Please use this thread for BBC-related comments and analysis. Please keep comments on other threads to the topic at hand. N.B. this is not (and never has been) an invitation for general off-topic comments, rants or use as a chat forum. This post will remain at or near the top of the blog. Please scroll down to find new topic-specific posts.
Singing heard from shifty characters in the background of the BBC reports from GOLDERS GREEN:
“Let’s show the BBC how to do it, my dears. You see, Beeboids,
In this life, one thing counts:
In the bank, large amounts!
I’m afraid these don’t grow on trees,
You’ve got to join a Northern Rock queue.
You’ve got to join a Northern Rock queue, boys,
You’ve got to join a Northern Rock queue.”
Sorry Foxgoose, but nothing you’ve mentioned is subsidised by the BBC at all. It used to be – years ago. But not any more.
MyDrive is not part of the BBC club, but it’s certainly not underwritten by the licence fee – that would be insane. Which is why it doesn’t happen. It’s run by a commercial company (called Alphabet – you can find them at http://www.alphabet.com) and it’s a car lease scheme – nothing more.
As for the BUPA healthcare – if only! It’s nothing more than a slight discount off the normal rates. They do similar things with lots of companies – it’s a way of enticing new business in for BUPA.
And all those cosy clubs (and if you’d been to Club White City, you’d know the description really doesn’t meet reality – it’s actually a dingy room with no windows and some strange lights) are funded by BBC staff who pay a membership fee. Lots of organisations have staff clubs – Transport for London, most NHS hospitals, the Met Police for example.
I’m afraid to say the BBC is not some employee eutopia. Far from it. If it was, the wages would be higher for starters. And believe me, wages here are lot lower than the commercial sector (as you’d expect from an organisation which spends your money.)
John Reith, I suspect you are not a BBC employee at all, merely an over qualified troll.
Could the moderators explain why you are entertained to the nth degree, off the back of your alleged BBC employee credentials, which as far as I can ascertain are merely hearsay.
I’ve yet to see a single post of yours be deleted, but I’ve yet to read a single posting of yours which contains anything other than sarcasm, avoidance and an obsequious desire to defend the BBC – no matter how sound the accusation.
Funny how so many postings that attempt to attack BBC bias in such way are killed, it makes me wonder if the purpose of this forum is merely an attempt to attract BBC personnel so we can all make ourselves feel a bit better intellectually, whilst having achieved ZERO in physical reality.
Now advertised on the Beeb news page:
“Pillow talk
Have we got any more honest about sex, asks Mariella Frostrup?”
I suppose that doesn’t pass any comment on whether sexual permissiveness (it’s not sexual permissiveness! It’s sexual “expression”!) is good or bad, merely analysing the character of the movement, etc etc.
No liberal consensus at the Beeb eh?
Of course, they will claim they are “marking the anniversary of the momentous Wolfenden report” – to which one responds, why? They don’t always mark anniversaries of government reports. They pick the ones that matter to them and “celebrate” them with our money.
This is displayed next to a set of video news pieces consisting of: a piece on “gay footballers” (main feature), a jolly looking piece about Fidel Castro and hats, a finger wagging piece about police chasing people too fast, and the launch of the apple i-phone.
Elsewhere:
“Staying on?
US commander to tell the wary British they must remain in Iraq”
Written as if they give us orders – that wouldn’t fit the BBC worldview would it?
Jane Corbin (Panorama reporter) is married to John Maples, a Conservative MP.
Robbie Gibb, Deputy Editor of Newsnight, is the brother of Nick Gibb, another Conservative MP.
John Reith | 18.09.07 – 11:32 am | #
JR, a Conservative MP is not necessarily conservative. These people did, after all, elect David Cameron as the leader of their party.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7000265.stm
The BBC promotes sexual immorality in a most gratuitous manner.
I can no longer pay taxes to this Caesar. Action is required. A few good and godly men are needed to cease the BBC from its infernal activities.
BBC: A crudely drawn moustache besmirching the noble face of lady Britannia
An other bias piece about Iraq
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7000259.stm
“Veneer of security”
So the security is not real just an appearrance.
