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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (142921)	10/14/2005 1:01:44 PM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 793843

That's up there with "I love mankind, it's people I can't stand!" That's "the cry of the econuts!"

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (142921)	10/14/2005 1:59:47 PM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 793843

THE BBC AS PARASITE? [Iain Murray] We're used to the BBC being portrayed as an annoying gadfly but Britain is perhaps waking up to the idea that it's actually a blood-sucking parasite. The Spectator's leader this week concludes: The ever-increasing BBC licence fee, too, is a symptom of the nullifying effect of Labour policy on the economy. Since 1997 Gordon Brown has added more than 800,000 employees to the public payroll; their salaries and pensions almost all paid for through taxes. It amounts to a huge transfer of resources from real businesses which make real profits to bloated state monoliths like the BBC which, being remote from market forces, have little interest in reining in their costs. Throughout Gordon Brown’s time as Chancellor, public sector inflation — which reflects productivity in the state sector — has stubbornly risen by between 6 and 7 per cent. If Britain were a plc and the BBC its broadcasting department, CEO Brown would pulverise the BBC’s director-general, Mark Thompson. Why are you paying disc jockeys £1 million a year when there are few competitors wanting to poach them in any case? Get people to watch BBC4 or it gets closed down by January, OK? Of course, none of this will get said; the government will meekly sign the cheque and the BBC will carry on saying, ‘What’s everyone moaning about? The licence fee is only £2.50 a week, and you can’t even get a pint of beer for that these days.’ That’s not the point. The point is that the BBC, in common with the rest of the public sector, is growing parasitically on the healthy parts of the economy. Gordon Brown is acting as a disease on business, whose symptoms it is becoming impossible to overlook. Remember that British citizens who own televisions are forced on pain of criminal sanctions to pay that $4 a week to the BBC. The equivalent over here would give an American version an income of $21 billion. corner.nationalreview.com