The film "The Lives of Others" should be added to the list of books and films which bring to life what a disaster communism was. It is compelling and affecting. It is about a playwright and others involved in the theatre and literature in East Germany during the communist era. They are all under pressure to write and say things that support the regime. If they are disruptive, they risk being banned from the theatre. Their homes are bugged. They are followed. And, if they break the rules, they may be interrogated and imprisoned. The female lead, a famous actress, has to grant sexual favours to a government minister to be allowed to keep appearing on the stage. It is heart-breaking for her and her lover.

It is an excellent film and, being made relatively soon after the events it describes, it has an authentic feel. However it makes one realise how few such films have been made.

Apart from the world wars, the great historical theme of the 20th century was the worldwide competition between the ideas of capitalism and communism. Then, in a most dramatic fashion, communism in Europe suddenly collapsed.

Yet I know of few films about all this. I would be glad to hear of them.

More important, there are few films and only a limited number of books describing the economic failure of communism. I was, in a sense, fortunate to see the queues of people lining up for basic consumer goods in Moscow. I saw the absence of fresh fruit in Irkutsk. I went into a supermarket in Bucharest where the freezer shelves were almost empty and not refrigerated at all.

But anyone who did not visit, and all those who have grown up since then, must only be vaguely aware that communism was an economic disaster as well as a political one. There are relatively few films to fix this in the public mind for any length of time.

The relative paucity of media work on the disaster of communism is, I fear, a reflection of the fact that the media, in Britain at least, tends to be left-wing - and therefore not keen to expose the failure of the extreme form of their own beliefs.

"The Lives of Others" is about the persecution of people in the media. So it is by the media and about the media. It is as if the only way media people are capable of feeling and expressing outrage about communism is when the can see their own people affected. As for the the millions of peasants impoverished and starved, they are not considered important or relevant enough.

I don't intend to insult the makers of "The Lives of Others". It is a terrific film. I just wish that that film makers generally would do more about the wider picture.

Posted by James Bartholomew • Indexed in Media, including BBC bias

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"You have been respected as a Chancellor" said John Humphries when interviewing Gordon Brown this morning. He added, "I don't think many people would disagree about that." His tone was positively dismissive of the idea that anybody doubts that Gordon Brown has been an excellent Chancellor.

This is a simple case of BBC bias. There are indeed many people who do not respect Gordon Brown's record as a Chancellor. Indeed, when I have written critically about him in the past (use the search facility if you like), the comments I have received have been in the nature of "And here's something else he did wrong..."

Humphries is, of course, a superb interviewer. One can only conclude that he is surrounded by other BBC people who have pro-Brown views. He has come genuinely to believe that virtually nobody has much to say against Gordon Brown's record. This suggests that pro-Left political bias is extrememly widespread among people in the BBC. It is, indeed, an institutional bias.

Posted by James Bartholomew • Indexed in Media, including BBC bias

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There is a danger that, as time passes, people will begin to think that the communist states were not so bad after all.

Gradually the generation that lived through the last few decades of European communism will become a minority. New generations will grow up who never heard the many anecdotes of deprivation, misery and political oppression that were widespread in those years. I have already heard one BBC radio programme in which Russian communists lamented the passing the 'good old days'.

It is, of course, a reflection of the political bias at the BBC that this programme idea was selected from the thousands that which are constantly being submitted. The way in which the programme was done - giving credence to the idea of 'good old days' - also reflected this bias. But this kind of thing is likely to become more common, not less.

Last night I heard another story of just how bad things were in the Soviet Union. Professor Christopher Andrew, the historian of secret services, gave a talk in which he mentioned in passing that mothers to be 'fled' from hospitals in Moscow and Leningrad. They went to the country to have their babies because they were terrified of having them in City state hospitals where the cross-infection rates were so dreadful.

Later, Mary Kenny, who was in the audience, told me that when she stayed with the Irish ambassador in Moscow in the 1980s, she learned that an American anti-abortion film sent to the Soviet Union had not had the effect intended. An American lobby group had wanted to shock Soviet women with pictures of how dreadful is the reality of abortion. Instead, Soviet women seeing the film were ecstatic by how wonderful - particularly how clean - were American hospitals.

