On Thursday we had a statement in the House of Lords about the News Corporation and BSkyB merger. The debate reminded me of Denis Healy’s advice to stop digging when you are in a hole. The Minister explained all the rules that would ensure that BSkyB would remain financially and editorially independent. Yet each questioner asserted that News Corporation had a history of getting round the rules so the Minister responded by speaking of yet more rules.
What was really being discussed is that it is the culture of News Corporation to which the questioners objected and the Minister asserting that tight rules would either change or control this.
Is this true?
The financial services sector are very closely controlled and regulated, but still cause problems. The misselling of payment insurance is only the latest example. Many agree that most of our present problems are a result of too light regulation in the banking sector. Red tape regulation is a constant source of complaint. Even when it is directed towards raising standards and fairness for the consumer.
What all this is trying to do is affect the culture and behaviour of businesses to encourage them to be “a good company”. Is setting rules really the way to do this? Perhaps it is more effective to give incentives to serve consumers rather than set the rules for the way in which they should be served. The European Commission is starting to say what is a good company. Fairness in the supply chain is obviously part of this. The way a company treats customers is another where the concept of stewardship is taking told. Indeed Tomorrow’s Company have recently published a stewardship manefesto and encouraging that manifesto may now be a more effective way of encouraging businesses to be “a good company” rather than more rules and regulations.
Meanwhile, you look the other way when it comes to the government finances.
What about a bit of auditing there?
1,050 billion of borrowing. (on the books)
1,300 billion owed to civil servants (all off the books).
The later is contractual, and if you were a private company, you would be jailed for fraud.
So don’t lecture other people on rules, when you can’t regulate what the commons does, but you take the money for that ‘service.
The second point.
Since the Lords were off troughing on expenses, and then getting the person responsible for dishing the money out to investigate themselves, so as not to rock the boat, you’ve lost any moral authority to say anything about any breaches in financial rules.
Incorporate the tribes. Privatise an indirectly elected house!
The still-deeper-underlying big-cause of all Britain’s, and The English-dominated World’s, economic, financial, military, human-development, and health-building disasters, failures and shortcomings,
is neither too much nor too little regulation;
it is plainly and simply Wrong Economic. Governance, Constitutional, Legislative, and Ecological formulation and equatiuon-balancing.
in every Sector of the English-Speaking Global-Economy and Civilisation, sustain-worthiness and lifeplace personal efficiency continue to be avoided, as being too embarassing and too-peacefully-revolutionarily-difficult.
The English Language being the international ‘tool’ for both Economics and Governance, should be a worldwide exemplary & followable-leader, upwards and onwards instead of (as it increasingly is turning out to be) downwards and “out-for-the-count”-wards (and all of our ‘leaders’ have been ignoring Healy’s ‘stop digging the rut deeper’).
There is a solidly-protected and deeply-constituted and legislated tangled-web of megalo-maniacal-mind-malfunctioning, throughout the trillionaire-billionaire-millionaire, the overpaid/undercapable Governance & Civil-Service, and the PhD-Land & Academic- classes and closed-communities, whose super-privilieged members have long, oh so very long, been banking upon there being up to 2012 at least one-and-a-half Earths-worth of renewable and non-renewable resources available and consumable/destructible, and by 2050 three-Earths-worth of such resources.
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I have long avoided anything to do with the Murdochs, and News Corp; so now I shall be by-passing his BSkyB, as well as his Fox TV news:
which will be saving both my time and my truth-&-honest-communication filtering energies.
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Yes, I shall be avoiding the Murdoch press in view of the recent revelations. If they take control of Sky I am sure that their culture will move to Sky News inspite of all the rules.
I think Lord Haskel that any company has to address innovation by allowing an open rather than a closed culture to exist if sales are to be sustainable. In manufacturing the concept of a ‘shadow factory’ is one where manager’s doors are always closed: employee or customer innovation has no way of improving business productivity or culture.
The problem with the Commons being essentially a house of bureaucrats is that they have no real experience of the needs of business and always assume a ‘closed door’ culture is at work. Legislation is easy, you pass a law or create a regulation; what is far more difficult is to understand the internal culture of a company and I’m afraid it is the board room and unions between them that create these difficulties.
Ref: Corporate Open Innovation: Hype versus Reality
http://www.nesta.org.uk/publications/guest_articles/assets/features/corporate_open_innovation_hype_versus_reality
Thanks for the link – political management and business management are separate skills.
