David Aaronovitch, in his final column for the Guardian, describes what happened when he, a left-winger, decided not to oppose the Iraq war.
All of a sudden I began to experience the left from the outside. And the first thing that struck me was its capacity for smug certainty and uniformity of response. Look at the cartoonists, whose work trumps debate. You may have Blair the poodle, Blair with blood-stained hands, Blair the liar, Bush the absurd chimp, but never, ever, Galloway the consort of tyrants or Kennedy the comforter of “insurgents”. Look at the millionaire publisher Felix Dennis, who read out a poem on the Today programme in the middle of the election (a poem, incidentally, written more than a year earlier). “Why do they do it? Why do they do it? Why do they stand on their hind legs, Lying and lying and lying and lying?” This was, he explained, aimed mostly at Blair for having lied. He wasn’t challenged.
It was beyond argument. Dennis, I’d guess, had never been challenged. Not by the researcher, the producer, the editor, his pals, not by anyone. Like a lot of middle-class anti-Blairites, I don’t think he had ever heard the contrary case put.
John R
And that one unarguable reason was what?
John R
‘Yes, it’s compulsory, but then so are many things in life (income tax, road tolls, speed limits) but none of those have come close to broadening my horizons, keeping me informed or entertaining me’
I pay income tax because I need my streets policed and my country defended. If I want to drive a car I expect to pay towards the cost of the infrastructure and abide by the rules. But why should I be compelled to pay to be entertained? It doesn’t cost £10 a month to provide a news service. The rest of it, web pages included is just nationalised circuses as in ‘bread and…There’s a market out there that’s willing to produce anything we wan’t for a reasonable price. If people really want to watch a homily to Che Guevara let them pay for the privelege. Of course if there only turn out to be ten of them,then the producer ain’t gonna be buying a new Merc that week and that’s how it should be. Why should one branch of the entertainment industry be feather-bedded to provide employment for people who can’t cut it in the real world?
Anyway, the whole arguements moot. Internet TV is going to kill the BBC the same way the dinosaurs got their’s.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/4538249.stm
John R
another apologist for biased, authoritarian, self regulating, competition destroying free loaders.
I say close down this rotten State Broadcaster and do it NOW.
OT – “A charity worker, Lena Clarke, is considering suing the BBC after it banned her from all its buildings.”
– Paddington Times.
[after attending a White City studio to participate as an audience member at a Dale Winton show]
“. . . she received a letter from the BBC banning her from any future recordings after a complaint was made about her group behaving disruptively.”
“I have been going to the BBC for more than 40 years and I can’t believe they can treat me like this. I am very angry.
“Why would I carry people to their studios and behave badly. It’s all lies that have been said about me and I am contemplating suing them for slander.
“I have written to them demanding an explanation.
“They shouldn’t treat me like this.”
“A BBC spokesman said it was considering its response to Mrs Clarke’s letter, but it took action after receiving several verbal complaints and one written complaint from other audience members and BBC staff about Mrs Clarke.”
He added: “The BBC has the right to refuse admission to its premises and recordings and, on the basis of the evidence received, the decision was taken to ban Mrs Clarke from further recordings.”
So it comes to this. A charity worker is permanently banned from all BBC sites; including various productions because of one written complaint(name of person unknown; perhaps O’Brien). The BBC Edict emanating from the Control Room is thus: Make the prole pay the BBC licence fee for the rest of her life, but keep her away from these public, compulsory licence fee established buildings. What a nasty little collective they are.
Who gives a damn about New Labour or the Conservatives – how in God’s name does one send the BBC permanently out of office.
“John R
And that one unarguable reason was what?”
– It’s a common good
– Most people agree that it’s a common good
– Some people don’t – but they are in the minority.
– The public are quite capable of showing their displeasure with taxes they don’t like [fuel taxes, poll tax].
– So the majority of people keep paying their taxes, just as they do for other common goods.
If you can show one simple piece of evidence, one reputable survey, that the public would prefer either to disband the BBC or completely overturn the funding structure, fire away.
Anonymous: “If you can show one simple piece of evidence, one reputable survey, that the public would prefer either to disband the BBC or completely overturn the funding structure, fire away.”
How about Majority ‘want change to TV fee’ for starters? Is a BBC/ICM poll from last year reputable enough for you?
The article reports the findings thus:
“The survey, conducted by ICM, found 31% thought the BBC should remain funded by the licence fee in its current form. Another 36% said the BBC should be paid for by a subscription – like digital broadcasters – while 31% wanted advertising to pay for the programmes.”
