Losing your shirt on Liverpool

My friend Mark the butcher offered me a couple of quid on United to beat Liverpool on Sunday.  In a rare fit of prescience I refused.  "We're going to get battered", I said.  And thus it came to pass.

Amidst the distressing signs that Liverpool, having been knocked off their effin' perch by Alex Ferguson, are intent on climbing right back on it again, there is one consolation for United fans.

Liverpool's away strip is terrible.

There.  That makes me feel a lot better.

RIP Bob Crow

Since I haven't lived in London for nearly fifteen years (thank goodness) I have almost no opinion at all about Bob Crow, who died yesterday.

Friends and foes alike have been generous about Crow, and although it's easier to be nice about someone you know you'll never have to cross swords with again, Boris Johnson spoke in a way that suggests in a better world it might be possible to disagree with someone in a civilised fashion.

Amidst the hagiographies this morning, two interesting facts emerge.  

Firstly, Crow lived in a Council house. I don't know how he managed to get one, but amongst other things you're more likely to be pushed up the waiting list if the place you live in at the moment is overcrowded, unsanitary, lacks basic washing and cooking facilities or is in serious disrepair. According to the Grauniad, 1 in 10 Londoners are presently waiting for a Council house.

Secondly, Crow's salary as a Trade Union leader was £145,000.

Broadly liberal - John Humphrys and the licence fee

In the context of the announcement a couple of days ago that from 2015 BBC3 will be an online service, with all the questions about funding that decision raised, John Humphrys' remarks in the papers today about the BBC's alleged bias can't have made welcome reading for Director General Tony Hall.

Humphrys told the Radio Times the BBC wasn't "sufficiently sceptical" in its coverage of the immgration debate because it had "bought into the European ideal . . . We didn't look at the potential negatives with sufficient rigour . . . the BBC has tended over the years to be broadly liberal as opposed to broadly conservative for all sorts of perfectly understandable reasons. The sort of people we've recruited - the best and the brightest - tended to come from universities and backgrounds where they're more likely to hold broadly liberal views than conservative".

Humphrys continued, "If an organisation recruits from a fairly narrow - in educational and class terms - band of people, it will tend to get people with a fairly similar outlook.  To be specific, the BBC tends to recruit intelligent, well-educated middle-class people with a Humanities degree from a good University.  Who could possibly have thought that they would tend to be Left of centre?"

Actually I'm being mischievous.  Humphrys didn't say that last bit. It's from a post I wrote in February 2013 entitled "James Purnell - liberal humanities graduate".

The thrust of that post was that the BBC's ethos, like that of any organisation, was the predictable consequence of its recruitment policy. I'm glad Humphrys agrees.

"I think we're out of that now", said Humphrys. "I think we have changed".  That's interesting.  If as he says the BBC has a broadly anti-conservative outlook, and if that outlook is a consequence of its recruitment policy, the Corporation could only have changed if recruitment policy has changed. And of course sufficient time would have to elapse for the effect of any changes to work through the system.

I must have missed their announcement.

People are fond of saying how much they love the BBC and what a great institution it is. My take is slightly different. I think the BBC is an over-managed, borderline corrupt (at senior executive level) and anti-conservative organisation, funded in an indefensible manner, in which devoted and creative staff somehow manage to make some absolutely terrific programmes.

The idea that such an institution can - without reform - to carry on being funded by a broadcasting poll tax, protected from future inflation, or by a new tax on computers and mobile phones, is absolutely ludicrous.

Of course by the time the licence fee is up for renewal at the end of 2016 we may well have a Labour government.  For Labour a broadly liberal BBC would be politically convenient.  And there's no reason why the BBC and a new Labour government can't climb into the bed where "politically convenient" sleeps comfortably with "absolutely ludicrous".

Ed Balls, the bank levy and the Titanic

Last autumn I wrote about Labour's plan to give parents of three and four year olds 25 hours a week free childcare ("Labour's free childcare policy", 24th Sept, for the curious).  Ed Balls said the childcare scheme would be funded by increasing the Bank levy.  This was a curious state of affairs since he had previously said similar taxes would pay for other policies including VAT cuts and Regional Growth Funding. I described the Bank levy then as "the gift that keeps on giving".

I've rather missed the Bank levy in the last six months and am pleased to find it's back. It is a guarantee of political amusement.

