The Government really needs a good firing.

That's a bit of a contentious title.

I mean the Government of the UK, or at least the bits of it that won't listen to the board of advisors that they appointed to reel the BBC in and make them behave.

HMG planned to "top slice" (whatever that means) 130 million off the license fee in 2010 and give it to ITV and Channel 4 (or just C4) on the basis that they too perform elements of public service broadcasting.

The BBC Trust have been doing some research and have discovered that the recent 5.50 rise in the fee, levied to pay for the switch to digital, needs to go away next year - after the switch is completed. I'd rather it was kept on and the extra fiver went to making a new series of Torchwood, or perhaps was used to commission some new programming in from some new writers. Maybe we could have another poetry season. However, the general public thinks it should go and the license fee should come down.

OK.

They also said that the general public does NOT want C4 or ITV getting hold of the license fee, or any part of it.

Here's the whole story including the whys and wherefores of the survey.

The Daily Mail puts it like this.

The Daily Mail is owned by The Daily Mail and General Trust, who have a subsidiary called DMG, who own a 20% interest in ITN...well, Wiki has a general list here, with appropriate caveats about trusting Wiki entirely.

Essentially, the Daily Mail's parent company is in direct competition with the BBC, both for local and national news, and has a significant internet presence to defend - a presence which is going to either have to change business models or disappear behind a paywall while the BBC continues to be "free".

The Government's response to the license fee issue was "well, we might anyway" - which is why it needs firing. The people have spoken, at least in a poll, and this should indicate that they've got to rethink.

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Transparency?

It's an idea I've picked up from David Brin (his blog is over there, on the right) and it's one I have decided I rather like.

There are a host of reasons. The main one is: I love my privacy. I don't, in any sense, have any. I have no expectation of privacy at work, where my phone can be tapped and my computer keystrokes recorded and logged for later, and I have no expectation at home because I live with other humans. We all need space, but we can't all have it at the same time. Google stores my search habits, banks and stores store my buying habits. I'm tracked, data mined, coded and analysed every minute of every day.

Which is OK with me.

On the other hand, while I am perfectly happy to have all of this happen - it's apparently the consequence of a lifestyle that I rather like - I am not so happy that there are elements of the world which are not subject to the same rules.

It irks me that while I can hide nothing from the IRS, whole political parties obviously can. I am annoyed that if I question how a major company is spending money I am not allowed to find out the answers. I would quite like to have access to all of that information.

Would I use it?
Well, no, probably not. I think the ordinary schlub, like me, probably wouldn't. I believe, though, that there are a sufficient number of people who would in order to make the total societal transparency that David Brin espouses (and which is still a really good idea) very unlikely. I think a society grown so used to lying, and being lied to, is probably not going to handle truth very well.

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Sarah Palin

I'm English, I'm intending to remain so and I live in the USA. I am not a citizen, but I do pay taxes and that - whatever some Americans think - at least allows me to air an opinion on the current political process.

Sarah Palin, whatever her abilities and her real skills as a politician, is a satirists dream. Tina Fey's caricature of her on SNL is very, very funny. So funny that you start to wonder whether it's all a bit too easy. People are saying she's dangerous; I've been invited to join a group on Facebook that claims she's the most dengerous woman in the Western world, or somesuch hyperbole.

I don't agree that she's dangerous. The reflex of the American political system is to Fearmonger as soon as something unexpected happens. We're seeing it with the Right's insistent harping about Barack Obama's links to "unrepentant domestic terrorists" and "extremists", and with a variety of people drawing undue attention to the possibility that there are root vegetables (long the bane of Vice Presidents) smarter than Sarah Palin.

Fine. She's not bright. We were spoiled by President Bartlett.

She is also far too easy to satirise. I don't think it's a good idea to have politicians who are this easy to make fun of.

Not because we shouldn't satirise our politicians. That's our right, and as an Englishman I have come to regard it as a sacred trust. We put them in power and we should do our utmost to remind them of this at every single opportunity to keep them honest and humble. They do not deserve our respect or admiration, they need to be called on every decision and every utterance, until putting the interests of the people ahead of their own becomes second nature.

Nope, it's because we shouldn't be thinking about the personalities in this election at all.

The human race is, and this is a technical term so brace yourselves, in the shit.

I could take the time to rattle off the things that are looming over us right now, but if you watch the news (oh please, do watch the news!) you already know what those things are.

OK, if you're an American, please watch something like CNN or somewhere with international news, instead of depending on Fox and Local news.

Anyway. You should know what's looming over us. Given that all this stuff is definitely looming, but has not yet reached the "oh *^$@!!!" point where it tips over and becomes a doom, we need to know what our darling politicos are going to do about it. I haven't heard too much about that, as yet.

I feel we should be told.

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