91Èȱ¬

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Also, given that the UK public already paid for the WS via taxes, moving it to Licence Fee funding certainly removes the taint of "state broadcaster" from the WS, which was happening.

Also, the 91Èȱ¬ will be able to decide which WS services make sense, not the FO, which is also, despite the cost, a plus.

'Fungibility' (ie 'swings and roundabouts') means, however, that the net benefit to the FCO budget as a result of this noble gesture by 91Èȱ¬ execs
offering to load the costs of the (excellent) 91Èȱ¬ World Service onto the
backs of willing licencepayers like myself may still end up being wasted
by the FCO and William Hague, and DCMS's Jeremy Hunt, on continuing the
state subsidy to the dreadful, bloated British Council - which continues
to screw up public diplomacy and promotion of UK's education and culture
overseas from a privileged position in relation to FCO overseas missions,
and now with taxpayer-funded exchange rate protection restored (?) and a
further licence from FCO, DCMS & HM Treasury to be even more aggressively
'commercial' in its money-grabbing operations which are anti-competitive,
unfair to the genuine private sector, cut across the role of the devolved
Governments in overseas promotion of education & culture (devolved under
the 1998 Acts), and - as in the case of British Council's tax-evasion in Russia and last week's toadying support for a fashion show organised by
the daughter of the Uzbekh dictator! - generally bring this country into
disrepute. Still: at least The British Council can no longer claim that they are a genuine 'arm's length body' 'like 91Èȱ¬ World Service' as they
tried to do immediately after this Quango was reprieved in the 'Review
of Public Bodies' last week which they immediately rebranded as an 'Arm's
length bodies review' in their selfserving British Council press release.

And given the close business relationship between the Culture Secretary's
old company 'Hotcourses' and British Council's 'Education UK' - and Ffion
Hague's previous role as a British Council Trustee, is it any wonder that
this chameleon 'Quango' escapes again as an even more commercial charity?

A reminder for 91Èȱ¬'s Newsnight about The British Council's 'Gravy Train'
and Martin Davidson's fatuous claims that they are 'a bit like the 91Èȱ¬'!

rejoice, rejoice, that you are blessed with the best broadcasting organisation in the world.....so count your blessings....

Interesting too that, in response to much external and Parliamentary criticism, the 91Èȱ¬ is now being required by the Tories to curb its activities in the regions so as to allow room for commercial radio
- yet British Council which still receives a hefty FCO subsidy has
to become even more commercial (according to the Spending Review)
even if this continues to upset the private sector, real charities
and the devolved administrations of Scotland, Wales & N Ireland not
to mention other arts bodies whose grants from DCMS are being cut??

The problems associated with the anomalous status of this bloated
Quango are laid bare for all to see in a fascinating exchange of
letters posted on this website where FCO Minister of State Jeremy
Browne MP (who is a Liberal Democrat) tries to explain away this
to the Tory FCO Under-Secretary of State Henry Bellingham MP who
as recently as September 2010 was raising this anomaly with FCO
on behalf of one of his constituents who's posted up the letter!



As for the reference to Scotland in this letter between FCO Ministers,
in which Mr Browne suggests that The British Council is regulated in
England and Wales by the (recently reprieved) Charity Commission and
the Office of The Scottish Charity Regulator whose numbers British
Council feature on their websites across the world, the line from
OSCR in Scotland is that they are powerless to act on complaints about British Council as they are not the 'lead regulator' for BC - which is the English Charity Commission. Frustration over OSCR's lack of powers
over 'cross-border' charities - such as British Council - has recently
prompted the Chief Executive of The Office of The Charity Regulator in
Scotland to seek additional powers.

I see 'The Telegraph' is reporting that £40 million of ring-fenced DfID
budget is being used to shore up the finances of the British Council? If
true that is a damned disgrace ...

...which normally would have taken months..

that's the bbc bureaucracy mindset for you. a land of endless meetings. Creatives have often complained of that bbc culture that buries and kills imagination?


the bbc now look like deckchair shufflers pretending the end is not in sight?

bbc will probably wreck the world service projection of the 1950s 91Èȱ¬ Service England propaganda the FO liked so much. The 91Èȱ¬ will want to make it edgy and aimed at yoof where 'talent' can 'shift the paradigm'. How exciting that will be. not.

the good news for the bbc is that there will be a licence fee for 6 years. but the writing is on the wall?

