The buck stops here

Mark Thompson, Director-General of the BBC

Russell Brand, Jonathan Ross and Jack Straw

One certainly doesn't have to be a Daily Mail reader to agree with their view of those answaphone messages. The 'humour' the two served up was of the sort that would appeal only to the sort of morons so lacking in decency that they would find entertainment in watching a YouTube clip of a man urinating on a dying woman.

As it happens, I'm someone who has enjoyed JR's Saturday morning radio show over several years, but hopefully no more. The BBC, equally at fault over all this, have been shamefully slow in confronting their misjudgement; hence thankfully the sheer scale of the public anger. Hopefully when Ross departs (as he surely will) the notion that any entertainer justifies an £18 million contract will go with him.

Over on 'Comment is Free', Jack Straw has been sharing his opinions. Yes, that Jack Straw. The one who resigned so promptly as soon as his "cynical premeditated" statements about WMD in Iraq were shown to be just that. I'm afraid Jonathan Ross is not the only public figure who should "no longer be paid a penny by the rest of us."

The cost of policing in Norfolk

I have long been of the opinion that my local constabulary would struggle to apprehend burglars even if they all wore striped jumpers and black masks whilst carrying large sacks over their shoulders labelled 'SWAG'.

It's gratifying to learn that this is finally being tackled.

What can Cameron do?

Private housing has become a compensation for the increasingly gross maldistribution of income. Inadequate incomes mean that large numbers of people don’t have access to the style of life that has always been the ultimate justification of neoliberalism and to which, reasonably enough, they now believe they have a right. What does give them access to it (in the short term) is credit. But credit has to be secured, and that’s what housing does. However, it works only if house prices keep rising and people have enough income to repay debt. When prices stop going up and people can no longer repay what they owe, the financial system begins to disintegrate. This is what has happened; and it has happened because we have replaced something like social democracy with credit democracy, or universal access to credit, and credit is a thoroughly inadequate substitute because sooner or later it has to be repaid. Which means that people’s incomes have to be sufficient to repay it, and in many cases they aren’t. What we have put in place is a dynamically destructive cycle. The number of houses is rationed in order to force up prices; people buy houses in order to secure credit on the strength of those prices; this encourages a heady belief in perpetual profit and thus both risky lending and risky borrowing; this renders the banking system unstable; and lending both to individuals and among banks then collapses.

Ross McKibbin's excellent LRB article.

City bonuses - big Government clampdown

Maybe.

Elegantly Dressed Wednesday

Post-hippie social worker chic? So where's The Guardian then? It's not clear if this is before or after she dropped her knickers.

Memo to Paul Flynn

Maybe you followed my recent spat with the MP for Newport West. Well, it seems he has a soulmate of sorts. In fairness, Mr Flynn's comments policy looks singularly liberal set against that of Tory sexpot Nadine Dorries. There's one thing they definitely have in common though (beyond being good looking of course) - neither likes to admit to being wrong.

Aside from her shameful trashing of Dr Ben Goldacre, Ms Dorries has been in a bit of trouble over her use of the Parliamentary Portcullis logo, first by using House of Commons stationery for political purposes - the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner found against her in June 2006, and again this year for displaying the same logo on her (political) blog.

You'd have thought that any MPs previously confused about the rules would by now be quite clear as to what is allowed and what isn't; it's not as though the bonkers MP for Mid Bedfordshire keeps a low profile on this (or anything else for that matter, she's plain barking). It's simple, blogs that contain political comment are not allowed to display the Portcullis logo.

I'm afraid that one or two (well, one at least) of her Parliamentary colleagues still haven't quite worked it out yet. Maybe Paul should get in touch with Nadine and ask for advice.

Nadine blogs here. Unfortunately she seems to have taken the post about her knickers down, I can't imagine why.

Osama Bin Laden traced to Iceland

You may well sympathise with our Government seizing the assets of the failed Icelandic banks. Their use of anti-terrorist laws to do so is a different matter though, since it is entirely at odds with repeated assurances that such legislation will only be used in cases that do indeed involve terrorism.

If there is no other legal means of carrying out such action (and I'd be surprised if there isn't) then maybe the Government should consider bringing some forward. Unless of course the collapse of the Western world's banking system is because Al-Qaeda has seized control of it; in that case giving banks large sums of public money is likely to be somewhat counter-productive.

I've never believed any assurances our Governments have given with regards to legislation that impinges on our civil liberties, but I take little satisfaction from finding my cynicism justified.

Stumps...

I'm sorry to learn that the Political Umpire has raised his finger and even as I speak Fora is heading for the pavilion and probable retirement. His blog has been, indeed remains, one of my favourites, and not just because the Umpire and I broadly share values and enjoy robust debate when our opinions differ.

To those who have yet to discover Fora, I can say no more than that there is a wonderful range of earlier posts to discover there. Hopefully this will yet prove no more than a rain delay; in the meantime go and enjoy the blogging equivalent of Headingley '81.