Stephen Glover in the Independent notes something interesting about the coverage of the Juan Charles de Menezes shooting.

Twenty years ago, if the police killed a seemingly innocent civilian, the press divided in a rather predictable way. The general pattern was that the left-leaning titles assumed the police were in the wrong, while the right-leaning ones took the view that the police must have had their reasons for acting as they did.

I'm not sure that it is just the authoritarianism of New Labour, which he points to, which is the cause of this change.

The titles most critical of the Metropolitan Police have been The Guardian, the Daily Mail and The Daily Telegraph. Last Wednesday all three papers splashed with ITV's scoop that Mr De Menezes had not behaved in the suspicious way alleged by the police, and the next day they came back to the story with still greater gusto. By contrast, the supposedly right-wing Sun and Times relegated the story to the inside. So too did the Independent. The Daily Mirror was slow off the blocks but caught up on Thursday. The Daily Express, however, was adamant that the police could not be at fault. On Thursday its front page said: "Why the police should never face murder charges over that Brazilian."

My feeling is that this is a small but welcome symptom of the way in which politics as a whole is changing in this country, becoming less tribal and more of a choose it yourself buffet. For example, I as a (pragmatic more than ideological) libertarian find that I often have more in common on some subjects with those on the left than I do with many on the right. Social authoritarianism, for example, the civil liberties implications of this case itself perhaps. I'm aware that my own views on the shooting are heavily coloured by my seven years in immediately post-Soviet Russia. It's very difficult to live in a place recovering from 70 years of being a police state, totalitarian even, without finding oneself forever more agreeing with Perry De Havilland's motto, "The State is not your friend." I agree that this is an extreme view but I regard this shooting as in some way worse than the bomb attacks themselves. We've for a century or more had groups of nutters trying to kill us and terrorise us, from the anarchists to the current lot via the IRA but one lesson I take from the 20th century is that the people we really have to be worried about are the State and its employees, doing what they think is best for us in aggregate.

This is why I'm happy to see that the major newspapers are not moving in lockstep on this. The Telegraph seems just as concerned about civil liberties from the right as The Guardian is from the left, in some ways we're no longer shouting across the barricades at each other but finding those areas where we do have common ground. This has also been evident in the papers' reaction to the Civil Contingencies Bill, the suspension of Habeus Corpus, ID cards and many other similar matters.

And, as we know, it is the people here at the Adam Smith Institute who are actually suggesting that the basic income tax allowances should be massively raised, thus taking the poor out of that tax's net altogether, something that should be desired by all concerned for the poor of left or right.

I'm not suggesting that this makes politics any less ideological, in fact it probably makes it more so. But instead of accepting all the assumptions and policies of one tribe or another, one is able to think through the various subjects and options on offer and to judge which one one prefers on the basis of rational thought rather than on the basis of social allegiance.

(Tim Worstall writes here).

The current issue of the Economist carries a piece (its cover story, in fact) examining whether video games are as wicked as some say. The debate is prompted by the disclosure that Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas contains lurid sex scenes which can be unlocked via a patch from the internet. The game itself is fast-paced and violent, as many are, but does that make it evil?

Those who have yet to decide might note that Hilary Clinton recently blamed video games for "a silent epidemic of media desensitization." She accused them of stealing the innocence of our children. The Economist is laidback about the whole subject. It points to the neophobia which has always pitted the old against the entertainments of the young. Rock'n'roll was denounced for its lewd degeneracy.

The accusers say that video games have bred a violent generation, and encouraged aggression, but the Economist does not see it that way.

Much of the research on whether video games encourage violence is unsatisfactory, focusing primarily on short-term effects. In the best study so far, frequent playing of a violent game had no effect on participants' level of aggression. And, during the period in which gaming has become widespread in America, violent crime has fallen by half.

The Economist also points out that games are widely used to train pilots, soldiers and surgeons, and are used in schools and businesses. It suggests that "anyone who has learned to play a handful of games can generally figure out how to operate almost any high-tech device." Furthermore, games require players to construct hypotheses, solve problems and develop strategies. They can, in other words, do a fair measure of good.

Richard Morrison in his Times column amusingly describes a repeat story in which an outsider, sent in to overhaul some venerable cultural institution, resigns a year or so later amid acrimony and recrimination. He gives the template of the recurring story.

The world of British pottery/knitting/morris-dancing was rocked last night by the shock resignation of X after just two years/two months/two days at the helm of the beleaguered (name of institution). When X was appointed after a brilliant career running the whelks/futons/ball-bearings marketing board in Tasmania/Canada/Singapore, he was expected to make sweeping reforms to deal with a deficit now running at £10 million/billion.

Morrison points that he could retire comfortably if someone gave him £10 for each time the story has appeared in the past 25 years. Others spring to mind which are no less frequent. How about "Government Appoints X Tsar," in which the UK government appoints a supremo to deal with the growing problem of X, and to report directly to the Prime Minister?

There is also "Chancellor Revises Treasury Figures," in which the UK’s Chancellor changes the official definition of the inflation rate/growth rate/exchange rate/unemployment rate/business cycle, showing that under the revised figures the economy is still on track and within his forecast.

Readers may care to suggest other repeat stories which spring readily to mind.

BBC executives will be awarded almost 25% of their salaries in bonuses this year, a greater percentage than last year, despite thousands of BBC job cuts and a loss of viewers. These bonuses could amount to £1m. With 70% of these bonuses, about £700,000, given in performance-related pay, it is hard to find the justification for the bonuses in the first place. In fact, the executive decision to alter BBC programming contributed to a decrease in the company’s performance this past year. The BBC’s TV audience share fell by 4% from the previous year even with an increase in spending. BBC spending was up 4%, an increase of £100m to £2.47bn over the past year.

Yet the most prominent source of outrage at the unwarranted bonuses stems from the company’s hypocritical management of resourses. Claiming the need for cost-saving measures, the BBC unveiled plans earlier this year that could make 5,000 of its 28,000 employees redundant and relocate other employees out of London. This led to a one-day strike by the BBC staff in May. Awarding executives £1m in bonuses doesn’t appear to be a cost-saving measure to the staff. Gerry Morrisey, of the broadcasting workers’ union Bectu, was quoted in Metro yesterday saying, “BBC management is already getting the rate for the job, so where is the justification for huge bonuses? People just should not be rewarded for putting thousands out of work.”

But next year, as the BBC lays off nearly 20% of its staff, the BBC promises to decrease the executive bonuses, by 10%. So bonuses will only be £600,000. But then, the BCC quietly adds, it will be raising executive base salaries next year by 10% as well…

Karl Marx has just been voted most popular philosopher ever in Britain. In the Melvin Bragg "In Our Time" survey he scored 28 percent of the vote, twice as much as the next, David Hume. Marx's popularity was eloquently defended by Eric Hobsbawm on the BBC‚s Today programme.

A perceptive graduate student once described me as a Vulgar Marxist. Vulgar, sure, as a rude Scot, but why Marxist I asked? Marx had no faith in the state, "just like you" was the reply. Curiously, as a revolutionary against the state, Marx has been used to justify state intervention across the world.