Consider yourself not just fired upon! Blasted out of the water more like, using your own side’s guns.
Here’s the full poll results.
http://www.icmresearch.co.uk/reviews/2004/bbc-panarama-charter-mar04.asp
You might also be interested to know that 59% reckon the BBC is good value for money, 61% disagree that it’s politically biased and 68% agree that it’s a national institution that we should be proud of.
It’s pointless trying to provide “one unarguable reason” to Pete_london, Alex, Sybil, et al – as far as they’re concerned no argument beats the free market. And you only have to look at the quality of broadcasting in the US to see how right they are. In the future, as predicted by thedogsdanglybits, we’ve even got the delights of free market “internet TV” to look forward to.
BBC staff to strike
This is great news. The worse the disruption, the more people ‘go digital’ e.g. through freeview, NTL/Telewest or Sky, the faster we get rid of this mad mandatory tv tax.
I hope Dixons, Comet et al are stocking up on digi boxes……
John R
Your failure to provide a reason is acknowledged. Maybe someone could tell me how it is right, proper and just that someone is sent to jail simply for owning a TV.
John R
If you are content with a State Funded Monopoly on the Broadcast of Political Opinion then so be it, but this is not North Korea.
Oh, and its really not the money we`re bothered about whatever the licence fee.
Cockney,
“59% reckon the BBC is good value for money” – persumably, then, a view that would also hold if the subscription was voluntary instead of being imposed on pain of prosecution
“61% disagree that it’s politically biased” – not directly related to the arguments over TVL, but even so, bias doesn’t have to be overt – much of the problem with BBC and other electronic media bias is that it is not obvious – if only it were, so the BBC’s true political leanings would be exposed.
“68% agree that it’s a national institution that we should be proud of” – yes, and?
So in highlighting these aspects of the survey, your point would be ….?
SO John R.
to recap you support a TV tax despite subscription being cheaper to collect, as well as allowing more liberty (i.e. we don’t jail people for an unregister TV!?!) and from your arguments you claim the BBC would lose very little revenue from subscription.
You also support oppressing a minority view (who are in greater numbers than the number of labour voters) who know the BBC is biased.
As for the Broadcasting being a common good, why are you not advocating new TV taxes for Sky and ITV?
Your argument for the BBC is non-existent.
Did I read someone dumping on American TV? If the BBC ever come up with a program to match the following I will give them great credit, till then I’ll stick with my American shows thanks very much:
The Simpsons
Family Guy
24
Lost
The Sopranos
etc etc etc
The format of American TV is worse, but their best programming blows ours out of the water, no question.
Unions to meet on BBC strike plan
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/tv_and_radio/4538929.stm
The BBC is expected to try to minimise disruption if the strike goes ahead but Bectu has said previously that it would seek “black screens and dead air”.
…don’t get me excited…!
I’m with the dog and anon. on the issue of public broadcasting. There is no problem with it in principle – the problem with the BBC is its built in cultural,social and political bias. But there is no reason why that bias has to exist.
I agree that in the future it may be possible to move to a subscription based BBC. At the moment though I think there are millions of elderly people who couldn’t cope with the complexities of digital set top boxes. I think we are looking ten to twenty years down the road before we would be ready for the big switch off.
The only reason the government have come out with the ridiculous analogue switch off target is to buy Murdoch’s political support – which of course hey got this election. Personally, given the choice between Murdoch and the BBC, I would choose BBC every time.
I think we should move to a middle point first: if people have only satellite/digital they should be able to opt out of the licence fee (and not be able to receive BBC channels) whereas those who pay the licence fee would be given a code to access digital BBC channels.
David Field, The problem is, it’s compulsory. You are not allowed to own a TV set for your own entertainment, with no intention of ever patronising the BBC, unless you fund the, uh, BBC.
Agree, American TV programmes blow British TV programmes, especially comedies, out of the water. Way, way, way out.
In addition, in the US, there is that bracing sting of freedom – conservative commentary on the radio. So conservative positions and points of view get that precious oxygen of publicity and get promulgated about.
The BBC is Stalinesque and patronising and always was. Dump it.
Why is it that everyone who shows up here to defend the BBC is a lefty? If the BBC were really as “impartial” as they claim, wouldn’t at least a few righties show up from time to time to defend the BBC?
Never. Seen. One. Ever.
