Presumably you are able to recognise that Ofcom's pronouncements carry the weight of statutory force.

It is impossible to conceive of a free-speech doctrine that includes government agencies issuing rulings on whether a comedian's jokes are funny or not.

The BBC is obliged to take account of Ofcom's broadcasting code, including its worthless stipulations on supposed offensive material, or suffer sanctions which include fines; they have indeed been fined for violations of the very section upon which Carr is accused of trespassing, in the trivial Andrew Sachs answerphone affair for example.

Frankly I would prefer Jimmy Carr skin a dwarf and wear its shrunken hide as a scarf in his next appearance on The One Show than have our treasured public service broadcaster at the mercy of PC crybullies and the government guns that back them.

Yes! That's what this research is telling us. I'm quite certain that this relabeling has been done already by some shady operators, without advising the consumers.

I suspect the effect would be stronger in the U.S. with direct drug advertising... is that legal anywhere else in the world?

How long until some shady character uses it as a defence in court? We just did it to increase the effectiveness of the generic drug... it's almost a public service

I disagree. Debunking something that is widely accepted as true is an important thing to learn.
Of course, funny is completely subjective.
But I believe that this video does a public service, honestly, in a palatable way.

Holy crap, this would have been so useful when I put in solar about 9 years ago. *quality idea, and public service google is offering here. Kudos.

There is no argument, the guy filming is a tool. There is no hero or public service announcement anywhere to be seen.

All he proved was that acting like a tool can get you arrested. Yep, that showed it for all of us, what public service did this guy provide exactly?

See, I can't understand this mentality. He knew the cops in his area were both poorly trained and stupid and set out to prove it. He did a fucking public service and didn't inconvenience anyone else in the process.

But people like you are going to criticize him rather than the cops who don't know how to do their own fucking jobs. Seriously, wtf?

The fucking sad thing is, I love seeing the videos where cops are doing the right thing. That cop that was dancing in the gay pride march, the guys that help out the cyclists when the motorist does the wrong thing, the cop that defended the people handing out flyers in the airport etc.

These people are good guys and girls, honest people doing a fucking hard job.

But if they speak out when they see the sort of shit that get's put up every other day around here, they get harassed etc. If they stay silent, they become complicit. Having worked in a public service job for a long time, I intimately understand the awful drag of complacency and apathy where you see shit happening for so long and nothing you do seems to make a difference, but it still becomes a choice of letting it happen, or continuing to fight.

You are mistaken.

This is not just Genji, it's most people around here. You want to nail yourself to a cross and think you're being singled out because of who you are, not what you say, be my guest, but you're fooling no one. Particularly since anyone can go back through your history of posts (I pity the fool) and see for themselves...

You want the respect you believe your public service demands, then do it better than the rest and stand up against the people making you and your profession look bad. Coming here and spewing bile everytime someone posts a video about cops doing bad things doesn't make you seem fair and balanced, it makes you seem complicit...

The advantages of laissez-bribé should be evident to anyone.

It removes the current disincentive to report bribery and the incentive to act on its influence. It reduces the ability of malefactors to gauge the effectiveness of bribes and removes any hold they have over their subject, because there can be no question of impropriety. It allows for effective monitoring of corruptive influence, provides a running record of officials' interests and creates a new platform for understanding and managing the economic imperatives inherent in the public-private interface. It even builds an inescapable fine into the act of bribery itself and converts otherwise hidden income into taxable revenue! Could there be a more elegant and socially responsible system?

Requires oversight, sure, but it's obviously functionally superior to any naive moralistic alternative.

I think James Randy Moss probably understood all this and, American hero that he is, valiantly laid his career on the line to usher in a new era of honesty and accountability in public service.

Notice how good the cops are at roughing people up when there is no danger and no real threat. But when the time comes when you actually hope that the police will defend person and property against invasion, times of genuine upheaval and fear, suddenly the police retire back and become strangely passive. It happens in every case of "civil unrest," and it's always astonishing. It's when property owners discover that they are on their own. The persistence of this behavior should make everyone rethink their presumptions that tax-funded, government-run policing is the right approach to security.

The smart response to Baltimore is to recognize that this is the product of the pointless drug war, a racially punitive policing system, failed public services, a highly regulated labor market that cuts off economic opportunity, gun control, and permanent martial law that makes everyone feel like prisoners in their own homes and lives.

Alas, we're likely to see only the typical bourgeois response to Baltimore: lock up these "animals" and unleash the cops on the rest.

Which explanation sells better to the "public?" I think it's pretty obvious. This is why fascism always wins.

@dannym3141

Broadly speaking, I tend to subscribe to the view that capitalism is the worst economic system anyone ever invented, except for all the others. There are plenty of problems with it but also practical solutions that could be implemented. Pining for a better system is great, but this quasi-vague revolution that Brand is espousing is as almost guaranteed to be as direction-less and short lived as the Occupy movement.

Take campaign finance reform, of what I'm familiar the Mayday PAC in the US is proposing a voucher system where either (1) each voter is given and limited to a set amount tax refund they can spend on campaign contributions or alternatively (2) there is public finance for something like a 10 to 1 matching system for smaller donations. That seems like a good solution to the problem. It's not perfect though, as speech via the media (TV, internet) would still be wielded disproportionately by those with power. But it's a start. More transparency on where donations are coming from would also help.

I'm no fan of inequality either, but it's a far more difficult issue to grapple with. If you approach it with taxes, the problem is you need global coordination. A single country raising taxes will just see incomes shift elsewhere particular the highest percent who are the most mobile. There needs to be some kind of standard on taxation globally as to whether it is incurred where it is earned or where the company is registered, otherwise you have companies like Apple paying next to nothing because they avoid it in both countries (known as the double Irish, although this has now been eliminated it's a good example).

Should investment income be taxed higher? Probably, I'm not too well informed on this subject but it certainly entrenches established wealth. Should there be an estate-like tax of sorts that limits wealth passed on through generations? Perhaps, but it seems like a band-aid of sorts and a double dipping on what should really be collected through income tax in the first place.

I'm all for public services where it makes sense to provide them publicly. I don't like political cronyism either. But solutions need to be practical. Eliminating tax avoidance by multinationals is good policy because otherwise these companies paying virtually no tax intrinsically sets up barriers to entry to smaller competitors which is terrible economically and leads to monopolistic behaviour and higher prices. Targeting finance with a specific tax probably isn't. Business will just shift globally and countries like the UK will lose out more than they gain.

You're 100% spot on, and that along with systemic corruption from top to bottom of politics and business (..but i repeat myself..) is going to be the legacy of this era - the Age of Deception. We MUST look good, we CANNOT afford to admit wrong.. these are phrases that should be anathema to politicians and public services, but they are words that literally define the modern statesman.

And as the supposed greatest amongst us, people flock to their example and are rewarded for doing so. We need both a psychological revolution, so we stop the rot of our civilisation, but also a physical one, because those in power are absolutely not going to relinquish it or even reduce their grip.

Why on Earth should we allow people who show themselves to be incompetent continue to hold the reins? We need a way to hold these people to account for their words and actions.

It's funny you call it a racket. The government funding model is the same as the mafia funding model. (That's actually a thing. Not making a joke).

Both rely on a tribute, both have enforcers to make sure you cooperate, and both provide the community with protection from touble makers that would harm productivity.

Heck, in south America, there are mafias that provide public services in places where the government doesn't have a presence. Utilities, policing, welfare, healthcare, etc.

I say this not as a criticism of either government or mafia. Simply pointing out that both work on the same basic principles.

-scheherazade