Huguenot

We had the BBC international team out here in Singapore before Christmas, and they confirmed they were developing an international edition of the iplayer. Licensing is a major issue, many programmes are commissioned rather than made by the BBC: QI for example is made by talkback Thames, who also make things like the Apprentice and Escape to the Country for the BBC, whilst they do Britain's Got Talent for ITV. International rights for programmes are a higher cost than just national ones, so it's difficult to justify this investment when funding is UK only. They may be able to make money from selling access, but the question will be whether the administration and collection of the proceeds exceeds the additional licensing costs.

Thanks louisiana, that was an excellent post :)

"organise themselves into trade associations without any bosses telling them when to eat, shit and sit down for many hundreds of years". It's a manifestation of childish online proselytising that people try and make a general point by resorting to hyperbole, fiction or fantasy. It's a shame that you're impressed by this approach LadyDelilah. If you find that patronising it's because you deserve it. You're also guilty of interpreting my observations through the chip on your shoulder. I made no mention of 'bosses', I was simply referring to organisational hierarchy. Organised labour inevitably leads to bureaucracy, and the power that bureaucrats yield inevitably leads to the uneven application of reward. Leninist propoganda about the lion hearted but gentle handed working class is a staple of student unions and sexual fantasies. Rose tinted reviews about the trade union movement can do nothing to dispel the socialist catastrophes of Russia and China. For every halfwit manning the picket lines at Stockwell I give you Bob Crow, on 200k a year including basic, performance incentives and perks. Not exactly shabby for a self-proclaimed communist / socialist. In fact that would probably make him wealthier than just about all the 'bosses' in LU that he's attacking....

Amazing? It's just nonsense. History would be a good start.

There is a theory that one way of diagnosing socipaths is whether they can look in the loo after they've unburdened themselves. It suggests that they can't acccept their discharge as evidence of their essential humanity, their ordinariness etc. Alan started removing his posts because just weeks before the crash he had pugnaciously been arguing that the housing boom would go on for ever, that he would be a millionnaire soon, that buy-to-let was a great way to line your pockets, and that everyone else who couldn't see that was completely stupid. As property prices tumbled and people started losing their jobs he couldn't face the evidence of his own hubris, so he deleted every comment he made. I suspect that he now does it for a joke - which may or may not be evidence of the fact that he's currently much more relaxed and happier with himself. ;-)

Venezuela and Bolivia are inspirations for using natural resources "for the betterment of society and to improve the lot of the poor"??? Ha ha ha. I think your Algerian friend is a poorly informed fantasist. A wiser course of action would be to create a society that manages an uneasy truce between the workers that generate wealth and the hierarchy that is required to allow organised labour to function.

The OP was trying to draw a parallel between Venezuela and Tunisia, Algeria and Egypt on the basis of oil revenues. My point was that it wasn't comparable. For example: recent estimates of reserves put Saudi at 230 billion barrels, Venezuela at 100 billion, and Algeria way down a shrinking list at 12 billion. Egypt has 2.9 billion and Tunisia 0.3 at doesn't even nudge the needle. For comparison the UK has 25 billion, but you wouldn't suggest that it was a major local political issue. Hardly comparable.

You may be being slightly presumptive there LD, just because those countries sound Arabic doesn't mean they have oil, they don't have any significant reserves. Chavez is a socialist revolutionary, there's no evidence of a particularly revolutionary socialist stance to popular protests in any of the north African countries. Venezuela was the worst performing South American country last year (3.3% drop in GDP) and this year looks worse (-6%) which given their massive oil reserves is a catastrophe. Despite his rhetoric, he often acts against the interest of the people. His wish to nationalize the last great privately owned company - Polar - is expressly against the wishes of the workers and their union. This suggests he is driven by dogma rather than the wishes of his countrymen. His attacks on political opponents and the attempted creation of a personality cult based on himself suggests that he is likely to be no better than any other totalitarian state in recent history. In other words the Chavez coterie is an elite by any other name. Still, his predecessors were so bad that at least he's done something for the living standards of the state, let's hope that the current recession is just a blip, and that he's more than just a one trick pony.

Eh? Prove what point? I'm not suggesting that DJKQ isn't entitled to be either disdainful or critical of the Lib Dems. What I'm saying is that the energy with which she attacks the Lib Dems contradicts her assertions that the Lib Dems are a spent force. If as she claims the Lib Dems aren't important, then surely she wouldn't waste the time criticising them? I don't have any obsession with you DJKQ, I treat all our forumites equally. Not commenting on contradictions in your posts would be to treat you unequally.

It would take a spectacularly anthropocentric (or shall we say religious) approach from quantum mechanics in order to use it to whip the bicycle from the student house of the daughter of a lady already predisposed to believe in the supernatural. To consequently fail to dust the damn thing almost seems rude. As for minkturtle, you clearly are the new messiah (albeit without the stern moralising), and I shall do my best to ensure that I play no part as a bureaucratic Pontius Pilate. I have in fact been an absent healer for many years. You get no gratitude. I cured a fat bastard from a small town near Phoenix Arizona yesterday and he put it down to Lemsip. I've slapped him down with Leukaemia but he won't find out for two months. I hope that someone else is going to look after that one.

Ha ha. I love it when people plow the old 'law' furrow - like it has any relevance. I understand that the 'revolutionary right' (also know as the 'neo-con pathologicals') in US politics are currently describing Iraq as a 'constabulary' action. I consider this a spectacular example of the use of euphemism in order to put some semantic distance between the disaster of Vietnam and the disaster or Iraq.

