Gotta love it, people are angry at auntie. I love the arguments;

Why should public money be used to create competition to a successful commercial venture such as MySpace?

….and what for it…..

Few will want to dispute the emphasis on building multi-media websites to cover areas ranging from sport to health. But the popularity of the BBC — it is already the most popular British website other than the search engines such as Google — makes it virtually impossible for commercial rivals to charge for similar online services in Britain.

This from such balanced and fair individuals such as James MacManus (executive director of News International) and Dan Sabbagh (media editor of The Times, a wholy owned subsidary of News International).

Damn the beeb to hell…..how dare they use public money to offer an free (monetarily and advertising) portal supporting society and stopping good honest, hard-working billionaires earning some more billions!

Also when did MySpace become just a successful commercial venture? I thought it was a ‘Place for Friends’, not a ‘Place for Friends to fill the pockets of multi-national conglomerates’. Seems to me that the BBC wants to set up a social networking site, not a cash cow. So in that sense James MacManus has nothing to worry about.

Really should have posted about this when I thought about it yesterday. But I was being lazy, and now the point seems a little mute after today’s happenings. But I do feel I need to speak my mind about Charles Clarke getting all puffy and red-faced about media-representation of the government.

“I believe that a pernicious and even dangerous poison is now slipping into at least some parts of this media view of the world.”

Woh there dude….poison, dangerous, are these words that should be used when speaking about what is in essence free speach. I don’t agree with a lot of what the right-wing press prints daily in this country, but I do accept that it is the right of a free country to allow people to speak their minds. It is also the right of any citizen of this country to disagree with those statements. But to declare it poison, especially from a government official, is somewhat dishartening. Especially when the matter in hand is about how the government is apparently getting more totalitarian.

So lets some up, state officials declare that free media are becoming poisonous as well as lazy and deceitful, in what one assumes to be a bid to stop said free media on continuing with this angle. Isn’t this in effect attempting to control the media? Now I don’t think the government are really that totalitarian (but as Simon Jenkins states today - there does appear to be a creeping authoritarianism) but when they attack the press about printing points of view (however inaccurate), a dangerous line is being walked.

Overall, however, I do feel Clarkey boy had a point. Sometimes the press do go too far and print widely exagerated claims based on flimsy evidence and can tend towards absolutism.

“So some commentators routinely use language like ‘police state’, ‘fascist’, ‘hijacking our democracy’, ‘creeping authoritarianism’, ‘destruction of the rule of law’, whilst words like ‘holocaust’, ‘gulag’ and ‘apartheid’ are regularly used descriptively of our society in ways which must be truly offensive to those who experienced those realities.”

But then that’s always been the way the press deals with stuff. Why say something is kinda bad when you can scream “THIS THING THAT HAPPENED HERE IS ABSOLUTELY HORRIBLY TERRIBLE AND THE WORST THING TO HAPPEN, EVER….EVAARRRRR…ARGHHHHH…WE’RE ALL DOOMED….ARGHHHHH!!!!!” in 20pt red lettering.

For me the entire argument gets a bit paradoxical. Consider the situation, goverment is accused by press that they are being totalitarian, goverment gets angry and declares that press are essentially being totalitarian by suggesting that government is being totalitarian.
Now look, I have confused myself and am all ism’d out.

Went for a vey nice walk with my girlfriend today, here are the pics.

Dave the Chameleon, absolutely brilliant stuff from the people that brought us such classics as the war in Iraq and Third World debt cancellation. A very cute mini-film ala Pixar about David Cameron and the very much hyped belief that he changes his opinion depending on whom he is addressing (isn’t that the very definition of a politician?). I really like this, among the style of recent ads where political parties realised that no one likes nasty, this ad manages to be appealing and negative (and seems to be and idea the Tories had themselves).

I see the point made by Mark Lawson that people may think this a little too cute and think higher of Dave than is intended:

In short, Dave is the kind of character that viewers may well love. An office straw poll suggests that the message - you can’t trust the Tories - is undermined by the essential charm of mini-Dave, and the reliance on an overly complex idea. Yes, his namesake is transforming the party, but it’s only superficial. The danger is that the first part of that proposition is more striking than the second. The advert even highlights one of Cameron’s assets - his green credentials, reinforced by his willingness to cycle to work.

Source

However, a point made later in the article, and a viewpoint I share, is that political advertising rarely makes much of a difference anyway.

“There is a myth about political advertising,” warned Philip Gould, New Labour’s polling and marketing guru, in his book The Unfinished Revolution. “Advertising has an effect but it is small and rarely decisive. It is certain that in four of the last five elections, advertising did not materially influence the result.

So if advertising doesn’t really matter then one might as well make it fun eh? In much the same way that large corporates don’t really advertise to increase sales, more remind people of their status and power. I for one think this trend should continue. Gordon Brown and John Prescott anyone?