gdp's Comments

http://www.conservativehome.com/ : Darren Grimes: Not even Charles Moore can save the BBC

Wed, 23 Sep 2020 07:52:34 +0000

The BBC is way too big, and has far too much money. It wastes most of it, but it has been hugely successful at squeezing out commercial competitors (regional media being the main victim). It’s also largely run by people who’d rather be pursuing a different mission from the one in the Charter (the same syndrome exists at the National Trust). I think Darren is being too hasty in condemning Tim Davie: he should be judged on direction of travel after a year, not a month. Let’s hope that the examples Darren quotes here are the last gasps of the old regime, rather than Davie’s work. There’s a mid-Charter review coming up in 2022. The Government should not have let the BBC renege on the ‘free licences to over 75’ commitment (without slicing the overall fee to make it revenue-neutral). Nothing much will change in 2022, but I hope to see an agreement to make the BBC much smaller by 2027.

http://www.conservativehome.com/ : Neil O'Brien: Johnson should instruct a team of Ministers to wage war on woke

Mon, 21 Sep 2020 07:47:27 +0000

Neil’s right that something needs to be done. Nick Timothy’s article in Telegraph today is in a similar vein. US Education Secretary Betty DeVos has set the right example. When the President of Princeton University stated that there was ‘systemic racism’ at Princeton, she pointed out that this was illegal under US Law. Princeton is now facing a Civil Rights investigation and the potential clawback by the Federal Government of $75 million, on the grounds that Princeton claimed the money under false pretences. The same logic can be applied here. Any publicly funded organisation that believes it has a serious problem internally with systemic racism, as evidenced by large expenditure on ‘diversity and equality’ staff, needs a new top management, and a healthy cut in budget. At the very least, Perm Secs and other SCS Officers who tweeted in support of BLM should forfeit any bonus for 2020/21. Depending on the content of their personal public statements, disciplinary action may be appropriate. Organisations can be as woke as they like within the law, but they have to do it with their own money., not ours.

http://www.conservativehome.com/ : Iain Dale: Good luck to Robbie Gibb's prospective challenger to the BBC and Sky. And to News UK if

Fri, 4 Sep 2020 15:21:33 +0000

Time will tell. Unlike his predecessor, he’s set a clear marker. I’ve pretty much given up on the BBC myself other than its website, but I’d still rather it rescued itself.

http://www.conservativehome.com/ : Why the Germans don't always do it better

Fri, 4 Sep 2020 11:03:32 +0000

It’s amazing that the regulators both sides of the Atlantic didn’t see the risk from the very start that the software would detect that it was a standard test and respond accordingly. It’s even more amazing that senior management in the motor industry didn’t realise that they were bound to be found out sooner or later.

http://www.conservativehome.com/ : Why the Germans don't always do it better

Fri, 4 Sep 2020 10:23:28 +0000

Yep - a really annoying feature of the Con Home software. Recommend doing as JWF suggests - write on Notes (or similar) and paste in. I’ve had trouble with the Edit feature so am not so keen on that method

http://www.conservativehome.com/ : Iain Dale: Good luck to Robbie Gibb's prospective challenger to the BBC and Sky. And to News UK if

Fri, 4 Sep 2020 10:17:52 +0000

The key thing is that the new DG recognises that licence payers have legitimate complaint.

http://www.conservativehome.com/ : Why the Germans don't always do it better

Fri, 4 Sep 2020 10:12:20 +0000

Indeed. Hence the scepticism about the Euro on launch. But the long term viability of the Euro will probably depend on big financial transfers from Germany to the Mediterranean countries. It’s fine as long as German taxpayers are happy with this, and Merkel’s great skill has been to keep them on board.

http://www.conservativehome.com/ : Why the Germans don't always do it better

Fri, 4 Sep 2020 10:02:03 +0000

I received excellent treatment from a German dentist here in Hampshire before she moved on (or maybe moved back).

