h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Your post made me realise how little I know about Dutch (and all European) history. Being an English speaker has many benefits, but there's a risk of limiting one's universe to the English-speaking world, to America, Australia, Hong Kong, Ireland. The Oxford Companion to English Literature takes Tolstoy and Racine in its stride, as if all literature was English. It's also tempting to think of Europe as the centre of visual arts and music (we've got Raphael, Picasso, El Greco, Beethoven, Mozart – who could ask for more?). And, as you say, we ignore all the ancients except the Greeks and Romans – not only the Aztecs, but Norse and Sumerian legends. I was reading the Epic of Gilgamesh a couple of years ago. It's very foreign, but it doesn't feel as if it was written 5,000 years ago.

Anyway, though I try to spread my interests your references made me realise how little I know about the Dutch. I'm aware of the damage the British Empire did to its subject peoples – starving the Indians and so on. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised to discover that you people did some massacring as well. But why did Queen Wilhelmina want to go to Breskens? Does that mean she was prepared to collaborate with the Nazis? I don't know who Den Uyl or Drees are. Wikipedia mentions a painter called Den Uyl, and a politician. I looked at some of the paintings on Google Images, hyper-real. Those were the days. Wikipedia says Drees was your prime minister. Are those the people you meant? I also hadn't heard of Terry Callier. Thank you very much for bringing him to my attention.

I'm not young, and don't particularly like U2. They've done some good work, but I find Bono's politics cheap and easy. He's a rich man amusing himself, and gets free publicity, from toying with the lives of the poor and desperate. What I was doing on the questions only thread was pushing ideas to breaking point, just for the fun of it.

I don't think the question is whether or not a care worker from a minority race should be discussing Botticelli with an 88 year old in the shower. You don't discuss Botticelli with your bank manager, or your stockbroker, or your dentist. The point is whether or not a humble care worker should know about Botticelli for her own sake. If all she's taught is how to dress and bath senior citizens, then she becomes (as the ancient Greeks used to say about their slaves) just a tool that talks. Besides, if she is taught a little about recent history, then she will know something of the times an 88 year old has lived through. I also wonder if anybody – black or white, rich or poor, cleaner or chairman – will know about Botticelli in the future. A well-known British journalist described how he had driven some student friends of his daughter around the south west of England and pointed out that this was where Thomas Hardy set his novels; he discovered that the students had never heard of Thomas Hardy. In similar vein a young American film actor was told that he might have a career as a light romantic hero such as Cary Grant, and asked who Cary Grant was.

I read somewhere that a liberal arts education was the perfect foundation for a career in business. If this is true, there's something very wrong with the kind of liberal arts education provided in the UK, and America. Here's a TED lecture on the subject:

http://www.ted.com/talks/liz_coleman_s_call_to_reinvent_liberal_arts_education.html

Tulipomania, in as far as I understand it, was the first recorded financial bubble. The theory goes like this: when a great empire comes to an end, there is money sloshing around but nothing useful to do with it. Instead of working, the people turn to self-indulgence and corruption. So, for example, when Vasco da Gama first sailed round Africa, Venice lost its raison d'etre. All the great palaces along the Grand Canal were built after that point, and Venice became a centre not just of culture, but of prostitution.

In the case of Holland, as Britain took over as the world's great trading nation, the people discovered that there was more money in buying and selling tulips than in working for a living. At its height a single rare tulip bulb cost more than a mansion in the Hague. There is a legend that a foreign sailor, not understanding what was going on, picked up one of these priceless bulbs in the market and ate it. He was arrested and explained that he thought it was an onion, and didn't think anybody would object. At this point, the people of Holland realised that a house should be worth more than something that couldn't be distinguished from an onion, and this first ever “bubble” burst.

I have no idea whether that story is true or not, but in recent years Britain has stopped being “the workshop of the world”. There has been a mania for buying and selling houses on credit. Everybody has, or wants, a house with granite work surfaces in the kitchen and flat screen televisions in the living room. Members of Parliament earn relatively little (much less, as I pointed out earlier, than BBC executives) but supplement their incomes by buying and selling houses and charging the cost of borrowing the money to buy those properties to the taxpayer. Television schedules concentrate on property dealing, sophisticated cooking and the latest high technology equipment to be manufactured in Japan and China. Leaders despise the people they lead (Robert Maxwell, a millionaire newspaper owner, used to stand on the balcony of his main office block on rainy evenings and urinate on his employees as they made their way home, and ended up stealing their pensions; a journalist who helped to conceal that pension theft and wrote a particularly flattering eulogy to him when he died now appears on television at least five times a week – BBC television, naturally). So I've been reading about the end of empires, looking for parallels with modern Britain and the United States, wondering what's going to happen next.

