Freely, Madly, Deeply: British Broadcasters Collaborating (at long last)

It’s interesting and resonant to see the launch of Freely today (30/4/24), the new streaming service from Everyone TV backed by BBC, ITV, Channel 4 & Channel 5. It involves various of my former C4 colleagues including CEO Jonathan Thompson, Sarah Milton and James Tatam.

For the first time viewers can switch between live and on-demand TV from all the main UK broadcasters simply and gratis. It offers features like pause and restart, and gives access to additional episodes for free (the clue’s in the name). All that’s required is a WiFi connection, no dish or aerial. The idea is to offer “a single, unified platform” centred on British TV.

It has been billed as “the first time all four of Britain’s public service broadcasters have come together to launch a streaming proposition” – but that’s not strictly true. 16 years ago ‘Project Kangaroo’ bounced onto the scene. It was the secret working title for a VOD platform combining content from BBC Worldwide, ITV and C4. However Kangaroo fell at the fence of the UK Competition Commission (now Competition & Markets Authority) in 2009. That was arguably the nail in the coffin of UK TV.

It was the moment we could have competed against Netflix (just a year old at the time) and the emerging international streamers. It was perhaps the one time we coulda been contenders.

“You don’t understand! I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender, I could’ve been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am.”

(Elia Kazan’s classic ‘On the Waterfront’ has just been re-released in UK cinemas to mark its 70th anniversary.)

The Competition Competition looked at the parochial UK situation instead of the Big Picture and in their folly probably killed (certainly severely wounded) the Little Screen in this country. It’s still playing out now all these years later.

BritBox was a pretty lame attempt to fill the Kangaroo void. ITV and BBC Studios founded would-be global streaming service BritBox in 2017 as a joint venture to showcase British entertainment (original scripted and factual shows, co-pros, etc.) to international audiences. Last month we heard that ITV has sold its 50% stake in BritBox International to partner BBC Studios for £255M, probably a sign that the partners’ imperatives had evolved in somewhat different directions.

So it’s arguable that Freely is 16 years too late. But I hope otherwise and wish them the best of British…

Scrapbook – The Superhuman Body Handbook

Just found this from a commission of mine for the 2016 Rio Paralympics – a short form video series for Channel 4/All 4

Little Dot launches SVoD app

From this week’s Broadcast – by Alex Farber – text courtesy of Broadcast

 

Little Dot launches SVoD app

Real Stories will offer factual shows

Little Dot Studios has launched an international SVoD service dedicated to factual programming.

The $3.99 per month Real Stories service is available via iOS and Android, with plans to launch via Amazon Fire Stick, Apple TV and Roku devices shortly. It is available as an ad-supported service in the UK.

The service features a host of acquired films, including Rich Russians Living in London, Out Of Control Kids and Interview With A Serial Killer, alongside Little Dot’s debut slate of commissions.

Ordered by commissioning editor Adam Gee, these include Underworld TV’s Sorry I Shot You and Big Buddha Films/MedialabUK’s Absent From Our Own Wedding.

Real Stories’ YouTube channel has generated 1.1m subscribers and some 284m video views to date, and has gone on to be extended across Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.

The app launch will be followed by an SVoD launch for world history channel Timeline, ahead of Little Dot’s portfolio of other channels including Spark, Nurture and Only Human.

The All3Media-backed business has tied with video streaming firm Simplestream to develop the debut app, revealed by co-founder Andy Taylor in October.

Little Dot’s senior partnerships manager Robbie Spargo said the aim was to learn about changing consumer habits.

“In particular, we’re fascinated by viewing shifting back to the living room through devices like Fire Stick, Roku, and Apple TV,” he added. “The Real Stories app will also give us the opportunity to experiment with different commercial models, from subscription to advertising to branded content partnerships with agencies and brands.”

Simplestream chief commercial officer Dan Finch said the service had been built using its fast-turnaround ‘VOD-in-a-Box’ platform.

“It allows Little Dot to deliver Real Stories on demand, to a targeted end-user’s location whilst serving up the appropriate business model for that territory in line with their programming rights,” he said.

