tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25656996.post8281314398075073203..comments2024-03-28T23:49:28.343+00:00Comments on David Lindsay: Friends Like TheseDavid Lindsayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06839882674758833524noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25656996.post-70099743234022344372012-11-29T21:09:02.253+00:002012-11-29T21:09:02.253+00:00Thanks for your reply.
The fact we don't have...Thanks for your reply.<br /><br />The fact we don't have a system of licensing is what makes our press more free than that of the rest of Europe, or anywhere in the world.<br /><br />Our broadcast media is badly over-regulated; the Left constantly complain we'd get "Fox News" if we didn't have impartiality rules,(what would be wrong with that if its what the people want?) but instead we get the BBC Channel 4 etc using "impartiality" as a cloak to push a left-wing agenda.<br /><br />It was the 1689 Bill of Rights that revoked our licensing laws and gave birth to 300 years of freedom.<br /><br />Simon Heffer recently wrote a great piece I urge you to read , about the brutal and bloody history of Britain's struggle for a free press.<br /><br />You don't address Rupert Murdoch's influence (is anyone forced to buy his newspapers?) by giving politicians power to control what we read.<br /><br />And, believe me, as Hitchens says "independent" regulators would quickly become tools of repression for all the vested interests now queuing up to back Clegg and Miliband against our free press.<br /><br />They'd be about as "independent" as Cuba's Rebel Radio. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25656996.post-68068703372622137262012-11-25T19:35:42.530+00:002012-11-25T19:35:42.530+00:00Most people in this country probably assume that n...Most people in this country probably assume that newspapers have always been subject to a statutory licensing system, and would be horrified to be told that that was not the case.<br /><br />In a sense, they are right. It is called the parliamentary lobby. In broadcast terms, Sky and the BBC now balance each other rather well, and no one can receive the BBC News Channel who cannot also receive Sky News.<br /><br />Some requirement would be no bad thing at all, that the papers granted lobby access should be balanced among themselves, even if not necessarily within themselves. Broadcasters having such access should be required to give regular airtime to all newspapers enjoying the same access.<br /><br />Set, of course, within the context of the restoration of the proper lobby system, although with MPs' staff members having the same rights of access throughout the Palace of Westminster.<br /><br />In fact, the signature of one seat-taking MP ought to grant any journalist lobby access. That, and nothing else. Who's in charge there? Who's in charge of the country?<br /><br />The media are over-mighty subjects as surely as the banks are, and nothing better illustrates that fact than their bank-like hysteria at the suggestion that their vast and completely unaccountable power should be subject to so much as the tiniest check or balance.<br /><br />At the very least, there ought to be a fairness requirement (which I have rather hilariously been told on here already existed, when it looked as if I might have been well enough to stand for Parliament) for the two newspapers that only exist because they are considered so important that the rules have been bent double in order to keep them going.<br /><br />For <em>The Times</em> and the <em>Sunday Times</em> are loss-making newspapers that exist only because the rules were bent double so that Rupert Murdoch could buy them in order, to his credit, to fund them out of his profitable interests. So they ought to be required to maintain balance.<br /><br />The publications granted parliamentary lobby access should be required to be balanced among themselves, even if not necessarily within themselves.<br /><br />And we need to ban any person or other interest from owning or controlling more than one national daily newspaper. To ban any person or other interest from owning or controlling more than one national weekly newspaper. To ban any person or other interest from owning or controlling more than one television station.<br /><br />To re-regionalise ITV under a combination of municipal and mutual ownership. And to apply that same model (but with central government replacing local government, subject to very strict parliamentary scrutiny) to Channel Four.David Lindsayhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06839882674758833524noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25656996.post-68044458218841274452012-11-25T16:30:53.987+00:002012-11-25T16:30:53.987+00:00But you didn't answer the question.
Statutory...But you didn't answer the question.<br /><br />Statutory regulation of the press puts us on the road to a totalitarian state-which is why Leveson is so intimately connected to so many left-wing vested interests (the Sovereign Trust, DEMOS, Common Purpose, Labour MP's like Chris Bryant and Tom Watson, not to mention various shameless celebs etc).<br /><br />You should read Peter Hitchens piece "They're Building A Coffin For Liberty" on the tyranny that awaits us with a regulated press.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25656996.post-23943992509111034202012-11-25T12:00:23.708+00:002012-11-25T12:00:23.708+00:00A conservative and a patriot, yes.A conservative and a patriot, yes.David Lindsayhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06839882674758833524noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25656996.post-10349612440103923532012-11-25T05:41:41.399+00:002012-11-25T05:41:41.399+00:00""statutory regulation of the press, i.e...""statutory regulation of the press, i.e., for national liberation from the Murdoch Empire.""<br /><br />Whoah, did I just read that right?<br /><br />You support the end of centuries of English liberty defined by the existence of a free press? AND YOU CALL YOURSELF A CONSERVATIVE?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com