I don't understand why you couldn't see the poem. There is no hidden meaning to my words. I referred you to a web site rather than posting it because the moderators are sensitive about copyrighted materials. The poet is not long dead, so it might still be in copyright. So to avoid any difficulties I've copied the poem and posted it on a web site of my own:

http://infiehimself.webs.com/

I was going to work on the double horizon story, but I've started a new approach to fiction which I hope is much better. I won't be posting it on H2G2 because I am quite serious about not contributing to any BBC web site. This decision has been reinforced by a book I stumbled across. It's called “Uncertain Vision”, and it's written by Georgina Born, a woman who teaches at Oxford University. She's the granddaughter of Max Born, who won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1954.

The book is an investigation of the BBC. It's full of instances of bad management and Gresham's Law in action, but the beginning of the book is really shocking. She was taken to one side by an ex-BBC executive and warned that the Corporation would do anything short of running her down in a car to protect itself. Later, while she was observing a meeting, a senior BBC manager threw darts into her legs. Nobody else attending the meeting commented on the assault.

We need responsible broadcasters to investigate things like slavery in Mauretania and the activities of our elected politicians. I think it shames the country that our biggest television corporation stoops to violence and the threat of violence to conceal its secrets.

I've been searching the archives of the national newspaper NRC-Handelsblad for a cartoon by Bas van der Schot that was published last saturday. I wanted to show it to you, but it's not in the digital archive of the paper nor at published at the cartoonist website.. I can only give you a description. It goes like this:

A middle aged man with with receding hair and spectacles is standing in the foreground, holding a copy of the Donald Duck. He says: 'I am a duck in the deepest of my thoughts'.
At a distance behind him are two people looking at him. One of them comments: 'another of those intellectuals who, after reading the NRC-commentary about Donald Duck, dares to come out of the cupboard as a role model'.

The phrase 'I am a duck in the deepest of my thoughts', refers to a well-known line of poetry by Willem Kloos, written in the eighties of the 19th century: "Ik ben een God in 't diepst van mijn gedachten', 'I am a God in the deepest of my thoughts'.

Interestingly, there was also a story in the paper last weekend about the spending of tax money and money from advertisements (731 million euro in 2008) by the public (not commercial) television broadcasting institutions. There's another institution to control it, but because not everything is public and transparant, a comitee was formed a couple of years ago to investigate complaints about lack of integrity, nepotism and excessive payments.

This committee's chairman is a former MP for the liberals. He says in the paper everything is alright now. No complaints have reached him. The so-called self-governance is working splendidly. According to him more control is not needed.

The story continues to tell how the popular programs about health and hospitals are made with money from the pharmaceutical industry.
A big chain of supermarkets pays for one of the children programs, and meantime sells merchandize products of the program in its shops.
Directors put their family members, son and wife, on the paylist.
Outside producers invite directors and managers of the channels for meetings abroad. The expenses for hotels and dinners and travel are being paid for.
One consultant asks 1.500 euro a day for his work.
Payments for executive directors are still far more than what a minister earns in this country, and the provisions for pensions, on average more than 40.000 a year on, are not included in the salaries but an extra.

The BBC-manager was quite blatant in his agression, I must say. The BBC workfloor is not exempt from bullying, I'm sure. Why shouldn't happen there what is happening all over the world every day? Have you any idea how many people are at home sick because of that? Thank goodness, I'm not working in an office eight hours a day anymore with people whose way of thinking and behaving are so outrageously of the mark. This BBC-manager should have been send to court for assault and been fired. But justice is not always given where it is due.

This well-known journalist better goes with modern times: Gary Grant! If he had mentioned Johnny Depp, the student immediately would have grasped the idea. I never read Thomas Hardy myself. You think I should? Why? Of the old ones, I like reading Dickens best. Why read a book by a male writer who was pampered from the craddle to the grave by his mum, wife, sisters, mistresses, female readers and male critics? I refuse to read Lawrence, why read Hardy?

