Hmm, looks like she\’s making that old mistake again:
The dysfunctional dominance of four newspaper groups, with four fanatical Europe-hating owners, will try to force a referendum.
Do media outlets create the opinions of their consumers or do they chase them? Is the Mail\’s immigrant lsbians building mosques will damage house prices something that Paul Dacre forces down everyone\’s throat or is he a masterly reader of the prejudices of Middle England (sad though it may be to think that that actually is hat motivates Middle England)?
As has been pointed out here many times before, the academic research seems to indicate the latter. Just as it is with almost all businesses: you find out what people want and then go and make it for them rather than make what you want and then force it people.
Only Margaret Thatcher, by demanding an exemption, allowed him to launch Sky on almost entirely US programming – against EU rules.
So if we had adhered to the EU rules there would be no Sky? Do we think that Sky is a positive or negative upon life? And thus whether those EY rules are a positive of a negative? Football would be wildly different if Sky did not exist, vastly poorer, for example. Consumer choice if wildly up as well: these are normally thought of as positives, aren\’t they?
We would join Switzerland and Norway on the outside, subject to EU laws on the single market but unable to influence them. That, of course, is what the Euro-crazies want.
Yup, exactly. That is indeed the minimum of what we want. Now the question becomes, why would that be a bad situation to be in? Can anyone provide rational arguments to bolster the view that this would be worse than the current situation? We\’d be free of CAP, of the CFP, of all of the federalising motions, we would have freedom of movement of capital, goods and labour across the marketplace: exactly what we\’ve always wanted anyway.
If desiring that makes me a Euro-crazy then please, sign me up.
Been thinking about the whole media/public opinion thing. I’m still not convinced by the studies I’ve read on this. I agree that the “chasing demand” conclusion is partly true but it seems to be a simplification of the issue.
With the Daily Mail specifically, Dacre may be a master reader of the prejudices of Middle England but he’s also perpetuating and amplifying those sad prejudices with hysterical reporting and downright untruths. Whether the chicken or egg came first, the Mail’s output reinforces a particular view of the world. Genuine attempts at honest informed political discourse are more difficult because of this.
This, it seems to me, is a problem with the free market for media. Erroneous beliefs will tend to be pandered too rather than challenged. No idea what to do about that (I certainly don’t want to abolish it) but it is one of the reasons why I believe the BBC is a thoroughly good thing.
Interesting stuff here! The premise behind the argument that there should not be a referendum on the EU and that media should be state controlled is that the people are much to stupid to make important decisions for themselves and, therefore, need the all-knowing government to do it for them.
As luck would have it, I just got off the phone with an agency in Brussels and found out that, while the EU requires manufacturers at great expense to produce target language manuals for each country, they do not even require this of themselves. They do not print the regulations I am concerned with in Italian, for example. Furthermore, these new regulations protect against a danger that never takes place and
a) were developed in Germany and amount to thinly veiled protectionism for a particular German company
b) a copy of the regulations in English cost 50 Euros more than the German copy.
As far as the media is concerned, I have little experience with the BBC but State television in Germany is in such a state that any half smart person could gather five friends and a videocam, get rip-roaring drunk, and still produce better progamming than one sees here. (or doesn’t see as the case may be)
As I see it the man in the street is often not far from the truth.
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Oh dear, would it not be absolutely terrible to be like Switzerland (or Norway, for that matter, which controls its fish and will go on controlling its oil). Actually, Switzerland is not even in the European Economic Area and, therefore, not being able to control Single Market rules is as important as not being able to control US rules. You sell to the people. Oh and the EU can huff and it can puff but it can do nothing about tax competition in Switzerland. A truly desperate situation.