Tuesday 2 March 2010
Manufacturing The UK's Consent: the BBC under fire
As an unaffiliated, licence fee-paying member of the public I am deeply concerned by the threatened loss of BBC6, and what it represents more widely: a pre-emptive, placatory reaction to the systematic attacks being launched on the BBC by partisan and profit-hungry factions seeking to benefit from its enfeeblement. The main streams of public debate, awareness-raising and artistic cross-fertilisation within the UK media would be lamentably poorer without a strong BBC.
For me, Radio 1 is an unlistenable reflection of lowest common denominator popular trends (with their accompanying unexamined worldview – the tainted wellspring of the widespread public ignorance, apathy and acquiescence allowing our societies to slide toward disaster). However, I must concede that it represents the BBC fulfilling its mandate. Radio 2 is, simply put, middlebrow and staid. Aside from BBC6 radio, nothing else in the British media provides so vital a forum for the exploration, nurturing and promulgation of popular music as art form.
In James Murdoch's MacTaggart Memorial Lecture he attacked the BBC, stating: "In this all-media marketplace, the expansion of state-sponsored journalism is a threat to the plurality and independence of news provision, which are so important for our democracy". This is nothing less than a vile example of pot-kettle-black doublespeak. If Murdoch had his way we'd have the kind of plutocratic media that allowed that war-mongerer Bush and his bankrollers to steal an election with barely a whisper of protest in their own country.
38 Degrees petition: Link
Avaaz petition: Link
Wednesday 10 February 2010
Thoughts on the Robin Hood Tax: The Defining Issue of Our Times
Banks will never develop a social conscience: they are amoral corporate machines honed solely to maximise profits at any and all costs. To do this, they tap the synergy of the many talented people they employ, but negate any normal human decency (whether its source be internal or external) that might detract from profiteering.
Any charitable or philanthropic activity from a corporation is solely an exercise in public relations or human resources management (i.e. assuaging the consciences of the workforce). The only way to make these machines work for – rather than continue to harm – the wider good is to legislate – and reining in these juggernauts before they bend our lives and world (even more) painfully out-of-shape is the defining issue of our times.
The Robin Hood Tax movement is exactly the kind of marketing-savvy counterattack we need, when the corporate leviathan has the majority of people hamstrung with overwork and opiated by The X Factor, its tendrils dangling our elected representatives like puppets. Godspeed!
The Robin Hood Tax: Link
Facebook Page: Link
Guardian article: Link
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So, one of the most vulnerable and aggressively marketed-to demographics is to be abandoned to unchallenged indoctrination by a commercial system which is destroying our planet, our communities and many people's lives, by the only British broadcast institution that is in a position to enlighten them – in a disinterested fashion – to the existence of ways of thinking and being outside of that mindset?