The United Kingdom and the illusion of choice

Travelling through North Wales and the internet connection in the B&B is just about what one has come to expect in this "highly modern" Britain. Therefore, I will avail myself of the opportunity to get online and get this posted while it is possible.

The 'Guardian's' front page this morning tells me that the BBC's Director General, Mark Thompson, is worried that Rupert Murdoch's News Corp is threatening to dominate television as well as the newspapers by increasing its stake in BSkyB. Worrying, worrying, if it were not in fact that in reality in "gleichgeschaltet" 'Blighty' the media is in fact much of a muchness and did a certain teacher cringe on delivering a class to foreign students on the "Beeb's" impartiality. Still, this morning over breakfast, on purusing the 'Guardian',  "Joe Soaps" up and down the country will actually believe that their "free media" is being threatened. Indeed, should BSkyB and BBC become BSkyBBC somewhere down the road in the kingdom of the blind they will continue to believe that they have a free media and that that media is a cornerstone of their democracy, which brings me to the other article on the front page of the 'Guardian'.

David Cameron believes that the greatest threat to the Tories comes from David Miliband. Well, it might just be that David Miliband might replace Cameron as Prime Minister a little quicker than his brother would. However, if by the "greatest threat" he is suggesting that a Labour Party which would actually challenge that establishment which Cameron and his ilk epitomise, which would challenge big business and the city and which would have Britain pursuing a radically different foreign policy while constructing a really fair society at home, then he is just babbling nonsense. Indeed, we might suspect that, even if David Cameron is too thick to know it, the reality is that not only is there not much of a differerence between his own Tory Party, his Lib Dem coalition partners and the Labour Party, there is even less of a difference between David and his brother Ed. Indeed, to hit the nail on the head the differences between them all are similar to the differences between BSkyB and the BBC and are best summed up by quoting the name of that other Ed who is running for the leadership of the Labour Party, a certain Ed Balls.

Yes, in much of a muchness, "gleichgeschaltet" 'Blighty' the belief that there is a truely free media and a real democratic choice really is a lot of balls. A bit like this internet connection, which is so bad, that I am going to get this post posted without telling you my joke about the penguin carrying a surfboard.