I asked Professor Andrew if he knew of any book which documented the terrible state of the Soviet Union prior to its collapse. He did not. Surely someone has written about this. If not, someone should gather together and verify the stories and the data. The disaster that was communism should not be forgotten. Otherwise it could well be repeated.

Posted by James Bartholomew • Indexed in General • Media, including BBC bias • NHS

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When I was researching the article on the photograph of John Prescott (see below), I looked at BBC Online. It was very hard to find any mention of it whatsoever. I only found it under newspaper reviews. Clearly it is a far more important story than that. That is why the other newspapers followed up either on Sunday itself or today.

Then I heard the World at One on BBC Radio 4 at lunchtime today. Finally the BBC belatedly felt obliged to cover the story. But the interviews were conducted as though nothing wrong had been done at all. The fact that all concerned were playing a game when we, the taxpayers, were paying for them to be working, barely got a mention. There was not the smallest sense of outrage from the presenter who, instead, asked the photographer whether or not he had been invading the privacy of John Prescott and this might be a matter for the Press Complaints Commissioner.

In short, the BBC has bent over backwards not to cover the story and then to treat it as a bit of muckracking. The bias of the BBC in this case is wholly indefensible. There was every reason to think public money was being wasted.

Posted by James Bartholomew • Indexed in Media, including BBC bias

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I will be appearing at about 11.05pm on BBC Radio 5 Live this evening

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Ruth Kelly was on the Today programme this morning and asserted that, under Labour, social justice had advanced. How does Ruth Kelly define 'social justice'? How does she measure it? The concept seems extremely vague. Does it mean giving more to the poor and taking more from the rich? So is the ultimate social justice when everyone has the same wealth? And does that not go by another name: communism? Has the concept of communism not been totally discredited by the vast and disastrous experiments in it during the 20th century?

It leads one to suspect that the phrase 'social justice' is a eumphemism for socialism or communism. And if it is not that, what is it?

Is it 'social justice' that:

The number of pensioners paying income tax has risen by 1.2 million under Labour, official figures reveal.

When Tony Blair entered No 10 in 1997 3.9 million men over 65 and women over 60 were in the tax net.

That figure has risen by a third to a record 5.1 million - nearly half the 11.1 Britons over state pension age, according to Government figures for the current tax year.

And later,

The Treasury put the rise down to the ageing population last night.

But the number of old age pensioners has only gone by 400,000 since 1997.

The above is from the Daily Mail.

Is the taxation of more old age pensioners a reflection of the greater 'social justice' in modern Britain? It remains the case, as I described in The Welfare State We're In, that the government defines a considerable number of people in this country as being in 'poverty'. It then taxes them. Many of these are pensioners. Rather more of them are now pensioners after Labour's rule. (I was glad to see the Tory spokesman Philip Hammond also making the point yesterday that the government taxes pensioners it defines as being in poverty.)

Incidentally, the Daily Mail is probably the most despised newspaper among the urban elite. But it keeps on picking up stories like this which tell us a great deal. It would be good to see some part of the BBC take this story on. The Today programme, for example.

Posted by James Bartholomew • Indexed in Media, including BBC bias • Pensions • Tax and growth

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I appeared on The World Tonight last Friday (28th April), debating whether or not the government's apparent obsession with reform had interfered with its ability to do the everyday business of administering well. For one week, it should possible to listen to it on the 'Listen Again' facility on the BBC website here. The little discussion starts at about 20 past the hour.

Posted by James Bartholomew • Indexed in Media, including BBC bias

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We are regularly told in Britain that water is vital to the health of many millions of people in Africa and elsewhere. So it is. But never is it suggested that the reason there is such a problem with water in Africa is because water supply is run by governments, not private companies. That would be to undermine the 'government is best' assumption of virtually all broadcast media coverage in Britain.

Now, at last, comes a paper from the Globalization Institute putting the argument that millions of people in Africa have died because of this misguided belief that government is best.

These are the opening lines of the paper, by Mischa Balen, apparently a Labour Party activist:

Over a billion people worldwide do not have access to safe drinking water, and 2.6 billion people have no sanitation facilities. More than two million people die each year from diarrhoea, and over six million people are blind as a result of trachoma, a disease strongly related to lack of face washing. In Sub Saharan Africa, 42% of the population lacks access to decent water.