http://www.conservativehome.com/ : Why the Germans don't always do it better

Fri, 4 Sep 2020 08:54:48 +0000

Everything depends on the Euro. As Andrew says, the politicians steamrollered it past a sceptical public. And it’s worked out pretty well for German industry (and thus the nation), by keeping the currency value lower than it would otherwise have been under an ever appreciating Deutsche Mark. The problem will come if and when the cost of transfers from Germany to the economies struggling under the Euro becomes a major source of discontent, and a post-Merkel CDU stutters over it. There’s no viable Opposition other than on the extremes, so that’s where protest votes will go. Greens and Linke on one side - AfD on the other - and a slushy failing centre (we can see the parallels with 1930s Germany without assuming a similarly catastrophic outcome). There’s also a potential problem with the car industry. Much of Germany’s wealth has been built on the superb products of their motor industry. Yet we’re in the bizarre position that a new US arrival to the industry (Tesla) with a still small market share is valued at more than the traditional European and American car companies combined. It’s difficult to imagine that the geniuses at Merc, BMW and VW can’t match Tesla, but they’ve been slow to date.

http://www.conservativehome.com/ : Iain Dale: Good luck to Robbie Gibb's prospective challenger to the BBC and Sky. And to News UK if

Fri, 4 Sep 2020 08:00:17 +0000

I very much hope that the BBC can recover from its sad decline. The new DG’s speech set exactly the right tone, with Impartiality being his top priority. We’ve seen what happens in the US, as the news networks become ever more partisan - it’s not healthy.

http://www.conservativehome.com/ : Paul Mercer: Police crime statistics need to be more intelligible and transparent

Tue, 1 Sep 2020 11:19:31 +0000

Maybe, and undoubtedly it could be made more straightforward. But as a test I selected Hampshire data for July, downloaded it, and put it into spreadsheet format - whole job took under a minute. I don’t see this as Government or Police making it deliberately difficult to access the data. There’s probably a separate argument about the data collected and published, which I guess is what LLifeless is alluding too. I wouldn’t go as far as LL in saying that the statistics are designed to create divisions, but there may be something of a point there.

http://www.conservativehome.com/ : Paul Mercer: Police crime statistics need to be more intelligible and transparent

Tue, 1 Sep 2020 06:04:39 +0000

It seems to me as if the team running the police.uk site are actually doing a pretty good job of making the data as accessible as they reasonably can. For example, the Archive that Mr Mercer mentions in his article is clearly shown as a tab on the home page in the data section. They’ve put fair effort into explaining the data. The page on which you can send feedback on the site was a bit trickier to find than it should have been, but it was there. I’m sure there is more that can be done to make access easier, but I don’t think it’s really an issue of ‘access being controlled by the Mayor of London’. As for whole UK data that Mr Mercer mentions, the data does cover England, Wales and NI. I guess Police Scotland do their own.

http://www.conservativehome.com/ : Richard Holden: The Government must hold firm and stay on course as the Commons returns this week

Mon, 31 Aug 2020 08:07:39 +0000

Possibly, but I think the economic disruption of Covid has rather put Brexit issues into the shade. We’ll never really know how much of the economic cost that the Remain campaign predicted was incurred by Brexit. Nor will we know by 2024 how much the UK has really saved by not having to contribute to the EU Coronavirus fund agreed by the EU27 in July (probably not all of that €80billion headline amount from the formula). Certainly much will depend on how well the EU is seen to be doing by 2024. At present the EU owes a huge debt to Angela Merkel’s remarkable ability to persuade German taxpayers to come up with the funding for the transfers to the southern and eastern nations without much complaint. Unless her successor next year has the same skills and motivation, the EU might not be too attractive a destination.

http://www.conservativehome.com/ : David Gauke: We're urged to return to the office - but Ministers must face the fact that the world o