Most of the social sciences in British universities seem to be influenced by para-Marxist sympathies such as anti-capitalism, anti-market, pro state intervention, and property rights controlled by the state. This is more so in French, Italian and other EU universities. In Japan some two decades ago it was hard to find an economics department in any university not dominated by Marxist thinking. The sciences are increasingly pervaded by this thinking in America (with Britain close behind), with concepts like consensus and the Green agenda. In America anti-market, anti-capitalism is harder to find. The Democrats rely on constraining, and maybe eventually strangling, capitalism by endemic regulation.

The propensity to misinterpret Marx for political purposes is replicated by dedicated followers of Keynes. The economies of America and Britain are now driven by the policy consensus that economic growth is fuelled by consumer demand and an optimum rate of inflation, for which Keynes must take some credit. Although when I offer this view in Cambridge seminars it is vehemently resisted.

What are we to make of Marx's win? That the BBC and academe exist in a twilight world where his discredited ideas still count? That he was judged for the influence wrought on history in his name? Hobsbawm says that where other philosophers promoted thought, Marx achieved action and change. In that respect he probably wins on body count alone.

The BBC has admitted re-editing some of its reports on the London bombings in order to remove the word 'terrorist' from its coverage. Tom Leonard (Telegraph) tells us:

Early reporting of the attacks on the BBC's website spoke of terrorists but the same coverage was changed to describe the attackers simply as "bombers".

The BBC gives as it reason the desire to avoid the "careless use of words which carry emotional or value judgments". They say the word 'terrorist' is not banned, but their guidelines say its use should be "avoided."

It may seem odd that the BBC chooses to avoid calling an obvious terrorist act by that name, but their concern is that if they use it in London they will have to use it elsewhere. Currently they refer to people who murder a pregnant Jewish woman and her two daughters as 'militants.' If terrorist killers in London are described as such, the BBC would have less excuse to avoid a term which conveys disapproval when it is Israelis who are murdered.

You might think that decent people would want to describe such acts in terms which conveyed the abhorrence they arouse. You would be right, and the refusal to do so is a political act.

The BBC's Radio 4 programme In Our Time is choosing the world's greatest philosopher. This is the BBC, so guess who’s going to win? Correct.

Thanks to some good and generous friends I was able to enjoy a Centre Court seat at opening day of the Wimbledon Championships, where I was able to see the great Roger Federer and Lindsay Davenport go through with ease, and the Great British hope Elena Baltacha go out just as speedily.

On the way back I read that the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, which runs the Championships, was complaining that tickets for the finals were selling at £700 on eBay, and urging that re-sale of tickets should be made a criminal offence. (Oh, no, not another.)

They've got themselves into the same pickle that Live8 did, which we reported on earlier. If you set the price of tickets too low, you have to ration them. Wimbledon does it by a ballot every year, where hundreds of thousands of hopefuls put their name into the hat for the right to buy a show-court ticket. But is that the best way?

It certainly means that the All England Club is missing out on a wodge of money. They would make far more if they sold the tickets for what they were worth - up to £700 as we now know. And that is cash that could be used to improve and extend the facilities and allow more people to enjoy the tennis. And indeed, improve coaching for Britain's young and promising players. Indeed, with better facilities and more people going to the Championships, you could actually keep prices down - which the Club is keen to do - and generate the same revenue.

Also, remember that there are many avid tennis followers who miss out on Wimbledon every year because they fail in the ballot. So that doesn't help the fans that Wimbledon wants to help either. They'd be better off if they knew they just had to save up and they could buy a ticket like anyone else. Millions of people make sacrifices in order to buy season tickets to their favourite football club, which is fine: why are other public events so keen not to use the market?

In the early days of English journalism, printers set up in a street across from the Fleet cemetery. It was named after the river Fleet, a Thames tributary which now runs underground. The flat gravestones provided surfaces on which the fresh-printed sheets could be laid to dry.

The street became the base of an industry, as other London Streets did, and its name became a synonym for journalism. In its heyday, most major UK newspapers were located there, sharing the pubs and wine bars located outside their offices.

The past quarter century has seen its titles disappearing or relocating one by one as the digital age heralded the end of the great mechanical presses, and the industry became more compact, and able to operate more cheaply and efficiently in purpose-built centres elsewhere. This week saw a farewell service as Reuter's, its last great reporting agency, marked its departure.

The only journalists still there are a handful working for the Dundee-based group D C Thomson, one of whose titles (pictured) acquired cult status as a children’s comic, and took a firm hold on the affections of a generation.

The term Fleet Street still lingers as a shorthand term for the media, but a colourful era came to a close this week.

Bob Geldof has branded the sale of Live 8 tickets on the internet auction site eBay as "sick profiteering" (BBC report). Minister for Music James Purnell also asked eBay to halt the sales, and now eBay has banned them. Sir Bob said:

It is filthy money made on the back of the poorest people on the planet. Stick it where it belongs… The people who are selling these tickets on websites are miserable wretches who are capitalizing on people's misery. I am appealing to their sense of decency to stop this disgusting greed.

Well, yes. But since there was a rigged market, with tickets allocated by lot, what does he expect unsuccessful applicants to do? Note that no money is raised to combat poverty; the only goal is to raise 'awareness.' If tickets had been sold to highest bidders, millions would have been raised. As it is, those on whom fortune has smiled and who'd rather have the money tried to sell their tickets to those who'd rather have the concert. This seems not so much 'sick' or 'filthy' as a straightforward satisfaction of demand.

There was nothing wrong with it.

Britain's media regulator, Ofcom, has blown a raspberry at the government's proposals to prop up the BBC for another ten years. That's how long Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell plans to extend the licence fee - an annual tax on TV ownership that goes exclusively into the BBC's pockets.

But Ofcom argues that the licence fee should be raised a bit and divided up between the Corporation and its commercial rivals. It also proposes getting rid of the BBC Governors, who at present try to run and regulate the same organization, in favour of an independent watchdog overseeing the public broadcasting content of both the BBC and commercial stations.

From its sleek riverside headquarters, Ofcom argues that the country will soon switch wholly from analogue to digital broadcasting, which will produce "seismic changes to the broadcasting landscape", making the old way of funding and running the BBC out of date.

I'm not sure what 'public service broadcasting' is, exactly. Our report Media Meddling and Mediocrity says it's little more than making sure that politicians appear on the box. But if the government is determined to support 'public service broadcasting', then the idea of paying competing networks to produce it seems a good one. Why should the state maintain its own broadcast network solely in order to produce the odd Newsnight or Panorama that only the political junkies watch? Better just to pay for the programmes themselves, regardless of who is contracted to produce them.

Frankly, though, I'd still prefer my money back. Sky News or the History Channel produce excellent serious programming without needing public subsidies. Why can't the BBC?

Tim Coates (pictured), former managing director of bookshop chain Waterstones, says that Britain's public libraries will all be closed within 15 years. They lack funds, are hog-tied by wasteful bureaucracy, and book borrowing "is in freefall," he says.