“We’re looking forward to working together over the coming months on Real Stories and other exciting Little Dot brands across the globe.”

Top Documentaries on UK TV 2017

My favourite documentary series of the year

	Title	Channel	Share %	Viewers ‘000s
1	Blue Planet II	BBC 1	45.8	14,011
2	Diana, Our Mother: Her life + Legacy	ITV	36.7	9,390
3	Diana, Seven Days	BBC 1	32.9	6,425
4	Rio Ferdinand: Being Mum + Dad	BBC 1	26.2	6,345
5	Spy In The Wild	BBC 1	25.7	6,218
6	The Real Marigold Hotel	BBC 1	23.3	5,999
7	Wild Alaska Live	BBC 1	31.9	5,998
8	Attenborough and the Giant Elephant	BBC 1	20.3	5,378
9	The Real Full Monty	ITV	24.2	5,362
10	Fake Or Fortune?	BBC 1	26.0	5,127
11	Snow Bears	BBC 1	23.6	4,969
12	Paul O’Grady For the love of Dogs	ITV	21.1	4,960
13	Diana: In Her Own Words	CH4	20.6	4,923
14	The Truth About… Sleep	BBC 1	20.3	4,704
15	Ambulance	BBC 1	21.1	4,660
16	Police Tapes	ITV	20.5	4,522
17	Easyjet: Inside The Cockpit	ITV	20.2	4,488
18	The Real Marigold On Tour	BBC 1	18.3	4,411
19	An Hour To Catch A Killer	ITV	18.1	4,362
20	Inside London Fire Brigade	ITV	18.7	4,317
21	Britain’s Busiest Airport – Heathrow	ITV	18.5	4,309
22	The Met: Policing London	BBC 1	19.5	4,224
23	Martin Clunes: Islands Of Australia	ITV	19.4	4,222
24	The Cruise : Mediterranean	ITV	17.3	4,216
25	Galapagos	BBC 1	16.9	4,173
26	Elizabeth And Philip: Love & Duty	BBC 1	14.6	4,149
27	Sir Bruce Forsyth: Mr Entertainment	BBC 1	21.7	4,094
28	Reported Missing	BBC 1	16.6	4,051
29	Prince Harry & Meghan	ITV	16.8	4,034
30	Joanna Lumley’s India	ITV	18.3	4,025
31	The Week The Landlords Moved In	BBC 1	18.2	3,982
32	The Fifteen Billion Pound Railway	BBC 2	17.4	3,908
33	Italy’s Invisible Cities	BBC 1	14.6	3,859
34	Ross Kemp Behind Bars	ITV	17.1	3,848
35	Sugar Free Farm	ITV	16.3	3,840
36	Gordon Ramsay On Cocaine	ITV	16.4	3,839
37	Diana: The Day Britain Cried	ITV	14.6	3,817
38	Spy in the Wild: Meet the Spies	BBC 1	17.6	3,784
39	Serial Killer with Piers Morgan	ITV	15.9	3,683
40	The Ganges with Sue Perkins	BBC 1	15.9	3,671
41	How To Stay Young	BBC 1	15.9	3,648
42	Britain’s Best Walks with Julia Bradbury	ITV	17.1	3,619
43	A Very Royal Wedding	ITV	14.9	3,588
44	Gone To Pot: American Road Trip	ITV	13.5	3,585
45	Killer Women with Piers Morgan	ITV	15.7	3,553
46	Britain On The Fiddle	BBC 1	14.1	3,459
47	The Truth About Stress	BBC 1	14.7	3,451
48	The Harbour	ITV	14.4	3,431
49	I Am Bolt	BBC 1	15.8	3,409
50	The Sheriffs Are Coming	BBC 1	14.1	3,400
51	Orkney: When The Boat Comes	BBC 1	17.0	3,380
52	Winterwatch	BBC 2	14.0	3,378
53	Harry & Meghan: Royal Engagement	BBC 1	16.0	3,377
54	Russia With Simon Reeve	BBC 2	14.0	3,287
55	Call The Midwife: The Casebook	BBC 1	17.0	3,234
56	Devon & Cornwall Cops	ITV	14.6	3,206
57	Planet Earth II: A World Of Wonder	BBC 1	19.6	3,174

Real Stories hits 1m subs

Here’s an update by Little Dot Studios Co-Founder, Andy Taylor, of the progress of this online documentary channel for which I have been commissioning the first original content.