“At the moment though I think there are millions of elderly people who couldn’t cope with the complexities of digital set top boxes”
Eh? You plug a set-top box in, they autotune they start to work, they cost 20-30 quid.
Remember the cost of collecting the TV-tax is 10%, so the savings on that can easily pay for set-top boxes. The savings for subscription would be easily 50%, this would save 120 Million a year enough for 6Million set top boxes (per year), more if bought in bulk, lots more if tax free.
Moving the BBC to subscription could easily save enough to give everyone who wanted one a free set-top box.
Mr Field
If there is nothing wrong with public service broadcasting “in Principle…” then why stop there, what about public service exhaust fitters, cake decorators or public service cruise ship operators with forced vacations for the elderly?
Government should be as small as to be almost invisible like, say, the Police.
Susan, the key objections to the existence of the BBC – that broadcasting should be provided through the market and that government compulsion is wrong – are by definition economically right wing.
If you were to look at any left wing publications or websites you would find a vast amount of complaints that the BBC is politically biased towards the right wing. I wouldn’t though as they are very boring.
Basil asked why Andrew had not posted recently. He has been ill, but hopes to be able to post again fairly soon.
Cockney has got to the root of the problem. Different factions will always fight for control of the airwaves and at issue is not only what is presented but how it is funded.
At present, we have Socialist Funding and Socialist Program content. All political questioning comes from a position to the left of both the Government and the Opposition. Here`s how to fix it:
– Subscription, just like PBS, they can say what they want secure in the knowledge that people have voted with thier remotes and switched over to Punk`d, where at least only some of the people are made fools of, some of the time.
–
Oh please. why do you think successive governments of all hues have kept the BBc funding model as it is? Because it’s the ‘least worst option’
Why has the BBC been criticised, blocked, and people listening to it imprisoned by: the USSR, China, Nazi Germany, Franco’s Spain, etc etc?
Because it says things they didn’t like. The rants and raves on here are nothing compared to the very real criticism aimed at the BBC over the years. If the American readers on here were slightly less ‘Yee-All Are all Commies’ and slightly more in tune with what British people actually think about the BBC, maybe there’d be more debate from those of us on the Right who don’t like everything about the BBC and certainly not its’ politics, but still admire its intelligence, and robust approach to realpolitik.
steve jones,
maybe there’d be more debate from those of us on the Right who don’t like everything about the BBC and certainly not its’ politics, but still admire its intelligence. . .
You are a rightwinger? No really, pull the other one.
Yes, isn’t that amzing Susan, some shades of grey in this argument?
Susan, you ask an interesting question about why no-one from the right is defending the BBC on this site.
I have another, related query, which is sort of the flip side of yours. To wit, if the BBC is so biased to the left, how come so many on the left complain about it – from new Labour to every activist and campaigner going?
Indeed, until I stumbled across this quaint site I had usually heard that the Beeb was biased in favour of the Establishment and against Swampy and co., peace protesters, Palestinians and so on in its reporting of the world.
Rob Read, I wish you could teach my old mum to use a set top box if it’s so easy! I bought her one and the damn thing has never worked.
If Basil thinks the BBC is biassed against the Palestinias he is even more dense than I thought.
The key BBC biases are anti-free market enterprise, pro-Europe, pro-UN, anti-Bush, pro public spending, anti the Iraq war. More or less the Guardian/Independent line. But I expect Basil will suggest they are rightist newspapers.
Yes, isn’t that amzing Susan, some shades of grey in this argument?
John R: You are a fairly recent visitor on this forum, are you not? steve jones is not a recent visitor. I have never seen him post anything remotely divergent from the Guardianista line in his political opinions.
Hence my comments. Perhaps you should be looking for shades of grey on your own as you don’t seem to have considered that some posters have a long history here.
Basil: 100 percent of the Beeb’s defenders who show up in this forum are Guardianistas who spout the exact same political opinions as you do (as well as the same boring old insults) — a pretty telling statistic, IMHO.
John In London: You forgot anti-Israel, anti-Christian and of course, anti-American.
And pro-Islamic.
What did all the Gramscian BBC fantasists do before they had Islam to swoon around about?
steve jones wrote:
“Why has the BBC been criticised, blocked, and people listening to it imprisoned by: the USSR, China, Nazi Germany, Franco’s Spain, etc etc?
Because it says things they didn’t like.”
