The protests running up to the G20 gathering have brought "them" out in their droves.
Ms Jackie Ashley (aka Mrs Andrew Marr) and the usual Guardianista suspects continue to jump to the conclusion that capitalism is dead. But she (and they) needs to take note that we still have no proper analysis of what happened. We continue to meekly accept the analysis from the guilty parties (both political and financial) that toxic mortgages are worth nothing. If there was any security involved, then they should not be worthless, even if that security is minimal.
If it transpires there was never any security, then on the face of it, a massive fraud has been committed and the rules/laws are already in place to prosecute the guilty - however cleverly it was wrapped up - and all the people involved need to be tried and if found guilty locked up. Ask Nick Leeson.
If Clinton's Democrats did indeed tell key US financial institutions to break rules in order to appease their voters, then those politicians may also need to be locked up, including the Vice President's husband. Such a thing seems quite possible, given that one of the Auld Fraud's initial delusional responses to his busted boom was to tell the voters that he was ordering the bailed-out banks to abandon the established rules concerning mortgage repayments and loan granting.
So then - call yourselves journalists? Don't extrapolate unresearched assumptions simply to allow the presumptions to hold out the hope of fulfilling long held fantasy desires to write off capitalism to make way for the halcyon times, when that egalitarian and banker-free Socialist future can be ushered in.
As you say, there is much confusion amongst the ragbag of demonstrators who feel compelled to protest about anything that is tainted by the "establishment" because they feel let down and disenfranchised after the past 30 years, during which time all politicians seem to have become increasingly amorphous "all things to all voters social democrats" as they climb aboard the gravy trains that they have expensively constructed for themselves in Westminster, Edinburgh, Cardiff, and Brussels ...and hand in their expense claims.
If we want the future to have any credible foundation, then we must trace this all the way back to the one shack in Alabama that started the cascade of dominoes, and let's see precisely who was involved at every stage of the process - and hound them as surely as any UK bank chases down any defaulter on a £50 overdraft.
Not quite a trial marriage yet, but the BBC is to cooperate with ITV to allow independent regional news in England and Wales to keep going. The BBC will share facilities, and some content in order to save ITV around £7m a year.
But let's be clear here: scheduled broadcast media is dead. This is more about deckchairs being reorganised than any realistic commercial future.
The BBC was doing a pretty good job until the 90s when it became overtaken by Common Purpose's subtle but insidious PC ethos, and thus a useful tool for social engineering for the "champagne socialististas" of Blair's "project".
The problem seems to be that it was allowed to grow and become ever fatter when the costs of broadcast technology dramatically dropped in the 80s/90s. Ironically, the result was that the luvvie-heavy management slashed the BBC's own world-class technology development operations and bought in cheap foreign solutions. The savings were not passed onto license payers but immediately "reinvested" in vast empire-creation projects, and especially the new digital media experiments that stunted the UK's crucial commercial media industry.
And so the BBC's dependence on government patronage grew with the inevitable consequences that various oleagenous political creeps have been allowed to get away with outrageously cynical behaviour in public office for as long as they have. A familiar corrupt face is making headlines again today in the "free press" - but will the BBC cover the story adequately, I wonder? The website doesn't seem to have noticed.
When Auntie underpaid the market rate, it developed and held on to its considerable wealth of home-grown talent through loyalty and dedication, not just cash; but now its deep trough can attract the gadarene swine of the world of "meedja" as they pass by. Some of the better talent simply gets weary of the left-ist bias and departs without making any sort of public fuss. Any BBC employee that is willing to go public with attitudes that are not on message quickly learns that there is no future for them.
The way that the "have your say" section of the website is moderated in the effort to suppress off-message comment and PC comment is laughable. The social engineering efforts of a decade do not seem have worked as well as expected, and management must be distraught at having to provide a platform for the very views that it spends hundreds of millions pounds to try and engineer out of British society.
Let's not underestimate the scope and depth of the technology revolution that has empowered creative talent and has enabled anyone with £10k to produce TV programming that competes with the best in the world. Yet still "olde worlde" budgets are thrown at shows like Dr Who and a cast of thousands of luvvies are hauled in and hyped to the rafters, and even the costly regional diversity box get ticked along the way. And still too many people accept the arguments about the cost of producing such shows.
Of course the old guard is not interested in proving that they can do it on 10% of the budget and set a dangerous precedent - but the world has changed fundamentally, and there is no way to stuff the many geniis back into the bottle, no matter how hard the BBC is bent on keeping its gravy train running at full steam.
Overall, this announcement means no more than ITV needs a cut price way to avoid breaking its licence terms and this is the cheapest solution; and the BBC is probably anticipating picking up the pieces when ITV finally tanks, since such a fractured organisation would probably be a lot less attractive to any potential purchaser of ITV. Although an alternative view might be that this also makes the BBC operations easier to commercialise when the time comes and all scheduled broadcasting becomes web deliverable.