Queen Wilhelmina! A nazi-lover, no. (It was her German son-in-law, Bernard, who offered his services to the Nazi's, only you won't read about that on the internet). What surprises me is that it’s for the first time I read that she asked the captain of the submarine to be brought to Breskens in the south because there were two fortresses in the vicinity of this fishermen's village, and that she considered to be save there.
One has to take into consideration that there has been a lot of critism in the last decade about the role of the queen and the government at the start of WWII, abandoning the country over night, and the (subsequent?) submissive attitude of the majority of the population during the warI.

In 1944. Wilhelmina, by radio, encouraged the population not to collaborate with the Germans anymore. The allied forces had liberated the south of the country. The railways seeing the shift in direction from where the wind was blowing, decided to go on strike. Then the advancement of the allied forces stopped and a severely cold winter followed. There as a serious shortage of food. People started to shop down trees in the streets for fuel, kill cats and dogs for food, went on journeys to the countryside on bikes to buy meat, potatoes, and vegetables. Those who couldn’t afford that ate bulbs, also the bulbs of tulips.

My old friend, Mrs. T, who worked as a seamtress in one of those expensive shops for the rich, met Wilhelmina once. (‘A tres chique maison’: an expensive shop. When the wife of a lawyer visited and something went missing, the manager was kindly requested to send the bill for the missing item to her husband's office.)
One day Queen Wilhelmina came in to fit a new dress. Mrs. T. was busy pinning the dress around her body and taking the right ankle length. Not once did Wilhelmina look at her. She stubbornly refused to look Mrs. T. in the eye. Nor did she give her a smile or said 'goodbye' when she left. Mrs. T. was ignored, serving as "a tool that can talk".
Of course it didn't help that mrs. T. was (still is) a remarkable handsome woman. But that is Wilhelmina, refusing to give a high ranking civil servant a hand when she met him after the war because he had worked for the Germans.

Wilhelmina left for England on the night before the invasion, taking the government with her. Two minor ministers didn't manage to escape, and were left without further instructions. The result was disastrous. Dealing with Seyss-Inquart, a specialist in constitutional law, they signed a treaty by which they handed over the entire administration of this country into the hands of the occupying forces: the ministeries, the civil servants (from top-level down to the provincial and local councils), the police, the railways, everything. "Es war ein Lust fur das Auge", "it was a joy for the eye", Eichmann is reported to have said about how well things were organized in this country.

Well yes, it still is if it comes to control and bully people who are dependent on the dole, for instance. The railway company has been partly privatised and is running late nowadays, the same is true for the post that is now in the hands of TNT. You can imagine what happened to the pay and working conditions of those working there.

Drees and Den Uyl were both social-democrats, both were prime-minister once upon a time in the post-war past. You have to consider that it is said that in this country everything happens about half a century later than in most of Europe. What the German's had in the 19th century in social insurance, we got in the sixties of the twentieth thanks to ‘vadertje’, ‘daddy’ Drees. Den Uyl is still refered to as ome Joop, ‘oncle Joop’. He’s the scapegoat for every state deficit, including those of the subsequent governments, the seemingly perpetual coalitions of the christian democrats and the liberals in the eighties until halfway the nineties.

Coming back to this cartoon in the NRC of last Saturday, one has to take into consideration that the word used for those who are poor in this country, is 'low-educated'.

Thanks for the Dutch stuff on World War 2. We're taught so little about European history.

i've seen a lot of bullying in the workplace, and even worked with men who like to hurt and humiliate women who were prepared to exercise power over female colleagues. What made the BBC story stand out for me was that he did what he did in a meeting full of people. Bullies are usually a bit more discreet than that - for fear of being dismissed for gross misconduct, at least under British law. He broke the law in a room full of people, knowing he was immune and invulnerable.

I think it's a matter of TV in general, not just the BBC. There was a report a few years ago in a magazine called Broadcast that more than half of employees in the television sector had witnessed sexist or racist bullying. They glide about in their limousines, sneering at the people who pay their salaries, knowing that whatever they do they'll get away with it.

Never mind.

Thomas Hardy is generally regarded as one of the major literary authors, up their with Austen and Dickens. He's slightly different, though. His work reads as if ity really happened, unadorned and honest. You should take a look at it, even if you don't read a whole book. I think his poems are very underrated. They're simple, with old-fashioned rhymes, often telling stories of country folk. For instance, there's one about a girl on her wedding morning who has discovered her fiance loves someone else, but daren't set him free because she's pregnant.