Sat, 29 Aug 2020 08:20:41 +0000

I think Mr Gauke’s pretty much right about the ‘working from home’ issue. Fundamentally the office is a 20th century (and earlier) framework. It’s the place where we keep and access information, and communicate with our colleagues. We’ve (largely) stopped keeping information on paper: we store, access and transmit it electronically instead. Audio and video links can mostly replace face-to-face conversation for routine work. So we don’t really need big office buildings any more. That’s not a bad thing. Transport is still important, but will we need so much of it either radially between cities and dormitory towns, or inter-city? The justification for HS2 - flaky from the start - needs a fresh cold look. Heathrow’s third runway is looking unlikely anyway - just as well. However, capacity, reliability and security of Grid and Internet become ever more important. Personally I think this is where our infrastructure investment should go, not on HS2.

http://www.conservativehome.com/ : If you back CANZUK, you should also support the D10 - an alliance of democracies

Fri, 28 Aug 2020 07:27:33 +0000

The key to this is India. Without India, it might just be a nice way of meeting countries that we already talk to on a regular basis - nothing wrong with that, but probably not a game-changer. With India, it becomes a much more formidable grouping.

http://www.conservativehome.com/ : Terry Barnes: Abbott's trade appointment is a masterstroke

Fri, 28 Aug 2020 06:28:14 +0000

Apart from Mr Abbott’s other excellent qualifications for the job, the Emily Thornberry tirade clinches it for me. Let’s hope it works out well.

http://www.conservativehome.com/ : Matthew Barber: The police must tackle non-violent crime too

Thu, 27 Aug 2020 07:32:38 +0000

Crime unpunished and criminals not apprehended beget more crime, more criminals. It is a false economy for the Justice system not to treat minor crime seriously. BBC and Sky have been falling over themselves in homage to the BLM movement, whose core objective is to defund the police. They have given blanket coverage to the killing of one man by a police officer in Minnesota. The huge increase in violent crime in American cities this summer hardly gets a mention.

http://www.conservativehome.com/ : These BBC Bourbons who have learned nothing and forgotten nothing risk precipitating their own downf

Wed, 26 Aug 2020 07:14:28 +0000

People are entitled to be as woke as they like within the law, but they shouldn’t be using taxpayer funds to do it. A short sharp reduction in funding for the British Library, the British Museum, and the British Broadcasting Corporation would be an appropriate response from the British taxpayer. Excellent article by Andrew Roberts in Telegraph today ... https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/08/25/woke-...

http://www.conservativehome.com/ : WATCH: Biden's speech to the Democratic National Convention - and his pitch to lead America out of a

Fri, 21 Aug 2020 10:21:33 +0000

‘He barely exists’ ... I fear you’ve called it exactly right. Time will tell, but if Biden wins, it will be the people who surround him who will have all the power. As history teaches us, this rarely works well.

http://www.conservativehome.com/ : WATCH: Biden's speech to the Democratic National Convention - and his pitch to lead America out of a

Fri, 21 Aug 2020 10:13:01 +0000

How has the Democratic Party failed to come up with a better candidate than Joe Biden? Age might bring wisdom, but I think that was the stage he was at when he became VP 12 years ago. Not even the greatest minds can viably head a major national government at his age. Churchill’s leadership from 1940-45 was outstanding - but his 2nd Premiership age 76-80 was not really an example to follow. And Biden is no Churchill. The American voter will have no idea who is really going to be running the country if Biden wins (though for many the fact that it won’t be Donald Trump will be sufficient at the polls). The VP has little power unless the President chooses to give them it, so it’s unlikely to be Kamala Harris unless Biden can’t continue at all, and she becomes President. The Democratic Primary season was a feeble parade, with not a single candidate looking viable. By contrast, Obama proved himself an excellent candidate (though even his biggest fans might regard his two terms as somewhat disappointing). Perhaps the two septuagenarians will agree to withdraw from the fray, and let Americans choose between Pence and Harris (not going to happen of course).