Lord Haskel,
If you haven’t read Joel Bakan’s masterpiece ‘The Corporation’ I would urge you to go out and buy the book immediately. You will never look at the world of business, banking, oil and multi-national business the same way ever again.
Thanks – I’ll have a look at the book.
This book is also a movie.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Y9YZxA5uM8
http://www.thecorporation.com/index.cfm?page_id=47
According to Wikipedia Murdoch will own every part of SKY;
therefore he’ll own not only all the News and Documentary channels, but the Sports, Movies, Music; and also that parasitic, evil-towering, anti-adult-educational “cancer”, of 69-odd “porn” channels from 900 upwards.
Since SKY runs a wide range of Programme-Providers, all of the BBC and ITV channels surely will also fall under Murdoch’s control, pressures, dictates and censorships ?
This newest Murdoch private-possession will bring only further insidiously-monopolistic and directively-stipulative control of not only the Public Mind, but of the Nation’s Moral-fibre, Vision, Memory, Intelligence and Intellect, and thereby of its Health and of its ultimate-survival.
Our only hope appears to be a Benevolent-ET Mission with more Power and Common-Sense than this Murdoch-Dynasty.
Could the Lords Spiritual lead Prayers for such a Benevolent-ET to come to our aid ?
Where will be able to turn to get the Truth, the Whole Truth, and Nothing But The Truth ?
and similarly get “the Healthy, the Wholly-Healthy, and Nothing But The Healthy” ?
from Virgin ?
1637Th070711.JSDM.
We will still be able to rely on the BBC for the truth and independence. My concern is that even with all the rules that we are told will make Sky News independent, the Murdoch influence will still pervade.
@Lord Haskel:
Murdoch’s entire raison d’etre is to permeate and influence.
You can’t rely on them now for truth and independence.
Take Nick Robinson. He was categorically denying stories of Gordon Brown bullying staff, even though others were reporting on it.
Then when it all blows up, and the truth was outed, Nick Robinson goes and admits he was in the know, and didn’t report it. It was worse because he denied the reports in the first place.
Lets fund the BBC by subscription, not by force, and then people can pick and choose.
What you are referring to of course is a change in the culture at the BBC, House of Lords, financial sector and others. I think the stewardship code is a move in the right direction and is already gaining acceptance. It is too early to know how effective it will be in future.
Many agree that most of our present problems are a result of too light regulation in the banking sector.
Nope. The present problems are caused by other issues.
1. Failure. Not letting the banks go to the wall. If you do, then the others sit up and take notice.
2. If you bail a bank out, and you want your money back, you have to let it profiteer. The other banks go along with this, because they win too.
3. Regulation isn’t box ticking. Most banking regulation ends up with more people employed, more people means higher charges to customers. It means barriers to entry. If you’ve ever been involved in creating a new bank you would be horrified as to what is required, and in reality never looked at.
4. Regulation and the regulators. My father is pushing a case at the moment. FSA admit that Barclay’s bank have calculated AER wrongly. Basic maths. That means customers are being fiddled. FSA won’t do anything about it. They say its the FOS who has to deal with it. FOS says we’re not touching it.
The regulator has failed.
With no comeback on a regulator, and the banks not caring contrary to your statement about regulation, they just screw the customer, the customer is the one done. Meanwhile politicians blame others.
As for regulation, look at the Lords. Why haven’t you passed a law that makes changing legislation for cash a crime? You’ve had plenty of time to sort out the Truscot issue and get them removed completely. You haven’t.
The applicability to NoTW relates to the identical issue with the police. They have been accepting money for things they shouldn’t be doing. It’s called corruption. Will politicians be calling for the people at the top to go? Will they heck. A few at the bottom will be thrown as tokens to the sharks.
@Lord Blagger:
Yes, just the same way as now they are recalling ‘Cressida Dick’ to take up where she left off.
This woman, who couldn’t run a police chase without an innocent dead man on the floor with seven bullets in his head, rears her ugly mush for a second run.
Of course being a woman pushes her into top position for the politically correct brigade to continue with their lunatic experiment on equality issues.
Laws should make it illegal to hire anyone for politically correct expansion. It should be an offence to be found pushing unsuitable candidates for positions, in any sphere, they are not the best candidate for. Because, the end result of that absurd objective, is a third rate society unfit for purpose.
This Dick woman failed in her duty which ended in a dead man. To take her on again, as if nothing happened, is an insult to the entire country.
Or, was she used as a cover for someone else in a higher position, with the promise of, ‘we will see you alright when the furore calms down.’