The BBC - or the land of official insolence

BBC Director-General Tim Davie says he backs 'enforcement' for TV licence fee evaders

The head of the BBC has said it is right that licence fee dodgers are taken to court.

Director-General Tim Davie claimed that the public also back ‘enforcement’ for those who evade the annual charge to watch TV, which rose to £174.50 this year, despite growing calls for decriminalisation.

Asked if he approved of the current system, under which those who refuse to pay up can be prosecuted and slapped with a £1,000 fine, he told BBC Breakfast this morning: ‘I do approve of enforcement. And actually, when you talk to most people who are paying their licence fee, they would say if people are evading the licence fee, it should be enforced.’

Pressed on whether that meant he supported people being fined or going to jail, Mr Davie said: ‘Absolutely I support the current system.’


He makes you feel that you are once more in the land of official insolence, and that, whatever you are collectively, you are nothing personally.

William Dean Howells - Their Wedding Journey (1872)

Be Bold With The Wrecking Ball

 

Be bold with tax hikes or risk 'groundhog day', chancellor told as low growth recorded

Rachel Reeves faces the prospect of another "groundhog day" unless next month's budget goes further than plugging an estimated £22bn black hole in the public finances, according to a respected thinktank

The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said there was a "strong case" for the chancellor to substantially increase the £10bn headroom she has previously given herself against her own debt rules, or risk further repeats of needing to restore the buffer in the years ahead.

Modern men and women who live in industrial cities are like mice that have come out of the fields to live in houses that do not belong to them.

Now and then a bold mouse stands upon his hind legs and addresses the others. He declares he will force his way through the walls and conquer the gods who have built the house. "I will kill them," he declares. "The mice shall rule. You shall live in the light and the warmth. There shall be food for all and no one shall go hungry."

Sherwood Anderson – Poor White (1920)

Political Parties Don't Work - Part II

Part I is here.

Suppose we say that the promoters of climate doom are lying merely because it is obvious that they are. Fine, but it isn’t so clear where that get us because the lying can’t satisfactorily remain unexplained. Lying is a bigger problem than the climate is ever likely to be as a result of human activity. Liars would deny that too of course – by lying.

One major problem is that we have to work out whether or not a liar knows he or she is lying. Otherwise it’s a delusion rather than a lie. It complicates the issue because many individuals clearly believe obvious lies and even those who don’t aren’t likely to admit it.

This in turn takes us into the complex arena of behaviour. When an individual assents to obvious lies, they outsource part of their verbal and often physical behaviour to beliefs which are reinforced in various ways. Belief is reinforced socially and even professionally as ‘appropriate’ and ‘appropriate’ becomes a proxy for ‘true’.

This seems to be key - a belief cannot be both ‘appropriate’ and false unless deception is admitted, as in the case of children being told about Santa or adults being treated like children.

However obvious it is that a belief is neither appropriate nor true, it is only obvious to individuals outside the belief. Outsiders usually have little trouble in identifying charlatans as charlatans, but also see reality as the only standard which can be ever be appropriate. Yet they are outsiders, what they say cannot be ‘appropriate’ or 'true'.

Mediocre politicians are attracted to the divisive nature of certain easy beliefs which can be sold as ‘appropriate’. It renders them politically attractive to articulate mediocrities in search of a message to sell by defining critics and sceptics as Outsiders.

All of which we already know.

Yet it is worth remembering that this is why political parties don’t work. They do not attract many honest sceptics but they do attract charlatans willing and able to build a career on fostering the popular attractions of easy and politically useful beliefs – any beliefs - even nonsense.

A Burden Become Unbearable

Tom Armstrong has a powerful FSB reminder of of how hopelessly burdensome and ineffective UK government has become.  


The State: A Burden Become Unbearable

The British people were once free. Not absolutely free, no society has ever achieved that, but free in a real sense, with the State kept on a short leash and its power limited by both custom and necessity. That nation is gone. We live now under a government so bloated, so intrusive, so suffocating in its reach, that it bestrides every area of our lives like a grotesque colossus, demanding money and obedience without public support.

It has become tyrannical not in the jackboot sense of an old-fashioned dictatorship, but in an inhuman bureaucratic nightmare, a thousand regulations and petty taxes binding us tighter than prison bars. The tragedy is that this tyranny is paid for by us, the working people, the pensioners, the savers, through a cancerous system of taxation that has metastasised into the biggest single expense of our lives.


The whole piece is well worth reading as a reminder of the absurd, cloying bureaucratic tyranny which has sucked the life, the vital spark out of our freedom and almost everything we once valued. 

Also worth reading because there is not the slightest sign of meaningful reform, no bonfire of the quangos, no hint of more productive spending, no sign of any official realisation that things are becoming worse.

Government in Britain has become the single greatest threat to our liberty and prosperity. Its taxation devours our income, its regulations suffocate our enterprise, its failures impose yet further costs on us. It is tyrannical not only in its hunger for control but in the sheer arrogance with which it squanders the fruits of our labour. The doctrine of Net Zero epitomises this arrogance, a delusion used to demonstrate virtue while imposing austerity on everyone else. The welfare state is another, keeping millions dependent in order to justify the existence of the bureaucrats who administer it. Law and order, health and education, all are failing, despite or perhaps because of, the endless flood of taxpayer money.

The truth is stark: the State offers appallingly bad value for money. We are compelled to fund it at levels that consume the largest share of our income, only to be met with incompetence, corruption, and decay. It has ceased to be a servant and become a master, demanding more while delivering less, eroding both our prosperity and our freedom.

Spyware On Wheels

Not a new idea and not an aspect of the video, but it would be interesting to know if EVs are more suited to surveillance than petrol or diesel cars because of the software updates. Might partly explain government enthusiasm.

 

Only one more step

Reeves blames Brexit, austerity, Farage and the Tories as she admits tax rises ARE coming in Budget


'Wake-up call' for Britain as top climate advisers issue starkest warning yet


Only one more step down the rabbit hole then we can't go any further with the silly lies. In which case, perhaps the next scare story has to be something like -

'Wake-up call' for Britain as Brexit, austerity, Farage and the Tories have caused climate change.

Meanwhile Digital ID...

Hundreds of passwords linked to government departments leaked on dark web

Exclusive: Nine attempts have been made to sell classified UK military documents in the past year – with experts warning it could ‘directly undermine national security’

A report seen exclusively by The Independent shows that more than 700 email addresses and corresponding passwords from across nine government domains have been leaked online in the past year, creating fears that taxpayers’ sensitive data, or “critical systems” such as power grids, could be targeted by hackers.