OFCOM. No, it really can get worse!

The sorry state of UK politics - and, potentially, OFCOM, the UK comms regulator - is being painfully revealed again recently by the Johnson government's unwillingness to take 'no' for an answer when it comes to appointing former Daily Mail editor, Paul Dacre, to Chair of OFCOM.

Trouble brewing...

OFCOM is no stranger to controversy within or without amateur radio.  Last year, it caved-in to what were utterly irrational and baseless public concerns about 5G roll-out, dragging amateur radio into the 'must assess RF safety' camp.  The radio press has been full of complaints and criciticsms since.  It's as likely that anyone will bother with doing the assessments for safety - noting OFCOM could not produce any scientific evidence of harm from HF emissions when asked - as anyone from OFCOM will turn up to check that you have.  So what was the point of it all?

Paul Dacre is hugely controversial, publishing a front page that has since become emblematic of all that is wrong in 'culture wars', fascist Britain. The judges upheld the law.  Paul Dacre embarked on encouraging public support for undermining them.

The kind of dangerous rubbish that Paul Dacre was resonsible for.

Now, things are getting ugly.  Dacre has been rejected once for the Chair of OFCOM, because he was "unappointable due to his anti-BBC stance".  The Johnson government, however, is hell-bent on appointing him.  It has already stopped the appointments process and started another, so that it gets the answer - and appointment of Dacre - that it wants.  Part of this to to dismantle the BBC, which the government doesn't like.

So it's now looking like it will go, ironically, to the courts.  Public legal pressure group, The Good Law Project, is taking the issue on.  GLP enjoys enormous financial support from the UK public and is widely seen as the real opposition to the government where the political opposition has failed miserably.

Quite what it would mean for amateur radio were this madman be given control of OFCOM is anybody's guess.  But it probably wouldn't be good.

Extract from Good Law Project's web site, announcing it is commencing legal proceedings.

The Twitterati don't like Dacre at all.  A non-scientific poll yesterday by Good Law Project returned a complete rejection of him: