Hello Dolly

They don’t get it. They really, really don’t get it.

Jeremy Corbyn has proposed establishing a British digital corporation that would commission online TV, offer easy access to archive material held by public sector institutions and operate a social networking arm that could play a role in direct democracy.

“The public realm doesn’t have to sit back and watch as a few mega tech corporations hoover up digital rights, assets and ultimately our money,” the Labour leader said.

And immediately I was reminded of Dolly Draper and his left-wing version of the libertarian blog. That went well, didn’t it? I recall wails and moans about how it was all going to be funded and writers recruited and not once did it occur to them that what we were doing was organic. We would sit down, create a blog and write. That was it. We had no organisation, no coordination, no planning committee and no money. But, no, the left-wing one had to be designed and built by committee. And that’s it. That’s where they go wrong and that’s where CorbynBook will fail. Because what Zuckerberg did with FaceBook was just create from an idea. He didn’t have committees and planning meetings; he and a couple of mates just created, much like the libertarian blogs. Okay, maybe in the end it became a monster, but that’s not the point. Central planning is the kiss of death to a project like this. Always will be.