The Aged P

Yes folks, aren’t you glad that the money taken out of your pocket via the BBC Poll Tax, enabled so many of the BBC elite to travel back and forth over the Atlantic?

The BBC spent more than £1 million on flights to America in the space of seven months this year, according to figures obtained under the Freedom of Information Act,
Executives including former director-general Mark Thompson clocked up the massive bill flying both business and economy class for meetings and to make programmes.

Yes, forget about the excessive use of fossil fuel and annoying the citizens who live under your flight path – is it absolutely essential to be physically present at those meetings? After all the BBC is television company…can’t they organise “virtual” conferences via skype?
Then what about making programmes – the BBC schedules are full of rubbish anyway so is it necessary to spend hundreds of thousands on sending “Top Gear” or Stephen Fry to the USA as a change of background from the usual crap?

Of course, the costs of these visits are even greater when you consider the hotel bills (doubt whether they stay in Motel 6) and cabs, hire cars, restaurants etc

Note that Mark Thompson travelled to the US a lot – did that include visits to his new employer, the New York Times? I think we should be told…
But do you know what, for me, is the most gut wrenching fact of all?

As the BBC is not legally obliged to reveal full details of how it spends the £3.7 billion it is given each year through the licence fee, it is not possible to name every staff member who flew to the U.S. between April and October.

Not good enough – it is this kind of “broad brush accounting” that helps to cover a multitude of sins. It’s time we were allowed to see these detailed accounts because, after all, IT IS OUR MONEY, YOU BBC FREELOADERS

A few weeks ago a majority of Americans voted to put the lunatics in charge of the asylum. That is essentially what Matt Welch was saying in a rather sombre piece at Reason – an article so depressing it ought to have had a health warning attached.

If elections are up-or-down assessments of politicians’ job performance, then this was a vote in favor of trillion-dollar annual deficits, bailout economics, and failing the minimum competence test of passing an annual budget. Federal policy for four years has produced lousy short-term results for the price of long-term insolvency, and now the characters responsible for this misgovernance have been given a pat on the head.

That’s right, despite Sarah Palin’s uncannily perceptive prediction in 2008, the USA wants more Styrofoam columns…..

So, just because Milliband and Balls are being constantly mocked in many of the public prints for their infantile money grows on trees rhetoric against public spending cuts, don’t imagine that our own band of lunatics cannot possibly party their way to power here in the UK in 2015….

Time to take to the hills?

A barbershop quartet and “Auld Lang Syne”…..perfection…

Prof Jacobson’s blog at Legal Insurrection should be a must read for any English politics junkie interested in American conservatism. With the exceptions of Dan Riehl and Instapundit nobody else mines the seam of small government outside-the-beltway Edward Abbey style mockery of bien pensant radical chic so effectively.

Which of course is why we here in the UK never hear his name mentioned by the High Tory bloggers at Conservative Home and Coffee House who much prefer the bleating of David Frum and the ravings of Andrew Sullivan

So I must recommend a guest post at LI by Joel Berger in which he takes to task, not just the liberal/left US/UK media but also several highly respected Israeli talking heads who are constantly chanting the mantra that, at some stage the Israelis should start a dialogue with the Hamas leadership in Gaza.

Berger turns the question around. Since Hamas is wedded and glued to the total destruction of the Israeli state and also driven by a hatred of Jews as visceral and obsessive as any SS operative there can be very little mileage in attempting to initiate dialogue. That’s why Berger is saying that the onus should be on pushing Hamas to the conference chamber. After all, why should anyone be expected to “negotiate” with a group of people who not only glory in violence but also say they are going to throw you not only out of your house but also over the top of the 500 ft cliff that is behind it?

The Palestinian political elite, be it Arafat or Hamas, see any Israeli concession as a sign of weakness, not of good will. That the UK and US should still be pushing initiatives and plans based on the assumptions of a two way street in the face of a self proclaimed disdain from Hamas is yet another triumph of hope over substance.

MPs have hired a lawyer to challenge their own expenses watchdog in court to let them keep the profits from the sale of their taxpayer-funded second homes.

…..and I wonder who will eventually pay this lawyer’s fees?

h/t for pigs

Three of the most vocal supporters of the Leveson proposals to impose statutory control of the press are actors Hugh Grant & Steve Coogan and former motor racing supremo Max Mosley – each of whom has an axe to grind about press reports of some of their more lively activities. Fighting alongside them are two Labour MPs, Tom Watson and Chris Bryant whose names figured large in the MPs expenses scandal.