In a report last year, Coates said local authorities spent £24 for each £10 book they bought, because of the bureaucracy. Only 9% of the libraries' budget is actually spent on books.

As a bookseller, he is obviously concerned about this. In a larger sense, though, we now get a vast amount of our information from sources other than books, so one has to ask whether it matters much that the traditional book-lending library is fading away.

But contrast this decline with what has happened in Mr Coates's own sector, the bookshops. Driven by entrepreneurs like Tim Waterstone himself, in the 1980s and 1990s they became radically different to the dry and dusty places they had been. Much more inviting, with restaurants, armchairs - sometimes it is hard to see where the bookshop ends and other retail services begin. And with much more comprehensive stock, slicker use of computer tracking and ordering, you name it.

The pity is that the nation's public libraries, being run by the state, haven't had this entrepreneurial boost. Instead of letting libraries fade away, we'd be better selling them to the highest bidder. I bet that Tim Coates and people like him could improve them beyond recognition - and help get the nation reading again.

Some people were worried when Home Office minister Hazel Blears announced the possibility that offenders on community service might have to wear some kind of uniform – maybe a bright orange one such as prison work gangs wear in some US states.

It made good copy in the papers and on TV, with many stock clips and interviews. To those ignorant of UK government, please note that the chance of this happening, to the nearest round number, is zero.

The idea is tossed out like chum to the churning sharks. They discuss and debate it, and the government looks tough on crime. That is the whole point. The idea will be forgotten in a week, but they hope that association with 'tough on crime' will linger. They do this day by day, week by week, to fill the pages and the bulletins. It is called news management. Each night they go to bed only after they have seen the early first editions of next day's papers. Then they start again next morning.

Meanwhile in the real world the problems go on and nothing is done to address them.

We all know the BBC is institutionally biased, but soon we will get chapter and verse on it from Robin Aitken, a BBC correspondent of 25 years, who has just written a book exposing that bias.

He claims the effete chatterati who run the Beeb just can't stand the Republicans, especially Bush, who's religious too. The also loathe Unionist politicians from Northern Ireland (Aitken was a reporter there for some time), since they're not only religious, but monarchist and have no sense of dress fashion.

He even went to the BBC governors, who asked him to compile a dossier on the bias, which he did. They thanked him, sent it on to BBC management, who said there was nothing to worry about, and nothing more happened. He was not even invited to put his case personally, or respond to the management's smug reply. "Can you imagine what the BBC would have had to say if that was how the Metropolitan Police had reacted to allegations of racism?" he told the Daily Telegraph.

Still, it's not all glum news. BBC Radio 4's Today programme sent its star presenter James Naughtie (yes, the one who said, in an interview with a Labour politician: "When we win the election...") to America to cover what it assumed would be the defeat of its knuckle-dragging President. But he instead had to report Bush's success, through gritted teeth. You would need a heart of stone, says Aitken, not to laugh.

Quite a stir round Old Trafford as US businessman and Tampa Bay Buccaneers owner Malcolm Glazer buys a controlling interest in Manchester United. And among the genuine concerns, a slightly unseemly undercurrent: we don't want these damned foreigners coming here and taking over our football and our industries to line their own pocket.

Man U is hardly in a position to complain about foreigners taking over: it should look at its own players, and of course its previous owners were Irish. Where, indeed, would football be without foreign owners, managers, and players. Foreign ownership doesn't seem to have done Chelsea much harm.

Of course, Glazer is no Roman Ambramovich. He's borrowed to buy Man U, and no doubt aims to make money out of the brand rather than to love the club. The fans worry that this means them paying more for tickets and merchandise; but maybe Glazer has other ideas, like squeezing more from global TV rights for what is one of the world's strongest brands.

Sneering commentators at the BBC hate Americans, see all foreign ownership as 'multinationals' expropriating our national assets, and want us to think the same.

But the greatest trading nation in the world, with its own investments round the planet, has done pretty well out of foreign investment. Indeed, it attracts far more investment than any European country. Foreign investors bring us new capital, new ideas, and new markets. In carmaking, Nissan, Toyota, and Honda turned around a fading industry - on which 750,000 jobs now rely. In the past financial year alone, some 800 investment projects from 40 countries created an extra 25,000 jobs here, predominantly in growth industries like IT, software, biotech, and pharmaceuticals. So why object if football is added to the list?

A reader points out that in the Times crossword today, clue 21 down is "Adam, economist and forger (5 letters)." The answer in case you are not a crossword puzzle solver is Smith, (one who works at a forge).

Today's London Evening Standard features a poem written by the Adam Smith Institute Poet-in-Residence, Madsen Pirie. The poem is a submission to the Scottish Arts Council. The council is giving a £30,000 "Creative Scotland" grant for someone to write poetry about this summer's G8 meeting in Gleneagles. Here is Madsen's submission:

"I think the G8.
Is great;
But to get an Arts Council Grant,
I'd probably need to take a different slant."

That £30,000 Arts Council grant can't be far off.

A year of brow-clutching on "public service" broadcasting and what do we get from Britain's government? The same old nationalised tax-funded BBC.

A classic example of public choice in action - politicians say they want a strong, independent BBC but what they really want is a tame broadcaster they can control.

Chris Bryant MP was on BBC Radio Wales with me this morning, declaring the BBC to be the greatest cultural invention ever (what happened to football and stiff upper lip?) but also wanting inclusiveness for Welsh speakers in the Rhonda and access programming for other minorities (like politiicians maybe?). Oh, and of course we're being swamped by American programming (snort, snort).

Where do these people live? My teenage daughter has an OC screensaver, a Friends backscreen on her mobile but also thinks Monarch of the Glen is a hoot and avidly follows the antics of McFly. How dare he paste his cultural norms onto her global cultural inspiration?

And that's the rub. A controlled BBC, unable to challenge markets, is going to be a British enclave, focussed on what politicans demand of it. As time passes, it will inevitably shrink as new channels and methods of communicating emerge. It will become "quaint" - a ward of state. What a waste of its creative energies - unable to innovate and challenge its global rivals. And all because the politicians want to preserve it as an instrument of "democracy" - that is, something they can use to tell us how good they are to us. Haven't they noticed that we are too busy watching OC and ER to be bothered?

Lord Birt, the BBC's former director-general, has called for the end of the BBC's exclusive right to the TV Licence Fee (a tax on television use). Instead, other broadcasters should be permitted to bid for a slice of the cash.

This is significant because Birt is working for the British Prime Minister as a "blue skies" adviser. The idea is one long advocated by the Adam Smith Institute: if there is going to be state funding of public service broadcasting, it ought to allocated in a competitive way.

A German football referee, Robert Hoyzer, has admitted match-fixing in all three of Germany’s top leagues, and betting on the results. There are no rules barring German referees from betting on matches, even the ones at which they officiate. Before reunification, Germans used to be limited to bets on a win or draw, but now they can bet on when the first goal is scored, or when and how many yellow cards will be handed out. Eric Culp says this has created a multi-million pound industry, and given referees an incentive to fix the results.