This week at Little Dot Studios, we are celebrating a major milestone. Our documentary channel, Real Stories, has hit 1 million subscribers.

Real Stories is only two years old, but is now running at over 700,000 views per day. It’s become a major success in a small window of time, leading to big projects and investments in the brand. But the launch of the channel was not the product of strategy reviews, business cases or investment committees – it was a small number of employees from different departments who developed their insights into ideas, and then had the initiative to see them through.

The history  

Two years ago, our ContentID team – the team overseeing YouTube’s copyright management tool – kept telling us that documentaries were big on YouTube. They were ‘claiming’ over 40,000 television shows for our production, distribution and broadcaster clients and kept finding that full-length documentary content was attracting significant viewing. In came our Insights team, who pulled all our viewing data and put videos into different genres: comedy, kids, entertainment, factual/documentary. The data showed that factual was the second-most viewed genre in our portfolio (after pre-school kids). There was an opportunity to create a genre-specific YouTube channel for full-length documentaries.

This was a novel idea at the time. Most people at this point still viewed YouTube as a short-form platform for ‘viral videos’ – certainly not the home of premium, long-form documentaries. But the data was on our side, so we opened a page called Real Stories, and our partnership managers went to all our clients to see if they would license us full, one-hour documentaries for use on YouTube. Within 3-6 months we had around 1000 documentaries.

Two years later, we have a phenomenal success story, all born from data, insights and people not being afraid to put ideas forward. A brand that didn’t exist two years ago and a channel for which we haven’t yet produced an original video now has 1 million subscribers. And we’ll pay out c.$1m to our partners this year. The prospects for 2018 are exceptional.

The evolution:

In August, we committed to two initiatives. First, to launch Real Stories on Facebook. It was always going to be tough because the brand is unknown on the platform and we have long-form content, while the platform demands short, snappy videos. 4 months later, Real Stories has over 200k Likes and achieves 200k views almost daily. On good days, it hits 1m views and has hit highs of 10m a day. We re-edit and repurpose one-hour docs for the Facebook audience and have licensed content from Vimeo and other platforms to bolster the content output. One of those videos has done 6m views. We’ve also run competitions and ‘live’ broadcasts to experiment with the Facebook algorithm. 

Second, we’ve been commissioning Real Stories ‘Originals’. We’ve brought in Adam Gee from Channel 4 (where he headed Factual Commissioning for All4) and within 4 weeks he’d signed off nine commissions. These commissions have gone to a range of new, emerging talent – different voices to the usual with a huge platform on which to tell their stories. We’ve subsequently signed off a further two and they’re all now in production. They’ll go live on Real Stories in January and, with a bit of luck, we’ll then be able to sign off more films.

Looking forward:

Looking even further forward, in Q1 2018 we’ll be launching Real Stories as an app on iOS, Android, Amazon Fire, Roku and other devices in the UK, US, Australia and Canada. It’ll be a ‘beta’ launch to learn about these new platforms and to continue to build the brand beyond YouTube. For us, it’s another step into the unknown for a brand that keeps pushing us out of our comfort zone.

Little Dot gears up for SVoD

The latest news about the commissioning of original documentaries I’ve been doing at Little Dot Studios over the last few months – from today’s Broadcast 

by Alex Farber | 26 October 2017

Absent from our Own Wedding

All3Media-backed firm steps up commissioning and acquisitions in run-up to launch of service

Little Dot Studios has kicked off a commissioning and acquisitions drive as it prepares to launch an SVoD service later this year.

The All3Media-backed business has appointed former Channel 4 multiplatform commissioner Adam Gee and Beyond Distribution head of acquisitions Caitlin Meek-O’Connor to spearhead the push.

