Milibandism and the TV football market

Sky‘s dominance over televised football was recently shattered by the entry of British Telecom into the market. On the face of it, this competition should be exactly what our country needs, to bring down the outrageous expense of TV, as a small but significant strike against our cost of living crisis. However, the market for football rights is dysfunctional, and Sky may already be trying to undermine competitive pressures [link]. That’s why Milibandism needs to be applied.

If BT and Sky were competing for customers on equal terms and with equal products, then prices would naturally fall. The problem is that they can’t have an equal product. One or other will have the football rights and the customers will go straight to that provider. Therefore, the two companies will compete ferociously to buy this content, pushing the price up to astonishing levels, and wiping out the advantage the consumer would have gained through their competition.

Binging paedophiles out of the shadows

The happiest client I ever represented was a paedophile who had walked into Limehouse police station and handed over his hard disc which contained thousands of images of child pornography. He was laughing and joking and brightening up the whole of the custody suite with his good humour, even though he could be facing a jail sentence.

The disc contained images right across the spectrum of seriousness. At the soft end was an image of a six year old in stockings and suspenders, lying spread eagled on her back, with a caption over her crotch saying “Click here to Enter”, so there was no mistake about the nature of the material.

Because he’d handed himself in he was given a caution, meaning he’d have no criminal record but would be put on the sex offenders register. You’d expect him to be delighted, but the moment we got outside, he suddenly burst into tears and was inconsolable.