Indoctrinated into a very specific Weltanschauung

Coping effectively with life's problems and failures requires realistic expectations. Psychologists call these expectations and judgements 'appraisals'. Life events (such as traffic bottlenecks or the boss's gruff voice) aren't a problem unless we appraise them as such. Life is never perfect and, to some degree, hassles and problems are a part of normal everyday life. If our appraisals are realistic, we're better able to react to day-to-day life events with a sense of proportion.

BBC Health article entitled Coping Skills

From cradle to grave – starting with the Kim-Jong-Il-Jr-style brainwashing offered by CBBC, moving on to oh-so-hip-Daddy-O pop broadcaster Radio 1, through classical Radio 3 to fuddy-duddily left-liberal Radio 4, not forgetting the achingly worthy and progressive TV channels BBC1, BBC2, BBC3 and BBC4 – the audience for Britain’s dominant national broadcaster is indoctrinated into a very specific Weltanschauung.

That Weltanschauung, you won’t be surprised to hear, does not find much room for concepts like limited government, low taxation, liberty, political sovereignty and accountability. It is extremely unlikely that a Tea Party movement could ever take off in Britain: the main reason being that, unlike in the US, the British simply lack the political vocabulary and intellectual building blocks to demand one.

From a James Delingpole piece entitled The BBC Is at Least a Thousand Times More Evil and Dangerous than Rupert Murdoch

That's right, at least a thousand times more evil. Just like that Kim-Jong-Il-Jr. With all that information about an overarching conspiracy that's a thousand times worse than anything the Murdochs and their underlings ever got up to, James Delingpole should really be following the example of James Murdoch and presenting his evidence to a select committee. That should be a hoot:

Adrian Sanders: Finally, are you familiar with the term "a sense of proportion?"

[Pause]

James Delingpole: Mr. Sanders, would you care to elaborate?

Or, as the Flying Rodent put it:

Children's BBC!  Truly, when you're reduced to arguing with Rastamouse, you've long since lost.

Marvellous stuff. Although, in the interests of strict accuracy, I ought to point out that Rastamouse goes out on CBeebies, (the channel for kids aged 6 and under), not CBBC [insert boilerplate apology for not getting out much here].

Funny how Children's BBC is such a magnet for angry wingnuts. Personally I think CBeebies is quite good; we're happy for our kid to spend most of his telly time watching it, as the programmes are generally quite educational and well-made (if occasionally a bit irritating and/or goody-goody) and the channel scores big time from a parental point of view by not being peppered with adverts aimed at unlocking the potential of pester power. But for some people Children's BBC is apparently the nexus of a sinister cult to corrupt the innocent.

There's a programme on CBeebies called Waybuloo (it's apparently been cut from the schedules until later this year, to the anguish of some young fans and their parents). It's aimed at the younger element of the under 6 demographic and involves four brightly coloured characters who live in a benign never-never land and talk a kind of baby language (any resemblance to Teletubbies is purely coincidental). The characters are nice to one another, play with small children, do a sort of yoga, are rendered in impressively seamless CGI and float around in the air when they're really happy. The programme is inoffensive, maybe a little wet in a Christopher Robin-ish kind of way, a bit dull and repetitive if you're 40-something, but pretty wholesome and entirely appropriate viewing for toddlers, I'd have thought.

Apparently, though, Waybuloo caused something of a panic among evangelical Christian parents, concerned that the series was undermining 'wholesome Christian values' by incorporating that suspiciously oriental yoga-like thing and implying that happiness might be attained without explicit reference to the only source of true joy that can be achieved in this life, Our Lord Jesus Christ.

I would refer these people (and James Delingpole) to the BBC article on coping skills, in particular the bit about how keeping a sense of proportion is good for your mental health, but they'd only accuse me of being a conduit for more outrageous BBC propaganda.

Bonus neologism of the day: guanophenia.

'Ridiculous opinions'

I think that we've got to look at the situation whereby one person can own more than 20% of the newspaper market, the Sky platform and Sky News ... I think it's unhealthy because that amount of power in one person's hands has clearly led to abuses of power within his organisation. If you want to minimise the abuses of power then that kind of concentration of power is frankly quite dangerous.

The ED 9000 computer, (which is, by any practical definition of the words, foolproof and incapable of error).

Ed is not doing badly, but his call at the weekend for Rupert Murdoch to sell his newspapers showed that he sometimes loses touch with reality (who does he suppose will buy the loss-making Times?). It may hurt, but to get back on-piste, he must disown the more ridiculous opinions of those he surrounds himself with.