Commissioning editor Gee has ordered his first slate of originals, including Underworld TV’s Sorry I Shot You, Big Buddha Films and Medialab UK’s Absent From Our Own Wedding and Showem Entertainment’s In Your Face as part of a £200,000 investment.

The factual films, all of which run to around 15-20 minutes, will feature as part of the Shoreditch-based firm’s Real Stories online channel, which is distributed via YouTube, Facebook and Instagram.

The shows, due to launch in mid-November, will also be used as the bedrock for a forthcoming direct-to-consumer app alongside a host of third-party programming.

Shared profits

Meek-O’Connor has begun striking deals with distributors, with around 2,000 hours of programming licensed to date. Many of these shows are picked up from suppliers for free, with the profits generated shared equally – Little Dot is set to return around £1.5m to distributors this year.

Co-founder Andy Taylor said he is looking to exponentially grow the firm he established in 2013. The business, founded by Taylor and Selma Turajlic, has doubled in size year-on-year. In 2016, it posted a turnover of £9.8m, up from £5.2m the previous year. Operating profits jumped from £300,000 to £1.2m in this period.

“Someone needs to put a stake in the ground and build a premium mid-form destination because the quality of content currently is poor,” said Taylor. “There has been a massive explosion in mobile video but none of the resource or investment from TV has leaked over. In the next three to five years, I need to build channels with massive scale, which house only premium content.”

Taylor added that he is eyeing a direct-to- consumer launch by the end of the year, with platforms under consideration including Amazon Channels, Apple TV and Roku.

“We need to be on those platforms because the monetisation opportunities are so much better. It’s harder to get reach, but they offer much higher advertising rates and we can experiment with SVoD too,” he explained.

Real Stories is being touted as a subscription forerunner, with launches for science and history themed sister channels Spark and Timeline also being weighed up.

In September, Barcroft Media’s YouTube channel Barcroft TV launched an ad-funded TV app. However, Taylor is not turning his back on the digital giants and is putting particular focus on Facebook. Changes to the Mark Zuckerburg-run platform have meant that Little Dot video viewing has soared, from virtually zero to 150 million monthly views in just three months.

“The new Facebook”

From his 120- strong staff, Taylor has appointed eight Facebook-dedicated editors who are tasked with closely tracking the changes to its algorithm and reactively clipping and posting videos for maximum exposure.

“We are trying to grow the digital brands of the future,” said Taylor. “Our bet is that over time, the platforms have to favour premium content – because that is what advertisers demand.”

While people visit YouTube less frequently than they do Facebook, they tend to stay for longer and are happy to watch 15 to 20-minute videos. Facebook visitors prefer shorter clips. Taylor said that Instagram, which has three Little Dot editors assigned, is fast becoming “the new Facebook”.

Sport is another area of focus, with Sky Sports commercial manager Rory Rigney hired as senior partnerships manager to forge ties with rights holders to manage their channels. With talks under way with major football and cricketing governing bodies, the sports-themed channels will join Little Dot’s network of broadcaster and producer- owned channels, including ITV, Warner Bros, Discovery and Turner, as well as All3Media.

{text courtesy of Broadcast}

The Future of Cinema as envisioned by Martin Scorsese

This open letter to his daughter was published in the Italian press at the turn of the year by Martin Scorsese. Coming from someone so steeped in the cinematic tradition it is particularly striking, not least in the way it perceives hope in digital technology. To drive home this Janus-like ability to appreciate past and future with equanimity, yesterday Scorsese unveiled a blue plaque for Powell & Pressburger on Dorset House in London with Michael Powell’s widow and his own editor, Thelma Schoonmaker. I had a memorable encounter with Michael Powell in 1985 when I set up the Cambridge University Film Society – he had been brought back into prominence then by Scorsese and other champions like Ian Christie.

Dearest Francesca,

I’m writing this letter to you about the future. I’m looking at it through the lens of my world. Through the lens of cinema, which has been at the center of that world.

For the last few years, I’ve realized that the idea of cinema that I grew up with, that’s there in the movies I’ve been showing you since you were a child, and that was thriving when I started making pictures, is coming to a close. I’m not referring to the films that have already been made. I’m referring to the ones that are to come.

