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566 thoughts on “A Good Idea”

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  • Ba'al Zevul (Vote For The Pretty Pictures)

    Buggerlugs raves: “Got you there, didn’t I – you’re in the proverbial cleft stick, caught between your dislike for the BBC (which you and your fellow Eminences continually slate) and your inability to admit that the present govt can do anything right. So you seek to divert :)”

    No. You must really learn to distinguish between individual commenters on this blog. I very rarely criticise the BBC’s reporting, much of which is excellent. However its management is ponderous and sclerotic, it is certainly under pressure to reflect the government of the day’s views, and your chums in the rentamedia industry would like to see the end of it.

    When your mentors and guides do anything at all, the reason given to the public – which you swallow uncritically – is tailored to maximise their chances of re-election. The economic aspect is concealed. And the economic aspect is that their actions are designed to hand large sums of money to their own sponsors.

    Not a diversion, buggerlugs. Just detaching you from your teat for a moment. Or trough.

    Here’s an excellent BBC programme – you can get it on the iplayer link – outlining the inevitable consequences of an unregulated market…

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-26680993

    Enjoy.

  • Mary

    Ref BBC Ba’al I thought it odd too. Perhaps the plan is to privatise it and flog it off to the highest bidder when they say its income has fallen to an unsustainable level. Would they allow the state broadcaster to go into other hands though?

    Heard earlier that 1,600 managerial jobs are going at the ‘Royal’ Mail. This will bring strike action. There will be 300 new or enhanced roles whatever the latter means.

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-26728116

    Flogged off at 455p. Currently 576.5p
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business/market_data/shares/3/89934/twelve_month.stm

    Cable is trying to stop the Canadian Moya Greene’s salary increase. She already takes £1.5m. Look at the repellent ConDems in this photo. The greed shows. Fallon is the one with the job of selling us fracking.

    Royal Mail boss Moya Greene is ‘badly paid’ on £1.5MILLION a year, chairman claims
    http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/royal-mail-boss-moya-greene-3042492

    Few people know that there is a large and valuable property portfolio (redundant depots etc) available to the privateers and that included in the flog off was the post code database also of great commercial value. State assets given to the private sector as per usual.

    Ministers criticised for sale of postcode database
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-26605375

    ‘Committee chairman Bernard Jenkin said: “The sale of the PAF with the Royal Mail was a mistake. Public access to public sector data must never be sold or given away again.’

    ‘Analysts Deloitte had assessed the value of this information to consumers, businesses and the public sector at £1.8bn a year, it added.’

  • Mary

    John I am not responding to the taunts.

    Being truthful, I had no idea that the ..ovitch/..ovych ending meant ‘son of’. All totally irrelevant of course.

  • Mary

    Prince Harry follows in the footsteps of Uncle Andrew and BLiar to visit the dictatorship of Kazakhstan for some skiing.

    Harry has reportedly shunned the luxury Swiss resort favoured by royals, opting instead for a romantic winter break in the ex-Soviet state
    http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/price-harry-whisks-cressida-skiing-3279647

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1365907/Tony-Blair-Prince-Andrew-mutual-Kazakhstan.html

    ‘Severe limits on ability to change their government; detainee and prisoner torture and other abuse; unhealthy prison conditions; arbitrary arrest and detention; lack of an independent judiciary; restrictions on freedom of speech, pervasive corruption, especially in law enforcement and the judicial system; discrimination and violence against women; trafficking in persons.’

  • fred

    “Ref BBC Ba’al I thought it odd too. Perhaps the plan is to privatise it and flog it off to the highest bidder when they say its income has fallen to an unsustainable level. Would they allow the state broadcaster to go into other hands though?”

    It’s no mystery Mary. The cost of enforcement is exceeding the benefits, it’s costing more to pay people to go round with detector vans than they get back.

    Decriminalising the license fee will allow them to hand it over to a debt collection company on a percentage basis. The company will be able to charge costs for bringing a prosecution, anyone caught would most likely have been better off paying a fine, unless they settle out of court which I expect the vast majority will.

    It is a good idea in theory, if the debt collection company is honest, experience shows they are usually more interested in profits than justice or the rights of the individual. People such as myself who do not have a TV are likely to get harassed and intimidated.

    Speaking of which I see ATOS are official sponsors of the Commonwealth Games in Scotland.

