A Grand Institution

I love the BBC. Let's make that clear right from the off. I have the greatest respect for their efforts to consistantly air quality programing.  We've had a good relationship.

But we're about to have a falling out.

On Thursday it was announced that this season of Doctor Who Confidential would be the last. For those of you who don't know, Doctor Who Confidential is the Behind the Scenes show that airs after every epsiode of the new series of Doctor Who. It provides interviews with the cast and the directors and takes a look at how an average episode is created, everything from CGI to location sourcing. I know at least one person who is interested in a career in film who loves it because of all the background and techincal knowledge. And now it has been cancelled.

According to the official press release it has been cancelled so that BBC3 (under Controller Zai Bennet who has already cancelled popular shows such as "Coming of Age" and "Two Pints of Larger and a Packet of Crisps) "can build on original British commisions unique to the channel." I'd tell you what that means. Except the BBC won't tell me.

You see as soon as I heard the news I swung into action and filed a complaint with the BBC. I pointed out the educational aspects of Confidential along with the shows popularity and also pointed out that as far as "original British commissions unique to the channel" go you can'tget more original or unique than Confidential, based as it is on a original British show and it never having been show on any channel other than BBC3.

They replied fairly promptly. Feeding me the exact same line from the press release.

So I complained again, asking for an actual explanation rather than a simple sound bite. I politly outlined my points again and asked them to provide me with examples of the type of shows they consider "original and unique". They didn't get back to me, so I filed a third complaint again outlining my points and asking both for examples and a response.

They have yet to get back to me. I'm torn between filing a fourth complain or heading straight for Points of View.

As I said above I have the greatest respect for the BBC. But I expect better from them. And as a long time viewer I expect a response to my questions.

Guess I'll just have to keep poking them.

Oh Russia

Taking a look at international events again today, specifically something that came out of the Motherland yesterday. So what exactly has Russia been up to?

Well the United Russia Party (the country's ruling - we swear we're not Communist we promise - party) held it's annual conference this week (it seems to be conference season) and yesterday there were a pair of twin annoucements that will I'm pretty sure have most of you going WHAT!!

To start with incumbant President Dimitri "I'm Not a Puppet or Anything" Medvedev gave his backing for the current Prime Minister Vladamir "Cult of Personality" Putin to run for the Presidency in the elections next year.

Shortly afterwards Mr Putin urged the Party to put Mr Medvedev at the top of the Electoral List for the Parlimentary elections in December. When United Russia win those elections (and it is When not If) that would make Mr Medvedev Prime Minister.

I'll let you figure out what that means for a moment. While you do, have a pictue of the pair.


Guess which one's in charge


Figured out what it means yet?

That's right. Putin and Medvedev are essentially SWAPPING roles.

Now I know what you are thinking. Hasn't Putin been President before? And you would be right in thinking that.   Putin was President for two terms between 2000 and 2008 following the resignation of Boris Yeltsin. The Russian Constituion barred him from holding a third term. However unlike the American Constitution (which holds to the Two Terms and your out rule no matter how you split it) the Russian Constitution seems not to prevent him from taking  the job again after a break. A break in which he oddly become Prime Minister.

His rapid rise to the Prime Ministers office and the fact that Putin has been quoted as saying that he and Mr Medvedev came to an agreement about what to do in the future "several years ago" seems to suggest both that Mr Medvedevs time as President was simply a stop gap until Putin could stand again and that for the last few years it has been Putin who has really wielded the power in Russia.

Oddly the Russian people seem to have no problem with this state of affairs. The Russian Orthadox Church has also endorsed Putin's return to the Presidency and Putin himself is quite popular within Russia. Over the last few years he has built up a Stalinist style "Cult of Personality" (only without the purges). Just Google, "Putin with Motorbikes" or "Putin and Horses" and you'll see what I mean.

And we won't even get into that whole "Let's do Judo with Putin" video that apparently exists.

If anyone has any clue how Russia has succeded in becoming such a powerful nation considering the amount of corruption that seems to pervade it's politics, please put your answers on a postcard. Cause I don't have a cluie.

I suspect it's something to do with Putin's time in the KGB though.

Liberal Democrat Conference

Yes it's that time of year again. Party Conference Season. And first up is the Liberal Democract conference in Birmingham.

It's been quite a year for the Lib Dems. They've gone from being the third (and smallest) of the major parties in the HoC to a partner in the Coalition Government. The LibCon Government if you will. This is their chance. Their chance to influence government and put some of their policies into action. A chance to make a real change.

