That the government admits it’s screwed up is not the story …

 a con, Andrew Lansley, Coalition, David Cameron, Jeremy Hunt, NHS, NHS cuts  1 Response »
Sep 152012
 

This story from the Telegraph this morning provokes an understandably immediate and cheesed-off reaction: “Who knew?”  As a newly-appointed junior minister admits the government screwed up over the NHS reforms, it’s hardly surprising that the reactions prior to the bill’s passing should already, back in February, have been thus.

http://youtu.be/aoFZx3SeMwg

But the big story for me today is not that the government finally admits it screwed up.  The big story for me today is that the government is bad before it’s mad.

Any intelligent and sentient beings, understanding that things were getting as grave as they have been with a subject as impactful as the nation’s health service, would surely have found it within themselves to seek support and help across party lines in order to resolve the encroaching mess.  Now I’m not arguing that Cameron & Co are anything but intelligent and sentient beings.  What I am saying is that, despite this fact, they are sufficiently lacking in self-confidence – even now, two and a half years after half-winning/half-losing a general election – for them to feel incapable of such acts of sensible politics.

They’re not primarily mad ideologues out to destroy the entire fabric of English society – though this may yet be the case – but, rather, simply awfully insecure politicians who don’t really know what they’re doing to our country and, actually, in the light of these recent declarations, know they don’t know.

The world suffers often from the securities of the single-minded.  But there is a moment in the political cycle when the insecure and inept are far more dangerous than the pig-headedly decisive.  And that moment has now arrived.  That moment is when the insecure and inept realise they may not be up to the job they are responsible for; that their previous decisions have made things far worse; and that history will almost certainly judge them poorly.

When the insecure and inept realise – with security – how inept they are, and even so do not want to give up on the responsibilities which make their lives so astonishingly attractive and powerful, is when the rest of us do need to begin to watch our steps.  Nothing more dangerous than a wounded animal, after all.

Nothing more dangerous than ineptness in charge.

Why today I agree 100 percent with Louise Mensch

 a con, David Cameron, Jeremy Hunt, phone-hacking, Rupert Murdoch, Tom Watson  No Responses »
May 012012
 

As the Commons Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee publishes a damning report today, Tom Watson provides a measured, contained and – as far as I can see – objective assessment of what’s really gone on over the past couple of years, whilst Parliament has tried to get to the bottom of the Murdoch phone-hacking case.  I agree with what, as an interested observer, I have read, heard and been able to cross-reference with respect to the case; with respect to the rest, I am happy to take his word for it.

Even so, I also find myself agreeing with Louise Mensch, one of the Tory Party members of the Committee, who found herself unable to vote for part of the report’s conclusions; in particular with respect to the following assertion: that Mr Rupert Murdoch was unfit to run a major international company.  As the BBC inform us:

A Conservative member of the Commons Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee said its phone-hacking report would lose credibility for its line over Rupert Murdoch being unfit to run an international company.

Louise Mensch said no MPs from her party could support the report – looking into allegations around the former News of the World newspaper – which would now be seen as “partisan”.

She’s absolutely right about the partisan nature of the vote, of course: the fact that – after all the sewage which has flowed under the tumbling media bridge – four Tory MPs can still band together along party lines and, by withholding their condemnation, let it be understood that the owners of News International have demonstrated all the tenets of good capitalism, is just about as revealing as any such vote ever could become.

When David Cameron saw nothing improper in Mr Hunt’s behaviours, he was implicitly – and simply – recognising that under similar circumstances he would have been happy to do exactly the same.

Louise Mensch and her Conservative colleagues now find themselves in precisely the same place.

I do hope they know what they’re doing and why.

In the very near future, I think they’re jolly well going to need to.

A free press versus what we’ve got right now

 David Cameron, Fifth Estate, free press, free speech, in a hole, Jeremy Hunt, journalism, PCC, regulation, Rupert Murdoch, Sky, unclassifiable  No Responses »
Jul 082011
 

I can’t imagine how anyone doesn’t want a free press.  OK.  With the exception of some people who live in places like North Korea – or, alternatively, the occasional British politician.  So we all agree on that.  But there does seem to exist an awfully deliberate misunderstanding of the choices we have to make if we want to achieve such a beast.

Whenever British politicians have spoken in the past about their relationship with the press, they’ve always gingerly couched their public pronouncements with the sort of mealy-mouthed statements which remind one of barge-poles and devil’s spoons.  Today’s speech by David Cameron on the subject of quite a number of things – mainly, it has to be said, Andy Coulson’s “second chance” (for which Cameron may soon find crucifixion the easier option) – also happened to touch on the matter of press freedom.  And for once, it clearly led us to understand how dreadfully the Press Complaints Commission had failed in its remit.  (If, that is, it actually has a remit to fail.  Like many hallowed British institutions, so much of what goes on here seems to have more to do with precedent and who you know than objective checklists and criteria …)

He did mention regulation too – or, at least, I think he did.  Now whenever the printed press and its representatives hear that dreaded word, they immediately clamber up onto their barricades and declaim the importance of holding shakers and makers to account.  They hardly ever include their own CEOs, it has to be said – but a morality of sorts, even so, can be detected by the more charitable amongst us.

And then what we have got from our mealy-mouthed politicians, looking to cultivate their cosy relationships with powerful print moguls in order that they may “explain their democracy better to the people”, is a lukewarm adherence to the principles of self-regulation.

I have to say that I do actually agree with the latter.  And my adherence isn’t lukewarm at all.  I’d much prefer a systemic solution to as many important government decisions as possible – than the terrible alternative, which is what we often have now: idiosyncratic, untransparent and – potentially – politically biased decisions made by self-serving politicians looking to winning masses of votes via top-down communication strategies.  The conflict of interests couldn’t be greater.

So this is essentially what I feel.  If we want a free press, self-regulated and autonomous, we need a far more plural ownership than we currently have.  We need the invisible hand of the market-place to ensure that politicians will never fear again the future patronage of a Murdoch or Daily Mail.  These units of production need to have a certain size to ensure the kind of investigative journalism carried out by the Guardian recently continues to be carried out for the benefit of all of us – whether professional politicians, amateur voters or self-proclaimed members of the Fifth Estate.  But there must also exist automatic measures of breakage which trip into action when a newspaper or media organisation gets bigger than a certain size.  As I have suggested a couple of posts ago, this trip switch could be an algorithm or simply a checklist in the hands of specialist personnel, which would ensure no politician would ever find themselves again in the kind of position Jeremy Hunt currently occupies.

A bit like making the Bank of England independent – but in this case in relation to our treasure trove of culture.

The alternative to all the above is, of course, quite simple.  If we wish to continue with monopolistic media, we need a much heavier – and, what’s more, external – regime of regulation than we have been used to.

So the choice is clear:

  • a free, autonomous, self-regulated press, possibly more digital than anything else; structured in small but sustainable chunks of ownership which allow for useful value-adding content to be created; essentially, a press which no longer has to churn out PR releases under the banner of original journalism but is able to truly inform, explain and investigate democracy on behalf of the rest of us – even as it manages to maintain a competitive plurality able to support and give space to all viewpoints in British society
  • a monopolistic press, still mainly based around the printed press, where 20th century publishing models are sustained – and where influence and favours are curried persistently by self-interested parties on both sides; a press, that is, where regulation must inevitably be as heavy as it currently is in TV and radio broadcasting

If you want an autonomous press, then, there is no alternative to the plurality of the true market-place.  If you want a monopolistic press, where the invisible hand of multiple offers is slowly but always amputated, there is no alternative to heavy regulation.

It’s as simple as that.