I don’t mean to be despairing. I’m not writing these words in a spirit of defeat. On the contrary, I think the future is bright.

We always knew that the movies were a business, and that the art of cinema was made possible because it aligned with business conditions. None of us who started in the 60s and 70s had any illusions on that front. We knew that we would have to work hard to protect what we loved. We also knew that we might have to go through some rough periods. And I suppose we realized, on some level, that we might face a time when every inconvenient or unpredictable element in the moviemaking process would be minimized, maybe even eliminated. The most unpredictable element of all? Cinema. And the people who make it.

I don’t want to repeat what has been said and written by so many others before me, about all the changes in the business, and I’m heartened by the exceptions to the overall trend in moviemaking – Wes Anderson, Richard Linklater, David Fincher, Alexander Payne, the Coen Brothers, James Gray and Paul Thomas Anderson are all managing to get pictures made, and Paul not only got The Master made in 70mm, he even got it shown that way in a few cities. Anyone who cares about cinema should be thankful.

And I’m also moved by the artists who are continuing to get their pictures made all over the world, in France, in South Korea, in England, in Japan, in Africa. It’s getting harder all the time, but they’re getting the films done.

But I don’t think I’m being pessimistic when I say that the art of cinema and the movie business are now at a crossroads. Audio-visual entertainment and what we know as cinema – moving pictures conceived by individuals – appear to be headed in different directions. In the future, you’ll probably see less and less of what we recognize as cinema on multiplex screens and more and more of it in smaller theaters, online, and, I suppose, in spaces and circumstances that I can’t predict.

So why is the future so bright? Because for the very first time in the history of the art form, movies really can be made for very little money. This was unheard of when I was growing up, and extremely low budget movies have always been the exception rather than the rule. Now, it’s the reverse. You can get beautiful images with affordable cameras. You can record sound. You can edit and mix and color-correct at home. This has all come to pass.

But with all the attention paid to the machinery of making movies and to the advances in technology that have led to this revolution in moviemaking, there is one important thing to remember: the tools don’t make the movie, you make the movie. It’s freeing to pick up a camera and start shooting and then put it together with Final Cut Pro. Making a movie – the one you need to make – is something else. There are no shortcuts.

If John Cassavetes, my friend and mentor, were alive today, he would certainly be using all the equipment that’s available. But he would be saying the same things he always said – you have to be absolutely dedicated to the work, you have to give everything of yourself, and you have to protect the spark of connection that drove you to make the picture in the first place. You have to protect it with your life. In the past, because making movies was so expensive, we had to protect against exhaustion and compromise. In the future, you’ll have to steel yourself against something else: the temptation to go with the flow, and allow the movie to drift and float away.

This isn’t just a matter of cinema. There are no shortcuts to anything. I’m not saying that everything has to be difficult. I’m saying that the voice that sparks you is your voice – that’s the inner light, as the Quakers put it.

That’s you. That’s the truth.

All my love,

Dad

For Adam – Michael Powell Nov.17.1985

{Scorsese’s letter reproduced courtesy of L’Espresso}

Reading between the lines

Today’s editorial in the Daily Mail [and some commentary]

Be careful of buying those degenerate ideas Jewish intellectuals like Miliband and Hobsbawm are trying to peddle!

An evil legacy [“evil”: that familiar touch of religious irrationality] and why we won’t apologise [welcome to the angry world where apology, change of mind,  compromise and growth of understanding are not on the agenda]

By DAILY MAIL COMMENT [and Adam Gee Comment]

PUBLISHED: 00:11, 1 October 2013 | UPDATED: 11:48, 1 October 2013

Red Ed’s [an improvement on Red Ken but still childish] in a strop with the Mail. Doubtless, [aren’t these the Lynn Truss school of zero-tolerance language fascists? if so, why the comma?] he’s miffed that his conference was overshadowed by the revelations of his former friend, the spin doctor Damian McBride, serialised in this paper, which exposed the poisonous heart of the Labour Party.