Except it hasn't worked out like that has it? As the junior partner in the Coalition the Lib Dems don't have that much influence. There are in fact only three senior Lib Dems in the Cabinet (Nick Clegg, Vince Cable and Danny Alexander if you're interested) and nearly every time the Lib Dems have tried to force something they have either backed off or been defeated. Nick Clegg even regenged on his promise to vote against a rise in tution fees, though whether that was at the urging of the Tories we will never know.

Of course there are those who say that the Lib Dems actually hold quite a lot of power. If they were to pull out of the Coalition then the government would collapse. But I doubt that will ever happen. For one thing I suspect that the Conservatives would limp along with a minority for a while before scoring big at the next election. I also believe that the Lib Dems will never pull out of the Coalition because this is there one shot at power. I strongly suspect that they know that if they don't buck their ideas up then come the next election they will be hammered by the electorate. We don't like Yes Men. And we expect better from the Lib Dems.

But over the last few days both the leader Nick Clegg and Party President Tim Farron have attempted to change this view. They have argued that while they were "respectful in the beginning" they were now beginning to articulate their differences from the Conservatives and will now aim to "punch above their weight." They also argued that the Lib Dems have "nerves of steel" and will survive.

Whether this is the truth or simple Conference rhetoric I don't know.  But it will be fascinating to see what happens in the next few months.

Summer Summary

So as the Summer fades away to Autumn I thought I would look back over the high profile stories that have occured over what is usually a  very quiet season newswise. A pity that so little of it was good.

Let's start at the very beginning, a very good place to start.

Libyan Civil War



This has already been covered in this page, but as it was at the forefront of people's minds at the beginning of the summer, I'll go over it again.

Following the successful revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt and the ousting of Presidents Ben-Ali and Mubarak, the people of Libya rose up in an effort to topple Colonel Gaddafi, leader of Libya for over forty years. Starting in the eastern city of Bengahzi, this gradually spread west ward, before stalling halfway towards Tripoli. However the intervention of the UN, helped the rebels get moving again and as of last week they are now in control of the capital.

Unfortunatly Gaddafi is still at large, possible holed up in his home town of Sirte. I don't know how this will end, with conflicting reports emerging stating that Gaddafi is either willing to talk about a hand over of power, willing to watch Libya collapse to the twin forces of fire and ice before the Western infidels can get their hands on it's oil, or possible both. At the same time.

What ever happens, it marks the beginning of change for Libya.

This was then replaced with the

Phone Hacking Scandal



This one had been brewing for a couple of months, running conncurently with News International's attempts to purchase of BSkyB and thus control the second biggest TV provider in the UK (after the BBC) and had already cost Andy "I swear I knew nothing" Coulson (above) his job as the PM's press officer. Just as we thought we weren't going to learn anything new, the news broke that the News of the World had not only hacked into the phones of celebrities but the phone of murdered school girl Milly Dowler and possible the families of 7/7 victims.

This as you may understand made people very unhappy.  Very Very unhappy.

In fairly short order, News International shut down the News of the World hoping that this would save their attempts to buy BSkyB - and incidently making several hard working journalists who's only crime was to work for News International redudant in the process.  It didn't. In a rare show of solidarity across the Commons benchs all MP's from every party came together to make it clear that Rupert "It's only 1% of the Company" Murdoch should drop the bid. Which he did some half an hour before the Commons debate began.

With investigations into Murdoch's activities going on both in his native Australia and in the US,  former NOTW editor Rebeka Brooks as well James and Rupert Murdoch were called before a Commons Subcommittee to answer questions about their company's behaviour. Apart from a brief fraca involing a shaving foam pie and Murdoch's head things went reasonably smoothly and to the great satisfaction of all those who dislike Murdoch and his strangle hold on the media it was proved almost beyond a shadow of a doubt that frankly he is both

A: Incompetant

and

B: Passed it with absolutly no clue what is going on within his own company.

 I thought this was going to be the end of big stories. At least until the unfortunate and catostrophic events in

Norway



On the 22nd of July Norway, one of the most peaceful countries on the planet, came under attack by one of it's own citizens. Anders Behring Breivik a right-wing extreamist committed two horrifc acts of terroism in the name of "protecting" his country and Europe.

After setting a car bomb outside the Prime Minister's office which killed eight and injured eleven, Breivik travelled to the island of Utoya the location of the ruling Labour Party's annual Youth camp and proceded to open fire on the assembled teenages resulting in a death toll of around eighty people. Eighty people who's only crime was to have an active interest in their countries politics.