This follows the recent scandal in which numbers of German federal and state politicians were forced to resign after revelations that they accepted payments and favours from big German companies. These payments were also quite legal.

To outsiders it seems like an attempt to bring football and politics into line with the 'Continental model' of the economy. In the Anglo-Saxon free-market model, competition and changing circumstances bring about unpredictable results. This makes it difficult for governments and officials to plan and allocate resources. A model which replaces the unpredictability of individual and team talent by the systematic planning of officials is obviously capable of a more even allocation of outcomes. It is one in which victory can be determined not by the chance of the game, but by international bargaining by officials. Herr Schröder will doubtless welcome it because "it replaces the random, competitive elements of football with the orderly planning by officials. It gives football a level playing field."

An inquiry commissioned by the BBC has found that the state broadcaster suffers from an "institutional mindset" that leads to a "reluctance to question pro-EU assumptions".

According to The Times of London, the report "says that BBC journalists are often ignorant about how the EU works; they portray the EU largely through Westminster politics and fail to show how much of British policies originate in Brussels. It also criticises managers who 'appear insufficiently self-critical about standards of impartiality'. The report concludes that 'the BBC is getting it wrong, and our main conclusion is that urgent action is required to put this right'."

John Lloyd, editor of the FT magazine had a thoughtful piece in the Jan 16th issue (limited to subscribers) about politicians and the broadcast media. Many observers have noted, some to deplore, the way in which political interviews have become contests, rather than attempts to elicit truth. Paxman's question "Why is this bastard lying to me?" speaks of a superiority and contempt difficult to reconcile with any truth-seeking mission of journalism. The aim seems no longer to be to elicit truth, but to humiliate and degrade the subject. Many viewers are irritated that the personality of the journalist overshadows anything the politician might be trying to tell us. Indeed, the constant interruptions actually prevent it. Lloyd suggests that:

The broadcast media class has, in the past two or three decades, positioned itself - economically, socially and morally - above the political class, and therefore treats it with jovial scorn and condescension.

He quotes from a game on the BBC Newsnight website. The game, Deadringer Game - NewsFighter II, tells you that "You’re about to enter the NewsFight studio and take control of Kirsty Wark. Can you defeat Tony Blair and make him answer the question, or will he walk all over you?" Lloyd tells us that:

Being the best, in broadcaster's terms, is what it says: being better than the politicians and other public figures, who must be either seen to be defeated, or they will be seen to "walk all over you." The political interview becomes an exercise in confirming superiority – or in suffering the loss of face and sense of shame which any upper class would feel when bested by an inferior.

These days the media journalists are often bigger celebrities with higher incomes than the politicians who must jump through the media’s hoops in order to speak to their electors. This does not mean people trust them more. In the MORI poll of trustworthiness, repeated annually, the only group which regularly scores lower than politicians is that of journalists. And while the mainstream media might exult in their superiority over the lowly politicians, there are now guys in pyjamas sitting out there tracking their every move and being just as merciless to them as they are to their subjects, as Dan Rather discovered.

Should the BBC have shown the allegedly blasphemous programme, Jerry Springer: The Opera? Or should it instead as a public body not offend (or potentially offend) the religious sensibilities of a large section of the population? The BBC received 45,000 complaints before the 'Opera' had even been shown!

Many Christians feel their license fee - a yearly tax on all televisions used in the UK - should not be used to show a program which offends their views. Other viewers believe that since they have paid for a license, they should therefore have the option of watching this programme. Both have paid their dues, who gets to decide? Surely any decision is arbitrary one way or the other?

The solution is simple - cut through the Gordian knot by removing the conflict from the public domain. If Sky were to air the contentious show (or indeed Jerry Springer the program, as they have done on a multitude of occasions), you may protest to them but in the end it's the 'consumer is king'. If Sky isn't providing what you want, you may cancel your subscription. No one can legitimately claim to be wronged by this system, provided private channels don't force people to join by threat of violence (fines) and kidnapping (imprisonment) like the current system.

Abolishing the license fee and privatizing the BBC would right many wrongs currently imposed upon TV viewers. Those who do not wish to pay for such low brow humour would not have to. The invisible hand works well elsewhere in the media such as in newspapers and magazines, so why shouldn't it be given the chance in regular TV broadcasting?

There are a couple of very large theatres in London's famous West End, but the majority are Georgian or Victorian buildings with an intimate atmosphere and delightful period decoration throughout. Yet their quaint intimacy is also their problem. There is no legroom, it's a squash to get in and out, and the interval is murder. They are full, yes, but they still make hardly any profit and haven't done so for thirty years. In economic terms, it would be far better to pull them down and build more offices or restaurants, and build better theatres somewhere with more space and lower rents.

Of course, Westminster's planners will not allow that to happen. So we are stuck with wonderful, but loss-making, theatres. A few rich people support the theatres because they love them. But you cannot rely on that for ever. Which is why a number of theatre-types want state subsidies so that the theatres can put in more spacious seats and other facilities.

Robert Whelan, writing in the Daily Telegraph, rightly points out the folly of this approach. Like every other body that has taken state subsidies, the theatres would soon find themselves being bossed around by their paymaster. There would be all sorts of 'targets' for 'inclusion' and 'access' or 'awareness' and 'outreach', and any other political buzz-item of the moment. Theatres would find themselves trying to please politicians more than the public. Before long, London's theatreland would be just as politicized as all Britain's other once-proud institutions that now survive on a diet of subsidy. Better to suffer a slight lack of legroom than yield to that.

Mark Thompson, head of Britain's state broadcaster the BBC, has set out his plans to save £320 million and preserve the way in which the Corporation is funded - by a £121 charge on every household with a colour television.

The reforms do not go far enough. Most of the proposed ("2,500") staff reductions are not real, and amount to merely moving staff out of London and up to Manchester, or outsourcing their jobs to cheaper private-sector providers.

The licence fee raises over £2,000 million for the BBC, which is around two-and-a-half times the budget of its most prominent competitor, the independent television network ITV. And why should families be forced to pay £121 a year when the BBC accounts for only a third of the nation's TV viewing? In order to preserve "public service broadcasting"? As our recent report shows, that means little more than allowing politicians to preen themselves on our TV screens. But if you do want quality current-affairs, documentaries and news, you can get them on Sky, CNN, Discovery and lots of other places. Spending £2,000 million to run an entire set of TV and radio channels and make tripe as well as the quality stuff is a hugely expensive way of delivering what other people do already.

There is a widespread feeling in both media an political circles that time is up for this 1930s dinosaur. Mr Thompson's reforms are not seen as being radical enough in an age where people have ample choice between hundreds of different radio and TV channels. The licence fee cannot last.

The BBC gets a lot of flak for bias in its reporting. Defenders of the BBC say that any news reporting organization the size of the BBC is bound to be attacked for bias. They point out that both the Conservatives and Labour attack the impartiality of the BBC, and if both parties complain, the reporting must be about right. Critics of the BBC disagree, saying that the BBC's ethos is so skewed that it attacks both the Conservatives and Labour from the Left.