You're so right about Johnny Depp being top-of-the-mind where previous stars are forgotten. There's an attitude something like: "Why listen to Mozart? Eminem learned his trade from all the musicians who came before him, so if you listen to Eminem and Bono you're getting the best music in the world." I exaggerate, but it's something like that. There was a competition on TV to find the "Greatest Briton", and the woman who put the case for Shakespeare claimed you could see his influence in the soap opera "Eastenders". Now, I've watched Hamlet and I've watched Eastenders, and I can tell you there are things Shakespeare knew that the writers of soap operas haven't managed to learn.

I've had dealings with TNT, who also have eyes on our postal service, so I sympathise.

I will read Thomas Hardy if I can find a copy of his work. The biggest bookstore in town offers a small selection of Anglo-Saxon poetry and Thomas Hardy's poems are not amongst it. I'm convinced that I can find his work in the antiquarian bookshop on one of the canals. Unfortunately this shop is only opened at the whim of its owners.

Last week the commissioners Smit-Kroes and Reding have come up with new rules for European public broadcasters concering internet services and new media activities: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/0de74bb2-6725-11de-925f-00144feabdc0.html

As for the attitude problems of BBC executives, these people suffer from 'the masters of the universe'- syndrome. They assume everyone is envious of them, that other people want what they have or can do what they do. They cannot grasp the notion that their behaviour is generally considered to be vulgar and in bad taste. "Power corrupts", to quote a cliche and a truism. That others look away when they misbehave is typical for people who are both ambitious and afraid.

The psychological concept of 'normality' is a matter of statistics. If the majority of the population behaves in a certain way, it is called 'normal. So, if more than half of the work force says to have been subject to either racist of sexual bullying ....

It's like what I said about the education system in Holland. One wants to learn and improve oneself, have a nice job in the future, do something that gives pleasure and one is interested in.

If you want this then you have to abide to the mores of those in power, the teachers. They tell you not only what to learn but also how to look at it and how to behave. They tell you want it and at the same time they tell you you're not quite worth it. You have to prove yourself to be worthy by adapting to their mores, their views, their opinions, even if it's madness. Once out of school, inside a professional career ... there are the bosses.

Thanks for the Smit-Kroes and Reding link. With luck, the party will be over for our publicly-funded princelings.

I'm going to stop moaning about the BBC in this thread, but before I do here are some links you might find interesting - about the BBC throwing parties that cost more than the houses of most of the people who pay their bills, and the fact that BBC executives have bigger pensions than anyone else in the UK public sector.

http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/columnists/carolemalone/380621/BBC-bosses-blow-our-cash-on-private-planes-and-posh-parties-Carole-Malone.html

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/tv_and_radio/article6638447.ece

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article6638318.ece

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/5750277/Top-BBC-executives-will-enjoy-pensions-costing-26m.html

http://www.dailyexpress.co.uk/posts/view/112006/Row-over-obscene-BBC-pensions/

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/media/article6638190.ece

Alan Yentob, mentioned in the last of these links, runs an arts programme that is famous for giving free publicity to artists who are his own personal friends ("Al's Pals" as they are generally referred to).

Don't spend money on the works of Thomas Hardy. You can get them for nothing: text from Gutenberg.org, or MP3 readings from Librivox.org. Then if you like what you see you can consider buying books (I find it difficult to read long segments of text on a computer screen). I suggest the novel "Tess of the Durbervilles" and the collection of poems entitled "Late Lyrics and Earlier: with Many Other Verses". It includes "The Wedding Morning", which I mentioned in post 23.

Hardy was a working-class lad with no formal literary training (he became an architect, but gave it up early on). You may not like his work - reading in a second language is a strange thing. I've noticed that people who don't have English as a first language tend to love Edgar Allen Poe, where the British tend to look down on him. And Jorge Luis Borges adored Kipling, who went out of fashion many years ago.

I think Borges is right and we're wrong, by the way.

Anyway, try Hardy and let me know what you think.

Infie

I said I would stop moaning about the BBC, but already I'm breaking my word.

I just heard an edition of "From Our Own Correspondent" [a Radio 4 programme, also available on Iplayer] about the collapse of local newspapers in the United States due to competition on the World Wide Web. As the BBC is actively engages in destroying Britian's local newspapers by using public money to compete with them on the web, I consider this to be the worst kind of hypocrisy.

OK. I shall NOW stop moaning about the BBC.

"You need a strong stomach to watch how in the back of the kitchen the sausage is made." ''Madmen'

You put it well, Krabbatt II.

I don't have a strong enough stomach to deal with these vile people any more. That's why I decided not to do any more postings on this site.

Really? I read an interview with Smit-Kroes in the paper last Friday. She says she's ambitious for a second term as a commissioner. According to her "now is an interesting time to be in Europe's kitchen". Perhaps she saw 'Madmen' as well on wednesday night. She's an expert in making sausages in the back of the kitchen. Not quite impeccable, but so far untouchable.

The English government decided not to introduce the identity card. The Dutch are obliged to carry one. From next August on we'll have our fingerprint on the new cards.

The English government decided not to privitize the postal service. I already told you about TNT. There's to be a next reorganisation: 10.000 job losses.

Journalists of the News of the World tap the phones of well-known people. The Dutch authorities, the police and the (secret) intelligence service, are world champions in tapping the phones of its citizens, especially those of lawyers and of journalists.

As for the bonus for the bankers, well our minister of Finance, the one that bought back from Fortis a small part of the bancrupt ABN AMRO, says that his attempts to curtail those are in vain because his hands are tied by Europe's strict regulations. These bonusses at ABN-AMRO are more readily given to the employees in the higher ranks because the evaluation of their work is far more relaxed and lenient than for those working in the lower ranks of the bank.

Today I was having a drink in the late afternoon with some friends who are also, like me, dog owners. After a couple of drinks we were ready to leave but my friend had to go to the toilet first. Sitting there I noticed that the air turned stale. There was suddenly a nasty musty smell. My friend came back and just before we left the young bronzed bloke next to me, who had just arrived with his girlfriend and had taken a seat next to me said to his girl: Dogs are really dirty animals."

I leave you with this last picture postcard with many greetings from my fascist country, Holland, nowadays also known as The Netherlands.

That was a very dark post, Krabatt II.

In contrast, there's some good news over here. The very slightest smell of decency round at the BBC, or perhaps just damage limitation.

Sir Michael Lyons, the Chairman of the BBC Trust has admitted that BBC executives are overpaid, and has suspended the top people's bonuses. These suspensions look as if they're going to be permanent. Here's an article about it:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/5819449/Bonuses-suspended-indefinitely-for-senior-BBC-executives.html

The problem is not the bonuses, though they're big enough. It's the huge salaries people object to, as well as the obscenely expensive parties and the millions paid out to presenters.

Sir Michael knows this. He has just had a generous salary increase:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/5827035/BBC-annual-report-Sir-Michael-Lyons-sees-package-rise-30pc.html

It's also encouraging that the government is beginning to notice what's going on. All politicians need to be on good terms with the media, and Jana Bennett, the BBC's "Director of Vision" is really employed for her contacts in Parliament, but our new Minister of Culture is married to a TV producer and is not so easy to fool. He has accused the Chairman of the BBC Trust and the Director-General of poor leadership. Here's an article about it:

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23719065-details/Culture+Minister+slams+BBC%27s+%27bunker+mentality%27/article.do

Between them, the Chairman of the Trust and the Director-General make more than a million pounds a year.

Are there cracks in the smug armour of the BBC? Perhaps not, but at least they're having an uncomfortable few days.

Did you download any Thomas Hardy?

A dark post, perhaps. I wasn't in my habitual post-socratic state of mind then and thereafter.

Indeed, that's some decent news. Those people in so-called top jobs give themselves unlimited extensive pay-rises. 50.000 a year should be a decent income, in my estimation. 70.000 for a top-job is by far more than enough. Mind you, those people aren't doing much work themselves. It's mostly done by their staff.

Did I read Hardy, no not yet.. I've just finished Steinbeck's 'The winter of our discontent'. Wonderful story. I enjoyed that book so much.
I found it in this antiquarian shop when I was looking for Hardy, but to my surprise there wasn't anything of him on the shelves. There used to be so many second-hand bookstores in the city, but one by one they've disappeared. The age of television and internet doesn't stimulate people to buy and read literature anymore, not to mention poetry, English poetry at that.

Now I've picked up Joyce's Ulysses again. I got stuck somewhere halfway a few months ago. Noble traveller Bloom meets noble knight Stephen and company at what seems to be a merry drinking party at a maternity hospital. Their attempt to lessen their thirst is accompanied by the cries of a woman who has been in labour for two full days and still hasn't delivered. A thunderstorm is raging overhead. I constantly ask myself: why am I reading this? It's just that I cannot admit defeat.

Hi Krabbatt II

Sorry to have taken so long replying. It's been a busy summer.

I've been taking an interest in the subject of this thread, though. Hard to miss if you read the British papers. How about this: BBC executives are given tax-free helpings of our money for advice on how they can avoid paying tax:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/5853046/BBC-executives-received-1000-in-licence-fee-payers-money-to-cut-taxes-on-pensions.html

Small wonder that if the Conservatives win the next election (and they probably will) they've promised to dismember the BBC:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/conservative/6142962/Conservatives-float-plans-for-massive-privatisation.html

The collapse might take H2G2 with it, of course. If Labour win they'll probably do something similar, because bashing the Beeb is an easy way to court popularity at the moment. This is what a leading Labour Party politician thinks:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/tv-radio/culture-secretary-calls-for-bbc-trust-to-be-dismantled-1788691.html

I find that very sad. I have watched and listened to wonderful things from the BBC. I think the people who run the corporation these days have played into the hands of Rupert Murdoch and News Corporation, and it's probably too late to repair the damage.

Still, nothing lasts, does it?

There's a survey you might be interested in. British people were asked how they felt about the salary of the BBC's Director General, Mark Thompson. 79% said his salary was “too high” and 51% said it was “far too high”. You can see the full report here:

http://www.yougov.co.uk/extranets/ygarchives/content/pdf/ITV_23-Oct-2009.pdf

Thompson earns more than twice as much as the chairman of ITV, the biggest commercial station in Britain.

I recently heard Stephen Poliakoff (playwright, screenwriter and film director, there's a list of his awards on the Internet Movie Database) complaining that the BBC has cut down on the production of individual dramas, putting their money into soap operas such as EastEnders, Casualty and Holby City. The BBC told him they did it because they couldn't find good enough writers. Poliakoff says the country is awash with writing talent. What he says doesn't count, though, because it's the BBC executives who make the decisions.

As legendary TV producer John Lloyd (who collaborated with Douglas Adams on the original radio series of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) put it: “The country (not just the government) appears to be run by a self-appointed, unelected class of professional know-alls that none of us asked for and who, while they haven't yet started shooting people, are unable to make proper decisions about anything because they are too busy feathering their nests at our expense.”

They haven't, as he said, started shooting people. But as I mentioned in an earlier post in this thread, BBC executives have threatened violence, committed assault and inflicted actual bodily harm.

They also prosecute poor people for not paying the license (kyk en luister) fee which funds H2G2, a site with used by people all around the world who pay nothing at all for the service.

Here's another report you might be interested in. The UK becoming increasingly corrupt:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/mps-expenses/6589686/Britain-slips-to-new-low-in-ranking-of-most-corrupt-countries-after-MPs-expenses-scandal.html

Once upon a time we could turn to the BBC to expose this sort of thing. Now we expect them to be standing side-by-side with the perpetrators, helping themselves to public funds.

"They also prosecute poor people for not paying the license (kyk en luister) fee which funds H2G2, a site with used by people all around the world who pay nothing at all for the service.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/annualreport/exec/financial/index.shtml

Quote:
"Maximising the returns we make on programmes paid for by the licence fee

This is, in essence, what the main commercial arm of the BBC exists to do. BBC Worldwide sells the programmes we make across the world, so that licence fee payers get the highest possible return on the money they pay.

We are always looking for new opportunities to sell our output, formats and other merchandise in the UK and overseas. In 2008/09 BBC Worldwide’s total revenues were just over £1billion, including intra-group income and its share of joint venture income, up 9.5% on the previous year and the first time that revenues have passed this milestone. This is partly down to new investment this year, in channels, online and production, and partly the result of growth from our existing business. Particular highlights from our Global Brands business include Top Gear and Doctor Who. We have also launched 18 new channels worldwide this year, which brings our total to 42, contributing to growth in Channels revenue of 23%."

As a foreign licence fee payer I want to express my sincere gratitude to you, Mrs. Patel and to every other BBC licence fee payer, for enjoying the free access to H2G2.
I assure you that I appreciate it more than a big bunch of flowers or an expensive dinner in a fancy restaurant.

My dear Imp, it's good to see you but I am a bit disappointed in you. I cannot believe you blame me or any other foreigner who visits H2G2 for how British society treats its poor. As you are well aware I am powerless in British domestic affairs.

It was the French philosopher Foucault who said that you can judge a civilization by treatment of its prisoners. Well, can't the same been said of how it treats its animals, children, women, foreigners or poor people?

Anyway, I love that photograph of the skyline of London in one of the links in your latest post. It gives the impression as if one approaches from the east Tolkien's Mordor in The Lord of the Rings.

Now, let me offer you nice cup of tea.
http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/tea.htm