselves conservatives would get rid of the Beeb - the world's oldest national broadcasting organisation. How precisely are these folk "conservative" I wonder, if they are prepared to throw the Beeb under a bus to conform to some bizarre ideological notion of the limitations of government. As for the Harri chappy he comes across as being a bit distastefully Judas-like, which in the modern world is no doubt "realistic" or "sexy".

Bah humbug. You shall get the media you deserve, no doubt. And hopefully I will be dead by then.

Sing if you love the oligarchy.

The best things in life are free,
But you can keep 'em for the birds and the bees...

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14112097 

www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jul/11/phone-hacking-news-international-gordon-brown

If true, the News Corporation scandal has just taken another turn. I quote:

On the reports on Fraser Brown having cystic fibrosis, the Brown family believe only medical staff treating their son had access to the records, and are worried they may have been accessed illegally.

A well-placed source has told the BBC that in 2006 when she was editor of the Sun, Rebekah Brooks called the Browns to inform them she knew that their son Fraser had the condition.

Friends of the Browns say the call caused them immense distress, since they were only coming to terms with the diagnosis, which had not been confirmed.

Cameron and Brown share the pain of having a child with serious illness. If someone had accessed the records of Cameron's son's illness, I would have thought that, had positions been reversed, Brown would have investigated this properly and Murdoch's empire would be liable to some sort of punitive response. And I think that Cameron is a big enough chap, and a decent enough man, to ensure that this revelation doesn't get away lightly.

I am now of the opinion that News Corporation's UK goose may well be cooked.