Nor did he see the funny side when we ridiculed the yucky, lovey-dovey [boarding school sexual hang-ups emerging] photographs of him and his wife, behaving like a pair of hormonal teenagers in need of a private room.

But what has made him vent his spleen — indeed, he has stamped his feet and demanded a right of reply — is a Mail article by Geoffrey Levy on Saturday about the Labour leader’s late father, Ralph, under the arresting headline ‘The Man Who Hated Britain’. [for “arresting” read ‘bears little connection to the substance of the article’ / ‘attention grabbing’ without the need to substantiate its meaning]

Of course, it was not the Mail that first drew the prominent Marxist sociologist Professor Ralph Miliband — a man who was not averse to publicity — into the public arena. This was the decision of his son who, for two years running, has told Labour conferences how his refugee father fled Nazi persecution to Britain. [we wouldn’t want our politician’s showing any humanity would we?]

More pertinent still, McBride argues that Miliband Jnr is obsessed with maintaining Ralph’s legacy.

Winning the leadership, he writes, was Ed’s ‘ultimate tribute’ to his father — an attempt to ‘achieve his father’s vision’. [The son has made it clear the father did not agree with his politics or have any love for New Labour.]

With this testimony before us, [undue weight on the testimony of a  proven unscrupulous spin-merchant and a flimsy hook to hang a whole article like this on] from a former Labour spin doctor who knew Mr Miliband inside out, the Mail felt a duty [dishonourable behaviour dressed in fake duty and unmerited honour] to lay before our readers the father’s vision that is said to have inspired our would-be next Prime Minister.

How can Ralph Miliband’s vision be declared out of bounds for public discussion [no-one said that, it is the lie of the headline which is the problem – Ed Miliband explicitly stated in The Times (2/10/13): “It’s legitimate for the Mail to talk about my father’s politics”]  — particularly since he spent his entire life attempting to convert the impressionable young to his poisonous creed? [nobody mention Viscount Rothermere here or his treacherous attempts to “convert the impressionable young to his poisonous creed”]

Today, we stand by every word we published on Saturday, from the headline to our assertion that the beliefs of Miliband Snr ‘should disturb everyone who loves this country’.

In his tetchy and menacing response, which we publish in full on these pages, the Labour leader expresses just pride in his father’s war record as a volunteer in the Royal Navy.

But he cites this, and his father’s affection for his shipmates (which, as shown on these pages, was riven by class hatred), as if it were conclusive proof that he loved this country.

So how is it that shortly after his arrival in Britain, the 17-year-old Miliband senior had confided to his diary [the evidence of a teenage diary not in the child’s mother tongue, a bit low and flimsy?]: ‘The Englishman is a rabid nationalist. [The likes of Viscount Rothermere bear this out to a reasonable degree] They are perhaps the most nationalist people in the world . . . you sometimes want them almost to lose [the war] to show them how things are’?
 Isn’t it permissible to surmise that a man who had expressed such views joined the Royal Navy not so much to fight for Britain as to fight, like the Soviet Union, against the Nazis? [It’s permissible to surmise but surmising isn’t worth a hill of beans.]

Yes, as his son argues, Mr Miliband Snr may have felt gratitude for the security, freedom and comfort he enjoyed in Britain.

But what is blindingly clear from everything he wrote throughout his life is that he had nothing but hatred [strong word – where do they get that from? Isn’t it permissible for an academic in a democracy to question its institutions? We are talking about a country in a period where the Police have been proven to have lied on a mass scale over Hillsborough; the Journalists have been proven to have breached the privacy of all manner of citizens; the Members of Parliament have been proven to feather their own nests with public money; etc. etc.]  for the values, traditions and institutions — including our great schools [that must mean the private ones e.g. ‘One in four boys is labelled as having special educational needs as state schools rake in funds’ (Mail headline 31 July 2013)], the Church [oh, is that this Church? ‘Church of England to admit ‘deep grief and shame’ in an historic apology for child sex abuse’ (Mail headline 6 July 2013)], the Army and even the Sunday papers [like The News of the World?] — that made Britain the safe and free nation in which he and his family flourished.