“Concrete – as in many parts of Baghdad – has been the solution.”
The only thing Iraq needed was concrete. I can understand the dillema of Andrew North how could he aknowlegde that security situation has improved without mentioning the American, the surge or general Patreus. Simple, say it was the concrete which improved the security.
“But behind these walls, no-one is suing for peace.”
How could he know that no-one is suing for peace.
“And while the US occupation is blamed for creating the chaos, for more and more Sunnis the Americans are the only force that can protect them.”
In hindsite everybody agrees that mistakes where made by the Americans, but not to mention the parties which tried to fermente civil war by committing one attrocity after attrocity is very very bias.
“The killing goes on, just more silently than before.”
Another attemp to try to insinuate that it is just the appearrance that things are improving. Don’t say it was just quote. Andrew North wouldn’t have used quote if he didn’t think it discribed the situation.
“During Gen Petraeus’s and Ambassador Ryan Crocker’s testimony last week, my Iraqi colleagues watched a congressman called Tom Lantos again warn Iraqi politicians that US patience is wearing thin. He told them that “the free ride is over”.”
He could have mentioned that Tom Lantos is a democrate which wants to bring the troop home as soon as possible.
I can understand the iraqi’s when they are little cautious to believe that things are improving. But the facts are that things are improving.
Sorry to be smutty but its not the article thats interesting but the first comment. The general reaction in our office was “was he going to be anything other than understanding?”
After 12 years of marriage I finally told my husband that I was bisexual, something I had kept hidden for the best part of 25 years. I told him of my feelings for a colleague and that I did not want to act on it, just that it was happening. He was amazing and totally understanding and it has lifted a huge weight from me. Our marriage is now better than ever.
Tracey, Leicester, UK
Sorry Foxgoose, but nothing you’ve mentioned is subsidised by the BBC at all. It used to be – years ago. But not any more.
Hmmm Andrew, I don’t think you’re giving us the full story here.
There are all sorts of indirect ways of subsidising things.
If I want to buy a new car I have to raise the cash or pay a deposit and persuade a finance company I’m solvent.
Under the BBC/Alphabet scheme there’s no deposit and no creditworthiness check. The BBC underwrites this risk for Alphabet which is, of course, an indirect subsidy to the employee.
If you don’t understand this look at this response by the BBC, posted on the BECTU site where the union are trying to hang on to BBC benefits for technical employees who are being transferred to Siemens:-
Any BBC benefits that apply only to BBC staff (which will include the Options/Options Plus benefits) will not be available to staff once they have transferred to Siemens. Individuals who currently have My Drive cars will be able to transfer their monthly payments to direct debit (subject to credit checks which will be carried out by the My Drive provider Alphabet).
And from the same document on the suject of BUPA benefits:-
Those who are currently members through Options Plus (payment is made to BUPA by deduction from salary via the BBC payroll) will need to convert to Options membership from the date of transfer. BUPA will write to these individuals with the necessary forms and for these individuals there will be a small decrease in their current level of discount from 54% (Options Plus rate) to 47% (Options rate) off the normal BUPA rates.
So 54% is a “slight discount of normal rates” is it Andrew?
Does anyone else on here get private medical insurance at less than half price?
Now – these dismal clubs you have to make do with. As I understand it every major BBC establishment has a club on the premises where you pay a membership fee and can eat, drink or entertain, in or out of working hours.
How separate are these establishments?Do they pay commercial rent, proportional service costs and business rates without any subsidy from the licence fee?
Lets say for instance you’re a hard working beeboid who’s just finished slaving away on an episode of “F*** off I’m a hairy woman” or suchlike and fancies celebrating with a few colleagues, a bottle or two of bubbly and a few nibbles. Do you just ring down to the club and have them send the waiter and put it on your bill or are you allowed to put them down as expenses?
Finally you didn’t mention who pays for the yachts.
I hope it’s more accurate than the BUPA tale
for these individuals there will be a small decrease in their current level of discount from 54% (Options Plus rate) to 47% (Options rate) off the normal BUPA rates.
