The Politics of Dancing

 THE BBC AND NADINE DORRIS  The TV licence is an anachronism, it is not of course alone, this country is awash with anachronisms from the Royal Family, to the House of Lords I could go on. When we wish to keep anachronisms we call them traditions, when we wish to dispose of them, we call them relics. As anachronism go the TV licence strikes me as of greater value than the Royal Family, and much greater value than the House of Lords. Indeed, the BBC is an institution that enriches British life and culture and is admired throughout the world. [1] The same cannot be said for the House of Lords, rancid and corrupt, a carbuncle on British democracy. Alas the licence fee will have to go, not because of the reasons put forward by the Culture Secretary[sic] Nadine Dorries, a woman who understands as much about culture as a dead hedgehog. A Dead Hedgehog opines The reason that the licence fee is no longer viable has however been provided by Ms Dorries, inadvertently or not. It is ...

      Like Trump,   Vladimir Putin is a master at bully and bluff. He knows how to play a weak hand well and is acutely aware of the weaknesses of liberal democracy and the constraints imposed upon his enemies by fidelity to the rule of law and accepted norms of behaviour. Thus far, from Georgia to Crimea, he has got away with levels of criminal recklessness virtually scot free.   But   ‘success’ like this can be heady, and even the most composed of poker players can overplay their hand. Public opinion in autocratic and   semi-autocratic states is a complex affair, measuring it is difficult, but it does exist, as the rulers of Kazakhstan are just finding out. For Putin’s Russia, which belongs in the second category, the pressures are similar but more complex than many similar autocratic states. The pressure of public expectations of reasonable incomes that keep pace with prices, matched by the competing pressure to meet the demands of greedy...