As mentioned above Breivik did this in an attempt to "protect" his country from he thought were the twin evils of Islam and Marxism. He wished to create a strong, White, Christian Europe free from outside influence and was willing to commit violence to do this. He is currently in isolation.

I would go on, but this story upsets me so much that I can't.  I would point you towards this though.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9547000/9547476.stm

Things quietened down a bit for a few weeks, and then we got this.

English Riots



This too has been covered in this blog, so I shan't go into any details and rather give a brief summary.

Following the shooting of a man named Mark Duggan in Tottenham by the police, peaceful protests over his death, spiralled into half a week of riots and looting across the capital and the country with hotspots including several London boroughers, Birmingham and Manchester.

While things have settled down since the courts still seem to be in overdrive as they sentence those involved in the looting sprees and the government are now having to think seriously about

A: What they can do to stop something like this from happening again

B: As mentioned in my previous blog post whether the activities of polticians may have helped spark this.

We will recover. We always do. And we did not suffer nearly as badly as Norway.

So that's the Summer's news. For a season where the main news is "Mrs Prentiss Budgie learns to Snowboard" it's been quite eventful.

Of course this would happen just as I go off to study Journalism wouldn't it?

Politicians Mistrusted? Never

According to a report due to go before the government that examines the underlying social problems that led to this months riots in London and other major cities, has cited a mistrust of politicans as a "major factor"

The report There will be Burning and A-Looting Tonight put together by researchers at Essex Univeristy and Royal Holloway University says that, though poverty and lax moral standards were also a factor in people's decision to riot, a dislike and mistrust of the Government and Polticians in general seems to have been the biggest reason.

It states that politicians are seen as a "class apart" who abide "by their own rules" and also warns that mesures used to punish rioters such as stripping them of their benefits will only backfire and lead to a further alienation of certain sections of society.

But then this really isn't suprising is it? It was the Banks that caused the recession, but the working classes who had to pay the price and accept the cuts to their salaries and benefits while those responsible (such as Fred Goodwin) escape with six figure pay outs and pensions (in Goodwins case amounting to an intial £700,000 per year).

The Banking Crisis and the subsequent Expenses Scandal have from an outside perspective seem to have shown that politicans and others at the top of society are (to use their own favourite phrase) ring fenced from the rest of society and allowed to do what they want and to take what they want without adequate punishment when they are caught. And if that is the case, say those further down the society ladder, than why shouldn't we be able to do the same.

I'm not saying this is the right attidue and I'm certainly not condoing it - rioting and looting are of course never the right course of action and arson is beyond the pale - but I can certainly see why people may think this way. And as each election only seems to bring in a government that is as bad as the last I can understand why they didn't feel like waiting for polling day to make their feelings known.

When news of this report reached Whitehall it - as you would probably expect - showed the major differences between the three major parties. Mr Milliband and Mr Clegg representing Labour and the Lib Dems respectivly were more open minded about whether alienation played a role in the riots with Mr Clegg saying that " the perception that politicans, bankers and others at the top were "getting away with it" may have been a factor in the rioters ignoring the "rules of the game" as well." Downing Street on the other hand played down the idea with a spokeswoman for the Prime Minister saying "One can speculate but we are not necessarily going to know exactly what the causes were."

Now while I'm happy to see the Lib Dems speaking their mind for a change, in this instance I would be happier if their opinion was also the opinion of the Coalition. They are after all the ones who need to make sure, that something like the Riots don't happen again.

Libya - What Next

So. Libya's Rebel Movement has finally captured the capital of Tripoli. The National Transitional Council is moving in and Gaddafi is on the run. I think the first thing we need to do is look at how what many people are calling Libya's Civil War came about.

The first thing that must be understood is that while the events in Libya were born out of the same types of protests that toppled Ben Ali in Tunisia and Mubarak in Egypt, things in Libya turned out differently due to the character of Colonel Mummar Gaddafi. For starters Gaddafi held power for over forty years, longer than either Ben-Ali or Mubarak. Thus he had longer to cement his position and more to lose if he was toppled by protesters.

Thus when the protests began - peacefully as all the others were - Gaddafi had no trouble sending in the Military, who of course support him. As in Zimbabwe us Mugabi the Military in Libya has a very comfortable existence under Gaddafi and do not wish to see him gone. These intial protests took place in the eastern city of Bengazi, located on the other side of the country from Triopli and far removed from Gaddafi's stranglehold.  When protests turned violent the citizens of Bengazi quickly overwhelmed the authorites and declared their oppistion to the Gaddafi regime.  Other towns followed and soon what had been minor protests blossomed into a full blown revolution.

