Who Rules: is there a Media-political class?

Liz Forgan starts of with the Lloyd-George Scott relationship and how it affected both information flow and impartiality. Should politicians fear the press, yes they should see them as an external consciences, the blogosphere is always kicking at any existing M-P class as it gets analysed and spat at from the internet, and that is keeping the media on the strait and narrow. Again discussing the fact that there needs to be a paid for media to pay for the day to day research and legal backup, references the Guardian tax avoidance pieces. Discussions about the Scott trust and how it supposedly works to safeguard liberal media to report on the erosions of liberty.

Peter Oborne is going to argue the thesis that not only does the M-P class exists and is a threat via international football. Sorry no Peter was apparently the wrong Crouch. The suggestion is that the current set of politicians are a clique amongst themselves and the supposedly opposition positions are all about maintaining the status quo of keeping the leadership in power. There is a term for this, it is a cartel. This manifests itself as a hatred of the institutions that could challenge them. He has just been wound up, in several ways.

Simon Jenkins starts with Norway and an exercise to see what the country would be like after a hundred years that was carried out at the millennium. The academics decided that the future was bleak and that the old truism (that was mentioned in the first session by the Polish editor) about it not mattering who you vote for, the government always gets in. The next point was a reflection of Eisenhower’s speech on the military industrial complex with the current security industry. What has happened to all of the campaigning politicians of yesteryear what is it that turns them into just another evil minister when they are in power.

Claire Fox is relating a Big Brother eviction into a liberty issue, which I am not sure I want to sign up to. Although her point about Endimol’s corruption of the big brother brand to stop it being as frightening as the Orwellian vision. She is continuing to talk utter shite about how reality tv is the problem. I really don’t think super nanny programs are really training people to be obedient.

Although it probably is quite good for organising questions, listing questioners 1 – 6 just really brings back memories of a certain programme that is about liberty being squashed.