We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
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 It’s a bit like walking into a Sunday meeting of the Flat Earth Society. As they discuss great issues of the day, they discuss them from the point of view that the earth is flat. If someone says, ‘No, no, no, the earth is round!’, they think this person is an extremist. That’s what it’s like for someone with my right-of-centre views working inside the BBC.
– Jeff Randall, formerly the BBC’s business editor. The BBC does quote this against itself, but my experience of the bien pensant left in the media suggests that it will not be much apprehended inside the corporation.
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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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Quite so Guy.
For example, even the link you give shows some signs of this.
The report comes to the conclusion that the B.B.C. is not biased. And Mr Tait claims the fact that the B.B.C. can include “people like Andrew Marr” shows how unbiased it is.
The fact that Mr Marr has been a man of the left his whole life counts for nothing (as far as the report and the article are concerned), he points out that the B.B.C. has a trendy leftist bias – so he must be an evil right wing person, which the B.B.C. is noble in tolerating.
Of course this is sometimes how people on the left stop being on the left.
They will find something in the standard leftist line that is, by their own experience, clearly not true – and they will say so. In the case of Mr Marr it is the matter of B.B.C. bias.
Then they find that, instead of accepting that “the line” is mistaken on this particular point, the left close ranks against them.
This gives them the choice of recanting (and being accepted back into the fold – after due penance) or standing their ground over a matter where they know (by their own clear experience) that the line is wrong.
If they stand their ground they tend to find that the hostility to them grows over time. In the situation of growing conflict they sometimes (not always – sometimes someone will just carry on with the standard leftist line about everything apart from the exact area where reality has hit him over the head) become receptive to the idea that the standard leftist line may be wrong about other matters as well.
“My former friends have assumed something that I know is not true, and when I politely pointed this out they sneared at me, perhaps they (and me) are wrong about other things that they assume as well.”
Note that the link you posted is filed by the BBC under “Entertainment”, not “News”. You’d think the BBC is trying to hide something….
BBC Biased! Shock Horror!
Well it’s certainly not news to me, and it did give me a bit of a laugh.
In a sense the BBC is not biased. It influences and also reflects what has become almost a gebneral consensus within society. How else could it parrot anthropogenic global warming as not just fact but as a matter of “ethical” living?* How else could it refer to Sir Salman Rushdie as being “controversial”** because he upset a bunch of morons*** without making any wider reference to his significant body of work other than the sodding “Satanic Verses”?
I know the BBC is always thinking of the schoolznospitals and the baybees so I’m not surprised this came from a former BBC business editor”. Perhaps he has more of an idea were all the money might come from to actually improve things. Just a terrible right-wing thought of mine. I mean, I dunno wasn’t it business, technology and enterprise which generated the standard of living which means… Oh fuck ’em. Fuck ’em harshly (with a cactus) and give ’em something to sphincter about.
*They recently had a show in which a BBC wonk and family recently spent a year living like troglodytes, “ethically”. I dunno about you but I always thought that the height of ethical living was typified by, I dunno, say Maximillian Kolbe and not some twat pissing on his compost heap in North London to add extra nitrogen. And, oh yes, he did. piss on his compost heap, every night.
** OK, that might’ve just been the abysmally low-brow ITV News but I’m sure the BBC said it too. I was up to my elbows in a computer at the time so I’m not sure.
*** Considering how I feel about the House of Commons I see no reason why the Pakistani parliament should be any less driven by ill-informed popular fervour.
Ah yes, Newsnight’s “Ethical Man”. What was the result of this sad bastard’s year wearing yogurt sandals? I have a feeling that he saved bugger all carbon to make any difference.
Cause or effect, though, Nick? Would that consensus exist without the BBC? I’ve always said that the problem is not simply that the BBC is biased – the complete impartiality to which it pretends is impossible anyway – but that it is hugely influential on British opinion, all the while denying that this is the case in order to stake a claim to guaranteed sustenance.
On the topic of bias, has anyone seen the execrable Robin Hood series of 2006? I have been watching the first 5 episodes on DVD with my daughters and they’re mind-boggling. Apart from the constant anachronsims (which are irritating) the villains have so far declared a `War on Terror’ and criticised Robin Hood for probably having been trained in an indoctrination camp in the Middle East while Robin has already asked the immortal question : `when did violence ever solve anything?’
And just as the BBC publishes its ‘findings’ into its own nincompoopery we have yet another gem uncovered. During the current operations in Baghdad the BBC were asking that any Iraqi spotting British or US troops contact them, presumably such information would then be passed on to Al Queda’s London Office (Television Centre, Wood Lane, London W12) and then conveyed to the noble freedom fighters in Baghdad.