Other diseases which are caused by water poverty include scabies, typhoid and malaria. The need for clean water to prevent the spread of these and other diseases is therefore paramount.

This is one of the greatest problems humanity faces. It is a problem which is taking place under the auspices of the state sector: 95% of the world's population gets its water from state-run services. Government provision in water has overseen millions of deaths through poor quality and lack of sanitation.

Posted by James Bartholomew • Indexed in Foreign aid • Media, including BBC bias • Waste in public services

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Many people remain committed to the NHS, I believe, because they think "if I get seriously ill at any time in my life, I will be looked after and it will be free". In their hearts, they may think the care may not be great, but at least they will get some care and it will be free.

But this is simply not true. Last night on Panorama there were graphic portraits of people who had believed this. But then they had got severe Alzheimer's Disease or had endured disabling strokes or had been knocked down by a car and become totally paralysed. They were treated, for a while, as patients in NHS beds - for free. But then they were shunted out into private nursing homes and told that they would have to sell their homes and pay for their care.

In theory, the government pays for medical care by not for 'social care'. In the Coughlan case, the Appeal Court upheld this distinction and insisted that the government should pay for someone with medical problems. But the programme eloquently argued that, in practice, the NHS ignores the Coughlan judgement and in many cases goes to great lengths to categorise people as being in need of social care, rather than primarily medical care.

In other words, the NHS shuffles off responsibility for paying for people who have become totally dependant on the help of others. It says, "you pay for it, we won't".

The NHS - and the government as a whole - offer the myth that you will be looked after, for free, if you become disabled for the long term. For many people, it is simply not true.

The welfare state has created an insurance policy that does not provide what it claims. It is another welfare state mis-selling scandal. It would be better if the welfare state were honest about it from the start - if it said, "We will not provide. Take out proper insurance because this is not it. Rely on us and you could lose your home."

"We are an accident and emergency service. We don't do long-term care." But such honesty is not a part of the welfare state. Perhaps it is just not a part of democracy as it has developed in Britain in recent years.

Posted by James Bartholomew • Indexed in Care for the elderly • Media, including BBC bias • NHS

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I have recorded interviews this afternoon for Sky News and ITN. I am told my contribution will be about 25 seconds on Sky (during the 7pm news?) tonight and I will probably be given a bit longer on ITN's news at 10.30pm. ITN filmed some shots of my book.

It is very satisfying that the book seems to be reaching a high level of recognition in the media. I almost seems to be turning into part of the political landscape.

Posted by James Bartholomew • Indexed in Media, including BBC bias

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Another step forward: a six-part BBC series on benefits and how they got wrong. The first one, tonight, appears to be about benefit fraud. According the Telegraph,

David Street, the series' producer, said: "These are just a few of the cases that are prosecuted every year. The scale of fraud in disability living allowance claims is just staggering.

"I have made a lot of programmes about fraud and I have to say I was stunned by the size of this problem."

The full article is here.

The programme is on BBC1 at 8.30pm tonight and is called 'On the fiddle'.

Posted by James Bartholomew • Indexed in Behaviour & Crime • Media, including BBC bias • Parenting • Waste in public services • Welfare benefits

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Tonight is the night when the programme is broadcast in which I put the argument 'The welfare state was a mistake' on Radio 4. The programme is called 'Hecklers' because four people, including two LSE professors, interrupt and object to my arguments. It goes out at 8pm.

Some supporters have been concerned that I have four 'lefties' against me and that the odds are stacked in their favour. But I have to say, in defence of the BBC, that this is the formula used for this series and was used in the programme the previous week in which someone argued that specific anti-terrorism laws were unnecessary and unhelpful.

Yes, it is possible to object that, in this format, my point of view is implicitly treated as 'way out' or, at the least, 'controversial'. But I think it is fair to suggest that the idea is, indeed, still controversial in British society. In fact it is a mark of a significant change in the thinking of the British governing class elite (in which I include the BBC) that the status of the idea has moved from being 'mad' a decade ago, to only 'controversial' today. That is progress. Slow progress, yes. But still progress.