Yesterday Balls announced a compulsory jobs guarantee for the young unemployed which will be partly funded by "a one-off levy on bankers' bonuses". As the Guardian notes this morning, Balls' plan immediately "came under attack from some think tanks, who said it was too complex and unlikely to be securely funded". Well maybe. But that isn't the funny thing.

What's funny is that Balls said (according to the Graun) that the levy on bonuses "will not be used for any other purpose". Putting aside the VAT cuts and Regional Growth Funding for which the levy had previously been earmarked, this came as news to Balls' colleague Stephen Timms, shadow employment minister. Timms was asked to explain how Balls' promise of exclusivity squared with previously-announced plans to fund 25,000 new homes using, er, a Bank levy. He had to concede that funding for the 25,000 new homes "may have to be rethought".

I particularly like the use of the word "may" in that sentence.  That's "may" as in, "Following the sinking of the Titanic, plans for a lavish dinner to celebrate arrival in New York may have to be rethought".

I like Balls, who is master at defending the indefensible.  But is Labour prepared for Government?

Tony Hall - Subscribing to BBC3

BBC Director General Tony Hall announced yesterday that in a few months BBC3 will become an online-only channel.  As someone who has never knowingly watched BBC3, my reaction to this is one of near indifference. But consider.

The BBC is paid for via the licence fee. There are many arguments against the licence fee, the most cogent being that it is effectively a broadcasting poll tax which takes no account of ability to pay. There's nothing the Corporation can do about that, but it has tried assiduously to disarm another objection - that the licence fee forces people to pay for something they may not in fact use - by providing programmes to suit every taste. There will be few TV watchers who can't find anything to enjoy, and as commercial TV has gone downmarket, the BBC has followed it conscientiously. It's been an impressive attempt to outflank the Corporation's opponents.

Last night I watched the final episode of Outnumbered on iPlayer. As it happens, I have paid the licence fee, but I could have watched it legally without having done so. That's an annoying anomaly. But by sticking BBC3 online Tony Hall has gone one step further.

It's one thing to make available online a programme that's previously been broadcast on TV, where the licence fee for that device has paid to produce the programme. However making people pay, via the TV licence fee, for something that isn't even going to be broadcast on TV is another matter.

It seems to be blindingly obvious to me that the future of the BBC lies in subscription. By that I mean, that's where we'll end up, for good or ill. As soon as it became possible to watch programmes on a computer the argument for the licence fee became impossible to sustain.  Making programmes to watch on computers only is, in that context, frankly ridiculous.

According to a report in the Torygraph today, Tony Hall "would like the licence fee to be extended to iPads and other tablets, as well as smartphones and all other devices capable of gaining access to BBC content". If true, this is a mad proposal.  Firstly, can you imagine any politician telling people they needed a licence to have an iPhone?  Electoral hari kiri.  Secondly, "all other devices" would presumably include laptops and PCs.  Would we be the only country in the world stupid enough to licence ownership of computers?  What about the computer user who doesn't watch BBC programmes?

All this leads me to the rather gloomy conclusion that if Hall understands the import of the BBC3 decision at all, he has drawn the wrong conclusion from it. For the licence fee to be justified the bare minimum requirements are that the licence should be for the device via which the content is accessed and that without the licence it shouldn't be possible to access the content legally. Ironically the BBC itself drove a coach and horses through this principle by coming up with the iPlayer. Post the BBC3 shift online, that argument is in tatters, and the news that Hall is seeking to square the circle by licensing the other content accessing devices looks to me a desperate flailing around to avoid the inevitable.

Subscription. Be afraid.

Ukraine news - President Putin not gay after all

So President Putin probably isn't gay after all.  Not gay in the sense of blithe and happy.  Not gay in the derogatory sense used by teenagers to denote something a bit pathetic.  He might still be gay in the homosexual sense, but it now doesn't seem like a good idea to suggest it, as many did after the furore in the run up to the Sochi Olympics.  Have a Google for "Putin gay" images, and you will see that the Photoshop-literate have given their sense of humour a good workout in recent weeks.

Disturbingly, those pictures of Putin with the horse didn't need any doctoring.

This can't have pleased President Putin terribly, and one can only too easily imagine the conversation.  "So they think I am gay do they?  Pass me the map comrade.  Where did you say Crimea was?"