What I don't understand DJKQ, is that if the Lib Dems are a non-entity, why you expend so much energy attacking them? There's an inconsistency between your disdainful assertions that the Lib Dems are not important, and your relentless harangues.

Hmmmm, once is surprising, twice is intriguing, but five times suggests that the thing they all have in common is a very forgetful lady with a penchant for Uri Geller.... ;-)

I don't agree Piersy. I think people are taking a far too focused approach, and like trying to identify an object through a magnified image of an obscure corner, what they're seeing just doesn't make sense. I think the talk os specific catalysts over simplifies and misrepresents the situation - I've too much experience of people who either search for excuses to justify a course of action to which they're already committed, or else post rationalise to explain away motivations they'd rather not face. In this case there were certainly catalysts, but in our revisionist approach we consistently overlook the fact that if the same set of events had taken place in a country that doesn't carry huge reserves of critical resources we simply do nothing. To identify the motivation you strip away catalysts until you find the one that was unique to this scenario. I can see only one - oil.

I didn't mean it in quite that sense. Singaporeans are different to HKers, and very much more deferential to authority. Shark's fin is not a popular dish here. What I'm saying is that the Chinese aren't eating shark's fin soup because they don't care if it goes extinct, they're doing it because they don't believe it's going extinct, and that it's just the authorities lying to them again.

Sorry, I confused myself...

Sorry to hear the thread was targeted. Sadly the ideological fervour of anti-fur and vegetarian campaigners is inversely proportionate to the logical consistency of their arguments.

I don't think that's entirely fair. HK and Chinese consumers have been fed a diet of manipulative political bullshit (whether British or Communist Party) from the mainstream media since monotype was invented. As a result the rejection of 'authority' is a cultural foundation. Unfortunately this rejection of authority applies to any kind of authority - political or scientific or any other. The consumption of foods that attract disapproval (regardless of whether it's political or social disapproval) is a demonstration of individuality. The expense of the consumption is a public demonstration of empowered individuality, and the lengths that people are willing to go to cock a snook at the system. Campaigns to address this issue should reflect the UK's success with making drink driving socially unacceptable - they're driven by public debate rather than finger wagging. Gordon Ramsay would make the ideal chap to pursue this campaign.

I don't think claims that anyone had SOMETHING or NOTHING to do with anything are helpful. They assume that political issues are a series of correlated direct cause and effect scenarios. Great for tabloids, but unrelated to the real world. Sarah Palin didn't give Jared Loughner a loaded Glock with an extended magazine. There are plenty of psychological studies that demonstrate that 'venting' angry thoughts escalate them rather than giving them a safety valve. Palin and her ilk created an environment within which confrontational lunatics with death wishes could flourish. I'd just like to anticipate some of the cretins who will respond to this observation with slack jawed simplistic assertions, that it doesn't mean I want to see Palin in jail. Likewise 9-11 doesn't mean it's an excuse to invade Iraq. You can either see the wood, or start fiddling amongst the trees. Most people on this thread are arguing about whether it's a birch or a beech. 300 million US citizenry (and 60 million UK citizens) have flourished under an era of cheap oil and cheap commodities based on the impoverishment and slave labour of 6 billion people in the rest of the world. Iraq (and many future situations like it) are created because none of you are going to let that go easily.

Tarot, you can find low energy light bulbs in the same range of brightness as high energy light bulbs. You need to look for the 'equivalent' wattage on the wrapping. For example, a low energy 25 watt bulb may give out the equivalent light of an old skoole 60 watt bulb. If you want 100 watt you can find them. Or 200 watt or whatever. Old skoole (tungsten) lights don't even give out a full range of colours. They're actually yellow. They compete with TV LED lights, which are blue. If you don't believe me, walk down the street after dusk. The yellow and blue lights of the competing light sources are very clear in people's windows. I think the real problem is that low energy lights are just different. There's nothing that can be done rationally to address this, you just need a few deep breaths and to relax.

I don't think you can criticise JB for defending the Lib Dems on a thread about the Lib Dems? Come on DJKQ, that's just cheap abuse. The point about housing renovations is probably just mathematical - how much housing can be renovated with the available budget? What would the difference be between the parties? Hard figures please? The rest of it seems like naff student politicking.... "Wooo there's spin in election manifestos, wooooo" It's dispiriting when the apparatchiks criticise politicians for knocking off top hats..... whilst knocking off top hats. Something about not being part of the solution, being part of the problem...

Erm.... Gosh.

Apparently the Ouija board was originally a parlour game - it only became a 'spirit medium' during WWI. I get deja vu quite often, but apparently it's just a short circuit in the brain...

I think the France and Italy both provided the nuclear equipment that Israel claimed were being used to manufacture weapons material. Loads of countries sent bits and bobs because it was viewed as peaceful at the time. It was also claimed that France provided the core biological seeds for bio-weapons development, and Italy, Spain, China and Egypt provided the (empty) warheads. The US sent anthrax, West Nile virus and botulism go Iraq. Eqypt, Luxembourg and Singapore sent either nerve gases or their ingredients. The Brits supplied equipment through Matrix Chruchill - remember the supergun anyone?

So if you don't think the war was for oil, DJKQ, and you don't think it was for WMD, what do you think the war was for? Why do you think they want to 'dominate' the Middle East and yet don't want to dominate, say, Sudan, Uganda, the Congo or Rwanda?