At first it was a distnticly amature rebellion, made up of civilians and occasional army defectors armed with weapons pillaged from military bases. Though they were able to capture several towns, they were no real threat. Hence the decision of the UN to insitiute a No Fly Zone around Libya to reduce Gaddafi's ability to bomb either the rebels or civilians who he had already targeted. A new government formed, the National Transitional Council which claimed to represent the views of the Rebellion.

So now after a long and arduous six months, the Rebels have control of Tripoli and have even over run Gaddafi's bunker. While there are still some pockets of fighting and they have to take control of all of Tripoli, the message is clear. The Gaddafi regime has fallen.

But now as the people of Libya look to the future two important questions spring to the fore.

1: How do you solve a problem like Colonel Gaddafi?

Gaddafi it appears got out of Tripoli when the rebels arrived. I'm not suprised frankly. If you've been a brutal dictator for forty years, the first thing you do is plan an escape route when the inevitable revolution comes. Most people believe he is now holed up in his home town of Sirte, surrounded by those still loyal to him. Today it has emerged that he has offered to engage in talks about an orderly transtion of power. Though some how I can't imagine that Gaddafi will just hand over power without a fight, so he must be searching for an angle.

The general expectation was that he would fight to the death - he said as much on the radio - but now a possiblity of surrender seems likely. In which case what happens once he is caught. The International Criminal Court would like to try him I suspect for various types of War Crimes, but I suspect what will actually happen is that he will be tried and either imprisoned or executed in Libya. It would act as closure for the Libyan people.

2: What Happens Next.

So far the National Transtional Council has not had to think about how to run the country. It has mostly been preocupied with running the civil war and the towns that is has taken over have had infrastructures already in place. But now that they have Tripoli, they have to restore water and power and create jobs and an infrastructure from the ground up. It has asked the UN to release millions of dollars worth of Gaddafi regime money that was frozen when fighting began but even that will take time to filter through.

What ever happens one thing is clear. Things in Libya are going to change. But whether for the worse or the better we will only know in time.

Strong in the Face of Adversity

It's been a hard few days for the people of London and the people of the UK. With less than a year to go until the 2012 Olympics, and with representatives from countries across the world here for Olympic heats, the nation that has been put on display is not a friendly, open and tolerant nation, but one supposedly filled with mindless, opportunistic thugs.

I don't think any person who has see the news or read the newspapers in the last few days is  ever going to forget this image. I know I won't



Reeves Furniture Store, a shop that has been in buisness for over a hundred and fifty years being burned to the ground, live on the nightly news. And now of course the violence has spread out of the capital to this countries other major cities. Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds and Liverpool all experiencing acts of copy cat violence.

But that's not what I want to talk about today. What I want to talk about is the good that has come out of this.

Call it The Big Society, call it Community Spirit, call it The British Spirit, but the British have never been a people to lie dowin the face of adversity. When faced with trouble, we simply roll up our sleeves and keep going, pulling together and helping one other.

It's been that way since long before I was born, the Blitz spirit being a prime example from the Second World War. We are a country for whom the phrase "When the going gets tough, the tough get going" could have been invented. And the UK Riots haven't changed that.

The media has often pointed out over the last three days how it is modern social networking site such as Twitter and Facebook that have allowed the rioters and looters to organize themselves. But yesterday morning as the country reeled in the wake of a third night of violence I awoke to discover that a group of people had decided the time had come to both do something about the rioting and to take back our social networks. I awoke to the glorious hash tag #riotcleanup.

Across London and across the country people were fighting the rioters. Not with sticks or stones or violence, but with brooms, cups of tea and peace. People were donning the rubber gloves and going out to clean up their communities. Going out to show the rioters that no matter what they did, they couldn't frighten people away. They couldn't dampen the British Spirit.

The Riot Clean Up website says that "This is not about the riots. This is about the clean up - Londoners who care, coming together to engender a sense of community,"  and BBC Journalist Michael Hirst said that at Clapham Junction station there was "Sunshine, high spirits, lots of joking and a community vibe,"  as three hundred to four hundred volunteers took part in the clean up operation.

This is the London, this is the United Kingdom that I wish the global community could see. Not the riots and the arson and the violence. But the Community Spirit that such action prompts in people.


The Riot Wombles of Central London. This is what being British means.

I have read quotes by people over the last few days saying that the violence and rioting has made them ashamed to be British. And it is shameful. But after seeing images like the one above, after seeing the Police being cheered by onlookers in Clapham Junction, I'm not ashamed.

In fact, I've never been more proud to be British.