Tory Culture Secretary and 'Hotcourses' founder Jeremy Hunt MP has of course recently stepped back from his role in this company, which has
intimate links with British Council and BC's so-called "Education UK":



So questions should I guess be addressed to .... Estelle Morris, the former Labour Secretary of State for Education? 'Big Society' - or a
cosy wee Whitehall world ......??? I think we should be told ......!!

One question, for example, for Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt MP and all the other apologists for British Council and their Education UK website
might be: 'Since when has Wolverhampton been in Wales, Jeremy?'!

91Èȱ¬ - THE VENICE OF THE NORTH (#7)

There is a difference however. The ravages of time have degraded Venice but the rampaging of the pisserati has besmirched the 91Èȱ¬'s fair face.

It hurts all the more that we once had guaranteed excellence - even elegance (like Venice) but now we have edgy fun, going forward.

With all these cuts for 91Èȱ¬ people and the DCMS, next year's 'débutante'
balls may turn into real cat-fights as 'hot job-seekers' try to find the right hot courses to get themselves new jobs? Nice work if u can get it:



The new ruling class!

Michael, I keep reading about the 91Èȱ¬'s "16% cut". But is it really only 16%?

Apparently if you add the six extra costs that the 91Èȱ¬ is expected to take on that represents a 9% cut (the fig came from David Elstein, ex-C5).

Plus we must add whatever the inflation figure is.

But how do we know what inflation will be over the coming years? You'll have heard talk in the financial papers recently about possible QE2 in the UK and US. I think it was the Wall Street Journal (20th Oct?) talked of Britain deliberately inflating away some of its debt. If true, the government will know this. If real inflation figure turns out to average 5-6% (quite possible) do the maths on the compound interest over 6 years!

The final figure is very unlikely to be less than a 25% reduction (16% + 9%) but could be a lot worse.

Better prepare those re-runs of "Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads?" and "Steptoe and Son"!

Note the way the FT reported this (front-page story) - yesterday morning:

"The 91Èȱ¬ has stunned its staff by agreeing to a funding cut of at least £340m, or one-tenth of the licence fee, equivalent to the budget of all
of its national radio stations combined."

Yet FCO continues to pick up a tab of several hundred millions for the useless freeloaders at The British Council .. who are also to get £40m
from the ring-fenced UK DfID aid budget for poncing around the world??

And foreign-exchange rate cover .. plus freedom to engage in aggressive
anti-competitive commercial activity trading as a 'charity' ..........
while Britain (according to yeasterday's Guardian) 'is to double to
£3.8 billion the amount of 'aid' money spent on war-torn countries such as Afghanistan, raising fears among charities that national security priorities will determine development spending' as 'An Oxfam policy adviser also expressed concerns about aid being delivered through 'military structures' that could risk civilian workers.'

In the cold light of dawn, we all need to sit down and start asking some serious questions about the departmental detail and full implications of all the paper released yesterday - including some of the above issues ..

I think it was, as it certainly was for me and millions of other investors around the world, that when Alistair Darling, by his own admission, blocked the Barclay's Bank (who have never taken a penny of bail-out government paper) take-over of the investment division of Lehman's Bank, which because his decision was understandably deemed to be irrational by the players on the global markets, caused the markets to collapse, that the nature of reality changed.

Of course for some that realisation would be slower than for others, who like me saw a six figure loss in a single figure hourly timescale, than for others. I guess it was predictable that the 91Èȱ¬, cocooned in it's undemocratic and, as some would say extortion-enforced niche, would go into total denial about the new global economic reality Darling had created.

It consoles me greatly when I consider that in order to watch ITV or Sky but still am obliged to pay the Beeb's protection money, that their day will come! Something so utterly monopolistic and economically indefensible cannot last.

PS- Really, why does the UK have to preach it's tarnished and sanctimonious message to the rest of the world anyway? Blair destroyed the credibility of anything enlightened and meaningful this country could possibly ever say, and tragically destroying so much more, including Dr. Kelly's life and his family's happiness, that I truly believe that the world would be a better place if we shut up and let the rest get on with it.

More than any other nation on this planet, or even the entire galaxy for all I know, we seriously need to get over ourselves. As we have already seen, the Iranians are well prepared to humiliate us at every opportunity!
Let's suck up the shame our politicians have inflicted on us and walk the path of humility from now on. Hopefully then no-one will bother to invade us and thus acquire our budget deficit for their troubles!! LOL.