The Beeb And The Bill

Plenty of good coverage of Stephen Pound's sleazy response to the R4 listener's poll out there in the blogsphere. Free Democrat has been on it since day one, while there's also a good post from Laban Tall.

To me, leaving aside questions of self-defence and the relationship between the citizen and the state, a really intriguing question is raised by these revelations on Laban Tall's site:

The programme's producers - and Mr Pound, convinced the organ donation law would win, had already arranged a debate between Evan 'Dr Death' Harris and a former Tory health minister, which had to be hastily rebilled on the website as 'the listeners' law for 'opt-out' organ donation came second - but a possible proposal nonetheless?'. And Mr Pound had actually already had preliminary discussions with Heath Secretary John Reid about the donor law.

First thing that needs to be said is that this proposed law has hardly come out of the blue. On the contrary, as early as 1999 then-Health Secretary Frank Dobson was talking about organs being a 'national resource', so it's plain dishonest for Pound, Reid or any other lefty creep to talk as though they'd just thought it up while in the bath one day. Similarly, as recent events have made clear, the law Pound really wanted to pass was the Nationalisation Of Organs Act 2004. The poll was of interest to him only in so far as it provided an excuse for him to push this atrocity through.

More than that though, what of the ever-neutral BBC's role in all this ? Not only setting up the poll in the first place, but setting up a debate to showcase the organ grab law immediately afterwards - even before the votes were in (and when the Great British Public kicked them in the nads, still pushing it as a 'potential proposal'). Seem like the Beeb might be trying to push us in a certain direction ? So here's the question: did the BBC conspire with Nu Labour to try and push through a controversial law ?