On 26-Dec-04 Robert Moore wrote:
> Members of the list might be interested in a series being
> broadcast on the World Service of the BBC. From the accounts
> I heard (and the trailers) it sounds good, dealing with
> privatisation world-wide, using data of a kind that does not
> normally feature in much home broadcasting. Series began
> on the 20th.
>
> No need to tune up your steam radio, you can listen on:
>
> http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/programmes/documentary_1.shtml#
>
> The first installment is there until Tuesday.
>
> Hope this is not off-topic.
>
> Robert
Well, that looked good, and so did the blurb on the website at
the above URL:
Privatisation is a great trick -- if a country can
pull it off.
At the wave of wand, a loss-making and inefficient
enterprise making poor investment decisions can start
to become a tax-payer, rather than remaining a recipient
of state largesse.
Yet, in a special four-part series, Nigel Cassidy
discovers at first hand, how poor consumers in India
face mass disconnection when they cannot pay water
or electricity bills.
Privatisation has brought them none of the promised
benefits. The drive to attract private capital to
essential services has become relentless.
Ultimately however, someone has to pay.
However, when I listened to it this morning it didn't quite
live up to the blurb. Very "journalistic", hopping from
scenario to scenario, briefly visiting the history of
privatisation (starting with BT), in many cases quoting
benefits which many reaped, and only at the end getting
round to a rather short piece on the hardships of poor
Indian farmers (who rely on electricity to pump irrigation
water and post-privatisation can only have it 7 hours a
day even if they pay their bills, whereas they often need
it 24 hours a day).
Nor did there seem tp be mention of "data of a kind that
does not normally feature in much home broadcasting".
Some of it may have been "tongue in cheek", however.
Somewhat disappointing on the part of World Service, after
the publicity hype. The World Service often comes up with
stuff that you can't imagine Radio 4 being keen to broadcast
(interesting in itself, since both are controlled by the
BBC and the principal difference between them is their
respective audiences -- not many UK voters listen to the
World Service, especially during the day when you would
have to deliberately tune into it; most are asleep at
night and even if awake many are not likely to be interested
in that "foreign" stuff).
However, I still reckon Robert Moore's posting was "On Topic",
in principle. To the extent that the program might have come
up with the goods, it might have provided a useful instance of
how to look "alternatively" at so much of the "information"
we get fed!
At least the broadcast took a "world view"! Maybe subsequent
broadcasts will be more stimulating.
Best wishes, and Happy New Year to all.
Ted.
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Date: 27-Dec-04 Time: 13:24:54
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