Daniel Knowles, writing in the Torygraph

Who's right here? If individual media organisations are less powerful, will this curb a nation's press freedom?  I looked at the top ten countries in the 2010 Press Freedom Index on the Reporters Without Borders web site (the UK ranked 19 last year, just below Australia and just above the USA). The OCED also publish a set of Sustainable Governance Indicators, which include the levels of media pluralism in the various OECD countries, so it's easy to compare how diverse the media are in the top ten countries (apart from Estonia at no. 9, which isn't in the OECD).

The OECD table offers qualified support for the notion that nations a free press doesn't necessarily entail the sort of market dominance enjoyed by the Murdoch empire. Eight, out of the top ten countries with the freest press* apparently have more plurality of media ownership than the UK. Correlation isn't causation, but at the very least this suggests that curbing oligopolies doesn't actually harm press freedom. I say 'qualified' because Iceland, which was deemed to have the very freest press in the world, (joint first with Finland) actually seems to have less media pluralism than the UK. Perhaps the relative concentration of media interest is counterbalanced by Article 73 of the Icelandic constitution, which states that:

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and belief.

Everyone shall be free to express his thoughts, but shall also be liable to answer for them in court. The law may never provide for censorship or other similar limitations to freedom of expression.

Freedom of expression may only be restricted by law in the interests of public order or the security of the State, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights or reputation of others, if such restrictions are deemed necessary and in agreement with democratic traditions.

Estonia doesn't appear in the OECD figures, so I haven't been able to compare directly it with the others in the group when it comes to media plurality. Apparently, media ownership Estonia is mainly regulated by the country's Commercial Code and Law on Competition, rather than by any specific legislation about media competition, but I don't know how its media diversity compares with the UK.

In theory powerful media oligopolies might put the fear of God into politicians, keeping them on the straight and narrow and keeping the public informed about things the powerful would rather keep hidden. In practice, the UK's leading oligopolist was rather too cosy with politicians and senior cops to be taken seriously as an outsider speaking truth to power. If the media-political complex was a tent, News International was on the inside pissing out.

A convincing majority of the nations with (arguably) the freest presses in the world aren't dominated by such concentrations of media interests. Conversely, Italy, with Europe's most developed oligopolistic media-political complex, comes 50th in the Press Freedom Index, sandwiched between Burkina Faso and El Salvador. Italy's  incestuous tangle of media and political power, doesn't strike me as a model to emulate.

Press freedom might be in danger from ill-thought out or restrictive regulation of what the press can say or do, but it's not clear to me that rules ensuring media pluralism represent any such threat. Maybe Daniel Knowles has a point about large, profitable media companies subsidising loss-making but worthy projects, but somehow or other, a more diverse and apparently free press stubbornly continues to flourish in Finland, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Austria, New Zealand and Ireland. All in all, I think this is one of the less ridiculous ideas in the EdBot 9000's memory banks.

*of course that's only according to one organisation, Reporters Without Borders,but it'll do for starters.

Strawberry or vanilla?

Just a picture of some seaside cottages in St Mawes, Cornwall. A bit chocolate boxy, but I thought the picture sort of captured the spirit of the place.

I originally posted this on Panoramio - I don't put much up there, but it's mildly gratifying to get your pictures on Google Earth. For some reason, this pic wasn't accepted for Google Earth, so I took it down again. I've not had many photos rejected, but I'm a bit baffled by the few that have been, as they don't seem to be inaccurately tagged, or to come under Paoramio's/Google Earth's list of "unsuitable subjects".

It's all the more surprising, as the most viewed photo that's I've ever had accepted for Google Earth via Panoramio is of a helicopter, which might reasonably be considered unsuitable, as pictures of any 'car, plane or any machine' are deemed unsuitable unless 'the object is an unavoidable part of a place'. I've also got a picture of a cruise ship onto Google Earth (see above) and the interior of a building, which is also supposed to be a no-no (excepting 'wide perspectives inside churches, mosques, train stations, and so on').

Compared to these, the photos that have been rejected (the one above, along with pictures of Heidelberg Castle and a Buddha statue in Sri Lanka) seem much more suitable  I resubmitted a couple of the rejected snaps a while back, but they weren't accepted on the second try, so I gave up. No biggie, but I'd be mildly interested to know what was unsuitable about the pictures which weren't accepted for Google Earth.

Goldeneye

We had a visitor this morning, in the shape of a frog who'd somehow got into our conservatory, then obligingly sat still to have its picture taken. I managed to stop it hiding under the furniture and send it on its way to the relative moisture and safety of a flower bed, so no amphibians were harmed in the making of this picture.

It's the luvvies wot won it!

