Ferguson Lays Reith on the Tomb of BBC Credibility

I keep thinking that I have reached the final straw in my relationship with Radio 4, by my addiction is strong, and I hang on to my cultural comfort blanket through politically biased explanations of the banking crisis and trite commentaries on the issues of the day. While, in spite of the decision to give Niall Ferguson the extroardinary accolade of Reith Laureate this year, I am still listening, I have managed to prevent myself from downloading the podcasts of the talks. I caught one accidentally late at night and it completely ruined a night's sleep.

Who is this Niall Ferguson? A historian of moderate reputation who, having confessed that he did not receive the attention he felt his ego deserved in the UK, emigrated to a job at Harvard, where he made the common mistake of thinking that his rapid rise to fame was the result of his innate genius, rather than his views serving the financial elite. I am not sure where along the way he became accepted into the inner circles of the Bilderberg conspirators, but their official list says he was in attendance at the recent meeting at Chantilly in France. I assume this website is for real: since Bilderberg conspiracy theory became Bilderberg publicity it is really hard to know.

While I have political objections to these unaccountable elite gatherings, in this case my gripe is intellectual. My question is why Ferguson is called on to opine on economic matters, when his training is in history. His poor level of competence in the field is made clear by a very elementary mistake exposed by Paul Krugman on his NY Times blog. Ferguson has misinterpreted US historical data to reveal his mathematical mediocrity and drawn mistaken conclusions about how national governments should tackle the recession.

So why was Ferguson chosen for the most prominent annual lecture series the BBC has to bestow? Perhaps a brief glance at the Corporation's Executive Board will help us to answer this question. Marcus Agius, disgraced former Chair of Barclays, is a senior independent director on the board: Ferguson's views can be expected to find favour there. The four non-executive directors appear to be a fairly incestuous bunch. Robert Webb is a non-executive director of the London Stock Exchange as well as Chair of Autonomy. The CEO of Autonomy, Mike Lynch, is also on the board. Between 1998 and 2009 Robert Webb was General Counsel at British Airways, who also employed BBC non-exec. Val Gooding for 20 years. Simon Burke seems out of place, having worked for neither Autonomy nor BA, but he has been involved in venture capital activities.

My daughter is hoping to study history at UCL next year and so I find the prominence of Ferguson as historian role-model almost as unhelpful as the high level of fees she is expected to pay. She is receiving a clear message: debt is good and deceit pays. Rather than speaking peace unto nation, I would appreciate it is the BBC could just stick to spending my money speaking truth, preferably to power.
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Over-Shadow Chancellor

Ok, I admit it: I've been naive. I genuinely believed that (a) Gordon Brown understood the nature of the financial crisis and (b) the absurd policy of throwing billions of pounds into the black hole of bank debt was just a shoring up measure while something less outrageously unjust - and capable of rebalancing the economy - was stitched up behind the scenes.

I now realise I was completely wrong about this. The grey suits really don't have a better idea than just fiddling on with more of the same in the hope that, somehow, the greedy corporate gamblers who got us into this mess will find some way out. My evidence that this is the case? The re-emergence of Ken Clarke - the chief proponent of smoke and mirrors economics under the discredited Tory regime.

I've noted frequently on this blog the ubiquity of this 'man of the people' who also rubs shoulders with the leading corporate players. In a move whose significance could not be more symbolic he is now being brought in to the job of mirroring Mandelson, while over-shadowing the flimsy toff-wannabe George Osborne. There is no doubting where the real power now lurks in both front bench teams.

The presence of the Big Bilderberger Beasts on both sides of the dispatch box make it clear who is really running the political show. Voting for any of the 'main political parties' can only ever be to encourage them. Tweet

Prince of Darkness Returns

I have been wondering for a while what Mandelson has been up to. Along with Kenneth Clarke - and we've certainly been seeing a fair bit of him on our TV screens - he has been identified as a key member of the Bilderberg Group. Will Hutton has referred to this shadowy bunch as the 'high priests of capitalism'. so we might expect them to have been rather busy recently.

Mandelson has taken a few blows in his time, most recently when the trade talks, the Doha round which had been billed as the round for the poor nations, collapsed during the summer. Globalisation is really about money, but in order to make the extortion of resources from the world's poor seem more decent it has to have trade as well. The terms of trade need to be fixed so that the rich countries will always win the game. It was that which the more powerful of the producer nations refused to accept in Geneva in July, and so the talks collapsed.

And now the financial side has fallen apart as well. No wonder we need dear Peter back in the Cabinet. Some speedy restitching of the global capitalist pact must be achieved without delay. No chance this time of a transparent international negotiation, or a fair balancing of the needs of all the world's people. This will be Bretton Woods on the back of a fag packet and behind closed doors.

So I'm not taken in by the drivel about Labour patching up its quarrels. We long since reached the Cat's Cradle world of Gore Vidal, where the politicians allow us a meaningless choice between policy platforms that are only cosmetically different. Who do you vote for if you don't want capitalism at all? If you're tired of a world where children are allowed to starve so that we can have plasma TVs? Where middle-income taxpayers in this country are subsidising the Bank of England's decision to buy the worthless assets of the morally as well as financial bank-rupt? By the way, this is not a rhetorical question. Tweet