It may be that the BBC suffers from a cafeteria culture in which staff at the BBC network far too much with like-minded individuals who all share similar views. The bias might not be the result of any plan, it might be that all BBC news staffers have the best of intentions, but the end result often ends up one-sided.

Perhaps the BBC has a recruitment problem. By overwhelmingly choosing to advertise its jobs in the Guardian newspaper, it makes a statement about the sort of staff it is looking for. If you want to work at the BBC, you first need to go out and buy that newspaper. Once you get hired in a BBC newsroom, it requires a great deal of courage to go against the prevalent culture. It may be wise, if you want to get on in the Corporation, to keep your mouth shut.

We do not mind bias in newspapers because we have a choice about what to buy. We know that the Guardian's ethos and the Telegraph's are very different. But the BBC, which forces everyone with a TV to give it money, has a duty to be impartial. If it cannot do a better job at this, calls for removing the licence fee will continue to get stronger by the day.

The BBC and most politicians argue that the technical nature of television mitigates against programmes of high educational quality in a purely competitive market. They say that some kind of government intervention is necessary to ensure that public service broadcasting happens.

But the BBC is not the only way, and therefore not necessarily the best way to deliver such public service broadcasting. It acts both as commissioner and deliverer of public service broadcasting. There is no way of telling if what we see on our screen is truly in the public interest, short of trusting the BBC and its board of governors.

An alternative would be to have a separate budget allocated to public service programming, financed from the licence fee, so that the money raised from TV watchers would be ring-fenced to be spent on public service broadcasting.

Some broadcasters, like now, would be obliged to meet certain public service broadcasting responsibilities. These would then bid for licence fee funds to make programmes which met those responsibilities. This would introduce competition for licence fee payers’ money as the best guarantor of value for money.

With licence payers’ funds being available to a multiplicity of bidders, what role would remain for the BBC? The logic seems to point to full privatisation, but there may be other options. The BBC might become a private non-profit corporation like the National Trust, for example.

There are those who argue that only the BBC is capable of preserving and reflecting cherished high standards of public culture and ethos. But such things are not best served by a raising one broadcaster to church-like status. Instead, they are a product of our education and civilisation at its broadest, and are preserved by factors way beyond the confines of television.

Sir Paul Bryan, whose obituary is in today's Times, led a varied and distinguished life, serving his country in war, and rising from private to lieutenant-colonel. He was awarded the Military Cross and the Distinguished Service Order in World War II.

While in Parliament, he was the (Conservative) Opposition spokesman on the Post Office and Broadcasting. The party had made a loose commitment to ending the BBC's radio monopoly, following the rise of the offshore 'pirate' radio stations in the 1960s. Sir Paul pledged a Conservative Conference that the Tories would permit 100 commercial stations. His leader, Sir Edward Heath, was reportedly outraged that a vague promise had been bounced into a firm pledge, against his wishes.

Sir Paul became a hero to the free radio movement, the more so when the Conservatives were elected and delivered his pledge.

OFCOM, which regulates UK broadcasters excluding the BBC, has called for increased taxation to pay for a new public service broadcaster to compete with the BBC. It has suggested that this could be funded by an increase of £12 on the television licence (a tax on television use) or through other taxation.

In the world of hundreds of channels, including Sky News and ITV News, The History Channel, the Discovery Channel, and the Perfomance Channel (which even broadcasts opera), one has to wonder if we really need any more state broadcasters. Indeed, most of the time I watch a programme that could be deemed as "public service broadcasting" - like a documentary - I find that I'm watching it on a private channel.

If there is a case for subsidising public service broadcasting, the money would be more efficiently spent if it were done through an grant-making body. This would allocate grants on a programme-by-programme basis, rather than automatically going to a broadcaster.

The American bank robber, Willie Sutton, was asked why he persisted in robbing banks. "That's where the money is," he replied.

On Radio 4's You & Yours programme this Thursday, I'm going to suggest that Britain's museums suck up to politicians for the same reason - because that's where the money is. Indeed, members of the public can only be a nuisance to them, since the government has banned entry fees.

And so the museums come to reflect the values of their paymasters - elites who love big projects and big projects, preferably in London.

Where they've tried to spread the cash around, it's been disastrous: £11m of Lottery cash on a pop museum in Sheffield, another £9m on a visual arts centre in Cardiff - both forced to close within months.

We have too many marble palaces built on the sewer of public money - money that is forced out of us under pain of imprisonment. Isn't it a much more wholesome idea to make museums depend on access charges and voluntary donations? They they would have to engage with their real customers, and be businesslike about it.

Let's rid museum boards of the grandees who think that having to earn money from the public somehow taints their purity. As every business knows, the only way to survive and grow is to give your customers such a good experience that they come back for more. Don't we want our museums to be like that?

Earlier this year, the UK government published proposals on setting up a new law on the Marine Historic Environment. True, the present law is a mess. Salvage allows anyone to break off bits of an unknown wreck and then claim the whole wreck: hardly conducive to protecting historic sites. Against that there is a Protection of Wrecks Act, another on military remains, not to mention the various powers of English Heritage.

But the government's proposals are no less confused. It shows no way of defusing this tension. At one point they call for less restrictions on diving ('access' is the buzz-word), at another they call for site designation and reporting rules that would probably deter all but the most dedicated recreational divers.

English Heritage would no doubt love to have a taxpayer-funded team of expert archaeologist-divers and drive 'amateur' recreational divers off the sites. But let's remember that 95% of the historic wrecks that have been found were discovered by those same recreational divers. And the seabed is always moving and scattering archaeological remains. By the time officialdom has donned its snorkel, the evidence would probably be lost. Sorry, but this is another case where the amateurs - ordinary people with a real enthusiasm for what they do - are better than distant, tax-funded 'experts'.

In an attempt not to make any child feel like a failure, proponents of progressive education attacked competitive sports. Their ideas are more than adequately described by this quotation from Lewis Carrol's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland:

There was no 'One, two, three, and away,' but they began running when they liked, and left off when they liked, so that it was not easy to know when the race was over. However, when they had been running half an hour or so, and were quite dry again, the Dodo suddenly called out 'The race is over!' and they all crowded round it, panting, and asking, 'But who has won?'

This question the Dodo could not answer without a great deal of thought, and it sat for a long time with one finger pressed upon its forehead (the position in which you usually see Shakespeare, in the pictures of him), while the rest waited in silence. At last the Dodo said, 'EVERYBODY has won, and all must have prizes.'

Fortunately, it is reported that competitive sports are now going to be encouraged within state schools.

The increase in competitive sports will not only promote the desire to win and relegate the term 'second' into being a fancy word for 'loser' but will also promote a healthier lifestyle, hopefully reducing childhood obesity.

In addition if we do end up hosting the 2012 Olympics we may have encouraged talented young athletes into competing rather than just taking part.

