The UNreal world of the BBC

Watching the "where are they now" show confirms that Dragon's Den provides some pretty outrageous promotion for those who appear on the show. TMP remembers the good old days of BBC propriety, when Blue Peter religiously used to cover the name of "Ever Ready" on its distinct blue batteries, using black tape.

It's not as if Peter "as seen on TV" Jones, Theo Profiterole & Co need any freebies - especially as their victims get quite thoroughly mugged for equity in a manner that borders on disgraceful, where they are blatantly using their benefits of celebrity – provided by the BBC licence payer – to leverage the poor mugs off their own businesses. With gullible souls like this eagerly turning up to be brutally insulted and financially raped on TV, it's a mystery how any of these ideas ever make any money.

The BBC has a long history of interfering with and distorting commercial markets since the BBC Acorn micro started out doing some good, but quickly became a terrible distraction that arguably set UK education back a generation, when the rest of the world was getting on with the more versatile and vastly more relevant IBM PC.

TMP respectfully suggests that part of the work of reforming the BBC might include asking the Dragons to hand back half the equity they have stolen, by exploiting the BBC and our licence fees? Better still, let's adopt an interactive format and more liquid market where the entire audience can choose to participate and "buy shares" in the ideas being paraded.

However "good" the TV, the idea that an entrepreneur is required to spill the beans on their business idea in a way that alerts competition must be fundamentally wrong.

And then however attractive the proposition, the Dragons nearly always end up saying they'll invest only if it's a guaranteed monopoly with patents to squash any of the competition (that has just been woken up) - and if the owner hands over half the business in return for a ride with the licence-payer funded publicity machine.

Have our say, not yours...

The BBC pretends that its "have your say" feedback section on its news website allows the public (anywhere, not just the license payers) to post their comments on subjects carefully chosen and spun by BBC staff. As you would expect, the process ouses political correctness from every oleaginous pore.

Most discussions are "moderated" according to set of (pretty obvious) published rules; but this is not actually what goes on. However, most thinking people are insulted when the BBC calls what they do "moderation" - it's much more than that.

It's a combination of blatant censorship based on their own internal agendas (not published) and the BBC's tireless efforts at "social engineering".

The most potent weapon the "moderators" possess is simply to delay releasing postings. The posting is time stamped when it was originally submitted. So it does not go to the "top" of the list when released, but could appear some 50 or more screens deep in the discussion, and is thus effectively buried from view. The BBC knows very well how to manipulate reactions by burying those views that do not perfectly reflect their own way down in the noise.

Frankly, this is an effective way of burying dissent that would have be approved by Goebbles or any other totalitarian ministry of misinformation.

It's such a pity - the BBC used to be a truly great institution and organisation until about 15 years ago. What on earth happened? No wonder so much of the press now seems out to see the BBC emaciated and not just "reformed"; but with insulting hypocrisy at every level from functionary to top talent, the BBC has been the primary instigator of its own eventual demise.

Baron von Mandelstein

The BBC's gruesome twosome of Peston and Robinson were positively bursting with glee this morning when breaking the news that George Osborne had been shopped by his alleged "friend" the hedge fund operator and banking dynasty scion, Nat Rothschild, over the matter of not managing to get a party donation from the richest bloke in Russia whom he bumped into on Corfu, apparently at Rothchild's invitation.

Also present at the scene of this private event was the lovely Baron Von Mandelstein, who according to gorgeous George was sharing some home truths about Gordon Brown, some weeks before Broon let him in from the cold.

So how come The Red Baron was rehabilitated and offered a peerage and a cabinet seat by the very same Gordon Brown to the amazement of just about anyone with a pulse? Surely not because he suggested he might be able to launch an Exocet at the Tory number two, with the assistance of his excitable chums at the BBC? Of course not. Perish the thought.

The Daily Mail reports that Rothchild, a reformed wild child, once pushed a portable toilet down a steep hill - with a friend still inside! It seems he is now trying to metaphorically do the same again; but why would Rothschild want to be part of this circus - what is in it for him? And how come controversy always seems to stick to the Red Baron like the Brown stuff to an ermine cloak?