22-01-2020, 17:20
^ Time and/or a high profile mistake (or two) will eventually do for Ofcom and their moralistic censorious attitude IMO. Like all juggernaut bodies that become too big for their boots I see them as eventually over reaching themselves and becoming an embarassment to some future government.
It might help if their errors lie in the over censoring of some mainstream programme but its more likely a form of breakup or enforced rebrand will come from leftfield (from our perspective) given Ofcom regulates on a multitude of areas.
There are two problems with ending Ofcom however... 1. TV regulation is always needed, so what rules do their successor's enact? (They may well simply adopt Ofcom's two tier approach - a system that keeps the babeshows very effectively held to a ridiculously high standard) and 2. Regulators take their tone from government policy... while government policy is often kneejerk and informed by the need to control (left and right of the political spectrum in this country may have their own reasonings but both are about control at the end of the day; neither have proven themselves libertarians for many a year now). We are in backlash period against personal freedoms atm that plays right into this aim. So, its actually the zeitgeist excuses for same that need to be seen for what they are... Ofcom is simply current weapon of choice.
What is actually required is for the powers that be to have no excuses left to weild. No wiggle room to argue for further controls.
Its important to note at this point that this zeitgeist is not actually public opinion, its an exaggeration of it, a hype, a calculated bastardisation of it proporgated by various organisations that benefit from the 'something must be done' reaction to various 'scandals'. Want a 'something' done as a government? Get together in a backroom with your covert third party organisation; suggest evidence is needed to reach an invitable conclusion; vola twisted survey (or broadly intrepreted one) is produced by third party to back preordained action.
Government has colluded with the (best intentioned but over reaching) NSPCC in this manner recently in order to bloster their push to internet censorship. Ofcom similiarly pervert their survey results all the time in order to lie about how cutting back on sex/nudity/etc on screen is a massive priority for the public. Actually their own numbers show the public (despite endless propaganda pushing the agenda) has many bigger fish to fry in terms of what they deem as requiring action. And Ofcom have to conflate many offense categories to get the relevant numbers as high as they do even then... But the presentation methods used for their summeries and judgements are key. They want to find justification in the numbers and so they do.
The polarising nature of the social media bubble plays into said aims of all these self perpetuating controlling bodies. Twitter in particular with its endless tirades of SJW's, drunk on meaningless little victories over this or that coroporation, fuels the convient idea that the wider public think along the same censorious lines as these identity politics obsessives. They do not. Anyone that looks to present twitter as the arbitor of public consciousness does so for a reason - again it is a perversion of the truth adopted to offer a required excuse.
There is no over arching conspiracy to all this. Just disparate groups that have learnt to work the system to achieve their own ends. The death of Ofcom is not actually a requirement in any turn around. What we need instead is for the public to get annoyed enough at their names being taken in vain. We need a backlash on the current judgemental backlash. We need Boris to be held to account on his recent statements over maintaining personal liberties. We need identity politics to be labelled for the dodgy belief system it is. We need the currently budding feeling of 'had enough of this shit' to spread and bear fruit in the right areas.
It seems to me the battle between personal liberty and authoritarianism is never really won or lost, it only ebbs and flows like the tides. Only public apathy tends to allow those in power the space to exert their egostical desire to leave their mark where none is actually required; that is the one true enabler to the forces we oppose. And that is what needs to change in order for the tide to turn once more.
It might help if their errors lie in the over censoring of some mainstream programme but its more likely a form of breakup or enforced rebrand will come from leftfield (from our perspective) given Ofcom regulates on a multitude of areas.
There are two problems with ending Ofcom however... 1. TV regulation is always needed, so what rules do their successor's enact? (They may well simply adopt Ofcom's two tier approach - a system that keeps the babeshows very effectively held to a ridiculously high standard) and 2. Regulators take their tone from government policy... while government policy is often kneejerk and informed by the need to control (left and right of the political spectrum in this country may have their own reasonings but both are about control at the end of the day; neither have proven themselves libertarians for many a year now). We are in backlash period against personal freedoms atm that plays right into this aim. So, its actually the zeitgeist excuses for same that need to be seen for what they are... Ofcom is simply current weapon of choice.
What is actually required is for the powers that be to have no excuses left to weild. No wiggle room to argue for further controls.
Its important to note at this point that this zeitgeist is not actually public opinion, its an exaggeration of it, a hype, a calculated bastardisation of it proporgated by various organisations that benefit from the 'something must be done' reaction to various 'scandals'. Want a 'something' done as a government? Get together in a backroom with your covert third party organisation; suggest evidence is needed to reach an invitable conclusion; vola twisted survey (or broadly intrepreted one) is produced by third party to back preordained action.
Government has colluded with the (best intentioned but over reaching) NSPCC in this manner recently in order to bloster their push to internet censorship. Ofcom similiarly pervert their survey results all the time in order to lie about how cutting back on sex/nudity/etc on screen is a massive priority for the public. Actually their own numbers show the public (despite endless propaganda pushing the agenda) has many bigger fish to fry in terms of what they deem as requiring action. And Ofcom have to conflate many offense categories to get the relevant numbers as high as they do even then... But the presentation methods used for their summeries and judgements are key. They want to find justification in the numbers and so they do.
The polarising nature of the social media bubble plays into said aims of all these self perpetuating controlling bodies. Twitter in particular with its endless tirades of SJW's, drunk on meaningless little victories over this or that coroporation, fuels the convient idea that the wider public think along the same censorious lines as these identity politics obsessives. They do not. Anyone that looks to present twitter as the arbitor of public consciousness does so for a reason - again it is a perversion of the truth adopted to offer a required excuse.
There is no over arching conspiracy to all this. Just disparate groups that have learnt to work the system to achieve their own ends. The death of Ofcom is not actually a requirement in any turn around. What we need instead is for the public to get annoyed enough at their names being taken in vain. We need a backlash on the current judgemental backlash. We need Boris to be held to account on his recent statements over maintaining personal liberties. We need identity politics to be labelled for the dodgy belief system it is. We need the currently budding feeling of 'had enough of this shit' to spread and bear fruit in the right areas.
It seems to me the battle between personal liberty and authoritarianism is never really won or lost, it only ebbs and flows like the tides. Only public apathy tends to allow those in power the space to exert their egostical desire to leave their mark where none is actually required; that is the one true enabler to the forces we oppose. And that is what needs to change in order for the tide to turn once more.
