Political Bias rears its head again at the Beeb...

I shall be brief, as I have to go be all bartendery shortly.

The BBC repeatedly refers to the BNP as Right Wing. It equates fascism with the political Right. This is a fallacy. The Nazis, similarly are confused with the Right. This is incorrect. The Nazis were (wait for it) The National Socialist party. Socialist. Anyone get that last word there?

Yeah?

Okay.

So. The BNP have very similar economic, political, and dare I say it, social policies to those of the now defunct National Socialist Party of Germany circa 1933-1945. The Nazis were actually not that far from the Communists in economic terms - really, Stalin and Hitler would have agreed on quite a lot were it not for their racial loathing of each other - particularly from old Adolf's point of view.

Both were left wing. The BNP, who espouse the same nationalist, protectionist and exclusionist policies of the fascist Nazi party (as well as other loathesome policies formed around a general dislike for anything other than Caucasian Heterosexual Men and their doting stay-at-home Women) are also left-wing. They are Left-Wing Authoritarians.

Will someone in the BBCs political editorial department PLEASE take note of this?

That is all.

Timmy, you just made my day

A big thanks to Tim Worstall for saying it so very well:

"You see, because if companies don’t pay their taxes then the money just disappears. There’s no such thing as an opportunity cost in lefty world.

Now then, out in the real world what does happen when the capitalist bastards manage to dodge taxes? One of two things.

1) The company has a higher retained profit which it then uses to reinvest in the business. More jobs, higher wages, economic growth, Hurrah!

2) The company pays it out to their fat cat shareholders who simply engorge themselves on the lucre extracted from the sweat and blood of the poor. And investments in companies working in poor countries are seen to be paying higher returns. Which leads to more capital being invested in companies working in poor countries so more jobs, higher wages and economic growth, Hurrah!

It is of course possible to argue that direct spending by governments will do more for the chances of the poor than more foreign direct investment. But to argue that if the money is not paid in taxes then it simply disappears as far as the poor are concerned is simply nonsense."

The reason capitalism works is because it is about generating wealth, and to generate wealth one invests the wealth one has made into making more, which means more jobs, profits, better pay, economic growth and happiness all around for those who endeavour to sieze the opportunity. Hand up, not a hand out - but then we can't even deal with that culture at home, can we?

The Doctor is a libertarian

This Sunday gone I indulged in a bit of a duvet-evening watching my way through Season One and Two of Doctor Who. The Doctor is one of my geeky pleasures; one of many. It’s classic BBC science-fiction at its very best: just a little bit crap but absolutely enthralling for it. David Tennant remains brilliant and I’ll be sad to see him go at the end of the year. He’ll be a rather tough nut to follow, I’d wager.

Anyway, to cut to the point, two lines uttered by The Doctor – one as Eccleston, one as Tennant, suggested that the BBC is projecting its leftie tendencies on to the travelling Time Lord in his little blue box. I point you to season one, ‘The Empty Child’ and season two, ‘Tooth and Claw’. Both are pretty incidental, but they did set me thinking.

In ‘The Empty Child’, the Doctor introduces himself to a group of vagrant children living in the blitz. Following an elder girl who acts as a ringleader and mother figure to the kids, he cheerfully declares their household invasions to feed themselves as ‘Marxism in action’. So, a ragtag group of individuals heroically take from another group of individuals in order to feed themselves. The scriptwriters justify this action by painting the aggrieved party (the bourgeois family) as morally depraved. The father is having a secret affair with the butcher to get extra rations, therefore getting more than his due. I suppose I can kind of see where the scriptwriters were coming from, but it basically boils down to ‘rob from the rich, give to the poor’.

Was the State telling them to do this? Well, clearly not. It was a bunch of kids stealing to survive. That’s not Marxism. It made for a nice line, but a Robin Hood gag would have been more appropriate.

Ooh, hang on... does that mean Robin Hood was a Marxist?

I’d say these kids were instead capitalising on an opportunity in a very enterprising fashion.

So, on to the second leftie moment. ‘Tooth and Claw’. The TARDIS has landed in what The Doctor and Rose believe is 1979. As he rattles off a list of great things that happened in 1979, he says ‘Thatcher’, catches himself, and shivers.

Oh, frak right off.

The Beeb just LOVES to demonise her. Even Doctor Who doesn’t like her, apparently. Because she only saved and rebuilt the British Economy after Labour trashed it and led us into the Winter of Discontent. Yes, the Government wasn’t perfect, yes, they were a bit on the authoritarian side (but not nearly as much as ZaNuLab), but please. It’s always plucky working-class types and evil corporations.

Still, however much the scriptwriters try to make The Doctor an extension of their leftie agenda, they have created a paradox in so doing. You see, The Doctor is an optimist. He doesn’t have much truck with authority, he also loves humans; our idiosyncrasies, our drive, our spirit, our enterprise. He believes in our innate good and our boundless sense of invention and adventure.

In short, The Doctor is a libertarian. He might even be a little left-wing, believing that the poor should be protected by the rich and helped, but he would never think it right that anyone could force you to do it. He believes in freedom and liberty, in peace, and protecting others, but allowing everyone to choose for themselves.

To my rather rudimentary understanding, the libertarian, especially the right-wing libertarian, is an optimist who believes in human endeavour and enterprise. Helping each other through trade and hard work, free to profit, but also free to choose to spend that money on helping those who have less – be it through employing them, or through philanthropy. The point is that he who has much will choose to help he who has less, but no one can or will force him to do so. The libertarian capitalist is the ultimate optimist, believing in the good of everyone and that ultimately we will want to help others, because others will want to improve themselves.

So to commit the fallacy of affirming the consequent and pretend it’s really modus ponens: The Doctor believes in the ultimate good of humanity and in liberty. A right-wing libertarian believes in the ultimate good of humanity and in liberty. Therefore, Doctor Who is a right-wing libertarian.

Discuss.

Mandelson's Ghostbusters Moment

Part of me (the part that wants Nu Liebour put in the stocks and pelted with rotten veg) was amused to hear about Mandelson getting slimed.

Unfortunately, I find such displays to be tantamount to assault - the acts of the raving lunatic lefties for whom decorum and debate are as alien as soap once was. Except that the environmental protestors these days are as likely to be called Sloaney as they are Swampy, and will have a bottle of Corton Charlemagne in their hamper next to the smoked salmon sandwiches. Just look at the students at Edinburgh University, who arranged their anti-Israeli love-in complete with MacBooks and Blackberries. If I were Edinburgh, I'd just have cut power to the building and shut off the WAP...

By lowering herself to this level, Leila Deen may have gained herself a few column inches and amused smiles, but it hardly gives the green lobby any credibility. Plane Stupid? Couldn't have thought of a more apt name for the lot of them.

Oh, and Mandy? Send her your dry cleaning bill; actions have consequences, after all. Maybe it's time she learned that.

Guardianistas to Hug-A-Tory

After reading this on ConHome the other day I was brewing up a post, but Iain Martin over at the Telegraph has done such a fantastic job that anything I were to add would seem superfluous. Some of the comments make for interesting reading too...

Nail. Head. Hit.