. Not, not the British troops, that would require an alternative universe, but BBC militants who are threatening to (heaven forbid!) resign from their posts over the Hutton Report and fallout. What interest he might have in protests supporting them I can’t imagine, but he might just want to maintain something of a media cushion against the multiplying pin-pricks of his own guilty verdict, so he was on hand for the ‘London Free Press’ with his rent-a-gob-for-free-no-oil-required-honest act to say:
“The report is exactly the whitewash and the establishment cover-up that we predicted, with a cherry on top”- which is Galloway-speak for ‘jolly good report- damn you’. Tim Blair presents this snippet as part of a useful item summarising affairs at the BBC.
OFF TOPIC
BBC2 programme about the hell that is North Korea. Concentration camps, testing Bio/Chem weapons on prisoners etc.
Also told that NK army is 1million strong.
But then its time to blame the US.
No oil, you see so leave them to their sub-human activities.
No explanation of how the US could alter NK without millions of dead South Koreans or worse.
BBC2 would argue, then, that the U.S. is morally deficient if it doesn’t support the DPRK’s regime continuing use of concentration camps, etc.?
At heart, this kind of argument is as bigoted as the beliefs that sent the great-grandparents of BBC managers and staff off to “civilize” Africa and Asia. How can a belief that a nation’s government can’t be held responsible for its own actions be anything other than bigoted?
dan
is not the inverse argument valid.
The BBC own bias towards the middle east is also oil based . take away the oil and would their bias vanish ?
guess one should ask George Galloway that question.
Can one believe any BBC reporting now? Sorry but after all is said and done, they used the image they built up over the years not to diseminate facts and news but to manipulate the public.
By the way, is there no way that the public can have a referendum on the compulsory license/tax?
Do you idiots not even realise what the License Fee gets you?
It doesn’t just pay for the BBC – dozens of other broadcasters benefit from the infrastructure supplied by the BBC’s licence fee income.
Transmitters, broadcasting infrastructure, technology developments (NICAM was invented by the BBC), expertise – all utilised by second, and third-party broadcasters.
Half of commercial local radio wouldn’t exist without the help of the BBC, and 25 percent of the BBC’s income is required to be spent on independent production companies – organisations who are established with the express intention of generating income whilst they produce content for public-service consumption.
I’ll add some more:
The World Service (news in 43 languages – granted, it’s funded by the Foreign Office, not the licence fee), educational material, successful films, comedy, drama, sport, radio (from about 50 local stations in the UK), internet services (a recent survey said that half of the people in the UK got connectd because of the BBC), music, documentaries, etc. etc.
The BBC doesn’t just produce news you know – and I defy anyone to tell me that Eastenders has a “bias”, or that Only Fools and Horses or Mrs Brown have hidden left-wing agendas.
You people need a reality check.
Go on, admit it, you’re Greg Dyke in disguise. Did that door hurt on the way out – I hope so.
Seriously though, I resent being forced to pay for left-wing agitprop. And as for Eastenders, you bet it’s biased – a lovelly canvas to parade the ‘issues’ they are so interested in. OFaH doesn’t count – it was produced before the lurch to the left the BBC exhibited in the late 1990’s.
Dear ‘The Insider’, I agree we do get a lot of good stuff from the BBC – but we also get a lot of crap from their Guardian-reading, Guardian-recruited holier-and-more-politically-correct-than-thou news operation.
Maybe we need a subscription model with optional parts – so that those of us who find BBC news coverage biased or offensive can vote with our wallets to avoid subsidising the left.
The fact that Only Fools and Horses is funny or that the BBC maintains broadcasting infrastructure or whatever doesn’t mean we should put up with blatant Guardian-style cobblers with every news bulletin – one doesn’t logically follow from the other.
Perhaps we could split BBC News into two digital channels – one, BBC Left, run by Richard Sambrook (he of Hutton infamy), the other, BBC Right, run by Andrew Neil.
Then we’d all be happy (Charles Kennedy and his taxi party notwithstanding 🙂
“…and I defy anyone to tell me that Eastenders has a “bias”,…”
Jeez, open your eyes, Insider. Eastenders in nothing but leftwing agitprop from start to finish – that is its avowed purpose even – think of all the ‘issues’ that it deals with, and *how* they are treated. This is what’s so depressing – so many people in the UK have no other frame of reference other than a leftwing one – and so cannot imagine another point of view.
Still, at least you’re here, so keep reading!
While you’re on the subject of left-wing bias in Eastenders, “insider”, I do think there is a subtle bias in the overall content the BBC shows. Any soap, gameshow, reality tv programme, home makeover programme etc. panders to the left’s desire for “people’s tv”. These types of programmes do not provide any intellectual nourishment. They simply allow lefty BBC execs to sleep well at night thinking that they have done their job and given “the people” what they want. Why don’t the people in charge of the BBC’s content show more intelligent programmes? I think it’s because they are afraid of being accused of “elitism”. It’s this fear of producing content which challenges the intellect which is one of the biggest problems with the BBC. Why don’t they have the balls to say no to crap, vacuous programming and put something challenging on instead. When they put their mind to it, they can give us some good programmes on things like nature, science, history.