All of which has nothing to do with the licence fee. The BBC World Service is funded by direct taxation, via the Foreign and Commonwealth Office of the UK Government. The UK could continue to annoy foreign governments of all persuasions without recourse to the licence fee at all.
The other country where people have been imprisoned for ‘listening’ to the BBC is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Indeed, in this country people are imprisoned for ‘listening’ to any television broadcast without permission from the state.
All this talk of a “telly tax” is entirely misplaced. The Television Licence is not a payment for services, it is strictly a legal permission from the state to install and use equipment for receiving television broadcasts (if you don’t believe me ask your MP to ask the BBC, or its agent TVL, on your behalf). The fact that the BBC is currently charged with collecting the licence revenue, and spending all of it, is immaterial to the status of the TV licence.
And the fact that UK subjects stand for this is indicative that John R’s suggestion that “the masses are so downtrodden and subservient they feel compelled to pay the hated tax” is actually spot on. They are so far gone they simply don’t notice it. They have to pay the state for permission to watch television – and it’s not that they hate it; they don’t even realise it.
They believe the BBC is worth the licence because the BBC tells them so; they believe what the BBC tells them because the BBC tells them it is trustworthy. They grow up with Blue Peter and ‘mature’ into the Today programme; nannied and infantilised all the way.
The situation is so perverse that the state can take the piss by saying things like:
“”A strong BBC, independent of government” the Government’s Green Paper on the future of the BBC has been published”
and the vicious irony is lost on the spiritually vacant morons who come here to apologise for the licence and the BBC.
Pathetic, whipped dogs; too frightened to let go of the tit.
.
PJF.
Absolutley Goddamned Right.
Basil –
The reason the BBC is criticised from the Left is because it is criticised by people who even fruther to the Left than the BBC. Most sensible critics of the BBC say its bias lies in it being a Left-Liberal outfit. Most of its opinion formers are the sort of people you would find on the left of the Labour Party or in the Liberal Dems. The left criticism comes from more hardline leftists.
Alex –
Your analogies are all wrong. Jsut because you have to buy a licence to fish in a lake doesn’t mean you have to go and fish. Similarly just because people have paid for a licence, it doesn;t mean they have to watch the BBC. Same principle as just because you pay road tax doesn’t mean you have to use your car. The Government coudl if it wished simply pocket the licence fee but instead it decides to use it to fund a public service broadcasting system.
Susan –
I vote Tory but I like a lot of things about the BBC: the range of programmes (radio and TV) on offer; the lack of commercial ads. (though their own are irritating); and a lot of their comedy output. I just don’t like the political cultural bias. I want to see more people like Andrew Neil and Spectator folk giving their opinions. I want to see an end to knee jerk denigration of neo cons. I want to see jokes about Mohammed as well as Jesus.
Further to steve jones’s reference to the USSR, here’s an interesting website by someone who refuses to pay his licence:
http://www.bbcbias.org/index.html
The BBC seems strangely reluctant to prosecute this person, despite his open admission of criminal television watching for several years.
.
David Field – You want to see jokes about Mohammad. Go on! You’re takin’ the piss, mate!
Here`s a joke you wont hear on Al Beeb
Two Arabs are sitting in a Gaza Strip bar chatting
over a pint of fermented
goat’s milk.
One pulls his wallet out and starts flipping through
pictures and they start reminiscing.
“This is my oldest son, he’s a martyr.”
“You must be so proud” says the other.
“This is my second son. He is a martyr also.”
“A fine looking young man”, replies his friend.
After a pause and a deep sigh, the second Arab says
wistfully,
“They blow up so fast, don’t they?”
alex,
A very old joke, sorry to tell you.
Susan – Do you know any new ones?
I’ll give you all a clue why BBC News is like it is.
I recently met someone who works on it.
Her qualifications for the job?
She’s a bloody actress!
‘Nuff said?
[This comment deleted by blog admin.]
Verity — none that are suitable for a family blog!
As I keep saying, sober expressions of disbelief or disapproval of the Muslim religion or any other religion are accepted in Biased BBC comments. But no inflammatory comments or ridicule.
Regarding this specific thread, I distinguish between mockery of Islam per se and mockery of Islamist terrorism. The latter is allowed.
PJF
Great post !
It seems that poor old Vladimir Bukovsky who would have been sent to Siberia for listening to the BBC in Russia, could now be sent to Wandswoth prison for listening to the BBC in England!
They wouldn’t dare go after Vladimir B., for fearing of people drawing the obvious parallels between the BBC and the Kremlin.