I thought I had a handle on the basic facts about the phone hacking malarkey that’s done for the News of the Screws. It’s complex and murky, but the main points seemed clear enough.

Proximate cause: public disgust at what the Guardian journalists exposed.

Ultimate cause: Newscorp executives bringing the crisis on their own heads in one or other of two ways. Either, one, by being completely unaware that some NotW employees were not only behaving like unfeeling bastards (which, shouldn’t have surprised anybody who’s actually glanced at a Murdoch tabloid at any time in the past few decades), but were also routinely breaking the law. Or, two, by knowing perfectly well that the law was being broken, but turning a blind eye, going along with it, or even initiating it.

Carl Bernstein, (yes, that Carl Bernstein, as in Woodward and Bernstein) who presumably knows a thing or two about the newspaper business in general and investigative journalism in particular, favours explanation two:

As anyone in the business will tell you, the standards and culture of a journalistic institution are set from the top down, by its owner, publisher, and top editors. Reporters and editors do not routinely break the law, bribe policemen, wiretap, and generally conduct themselves like thugs unless it is a matter of recognized and understood policy. Private detectives and phone hackers do not become the primary sources of a newspaper’s information without the tacit knowledge and approval of the people at the top, all the more so in the case of newspapers owned by Rupert Murdoch, according to those who know him best.

And, you know what, he nearly had me believing that it was all Newscorp’s own fault. Until I came across this brilliant piece of investigative reporting from one Nigel Green, crime reporter for the Sunderland Echo and erstwhile freelance contributor to the News of the Screws, fearlessly exposing the real puppet masters:

Murdoch has been forced to take this action by a hysterical bandwagon made up of sanctimonious luvvies who sneer at tabloid newspapers and their readers.

Thanks for setting the record straight, Nige; with insightful pieces like that, you'll go far, mate.

Ha! Take that, Bernstein! You thought it was Newscorp executives up to no good who brought down the Screws, but that was just a set-up, you has-been. In fact, it was a tiny band of hysterical luvvies who got together and bitchslapped the world’s mightiest media conglomerate until it whimpered like tiny puppy left out in the rain.

Well, who’d have thought it, eh? I, for one, will be raising a glass of some suitably louche gin-based cocktail to our gallant thespians. Endlessly mocked for their shallow, narcissistic ways, their cravats and their Brylcreem, this tiny band of entertainers went up against the brutal might of Murdoch’s pan-continental empire of evil and came back glorious. Never in the field of British journalism has so much been owed by so many to so few. Never again will I make fun of a BAFTA acceptance speech, now that I know what these plucky luvvies have done for us all. By Jove, they make you proud to be British.

Luvvies of Britain, I salute you all! Darlings, you were wonderful! Mwah! Mwah!


Hat tip to The Null Device for the Bernstein piece.

Timely clichés

What the proprietorship of these papers is aiming at is power, and power without responsibility — the prerogative of the harlot through the ages.

Stanley Baldwin, adapting a Kipling quote to denounce newspaper tycoons back in the 1930's.

When - only last week - compliant politicians from both main parties were still desperate to network with the thought leaders of the Murdochcracy, the first part of this well-used phrase fitted what was happening now. I don't think the 'perogative of the harlot through the ages' bit ever fitted. Harlot is a pejorative term, but it brings to mind dependency rather than real power:

For their mother hath played the harlot: she that conceived them hath done shamefully: for she said, I will go after my lovers, that give me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax, mine oil and my drink.

Hosea 2:5

If we have to keep using this patriarchal insult to describe what's happening between media oligarchs and politicians, surely it's the politicians who deserve the label 'harlots' for the demeaning contortions they went through to please their Newscorp sugar daddy.

Another phrase that's become synonymous with the tabloid minions of Rupert's global vertically integrated media empire is "chequebook journalist." With 200 News of the Screws journalists about to be thrown to the wolves, I suspect that it won't be journalists from Newscorp who will be waving their chequebooks around this weekend, but reporters from every other news organisation, offering a nice lump sum to any disgruntled former NotW employee with some inside dirt on the filthier corners of Murdoch's Muck House. The Newscorp HR department must be a buzzing hive of activity at the moment as they finalise hush money and gagging clauses for the people they're letting go and try to find internal posts for any toxic hacks who know where the bodies are buried.

Mind you, with the British banks no longer honouring cheque guarantee cards, in their rush to phase out cheques in favour of electronic payments, calling people "chequebook journalists" will soon start to sound as outdated as describing them as "harlots."  Once cheques are history, I don't know what we're going to call them.* BACS hacks?

*without actually swearing

Alright my luvvers...

Just back from spending a week in a tent in the West Country. Normal service will be resumed dreckly...