This is a link that should be displayed on the front of your website showing EXACTLY where the BBC politics lie.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/blog/viva_greg.shtml
God, I’m so annoyed that I’m forced at gunpoint to pay for their drivel, can I get damages for wearing out my fingers skipping their “channels”?
Imagine if Sky Digital subscribers had to pay for every single Sky channel available. Every sports, movie, news and music channel. Then imagine that if the subscriber didn’t want every single channel, they would not be allowed to watch any other non-Sky channels, nor would they be allowed any TV signal receiving appliance in their home.
Now imagine how the BBC would cover the story and how they would portray Murdoch as a villanous and evil businessman out for all the money he could get. Imagine what would happen to the sales of Sky boxes, they would plummet; nobody would want one.
Now imagine how Murdoch would get round this niggly matter of free choice. How could he force everyone into his scheme? That’s right! He could work with the government and make it illegal for anyone to have a TV without paying for his channels. Great!
Insider
I would suggest, from the above responses, that your arse has just been handed back to you on a plate.
But feel free to continue talking out of it.
“Imagine if Sky Digital subscribers had to pay for every single Sky channel available.”
Hey – my arse has *certainly* been handed to me on a plate here, eh?
Every single Sky channel **costs**, you idiot.
Right now, I’m imagining a world without you Daily Mail-worshiping, vapid morons.
It’s interesting, every popular blog and forum I visit with a substantial interest in discussing the failings of the BBC has suddenly gained a vociferous minority opposition. I think this demonstrates that BBC supporters are very worried indeed. This is a good thing.
And it’s always useful to have a freely expressed dissenting viewpoint, as the BBC would be wise to learn.
As to the wonderful benefits of the licence fee listed above that we are supposedly unaware of, it is clear the ‘those inside’ have difficulty with the notion that the free market would have provided all those – most of them earlier.
cont.
cont.
After all, it took the state telecom service about eighty years to get the country connected with a really stinky ‘phone system. Since it was notionally deregulated, innovation and service has picked up substantially.
In contrast, in not much more than a decade, the private mobile phone companies have rendered the previous almost obsolete. They have created an extensive and popular service with their own incredible investment, and paid the government hundreds of millions in the process.
And, of course, history shows us that television developed faster and more extensively in the USA than it did in the UK, funded by the private sector without the restrictive and criminalising BBC licence system.
Greg says ‘cut the crap’ and the news staff demand independence. I agree with them. The free market awaits.
The Insider vomited:
“Every single Sky channel **costs**, you idiot.”
Go back and read what Barry wrote, and see if your comprehension skills improve enough to cause a glimmer of realisation in your brain.
Do you really work for the BBC? Do they really employ people of your calibre? How laughable if so.
BTW, to follow your hopeless misinterpretation to its pedantic conclusion, there are at least three Sky channels on Freeview.
Less of the sanctimonious insults, please, Mr. “The Insider”.
Every single BBC channel costs too – even those that people can’t/don’t watch. Yet we still have to pay for all of them, even if we watch none of them – lest the BBC’s agents come and lock us up for not paying the BBC poll tax.
Just imagine how you would feel if you had to pay for the Daily Mail every day when you went to pick up your copy of The Guardian or The Mirror. Annoying, eh? (As an aside, I can’t stand The Mail either).
The BBC is so wedded to their licence fee poll tax that they’ve gone out of their way to make it technically and politically difficult for the so-called Freeview service to be charged for at some future point. I wonder why!
cont.
Whatever you think of the people on this blog who object to pervasive BBC bias, you cannot justify forcing us (and everyone else) to pay for it *whether we watch it or not*!
The world has moved on from the days of one state broadcaster and one commercial broadcaster. Time for the BBC to move on too – either by choice or at the tender touch of Adam Smith’s ‘invisible hand’ 🙂
P.S. Given your nom-de-guerre, don’t you think you ought to declare an interest, if indeed you are a beneficiary of the BBC’s shilling?
I challenge you to confirm whether or not you or a close relative are or have been an employee of the BBC or its programme makers.
“Right now, I’m imagining a world without you Daily Mail-worshiping, vapid morons.”
Ah yes Insider, when all else fails, resort to childish name calling.
Why not stick to logical coherent argument instead? Or is that beyond your intellectual capacity?
The problem with the Insider shows the true problems of Leftism. Namely group-think, any disagreement or difference of opinion is to be discouraged.
He doesn’t realise that in a free market two people can hold two different opinions, and both be “right”. The only way to make it wrong is to make one pay for the other.
The license fee is an abomination, and from The Insiders comments he bleives the BBC is such “good value” that “no-one” would not take up their offer. I beleive then that the lefts primary motivation is to inflict their views on others as disagreement cannot be countenanced!
Please tell me where I am wrong?
You will notice that the chattering classes will get louder because they see the light and the end of the tunnel.
Why do you think there’s such chattering about FoxNews, a cable station w/barely 3 m domestic viewers? And one that people CHOOSE to pay a premium for?