The Times recently published an article in which it claims that:

Since the abolition of 192 services almost a year ago, calls to directory inquiries have fallen by three million a week and confusion about the different prices of the 118 numbers has worsened.

The article also suggests that many people are now paying more for directory inquiries than with the old 192. In time prices will likely decrease, but what has gone wrong in the short term?

The regulator, OFTEL, attempted to increase competition in directory inquiries by a major shake-up. When the telecoms sector was more generally liberalized in the 1980s, competition was introduced in a more evolutionary way. Customers who did nothing remained with British Telecom (BT). Cable and Wireless's Mercury subsidiary was granted a license to compete with BT, and gradually new companies joined the market. BT, keen to keep its customers, reduced prices steadily over the following two decades. Thus, both customers who changed supplier, and also those who did not, benefited from competition.

Had 192 been allowed to continue, consumers would have been able stick with the service they knew and trusted, only switching to an alternative company if they understood it served a better price or service. It would have led to lower prices from the start and made more sense to consumers. Of course, leaving 192 in place would have given BT the benefit of inertia, but some inertia here might have helped directory inquiry competition work better.

This year marks many important anniversaries. One of them is the end of the BBC radio monopoly in 1964, forty years ago. The BBC had offered a diet of such treats as Music While You Work. It rarely allowed youngsters to listen to pop music, partly because it loftily disapproved, and partly because it was under the thumb of the musicians' union, which allowed only a tiny amount of 'needle time,' and insisted on music mostly from live (non-famous) musicians.

The BBC boasted of the popularity of its Sunday Family Favourites programme, its weekly concession to pop records. Meanwhile teenagers turned in desperation to Radio Luxembourg, which broadcast pop from Europe with variable reception.

Then came Ronan O'Rahilly (pictured). He wanted to promote new pop talent, but this was impossible on the BBC, and Luxembourg was block-booked by record labels to promote established artists. O'Rahilly's response was to start his own radio station, broadcasting from a ship moored outside UK territorial waters and UK jurisdiction. It was an early example of off-shoring. Forty years ago Radio Caroline began to broadcast a lively mixture of pop and DJ chatter.

It proved so popular that within a year it had been joined by several other 'pirate stations,' as they came to be affectionately called. The BBC lost its monopoly and its audience. The Labour government, with the same sensitivity as it now shows to popular liberties, brought in a law to outlaw any support, supply or advertising on the new stations. The others closed down as the act became law, but Caroline famously stayed on the air illegally. O'Rahilly, having started it, wanted to finish it.

In the 1970 election it broadcast loudly against the government, and contributed to a shock defeat for the government. The swing to the Tories was noticeably higher in the districts within range of Caroline. The Tories had opted to let youngsters have their way, and were pledged to legalize commercial radio stations to play pop music. It happened, the BBC monopoly was broken, and the sound of UK radio changed forever.

It took courage by Ronan O'Rahilly, and by his top DJs Johnnie Walker and Robbie Dale, among others. They made a difference, and it is worth remembering with some affection, forty years on, the role that Radio Caroline played.

Adam Smith Institute author Keith Boyfield says in the Independent today that there is only one winner in the British government's proposed sale of The Tote - and it's not the British taxpayer.

The Tote (real name: the Horserace Totalisator Board) was set up by Parliament in 1929. It has become a huge near-monopoly bookmaker, with a turnover of £1,470m and 457 betting shops in prime locations. A nice asset that Gordon Brown could sell: after all, why should the state be a bookie?

But the racing lobby would like to restrict the number of potential buyers to one: a racing trust. And they would like that trust to have a seven-year monopoly on it too.

Hmmm. With just one runner in the frame, the Treasury might be lucky to get £150m for the Tote - against an estimated open-market value of £500m. 'But it will be good for racing,' we are told.

Forgive me for asking: why should taxpayers support racing? Racecourses are a business like any other. Horse owners tend to be very rich people. The sector is awash with allegations of race-fixing. Why should such a sector deserve public money and a seven-year monopoly?

There's a Peter Bagge cartoorn in the new (August) issue of Reason (not online yet) about US art museums. Just like the BBC, they make the "half the price of a cup of coffee"-type arguments, which the cartoon calls "tired" and "blithely ignoring the fact that no one ever went to jail for refusing to buy a cup of coffee."

The BBC reckons it offers excellent value, costing half the price of a quality newspaper. Shouldn't it therefore have the courage of its convictions and welcome the end of its tax on TV use?

I'm typing this from a hotel room in Las Vegas. Like all cities, Vegas has its share of social problems. But there's one it avoids: bar throw-out times. The usual 11pm closing time in England is often unpleasant. People rush their drinking to get an extra pint or two before closing - getting much drunker than if they took things more slowly. They then get put out on the street simultaneously, which leads to brawls and arguments. In Vegas, thanks to 24-hour licensing that doesn't happen. I can walk down The Strip in Vegas late at night, surrounded by bars and casinos, and feel a fair deal safer than in central London.

Entrepreneur and impresario Raymond Gubbay supposedly has the luvvies choking on their Sancerre. The best seats in his new Savoy Opera cost fifty pounds while similar seats at the Royal Opera cost four times more (there, a ticket in the stalls costs 150 pounds to you and 50 more in taxpayer subsidies). Charging just a quarter of the full Covent Garden cost, Mr Gubbay pays his cast and orchestra, pays theatre rent to the Savoy, and all his other costs, and still makes a little something for his considerable risk and effort. Luvvies are upset because he shatters their old lie that opera cannot survive without taxpayer subsidy.

And what's it like? Accessible (it's in English) and terrific entertainment. In his ongoing Barber of Seville at least two voices are of very high quality and the rest are plenty good enough. And director Aletta Collins has done an international caliber job staging Rossini's potentially complex tale, enhanced by brilliant comic turns that you'd never see in stuffy old Covent Garden. The couple next to me nearly needed oxygen.

It really is The People's Opera. If you think that opera is all egghead music sung by fat ladies in tin brassieres, Mr Gubbay's production shows why it is so madly popular in so many countries among people of all varieties. It doesn't draw blood from taxpayers, and it won't bust your bank account to give it a try.

Popular live sports and music events are regularly sold out leaving a great legion of fans disappointed. Ticket touts (scalpers) have realised this niche market and they benefit both the supply and demand side of the transaction.

Suppliers do not want to bear excess risk and do not want to set a price so high that it discourages loyal fans. The guaranteed sale to block-bookers such as touts helps manage their risk.

Buyers from touts gain, too. Instead of taking their chances and losing out in the usual lottery allocation or waiting lines, they simply pay extra to get the tickets. The benefit of watching their favourite band or sports stars is greater to them than the extra cost. People who are time-poor would rather pay others such as touts to do the queueing.

Why then are touts viewed so badly? Glastonbury music festival officials are trying to restrict vastly inflated bidding prices for tickets on eBay this year by printing names on tickets thus preventing touts selling them on. This just makes it harder for determined fans to get tickets.