It will - or would - be a further mammoth step if we get to the point that it becomes commonplace to think that the state is generally not good at running things.

Posted by James Bartholomew • Indexed in General • Media, including BBC bias

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BBC Online has a report today which throws in private hospitals with NHS hospitals as being part of a report which indicates standards of cleanliness are not good enough.

This is the opening of the BBC report:

Two-thirds of NHS and private hospitals are failing to meet the highest standards of cleanliness, snapshot inspections have revealed.

This makes it sound as though two thirds of private hospitals and two thirds of NHS hospitals are failing in this respect.

However going to Healthcare Commission website, the official press release summarises the findings as follows:

Dividing the hospitals into four bands, the Commission found:

- High standards of cleanliness were being achieved in a significant proportion of organisations with 33 hospitals in band one.

- But too many hospitals failed to perform as well as they could with 44 being in band two, indicating they have room for improvement.

- There was evidence of systemic problems in the 23 hospitals that were in bands three and four, indicating that cleanliness was unsatisfactory for an environment in which clinical care is being provided.

- Standards were markedly poorer in NHS mental health hospitals visited. These made up all six hospitals in band four, indicating serious and widespread problems, plus 18 of the 22 hospitals in bands three and four

So all of the hospitals in the worst category, without exception, were run by the NHS.

And what about the hospitals with the best results?

Posted by James Bartholomew • Indexed in Media, including BBC bias • NHS

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Moeletsi Mbeki, brother of Thabo Mbeki and deputy chairman of the South African Institute of International Affairs, wrote an open letter to Bob Geldof in the Mail on Sunday. It was all the more devastating for being politely expressed by a man who lives in and really knows Africa:

I know that you and Tony Blair have been genuinely touched by the suffering of Africa.
But, ironically, the contribution you are making is exacerbating the problem.

Posted by James Bartholomew • Indexed in Foreign aid • Media, including BBC bias • Waste in public services

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Five million out of 5.7 million public sector employees (88 per cent) have final salary pensions. Meanwhile only 3.6 million out of 22.5 million private sector employees (about 16 per cent) have final salary pensions.

These figures, accourding to the Sunday Telegraph, will be published by the Government Actuary's Department on Thursday. There have been a fall of one million in those in the private sector who are on final salary schemes over the past five years. That is largely the effect of Gordon Brown's tax on dividends received by pension funds which has helped make final salary pension schemes just too expensive for private companies. But what is too expensive for private companies, is not too expensive for taxpayers to pay for.

The civil servant, the teacher and the hospital manager all get relatively luxurious, final salary pensions, courtesy of taxpayers. The MPs and the prime minister get the most luxurious pensions of all.

Posted by James Bartholomew • Indexed in Media, including BBC bias • Pensions • Waste in public services

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In today's Daily Mail, Quentin Letts describes one of the 'masochism sessions' which Tony Blair is going in for in the run-up to the coming election. He was on Sky News and was criticised by one voter after another regarding public services.

He waffled and made handsome noises of sympathy, with some Bill Clinton-style eye narrowing and shakes of the head.

The problem with these TV whip-fests he is suddenly doing is that no one ever says 'tax us less'.

The impetus, by the very nature of live TV, goes to the 'something must be done' brigade, with their lurid demands for more state spending. This suits Labour's philosophy but it underplays personal responsibility.

So when a whiny ex-con started bleating that the state was not doing enough to help him, no one told him to pull himself together. How one ached for a Norman Tebbit to tell the miserable little so-and-son to pull out his finger rather than making the rest of us pay.

Sadly it appears to be part of the nature of democratic government that appeals for the state to 'do something about it' get more of a hearing than objections that state interference in the past has done more harm than good.

Posted by James Bartholomew • Indexed in General • Media, including BBC bias • Politics

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One of the greatest problems in persuading people that the welfare state is damaging is the difference in reporting experienced by the private and public sectors. When something goes wrong in the private sector, the fact that it is the private sector is particularly drawn to the attention of the audience. But when something goes wrong in the public sector, the same does not apply. You would never have a story starting, "A prisoner found hanged in his cell at a state-run Warwickshire jail...". But you would get the following, as revealed on the Biased-BBC website:

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