CONRAD, A LINK TO CANADA’S PAST ECONOMY
Canadian’s paid 30% extra on appliances, cars and anything else of value back in the 1960’s (what else was there to buy then?)…our paternal businessmen gouged the populace blind, and our per capita income was but 2/3 of the US (not far off that again, though Canada is rebounding). Conrad Black would, I believe, be glad to have that kind of a world returned, where papers and politics could influence controllable minds.
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CANADA’S GEOGRAPHY
Tacking in a completely different direction;
70% of Canadians live at a latitude equal to or SOUTH of SEATTLE, USA ..the big country on the map is a lie that even confuses Canadians …the main group of Canadians live in a protrusion between the states of Michigan and New York .. the rest, like a horizontal Chile, lie ribboned along the southern mountain called the USA, to the north side lays a big bowl of gruel and rice (I mean muck and ice) encompassing 3 1/2 million square miles.
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CANADA’S HISTORY
Canada is a country that was formed for three interests,the British Empire, ex-American Loyalists who left after the revolution, and the Quebecois who did not want to be swallowed up by America. Of course, only the Quebecois reason for Canada exists today ..and they would be swallowed up like never before, yet many want to leave, and be swallowed up.
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CANADIAN POLITICS AND A “DEFENSE” OF CONRAD
Canada tried the third option under Trudeau (closer to Europe-never got off the ground), the buffer to the USA (Canadians dearly love being loved by everyone else) and will try other things to find an identity …but Canada is merely an outdated, lovely regional twist to america…. .. and off center (US spelling of center) newspapers, even Conrad Black’s, can no longer do much harm to this confused country.

CONRAD COULD EVEN BE A POSITIVE LIASON?
In fact, a touch of the ‘extreme’ right helps keep Canada’s status as a liason or buffer plausible(Canadians would like to believe this, they really would), since a few Texan businesses combined with a few unnecessary industries (tobacco, government security and questionable defense contractors) to elect a President that would war in Iraq and lose thousands of its troops and hundreds of billions of dollars, while its allies let it twist in the winfd…surely that is a little extreme … and Canada needs a little indoctrination to stay in touch with this kind of folly, and remain an understanding liason,

Abiola - in the event that you’re interested in a debate rather than throwing personal insults, I’m happy to continue this discussion on my blog.

No one is ever going to make that particular mistake with the likes of “john b”, thank God. Where’s BBC tax refund, while we’re at it?

Since the licence fee is such a trivial imposition, why don’t you reimburse me for mine, then? It’s easy for trolls like you to talk big when other people’s money is on the line.

I also should have realised that this blog belongs to you, rather than belonging to the people listed in the ‘contributors’ section, and therefore that you have every right to instruct me in what I should and shouldn’t post.

To elaborate on my point above: there seem to be a lot of people - some of whom aren’t even British residents, which is particularly bizarre - with a pathological hatred of the BBC, and who’ll take any opportunity, no matter how tangential, to criticise said organisation. Only a very, very crazy person indeed (cf Mr Black) could claim that having to pay ?120 a year to fund a news source was a worse menace to the UK than Islamic terrorism, or the likely end of the Gulf Stream, to pick two random examples.

Describing people with such an obsession as “tinfoil-hatted loons” is unfair; I seriously doubt that many of them actually own tinfoil hats, or have genuine mental disorders. However, the kind of anti-BBC obsession that leads people to agree with Mr Black’s obviously untrue words above is not indicative of a terribly sensible set of priorities, in my opinion.

(NB the post above in no way defends the BBC. There are plenty of arguments in the institution’s favour, but these aren’t needed here.)

To be honest, the whole idea of tax-funded media irritates me to no end, and the ?112 annual fee is a real imposition if you aren’t exactly wealthy, which I certainly am not. However, if the state of affairs is such that I can do nothing to rid myself of this burdensome tax, then the least one can ask for is that it goes to fund the most anodyne, least politically aggressive reporting possible.

I would rather that the BBC not be funded by the public purse at all, but if I can’t have that, I can at least request that it be boring and unopinionated. One good thing that can at least be said about even the “Daily Wail”(1) (whose unending anti-immigrant tirades get on my nerves intensely) is that none of my money is going to support that nasty piece of prejudice-mongering. The same certainly isn’t true of the BBC, which, as we speak, is actually trying to pass off a group of Italians collecting money for Ba’athist fighters in Iraq as “anti-war activists”, rather than as the traitors to their own countrymen that these people actually are.

1 - No, that wasn’t a typo …