The only cases where touts could cause a problem is when a segregated crowd is needed to stop clashes between fans, or to stop known troublemakers from entering the venue. These are special cases which should be dealt with separately, and the authorities should be acting against the trouble-makers rather than the touts.

Ticket touts are not harmful and wicked. They help to allocate a restricted supply to those who value it most.

Andy Duncan points to how Blue Peter, a popular children's programme, promotes socialism. Biased BBC talks about anti-market bias on Newsround, the news programme for children.

BBC News has been known to tell free-marketeers that they have to be introduced as "right-wing" as their viewers would not understand the term "free-market". Any complaint about not putting forward the free-market view on children's television is even more likely to encounter the "too complex for our viewers" line.

Yet surely the whole purpose of factual children's programmes is to bring complex issues to a young audence. If they only present the socialist side of each issue to their audience, they are failing do anything useful - except indoctrinate. The BBC would be better to save the cash and just broadcast cartoons.

There's been lots of attention this week on the BBC. I can't help but think that if the controversy had instead been around ITV News or Sky News, there would have been a lot less fuss. It is precisely because of the BBC's privileged position that we all care. The case for BBC privatization was strong even before recent events. Now, thanks to Andrew Gilligan et al, that outcome looks rather likely.

Stephen Carter, DG of Britain's new media regulator Ofcom, came to an ASI Power Lunch recently. According to an excellent article by Stephen Glover in the Spectator this week, he's paid £250k a year, so I guess we had about 500 quid's worth of his time.

Not much, you might say, for someone who controls the media of an entire nation. But do we need the expensive Mr Carter at all?

Where there is no real competition, I can see the case for having a regulator. In TV and Radio, for example, where market entry is restricted by the need to get a government licence. (Better, of course, not to have a government licensing system in the first place.)

But printed media, newspapers and magazines, are fully open to competition. If you or I want to start one tomorrow, we could. And yet, says Glover, Ofcom proposes that when newspapers want to merge:

the regulator will require detailed information about 'column inches dedicated to advertising, regional/local stories, sport, human interest stories, features, etc.'. It will want to know about 'the current level of contact' between a proprietor and his editor and other senior members of staff, and 'the likely level of involvement of proprietors in editorial decisions'.

Glover concludes that we are not far from state control of our newspapers. Apart from the political concerns about that, if he's right it will mean our papers become just as lifeless and politically correct as the bureaucrats have forced our broadcast channels to become. Why do we wish these empire-building quangos on ourselves?

George Orwell's Newspeak sought to change the language to prevent people even thinking any thoughts the party disapproved of. A speaker on BBC Radio 4 said that political correctness, by making people talk differently, forces them to think differently. She approved.

Political correctness counts on good manners. We do not like to offend. If people object to some words, we switch to others. Many terms of racial description were originally descriptive, not intended as insults. They were dropped from polite speech, however, because they were regarded as such.

I myself use 'they' to mean either he or she. It makes language more awkward, but it no longer leaves out half the human race. Unfortunately some people trade on our good manners. Persistent sales representatives rely on people being too polite to silence them. Similarly, many advocates of PC rely on our reluctance to offend.

At student conferences speakers were booed for talking of lame excuses, blind to the problem, or deaf to the arguments. This language was alleged to offend disabled people. If it were only about language we might grudgingly acquiesce, making jokes about Snow White and her Seven Vertically Challenged Companions. But it is not just about language. It goes with attitudes which attempt to make outcasts of those whose thoughts and habits are currently unfashionable.

This includes smokers, drinkers, and those who eat hamburgers, drive cars, and use disposable nappies, as well as those who use unreformed language. Incessant propaganda tells us that these anti-social types are causing disease, violence, death, and ruining the planet. In fact, these people are like us. They are friends who enjoy a cigarette, or a drink. They find fast cars as convenient as fast foods, and they hate washing nappies.

PC is preaching intolerance. It tells us to castigate those whose lifestyle choices we do not share. If we do not smoke, drink or hunt we have to be anti-smoker, anti-drinker, anti-hunter. The harm of the PC attitude is not that it tries to make us talk differently but that it tries to destroy the easy-going glue of tolerance which holds a civilised society together. It seeks to turn us against each other, and to turn intolerance into a virtue.

From The Sun newspaper:

Barmy BBC bosses have banned reporters from calling tyrant Saddam Hussein a former dictator. Instead, staff must refer to the barbaric mass murderer as "the deposed former President". The astonishing edict was seized on by MPs last night as more proof of a Left-wing bias inside the BBC against the Iraqi war... A spokeswoman said: "This was reiterating existing guidelines to remind BBC News Online journalists of the need to use neutral language."

But as Au Currant points out, Augusto Pinochet is described as a "former dictator" over 500 times on the BBC website. Why the double standard?

A couple of months ago I blagged my way into a London party for Third Way movers and shakers. In the middle of the party, there was a speech by a guest speaker who attacked the internet: "The problem with the internet is that it's all about content. Content should be dead: what matters is contact." He then said that we were all selfish and spend too much time accessing Amazon and not enough time doing e-democracy.

His talk, to me, brought together exactly what the Third Way stands for: style over substance with added contradiction. I enjoy meeting Third Way types, but I don't always understand what they are talking about. They have terms like "regulating self-regulation", "outboard brain", "network entropy", and "new economics". Normally the jargon they use simply means more government controls. But why don't they just say that? At least with traditional socialists it was easy to understand what they were arguing for.

Stephen Pollard has written a scathing article on the BBC. He does not think it a good use of taxpayers' money that our main state broadcaster is giving £2m to its journalists to compensate them now that it is banning them from writing in newspapers.

Of course it is a waste of taxpayers' money. But I wonder if it really makes sense to stop BBC journalists from writing. The BBC thinks (perhaps correctly) that its journalists are causing it embarrassment. Viewers may indeed have less faith in the BBC after reading Andrew Gilligan's articles. But, from a public service point of view, isn't it good that we, the taxpayers, know the prejudices of the reporters?

Journalists cannot be expected to provide news from an Archimedean point, as though they are looking down from a distant vantage point with no initial views of their own. Not everyone employed at the BBC is a left-winger. Nor, as often claimed, is the BBC "institutionally biased" (as only individuals can be biased). But if the BBC wants to be seen as balanced, maybe BBC News should employ more journalists on the right of the political spectrum?

There is of course a more important issue: why in a multi-channel world is the BBC still paid for out of taxation?

All my family love rugby (except me), so I've been forced to sit through umpteen national anthems. Scotland now has its own, the maudlin 'Flower of Scotland', enabling Scots to weep into their beer as they recall the (brief) supremacy they once held over the English 700 years ago.

But forlorn England still has to use the UK one, God Save the Queen.

Isn't it time that England had its own national anthem? Ideally something that is as anti-Scottish as Flower of Scotland is anti-English, with a tune as stirring as the Marseillaise? Any suggestions for how the first verse should look?