Perhaps it was to these five individuals that Sara Payne, whose daughter was raped and murdered by a paedophile in 2000, was referring when she recently stated her opposition to the Leveson proposals despite having been a victim of press intrusion herself

It is important that celebrities and MPs, whose own moral shortcomings may have been exposed by the Press, are not allowed to hijack this vital overhaul.

Time, I think, to recall the words of John Milton who in 1644 penned the magnificent and majestic Areopagitica, still the most impressive defence of a press free from government censorship and licensing ever written

Though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so Truth be in the field, we do injuriously, by licensing and prohibiting, to misdoubt her strength. Let her and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter?

Truth and understanding are not such wares as to be monopolized and traded in by tickets and statutes and standards. We must not think to make a staple commodity of all the knowledge in the land, to mark and license it like our broadcloth and our woolpacks

Or maybe we should just echo Wordsworth’s famous plea

MILTON! thou shouldst be living at this hour:
England hath need of thee

I am not alone – at least one other person is not particularly impressed by Charlotte Church’s complaints about the media.

During BBC Question Time last night this lady, just an ordinary member of the audience, had the temerity to interrupt Charlotte in full flow

Last night an unnamed audience member aimed a barbed comment at her and said that celebrities who court the press should not be surprised if they are targeted.
‘The man in the street I accept shouldn’t be persecuted, but some celebrities go out for notoriety and press and some of them ask for what they get,’ the woman in yellow said.

Chalotte was shocked SHOCKED that she should be accused of “courting” the press. Twitter was alight with supporters who rushed to the defence of the newest feminist icon. CC waxed angrily about her family to the lady and when she tried to reply David Dimbleby shut her up and moved swiftly on.

Actually I tend to agree with the “unnamed audience member”. Like many celebrities Church has never hesitated to use the media to boost her own career and her public conduct has sometimes been dramatic. I take her point about impact on her family but the very nature of modern celebrity shines a spotlight on the immediate circle and there are always temptations for family and friends to dine out on the link, especially if there is some sort of grievance.

Maybe it’s time to reconfigure this whole concept of “celebrity” for it has taken over our media – look at the TV chat shows and the papers. Editors and producers no longer have to think hard about content – the PR hacks provide them with off the shelf fillers for peanuts…manna from heaven when the bosses are slashing costs. Get rid of the real journalism because that is time consuming and expensive – just get celebrity X on screen or on page to puff their latest film/book/album/show while the host/interviewer pretends to be totally fascinated.

So here’s a suggestion that will kill two birds with one stone – get the intrusive media off celebrity backs and clear my tv screen/paper of meaningless moronic pap at the same time. Just show the singers/actors/players doing what they are supposed to do – AND NO MORE!!!! Get rid of the chat shows and gossip pages, and use the money saved to bring back some good old fashioned journalism…

…and if you don’t have enough material to fill the schedule bring back the potters wheel, a damn sight more interesting than hearing some washed up hasbeen trying to kick start their fading famefest by yattering on about their latest project.

Job done.

As Alistair Thompson points out the biggest mystery behind the phone hacking scandal that spawned the Leveson Inquiry is why the police and the Blair/Brown Labour government turned a blind eye to this illegal activity. Yet this is a question still largely unanswered by the Leveson Report – and, of course, ignored by Ed Milliband, Ed Balls and Tom Watson who were very close to the levers of power in those Blair/Brown years.

Could it be that from 1996 to 2010 Rupert Murdoch supported the Labour party?

Douglas Murray spells out some cold, hard facts about Hamas, their rockets and the Israeli response which should always be borne in mind when watching any BBC report from Gaza.

The reason Hamas are firing into the heart of Israel is because they do not believe that Israel should exist anywhere at all. Hamas are not quibbling over the 1967 borders, or the Oslo parameters. They are showing that they do not accept the 1948 borders. Hamas do not accept Israel. They say so and, by actions like these, they demonstrate it.

And one thing you cannot say about the leaders of Hamas is that they are concealing their true motive

There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors.

Not that you will hear too much about that from the BBC and the rest of the liberal/left media….

A controversy is brewing in Rhode Island after four police officers seemingly made a group of young men do push-ups as immediate punishment for vandalizing mailboxes.

The mayor and the police chief of North Providence are apparently up in arms. There is talk of the officers being punished. Probably at this very moment regiments of lawyers are flooding into the town to snap up a juicy “human rights” case.

So perhaps it’s just the right moment for Katy Bourne to phone the four officers and offer them a job here in the UK with the Sussex police or, if that isn’t possible, at least show her officers the video.

No lawyers, no court process ending up months later with nil result, zero paperwork – a bunch of idiots have their time wasted (which irritates them) and victims see something being done….. now that’s what I call a great example of “community policing”!!!