  • John Goss

    Ba’al Zevul (Vote For The Pretty Pictures) 25 Mar, 2014 – 10:07 am

    I’m sure Craig and Uzbek in the UK would be pleased to read that BBC article about Gulnara Karimova if they can wade through the Habba distractions first. This is an enlightened article which raises questions about what Gulnara’s real message is. Are she and her daughter really under house arrest? Is she really a reformed character? Or is it a means of changing her public image to prepare for continuation of the dynasty? Or is her sister Lola the rising star? She’s described as a philanthropist.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lola_Karimova-Tillyaeva

    It would be good to get some enlightened opinion on this from experts like Craig and those who have lived there like Uzbek in the UK, (instead of having to listen to his perpetual tirade against mad lefties).

  • Ba'al Zevul (Vote For The Pretty Pictures)

    “Perhaps the plan is to privatise it and flog it off to the highest bidder when they say its income has fallen to an unsustainable level. Would they allow the state broadcaster to go into other hands though?”

    All sorts of options available;

    Allow advertising to fund the business. Lucrative, and with only a little manipulation, would prevent adverse comment re. big oil, polluters, companies trading with disgusting regimes etc. A lot of PR companies pay MP’s.

    Much of the BBC’s production capacity has already been dismantled on the assumption that it would buy programming from private companies, which it does (and nothing particularly wrong with that on the entertainment side). The end of that particular road is an organisation which consists entirely of managers, when nothing whatever is being produced. This, and its property, would be an attractive speculation for a hedge fund, perhaps. What fell “into other hands” would not actually be the BBC, then.

    The World Service is already funded by the Foreign Office (its worldwide shortwave stations are now owned by Babcock) and would continue to be a separate entity, whose credibility, as it increasingly compromised to retain income, would be no more than Press TV’s or RT’s – which have the same problem.

    But I think what Murdoch and other media oligarchs would like is for the BBC to become a castrated parody of itself, kept on a very tight financial leash, and dealing exclusively in the kind of material that doesn’t sell advertising. The model of public service broadcasters in the US, in other words. Then the likes of buggerlugs can mock it for its -necessarily – niche, lefty appeal. The marginalisation scenario.

  • Ba'al Zevul (Vote For The Pretty Pictures)

    Yes, John. I posted the link without comment re. Gulnara, as I don’t want to accept it at face value. If Googoo is currently shackled hand and foot and being flogged by her Dad, it sounds too good to be true. Perhaps it’s a ploy to set her up as a tame ‘opposition’ figure who will not object to only getting 10% to Dad’s 91% in the next election?

  • Ba'al Zevul (Vote For The Pretty Pictures)

    Mind you, Mary, the Post Office solution is favourite for the BBC, too. This would be spun as ‘letting hard working families decide,’ perhaps. Having applied the stranglehold of reduced income from license fees, there would be a profitability crisis (yeah, yeah, it’s never been in profit. Ever. How could it be? But the SUN will be lengthily appalled) and the public would be offered shares at knockdown rates. By ‘public’ we really mean an unpublicised issue of 75% to institutional investors and 25%, non-voting, to the small fry.

    Ownership would then be transferred to some hedge funds, who would be free to turn it into anything they pleased, perhaps, optionally, retaining an obligation to broadcast the News once a week on Tuesdays. My guess is executive housing.

  • John Goss

    “If Googoo is currently shackled hand and foot and being flogged by her Dad, it sounds too good to be true.”

    You said that as a joke. Right? I wouldn’t want to think of anyone being treated like that. Remember, if it is true, that she has lived a life of luxury, with slaves to do her every bidding, how much harder it must be for her to be in a similar position herself.

    If true, this sneaking in and out letters shows she has some kind of freedom. It’s a bit like Mary Queen of Scots being incarcerated in Loch Leven, or Tutbury. It is full of intrigue and the kind of thing the soon-to-be-privatised BBC does very well. Anyway, come on you experts. Analyse please!

  • Ba'al Zevul (Vote For The Pretty Pictures)

    “You said that as a joke. Right? I wouldn’t want to think of anyone being treated like that.”

    A lot of Uzbeks would probably take a different position…I await confirmation. Joke? No. Not funny, although the words ‘poetic’ and ‘justice’ suggest themselves. Just that there may be more than meets the eye. Additionally, it could be convenient to be a helpless prisoner of a regime which doesn’t hold with international law if the Swiss are looking to extradite you. Call me a cynic if you will.

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-26543458

  • doug scorgie

    John Goss
    25 Mar, 2014 – 8:21 am

    One of the Ukrainian Nazis shot dead by, Russians, Ukrainians or the west. It looks like they were all after Alexander Muzychko.

    Who did him in, I wonder?

