The heyday of TV and radio meant that the lunatic variety of Tom Sawyer’s America was pasteurised away and a free people could now be made to feel anything at all… The ideal technological conditions for actual totalitarianism probably existed from around 1950 to 2000 – the peak of TV’s influence. This never came to pass, though stories of distant American relatives prone and raving before Rachel Maddow now give a slight tincture of what might have been. As others have pointed out, you can at least do something else while listening to the radio, and with a computer you are an active user… That the legacy network media is now so regularly conflated with ‘liberal norms’ shows that what’s being defended by people like Kamala Harris aren’t the old liberal freedoms, but rather those 20th century institutions originally created for mass mobilisation and total war: the broadcast media, an expanded bureaucracy and fixed international obligations. To people like Mrs. Harris success means the return of these ‘collective experiences’, where news anchors can once more move millions with a look. A return of the Cronkites, in which there will always be a little girl down the well to pull you away from real life.

J. Sorel, The BBC is a Relic of Mass Mobilisation and Total War, Sprawled Across the National Psyche Like a Huge Rusting Battleship

#bbc

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"The ABC Murders" Murder

NB This post contains spoilers for several Agatha Christie books. The defining scene of the new BBC adaptation of The ABC Murders , w...

niallthinksandwrites.blogspot.com

This is a nice review of the BBC series “The ABC Murders.”

#bbc #agatha christie

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Milliband, Google and Adam Smith

Yesterday I had the unfortunate experience of watching BBC News. One of the stories they ran was Labour’s goofball-in-chief, Ed Milliband, criticising Google for paying very low rates of tax. The BBC in its usual unbiased fashion made the words “tax evasion” and “tax avoidance” appear multiple times in the segment.

But this isn’t an example of tax evasion. Tax evasion is refusing to pay taxes that you are required to by law to pay. Google is simply lawfully arranging its finances so to pay minimal tax. Literally every person does this. The justification for taxing cigarettes is that it makes people buy fewer—is that “tax evasion”?

It isn’t the responsibility of private firms who are competing with one another to make sure they pay a “fair amount of tax.” If people take advantage of tax loopholes the fault lies entirely with the legislators. It is beyond naive to believe that by moralising a company you can expect it to act against the incentives it operates under.

There are two ways to solve this problem:

You could close the tax loopholes, though that may lead to Google moving its operations abroad.
Or you could lower the tax rates. Suppose it costs 45p per £1 of earnings to hire an accountant and eliminate the tax you pay. If the tax rate is 50% you hire the accountant; if the tax rate is 40% you pay your taxes. Lowering tax rates can actually increase tax revenue. This is an argument originally made by Adam Smith (though often attributed to Art Laffer). This has the advantage that it won’t cause Google to move its operations abroad.

#economics #bbc #Adam Smith

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Harry and Paul Question Time parody

#bbc #question time #harry and paul

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One thing that annoys me about BBC shows is the "incest" that goes on between them. Like one time I remember Nigel Farage, a week after he appeared on Have I Got News For You, made this completely random and unfunny appearance on The Armstrong and Miller Show. He didn't add anything to the sketch. He was just there. For no apparent reason.

I've seen them do this before. Because they have this big building where they make a lot of the shows they can take some (pseudo-)celebrity that they want to push and make them appear in a string of different shows just for the hell of it.

#bbc #nigel farage