Britannia Radio

SHILLING FOR THE NHS...

The BBC is obsessive on the need to tell us how wonderful the NHS is as a health-care system. It does so as a not so subtle battering ram to force the Conservatives into wasting the same huge sums of OUR taxes on it as has Labour when they come to power. This is all about positioning for future years. You can understand why the BBC admires huge taxpayer funded monopolies. Anyway, I listened to this "debate" this morning on Today.

At first I thought it actually was going to be a real debate. Leading cancer specialist Karol Sikora suggest that the NHS is "doomed" and he was on to debate this with Dr Michael Dixon who is Chairman of the NHS alliance. However it turns out that Dr Sikora was simply pointing out that the demographics that support the funding of the NHS are unsustainable, a very fair point. Dr Dixon simply ignored this economic reality, as one would expect from an NHS apologist. Dr Sikora went on to praise much that is good in the NHS, including the "jewel in the crown" - the GP service. Sorry, but I don't think the GP service is anything of the sort. If you are unlucky enough to need a GP after hours, at weekends, or on bank holidays you will find such reality rather different. Labour has put in place with GP's perhaps the most anti-patient contract one could devise, though GP's are richly rewarded! Why can't the BBC allow someone on who believes that socialised healthcare provision is morally wrong, financially unaffordable and anachronistic in the 21st Century? Perhaps the analogy to State Broadcasting is too close for comfort?

ON TOUR WITH THE QUEEN

I caught Kwame Kwei-Armah being interviewed on the BBC this morning concerning his documentary "On Tour with the Queen. The former Casualty actor and much loved neo political commentator was able to tell us that Australia did not want Her Majesty as Head of State, and it showed a clip of him being interviewed on Jamaican radio laughing uproariously at the suggestion by a caller that Independence has been a disaster for Jamaica and it would be much better off as a British dependency. The hosts on the BBC joined in the chuckling. You can tell why the BBC loves Kwame.

JUST ANOTHER MANIC MONDAY

What better way for the brave little class warriors at the BBC to start the week but by giving an easy canter to the hard-left Compass group's lunatic suggestion that we need a "High Pay" Commission. In essence, Compass want Government to determine an upper limit on what we can earn and on the level of financial bonus we receive. The Compass spokesman got away with the canard that "greed" caused the economic recession and also with the suggestion that the "Low Pay" Commission brought in during 1997 has been a success. All nonsense and economically illiterate, of course, but since the BBC was unable to find anyone with an alternative point of view I guess listeners will be left with the impression that Compass wanted.

"Why Have Prisons ?" Redux

>> SUNDAY, AUGUST 16, 2009

An afterthought to (and some additional information on) the Today programme's three-item (one, two, three) 'don't lock them up' fest of last Thursday, noted by David here :

Two points. One is the BBC double-whammy reporting - that not only do Barnardo's think that too many young criminals are being locked up, but the Parliamentary Justice Committee think the same thing - which was reported as a separate item on Radio 5 news that day.

Alas, the BBC failed to tell us who's at the top of the list giving evidence to the Parliamentary Justice Committee. You wouldn't be too surprised to know that it's - wait for it - Barnardo's.

In fact the list of organisations giving evidence to the committee (mostly 'fake charities', the bulk of whose income comes from the taxpayer - Barnardo's for example closed its last children's home in 1989) is one to warm a social worker's heart, and the evidence presented (here) by the assorted pointy-heads deeply depressing. It's worth a read if you want to know why crime is so high in the UK.

But I digress. The thrust of the evidence presented by Barnardos, and through them by the Justice Committee, is that too many young criminals are being jailed. Why too many ? Because - wait for it - the judges are too harsh. There are government guidelines - which the judges ignore and go their own punitive way. Were they to keep to the guidelines fewer young criminals would be in jail (according to the evidence presented over 97% of young criminals appearing in court are NOT sent down - I cannot find the figures, but I would be very surprised if the majority of young criminals ever got as far as an actual court appearance).



A small thought experiment. Imagine - even if you live in Islington - that you go out onto the streets of your neighbourhood and ask, say, a hundred people at random if they think judges are too harsh on young criminals. How many do you think would agree that they were ? Perhaps the BBC should have headed their story :

"Judges too tough, say charities and MPs"

Even the Today programme might have trouble with that spin, but the BBC are happy to present (albeit obliquely) this thesis with a straight face.

A small quote may be in order here, from the first chapter of Steven Pinker's excellent work The Blank Slate.

"The problem is not just that these claims are preposterous but that they did not acknowledge they were saying things that common sense might call into question. This is the mentality of a cult, in which fantastical beliefs are flaunted as a proof of one's piety. That mentality cannot coexist with an esteem for the truth ..."

THOSE CONSERVATIVE SHIAS

I was reading this BBC report on the law that has been just passed in Afghanistan that will allow a man to starve his wife to death if she does not agree to have sex with him. According to the State Broadcaster "Mr Karzai is selling out Afghan women for the sake of conservative Shia support at next week's presidential election." Let us be clear; there is nothing that is any way "conservative" about the dark ages pathology of Shia Islam and whilst the BBC never miss the chance to couple the word "conservative"to any depraved cause, we should not let it pass unchallenged.

THE BIG QUESTIONS?

Just watching Nicky Campbell's wonderfully awful "Big Question"programme.

Here were the two main issues that were covered.

"After 200 deaths, have we the moral duty to remain in Afghanistan." The first guy Nicky interviewed was called Mohammed. (sic) The lead panellist on this, Rory Stewart, believed that we should be get out of Afghanistan. Listen to the debate and all you can hear is the dismal beat of surrender from the BBC and it's selected audience, the same relentless beat that was heard during our time in Iraq. Ming Campbell was on to make it clear we cannot win the war against the Taliban. Good news for our troops out there, eh? Kaye Adams from garbage TV show "Loose Women" was also of the view we need to get out and should never have been there in the first place. (She's obviously not bothered about "loose Afghan women" Listening to the debate, the conclusion is that the only real reason to be in Afghanistan is to uphold women's rights. It seems that fighting Islamic terrorism is not really the issue and we need to chill out and be relaxed about the Taliban. Rory informed us Bin Laden was in Pakistan, not Afghanistan, though he did nor reveal his source for such a claim and Nicky Campbell did not question it, naturally. 

The next issue for debate is "Does Evil exist." An Iman was on to tell us that only Allah can determine evil and so he thinks we should not label people as evil. There was also a humanist on who was able to tell us it is wrong to label Tracey Connolly - the mother of Baby P as "evil". Worthless was his preferred term. Another person on the panel, a Professor of course, suggested that she was a victim. There was a widespread consensus that all religion is evil. Naturally the Islamic scholar was there to put the moral argument for the application of the concept of evil. No Christians were to be found in this "representative" Edinburgh audience.

Just where DOES the BBC get these audiences from?