Moore's Crusade

The treatment of its captive audience by the BBC has long been a total scandal, especially in the area of funding, where its behaviour, especially over the past ten to fifteen years, has become beyond sinister and threatening to the point where it could well be - and probably is - illegal according to international law.

But I had no idea just how big an impact the BBC's licence fee collection army has on the entire legal system until, that is, I started following Charles Moore's protest of disobedience at the handling of the Ross-Brand outrage in 2008. Today, he's written what I imagine will be his last piece on the now-resolved case (which he lost, naturally) in which he reveals some truly chilling facts, especially towards the end, about just how massive a drain on the nation's resources the BBC has become, in every sense:

Perhaps the most extraordinary thing I have discovered over the past 20 months is the vast tide of small-scale human misery which the licence fee causes. In 2008-09, there were 168,800 prosecutions for licence-fee evasion. That is nearly 15 per cent of all prosecutions. Almost all the people charged are poor. The telly is one of their few pleasures, and they tend not to watch the BBC on it. And yet, for want of £142.50, tens of thousands clog up the courts every year.

Yesterday in Hastings, a young single mother was tried for the same offence as mine. She had a baby in a pushchair, and I agreed with the clerk to let her case go first, so that she could get out in time to fetch her other children out of school. I can see no justice and no humour in a situation where people like her are punished, so that people like Ross can get his £6 million.

The BBC is a parasitical organism, draining life out of our culture, our society, our politics and our economy with its PC anti-intellectualism, its decadence, its political bias and its greed.

It's time this particular disease of the body politic was cured.

The Perfect Protest

This is how to make a point in public!

Hat tip to Guthrum and, as he says, watch and applaud.





Good fun. But with sinister undertones - everywhere.

Wind of Change?

Hat tip to John Ward for this funny vid.

Meanwhile, as interviews with members of the public all over the media reveal growing anger about these scandals, Guthrum over at Old Holborn speculates in a thoughtful piece that there's a comparison to be made between public outcry here and that which led to the '89 uprisings which brought democracy to eastern Europe. As Fraser Nelson argues, this is rapidly ramping-up to the level of a very severe constitutional crisis. The Westminster government is now regarded as the least popular and most corrupt in all Europe (save possibly for Italy). The backlash against parliament could just be warming up. Guthrum:

We are watching the slow motion car crash of Westminster, it just smells and tastes like the events of 1989. Each night, I watched sixty years of oppression unravelling on the TV, as Czechs, Germans, Poles, Lithuanians, Estonians etc just simply said no.

They were not led by anybody, professional revolutionaries are usually far away from the action when the day finally comes, Lenin was not even in the country when Tsarist Russia finally imploded.

It is usually just naked anger from the public having had enough.

Brown/Clegg/Cameron have literally days in which to stop this, by calling an election, but this has to be an election with the prospect of a new written Constitution (we had one in 1653, by the way), not just a change of one set of thieves for another set of thieves.

If they fail to act, we have to, by gathering in London, Bristol, Glasgow and Manchester - its our country and we want it back

Yours truly does not think of himself as a marching type (apart from in ranks), but after this appalling display of feudal dishonesty by people who clearly consider themselves our 'ruling classes', if I don't see that immediate general election I've been banging on about, it might actually be time to dig out the loud hailer and paint up some placards.

If you disagree, just remember the words of Gorbals 'uberpiggy' Mick, the so-called 'Speaker' of the HofC:

"I've been a trade unionist all my life I did not come into politics not to take what is owed to me".

Bastard.