The constitutional monarchy, the bicameral legislature, property rights, common law . . . even ‘respectability’ and ‘good taste’ — all were anathema to this lifelong, unreconstructed Marxist who craved a workers’ revolution.

Significantly, when he defended students for silencing a visiting speaker with whom they disagreed, he wrote: ‘Freedom of speech is not always the overriding criterion.’

As for the Falklands war, our defence of British sovereignty so appalled him that it moved him to four-letter words of disgust.

At the London School of Economics, he was taught and heavily influenced by the extremist Left-winger Harold Laski, who said the use of violence was legitimate in British elections. One of his closest friends was Eric Hobsbawm (though, as we reported, at least Miliband wouldn’t join his fellow Marxist in refusing to condemn Stalinism’s mass murders or the brutal Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956). [According to Ralph Miliband’s obituary in that known hothouse of left-wing views, The Times of London: “he was in no sense a rigid Marxist, never a member of the Communist Party and a strong anti-authoritarian”]

It is all too easy today to forget that Marxism supplied the philosophical underpinning to a monstrously evil regime.

Under Stalin’s Communism, countless millions were murdered, tortured, starved to death, executed or sent to endure a sub-human existence in the gulags.

Religion, the family and the very spirit of the individual were brutally crushed. The arts, newspapers — justice itself — were ruthlessly controlled by the commissars.

Freedom of expression was purged. Even as late as the Seventies, dissidents were locked in mental asylums, while the Press was controlled by the State for another two decades.

Truly, Ralph Miliband and Hobsbawm were, in the withering phrase often attributed to Lenin, the ‘useful idiots’ who validated this most pernicious doctrine, which has spread poverty and misery wherever it has triumphed.

That’s why the Mail — which is not Pravda — said that readers who love this country would be truly disturbed if they understood about Miliband’s father’s views.

We do not maintain, like the jealous God of Deuteronomy, [not so subtle Jewish reference] that the iniquity of the fathers should be visited on the sons. But when a son with prime ministerial ambitions swallows his father’s teachings, as the younger Miliband appears to have done [no evidence, in fact signs to the contrary], the case is different.

Indeed, his son’s own Marxist values can be seen all too clearly in his plans for state seizures of private land held by builders and for fixing energy prices by government diktat. [better to let them get fixed by fakely competitive semi-monopolies and cartel-like behaviour, with a bit of mis-selling and deliberate obfuscation of pricing thrown in for good measure?]

More chillingly, the father’s disdain for freedom of expression can be seen in his son’s determination to place the British Press under statutory control. [ah, so that’s what this is all really about…]

Next week the Privy Council, itself an arm of the state, will meet to discuss plans — following a stitch-up with Hacked Off over late-night pizzas [the Mail must be miffed they didn’t have the obligatory Byron burgers] in Mr Miliband’s office — for what will ultimately be a politically controlled body to oversee what papers are allowed to publish.

Put to one side that Mr Miliband’s close involvement with degenerates [the degenerate  whose testimony is the rationale for this whole article? “degenerate” “entartet” a good Nazi word]  such as Damian McBride gives him scant right to claim the moral high ground on anything.

If he crushes the freedom of the Press, no doubt his father will be proud of him from beyond the grave, where he lies 12 yards from the remains of Karl Marx.

But he will have driven a hammer [a bit too blunt?] and sickle through the heart of the nation so many of us [“us” – now there’s a poser] genuinely love. [hate masquerading as love – the essence of the Mail]

The Daily Mail for Dummies – a disturbing new low in British Life

It knows which side its bread is buttered

It’s been nothing if not consistent in its hate-mongering for 80 years

But it’s not been as consistent in its preaching – April 2013

Lack of respect for the dead – September 2013

Fear & Sex – an analysis of the Daily Mail

Alpha Mails – Daily Mail journos V its readers

 

Dodgy Facebook advertising

Devaluing the already dubious Like (no connection between the question and liking the brand)

I wonder how long this will last?

The ‘question’ here was “Hit like if you’re getting FIFA 14 today?”

BTW I think Spurs can beat Chelsea today – not too long to wait before the Portuguese Men of War go at it…