Let no-one doubt that, whatever Putin's proclivities, he is no Judy Garland-loving interior-decorating panty-waister. No.  He is the kind of man to send in the tanks.  And there's nothing we can do about it.

Many commentators on both Left and Right have made this point.  After the West's failure to intervene in Syria, referred to by Jonathan Freedland as the "global shrug", no-one can seriously have thought that we might have used military force to stop Putin.  And of course you can argue that's a good thing.  Military conflict could lead so easily to nuclear war.  But that means that Putin - and other leaders like him - can do what they want with impunity.

How has this happened? Western revulsion post-Iraq has killed the appetite for intervention. You can argue that loss of appetite is due to a focus on the way the invasion was sold to British and American electorates, narcissistic in its refusal to see that the possibility of self-determination for Iraqis post Saddam might just trump our domestic politics; but we are where we are. We intervened there. Lots of people got very angry about it. Politicians are nervous. When Syria came up, Ed Miliband led his troops into the No lobby, and that was that.

Deterrence does not mean taking military action when something happens you don't like. It doesn't even mean readiness to take military action. It means the other people not being entirely sure whether you'll take military action or not. President Putin on the other hand was absolutely sure we would do nothing. That is a foreign policy failure.

Although I'm absolutely sure Putin is Not a Nice Man, I have some sympathy with the Russians. Ukraine used to be part of their empire. It's still part of their sphere of influence. The country has strategic military significance for them. Many Russian speakers live there. The outgoing Ukranian President was one of their people and was, apparently, democratically elected. The West can't really expect Russia to stand by when he is bullied from office by demonstrators who, however numerous, aren't representative of the country as a whole.

We get a curious picture from the media. Reporters like to interview people who speak English and with whom they can identify. So we get vox pops with Ukrainian web designers and academics. Thus a curious analogue of our own fixation with metropolitan elites arises. The people outside of Kiev are marginalised, the demonstrators encouraged, and it's quite late on in the day we discover that, funnily enough, to the east of the capital there are lots of other people who take a different view. Who knew?

If I were an opponent of President Yanukovyich, surveying the catastrophic scenes in my country, I might well find myself wishing that I had waited for the next election for a chance to throw out the regime.

PS  David Cameron yesterday described the proposed Crimean referendum on joining Russia as "unconstitutional".  Hmmn.  Would be unconstitutional in the same sense that hounding President Yanukovyich from office was unconstitutional?

Harriet Harman, fruitcakes and Newsnight

The funniest thing I've seen on BBC TV for years was last night's Newsnight interview with Harriet Harman, in which Laura Kuenssberg grilled the MP over her time as Legal Officer to the National Council for Civil Liberties, a period in which, apparently, one organisation affiliated to the NCCL was the Paedophile Information Exchange.

The interview was funny in the first place because if anyone in public life strikes me as a sex-free zone it is the hapless Ms Harman; I cannot think of anyone less likely to have got into bed, as it were, with the furtive gentlemen of the PIE. Or indeed with anyone else (but she is happily married to Jack Dromey, so that's obviously a failure of imagination on my part).

It was also funny because no matter how hard Kuenssberg pushed her, Harman would not admit that the affiliation was a mistake. No one seems to have told her about holes and not digging.

Thirdly if you had to pick anyone to represent the self-righteous tendency of the Left I think Harman would be a pretty strong selection; and to see her default political anschauung so utterly disabled by a piece of crass stupidity in the 1970s was as nice an example of things going-around and then coming-around as you could hope to see. The wheels of justice grinding slow, but exceedingly small.

Actually I can just about see how PIE might have got under the NCCL's radar. I remember once being in the office of one of Ms Harman's fellow travellers amongst Left-wing lawyers, and there on the shelves was a memoir published by a PIE luminary, if that's the word, devoted to the joys and possibilities of adult/child sexual relationships.  "What the flip (I paraphrase) is this?", I asked, appalled.  "Oh, they were trying to see if there was any way there could be a human rights angle on paedophilia", my friend said casually.  Whose rights would those be, I wondered, shaking my head. The child's? Or the adult's?

But then these were the 1970s, and even a decade later a close family member of mine recalls being asked to sit on a sub-committee of the Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers - a similar organisation to NCCL with considerable membership crossover - devoted to exploring the possibility of abolishing the police. This in about 1989.

Fruitcakes then, and fruitcakes still.