    “It is noteworthy that Muzychko, after having fulfilled a function, increasingly became a PR liability for US and EU leaders who had supported the armed coup d’Ètat in Ukraine with the help of neo-Nazi and ultra-nationalist organizations.”

  • Herbie

    “Who did him in, I wonder?”

    The Kiev govt are claiming it was a police operation:

    “The leader of an armed group in the Rivne oblast who made headlines in the world (damaging Ukraine’s image) for threatening a prosecutor in his office with a Kalashnikov, was killed during a police operation, the first deputy interior minister Volodymyr Yevdokymov said, UNN reports March 25.”

    http://zik.ua/en/news/2014/03/25/police_sashko_bily_killed_during_his_arrest_473620

    Pity. With his increasingly prominent media profile, I fancied him as a rising star of the new regime.

  • John Goss

    “Who did him in, I wonder?”

    Somebody knows Doug. And eventually we will all know. It would not surprise me if this was not the first of many assassinations. Next on the list could be Igor Miroshnichenko.

    http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/03/19/kiev-tv-attack_n_4995160.html

    These western-backed thugs are the ones destabilising a once fairly stable country. I think, and even a part of me hopes, that these fascists will be subdued before the world suffers even more than it has over the last fifteen years. Full spectrum dominance is not something I want. It is something the United States of America has been working towards aided by bankster money. Those who do want FSD will never achieve it.

    “He who kills with the sword shall be killed by the sword.”

  • Winkletoe

    Alexander Muzychko was relatively small fry. Removing him and a like few may well be a tactic by the Victoria-“f*ck-the”-Nuland tendency in Kiev to suppress the pumped-up stormtroopers, and have been weighed up for its obfuscatory value. It certainly won’t impede the novus ordo seclorum mission. What would be of more genuine benefit the oppressed people of the region would be some carefully targeted action in the Far West rather than these lowly tools.

  • Herbie

    This seems a reasonable summing of the situation:

    “”I think that the government is well aware of this. Now they try to reason the revolutionary component of Maidan with different methods. The first step was to create National Guards from radical forces, designating them an external enemy – Russia, thereby setting their zeal and energy against Russia. But I think that many radicals will not be satisfied in the barracks with humble soldiers’ food. Many of them remained in the streets doing there what they were doing before – committing crimes. They attack people, entrepreneurs and former oligarchs.”

    http://english.pravda.ru/hotspots/crimes/25-03-2014/127158-ukraine_muzychko-0/

  • John Goss

    Could be Winkletoe. Kill a few low-lifes, get the US backed favourites to criticise the actions of those bringing them into disrepute, as Klitschko has done, and voilà you have an apparent moderate government. I still think it is too early to know who carried it out. When you’re hated by all sides, and have been a nasty mercenary and murderer, it is time to buy yourself a coffin.

  • Ben

    Visiting conservative forums and seeing the commentary for some years, the Tea Partiers talking of secession and 2nd amendment solutions, I have no doubt if there were a less stable form of government, they would be pulling the same tricks as Maidan and Co.

    We had a Civil War, and a bloody attempt at partitioning an entire region, I think, by the same sort of people.

  • John Goss

    This is on-topic somewhere else. Is the CIA involved in the disappearance of the Malaysian airliner? Just asking.

    http://www.911forum.org.uk/board/viewtopic.php?t=22284&start

    In this day and age when so much can be done remotely it would be wrong not to investigate every angle to a missing plane, presumably lost in the area known as the roaring forties, for which some accounts are suggesting may have been diverted to Diego Garcia. I would not have been so suspicious if wreckage had been found.

  • Ba'al Zevul (Vote For The Pretty Pictures)

    “Baroness Warsi: I am not familiar with that particular human rights group but I will certainly ensure that officials are aware of the work that it is doing.”

    Well, that helps with one question. Which my MP said he would ask her, but didn’t; who actually funds the Con/Lab/Lib/Commons-bar-staff Friends of Israel groups?

    http://sayeedawarsi.com/tag/conservative-friends-of-israel/

  • Mary

    Earlier Fred mentioned that ATOS are sponsors of the Commonwealth Games, more bread and circuses.

    25 Mar 2014

    Atos, G4S paid no corporation tax last year despite carrying out £2billion of taxpayer-funded work

    Two of the country’s biggest private contractors paid no corporation tax in Britain last year, despite carrying out billions of pounds of taxpayer funded work for the Government, an official audit finds

    http://welfaretales.wordpress.com/2014/03/25/atos-g4s-paid-no-corporation-tax-last-year-despite-carrying-out-2billion-of-taxpayer-funded-work/

    Pure chutzpah.

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