Somehow I managed to escape school without reading Lord of the Flies. I've just watched the 1963 film version, which I think is great. The hero of the story, Ralph, gets voted as leader of a group of children who are deserted on an island. He stands for decency, friendship, and loyalty. He's one of the people in this world who will talk to anyone, the sort who at parties aren't constantly looking around the room trying to find someone more important to speak to. A thoroughly decent chap. But his downside is that he is too authoritarian. His emphasis on rules stands in the way of the children having fun. Ralph seems to be an authoritarian Tory.

Most of the children are lured by Jack, who says "Bollocks to the rules!" and promises them utopia for all by joining his 'tribe'. But Jack's utopia soon becomes much more oppressive than Ralph's Toryism. Instead of being a more egalitarian, less top-down society, it becomes a dictatorship, with children being beaten, and people staying with Jack out of fear. It quickly turns murderous. Jack, for all his progressive-sounding speech, is even more authoritarian than Ralph.

If both models - Ralph's and Jack's - are flawed, is there a better way? Well, yes. It is a free society. Free societies let individuals make choices about their lives. The power of politicians to tell people what to do is limited (either by constitution, or by precedent and culture). But free societies rely on impartial institutions like the police and the legal system to protect the rights of individuals. Only a combination of freedom and the rule of law provide a truly progressive society.

When I learned French as a schoolboy I was struck by the way they didn't pronounce the consonants. A word such as aiment is pronounced merely as 'em.' Ils jouaient (they played) is pronounced 'eel zhew-eh.' (Connoisseurs might note all of the 5 vowels next to each other. Can anyone name an English word in which this happens?)

Naturally we all felt slightly superior to the French who wasted all of those consonants and quite a lot of vowels. Not any more. As I listen to the English language as spoken in England, still perhaps the world's third source of English after America and India, I notice how like French it is becoming. I don't mean its incorporation of words such as 'souvenir,' which is English for le keepsake. I refer to its pronunciation.

The various class and regional accents have been bowled over like ninepins (US readers should note these are like ten pins). The conqueror has been Estuary English, in which consonants are dropped to affect ordinary parlance, and to avoid 'talking posh.' One of its characteristics is the use of the glottal stop to elide consonants. It becomes 'glo'al' stop in Estuary English. Butter becomes 'ba'a,' and so on.

People from privileged backgrounds and expensive schools affect Estuary English to avoid standing out. Indeed, where once people took speech classes to make them sound more refined and educated, now they attend them to dumb down their speech.

I suppose it is part of England becoming a society where class and background matter less than ever before. With such a cultural melting pot, I suppose it is an advantage to have a unifying language which everyone can learn. Especially since English is now the world's lingua franca. And even if it does sound awfully French with its willful disregard for so many letters, it does have the advantage of being incomprehensible to foreigners, including the French.

Watching Disney's latest animated blockbuster, Finding Nemo, I was struck by the subtext of the film. On the face of it, the film seems to be a typically innocent Disney adventure, in this case featuring the trials of a neurotic clownfish as he combs the oceans looking for his lost son. However, beneath this façade lurks a distinctly political agenda.

The leading fish, for example, is a single parent father, and his son is disabled with a stunted fin. A young seahorse has an intolerance to water. At the coral reef playground, all the anxious parents are male, with no women in sight. The male turtles are responsible for childcare. Even the sharks are struggling to become vegetarian.

Should we be worried by this obvious attempt by the American entertainment industry to brainwash children into believing this kind of post-modern disingenuousness? Are children being conditioned at an early age by the media to view political correctness as an unassailable secular truth? Are we setting them up for a fall in later life?

I don't think we should be too alarmed. In the playground, the highs and lows of adult life are played out in microcosm. Children are hard-wired to be competitive. They are sometimes nasty, but they learn human interaction, awareness and tolerance. This is all perfectly natural, and part of the process of growing up. It's going to take a hell of a lot more films about fish being nice to each other to change this biological fact.

Milton Friedman said that the government solution to a problem is usually worse than the problem. It's certainly true in the area of unsolicited e-mail. There are two government approaches being advocated, neither of which will work.

The better of the two approaches is to make spam-sending illegal, and make it easier to sue spammers. The European Union has tried to do this with a directive that comes into effect this month. But it is problematic because, as Spiked has pointed out, it defines spam so broadly that some legitimate e-mail is technically illegal. The EU says that common sense will prevail in how it will be enforced. However, it is unlikely that the law will make much difference to the amount of spam received by people anyway as it only applies to senders in the EU.

The second approach is to have a tax, or some form of fee, for every e-mail sent. Quite correctly, those who advocate this recognise that if spammers had to pay even a few pence for every e-mail, they'd soon give up. The problem is that spammers would never have to pay. Spammers mainly rely on hijacking other people's servers and increasingly using computer viruses. The victims would be the people paying - both those whose servers get abused, and the end user who now has to pay per e-mail. I'd prefer to receive spam than pay for each e-mail I send. Besides, it wouldn't work unless it were implemented globally, and that just isn't going to happen.

Essentially, government solutions to spam either don't work, or make things worse. So what do we do? Well, the market is already making huge steps to solve the problem. I used to get 40 spams a day. Now I get five a week. My e-mail provider runs SpamAssassin, a very good filter program, on its servers. And filtering technology, along with other anti-spam technologies, is getting better. Technology, not the government, is the answer.

I can't comment on the case of Margaret MacDonald, on trial in France accused of running a network of 500 call-girls. But in a country where - thanks to press censorship - half the politicians (and no doubt half the judges) are bonking mistresses, prostitutes or both, it seems pretty odd.

What harm does high-class prostitution do anyway? Willing, wealthy buyers; willing, streetwise sellers; good pay rates... Where are the losers? Maybe a few femi-nazis who say it demeans women (or bear a grudge that this market would never clear their particular shelves anyway).

The problem is at the other end. Where girls from poor countries are lured to rich ones, and effectively imprisoned in brothels either because they're hooked on drugs or they know that they're working illegally and fear imprisonment or deportation.

And again, the only answer to that is legalization. Sure, we might not like all the consequences: more women in prostitution, more in-your-face brothels and advertisements, more widespread health risks. But in a legal market you can tackle stuff like that. And at least violent thugs would no longer be able to prey on the fears of young girls.

I attended a Spiked debate last night on blogs. An issue brought up by James Crabtree of the Work Foundation was whether adding millions of new blogs to the current "blogosphere" would have a positive or negative effect. My take on this is that increasing the number of blogs will be good. But not all current bloggers will like it.

It does not matter if there are 40,000,000 poorly-written blogs. The blogosphere is good at filtering content, and will cope with this. There are already hundreds of thousands of blogs which are largely ignored. In the future, for a blog to get linked to by the biggest read blogs, a higher standard of content and design will be required. This is because there will be more material to play with.

Some bloggers will feel that the blogosphere is not as good as it used to be before the masses joined it. They will complain that there is too much power held by the top blogs like InstaPundit and Samizdata. Of course, the only power they have is that they consistently provide what their readers want.

Nevertheless, this is all good for readers of blogs - because the quality of items they are pointed at will go up. Many have praised blogs as a medium because there are virtually no barriers to entry. That is true, but you still have to have a good product.