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Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Samizdata quote of the day – Choice exposes irrelevance The future is choice.
The BBC hates choice — because choice exposes irrelevance.
No more reverence.
No more compulsory funding.
No more pretending this is about anything other than control.
– Russ
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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I’d argue that this is about anything other than keeping the gravy train going.
Good post.
Discovered Joys – NO they value their (evil) doctrines, they value them very much – this is not just about their pay and perks.
As Dr Johnson pointed out – a man is seldom so innocently engaged as when he is after money, because other motives make men (and women) do far worse things than they would do for money.
Today both the British and the French governments attacked the “X” of Mr Elon Musk – this is nothing to do with a gravy train, and everything to do with power and control.
The governments, and general establishment, of Britain and France and, indeed, most nations, HATE liberty – they HATE liberty with an unholy passion.
And in case any American reader is feeling smug – the establishment in the United States also HATE, they would love to replace the 1st Amendment with (say) Article 11 of the French Declaration of the Rights of Man (1789) which says that people have the liberty to publish their opinions UNLESS they “abuse” this right, this to be decided by “law” – this “law” being (according to the same document) the expression of the “General Will” (i.e. the ravings of Rousseau’s “Lawgiver” – with what people say they want dismissed as “the will of all” to be despised and destroyed). In short people do NOT have Freedom of Speech in France – indeed they have no rights against the state at-all, as there is “take-back” wording in all the Articled of the Rights of Man – apart from those articles that are so vague that they are meaningless.
A couple of leftist appointments to the United States Supreme Court and the Bill of Rights is dead.
Yes. They talk as if the BBC has a natural right to exist, and keeping it in the manner to which it is accustomed is some kind of national imperative. It’s not. Shut it down.
Discovered Joys & Paul Marks – embrace the power of “and”.
llater,
llamas
llamas – you do indeed have a point, people can have more than one motive.
By the way – to those people who do not know….
Wording such as “boundaries to be decided by law” or “unless against the interests of society” means – you-are-buggered, you have no rights against the state at-all.
The French Declaration of the Rights of Man (1789) breaks with older documents (in various nations) that listed specific rights, and begins the modern practice of producing documents that sound wonderful – and mean NOTHING.
Thomas Jefferson loved the high sounding language of the French Revolution, but the practicing lawyer John Adams understood that this high sounding language would save no individual from persecution or death.
France could have gone down another path – restoring the traditional liberties of the church, and the nobles (who had sold their rights for exception from most, but not all, taxation), and the provincial Estates (assemblies), but that would have meant following Montesquieu not Rousseau.
The men who wrote the Constitution of the United States often cited Montesquieu in their discussions and writings – not Rousseau.
It was the opposite in the case of the French Revolution.
France was not without a tradition of specific rights, going all the way back to 877 under Charles the Bald – but it was all thrown away, replaced by high-sounding waffle – such as the “Rights of Man” (1789). Tyranny unlimited and savage – masked as the good of the people, or “society”, or the “General Will”.
Even Labour seem to be suffering a certain amount of ennui vis Auntie Beeb. Sure, they’ll rubber stamp the paperwork to enable the license fee to keep running until they’re kicked out of office (pronto please), but they certainly aren’t enabling the fevered dreams of the Beeboid Marxists about expanding the scope of license fees across the realm of non-live, non-BBC media (Netflix et al).
The BBC radio licence was abandoned in February 1971 and nominally consolidated into the funding from the TV license, so to break it back out again now seems like weak sauce, plus how the hell would you enforce it? Going to send out Radio License goons to tap on peoples car windows “‘Ave you got a license for that car radio?”
Sure, you’ll get SOME additional funding, because there are always gullible people with too much money prepared to pay for guff and nonsense, but I doubt it would make up for the fall in licensing revenue for a single year.
As for the attempt to “get richer households to pay more”, how are the Beeb going to do that? Have an additional precept or surcharge on Council Tax bands above D?
They’re having a laugh.
Can’t see Labour making themselves even more unpopular in the May elections by enabling this guff. They are bad enough with there own errors (both forced and mostly unforced), without adding the general public’s contempt for the Beeb to the bill.
So now. The Beeb will continue to be reliant upon the license fee, whose revenues will continue to decline in both nominal and real terms because the old ‘uns that put up with their Telly license bullshit are dying off and the younger generations don’t see the point of the BBC or even live TV at all.
Stagnation and decline is the only way forward and whoever is in government after Labour will only accelerate that stagnation and decline. Nobody is going to save Auntie Beeb, although they may prefer to avoid getting blood on their hands with the actual murder.
@Dan Souter
So now. The Beeb will continue to be reliant upon the license fee, whose revenues will continue to decline in both nominal and real terms because the old ‘uns that put up with their Telly license bullshit are dying off and the younger generations don’t see the point of the BBC or even live TV at all.
I’m fast approaching the category of “old ‘un” and I’m not sure I agree. Your comment made me think back — when was the last time I watched live TV? I guess I watched the Bears Chargers game live (Chicago wept, especially after that last second TD), but that was on a streaming service. In the old days everyone would jump on at 7pm or whatever to watch the latest episode of Friends or Seinfeld or Voyager or whatever. I remember doing that. But that was all in the 1990s. Then I got Tivo so I didn’t have to schedule my watch habits. So I’m pretty sure I have not watched live broadcast TV, never mind scheduled TV, in the 21st century. I don’t even get live TV on my TV.
The BBC license fee is a ridiculous anachronism with the the terrifying shadow that the term “state broadcaster” holds. But of all the free speech issues in Britain, that one is pretty far down the list.
Yes, but some of us Old ‘uns (and I include myself in that), were always ahead of the curve. I haven’t watched live TV since the missus packed her cases in 2008.
Being that she was from foreign, she had a fear of “Government agents” knocking at the door.
I’ve no such fear of the TV license goons or even the coppers to be quite frank. Unless they’ve got a warrant they can jog on.
The Telly Goons haven’t requested a search warrant in Scotland since the TV License was effectively decriminalised here years ago.
Remember that Sky News (owned by Democrat Comcast – the rest of Sky is owned by the even more vile Disney Corporation) and Channel Four are just as bad as the BBC. And Channel Four is also funded by a tax – a tax on commercial television stations.
I barely watch TV now but notice when I visit my Mum (75) she largely watches old shows, rarely anything newer than the 1990s, sometimes as old as the 1950s. Seeing these shows does remind me that the BBC and ITV did used to have some really excellent programming, and thus despite their mostly dire contemporary output, are more culturally valuable for their archive and history than the new streaming giants, who have largely only really existed in an age of wall to wall dross (Disney would be a partial exception as at one point it produce good films, several decades ago). When I first had access to Sky TV 25+ years ago I was obsessed with it but it was mainly due to the Simpsons, South Park, WWF wrestling and the music channels. I don’t think I ever watched any original programming from Sky.
I will defend the BBC online archive too, that is a genuinely valuable resource and wish there was a lot more added to it. BBC used to make some very good documentaries, such as Timewatch, and I remember a the late MP Alan Clark hosting a good series in the late 90s on the Tory Party based on a book he wrote. Given Clark was perhaps the most right wing MP at the time, I think fair play to the BBC. I don’t necessarily agree with his opinions but I do like the BBC documentaries Adam Curtis has produced, he does use BBC archival footage very well.