All this derision directed at any right-wing person who questions whether the continuance of the NHS is a good thing, by Beeboids.
But lo, they have “benefits” of heavily discounted BUPA rates!
Surely the Grauniad-wielding Beeboids aren’t taking up this benefit? Tell me it ain’t so!
I mean that would be double standards.
‘Allaboutme’, take it from me that John Reith often posts from a BBC IP address, and appears to have easy access to internal BBC information. I have no doubt that he works for the BBC.
There is no policy of entertaining him or not deleting his comments – if he were to comment too far off topic or post lists of links not apropos the BBC then he too would get deleted.
If a BBC employee wishes to comment sarcastically or avoid the issue or slavishly defend the BBC “no matter how sound the accusation”, is that a bad thing for us to tolerate here? It shows us something of the nature of the BBC. It also provides insights into the workings of the BBC, and helps keep our arguments honed.
As for the achievements or otherwise of Biased BBC, I think we do make a difference – even where the results aren’t quite as obvious as they were this week.
Under the BBC/Alphabet scheme there’s no deposit and no creditworthiness check. The BBC underwrites this risk for Alphabet which is, of course, an indirect subsidy to the employee.
Perhaps you’d better reveal where you get this information from, because believe me – it’s 100% at odds with everything I can find out about MyDrive.
Yes there’s no credit checks. Can’t deny that. Says so here for all the world to see. But that doesn’t mean that the BBC has ANY financial involvement in the scheme.
If you don’t understand this look at this response by the BBC, posted on the BECTU site where the union are trying to hang on to BBC benefits for technical employees who are being transferred to Siemens:-
And you expect BECTU to do anything else? Maybe if your employer was about to sell you off to someone else, you’d want to keep all the benefits you’d had under your old employer. Of course the union could just have shrugged and gone “hey, who cares” but I don’t think they’d be representing their members very well, do you?
So 54% is a “slight discount of normal rates” is it Andrew?
Far cry from your original comment isn’t it? It’s hardly the free BUPA healthcare you originally implied 😉
But believe me, this is not subsidised by the BBC. If BUPA want to make those things to companies, they can.
In fact mate, if you look at BUPA’s website, you’ll see they have a whole section on offering such things to company employees. Here’s the URL.
http://www.bupa.co.uk/business/asp/index.asp
You’ll notice they have a scheme which has no cost to the companies. Of course, if you have evidence that the BBC is paying money to BUPA to give that discount, I’d again like to see it because it’s 100% against everything we’ve been told internally. And if the BBC management are lying to me, I’d like to take them to task!
How separate are these establishments?Do they pay commercial rent, proportional service costs and business rates without any subsidy from the licence fee?
Whether it gets preferential rent agreements – I’m afraid I don’t know. If it does, it will be no different to 100s of company based clubs.
Lets say for instance you’re a hard working beeboid who’s just finished slaving away on an episode of “F*** off I’m a hairy woman” or suchlike and fancies celebrating with a few colleagues, a bottle or two of bubbly and a few nibbles. Do you just ring down to the club and have them send the waiter and put it on your bill or are you allowed to put them down as expenses?
The Club doesn’t deliver I’m afraid. You can however order alcoholic hospitality from the catering department, and you can put a certain amount behind club bars paid for by a charge code.
It’s called thanking your staff – many good employers who want to keep staff retention high, do the same.
It’s also rare. We tend to have to fight for celebratory drinks – most are paid for out of our own pockets.
If you’d like some analysis about why giving your staff some free drinks is a good thing, try this blog post I wrote in 2006.
http://www.planetbods.org/blog/2006/12/02/officedrinks.live
Any good employer who does the sums, knows that giving your staff a little token of thanks, cuts staff turnover. And that’s good, cos recruitment is expensive.
Finally you didn’t mention who pays for the yachts.
Easy. The Yacht Club membership. How they do it, I don’t know as I don’t belong to the Yacht Club. I believe it costs something like £50 a month to be a member, if that helps.
Believe me, if the licence fee was paying for yachts for the yacht club, I’d be completely and utterly outraged. As would thousands of other BBC employees.
Foxgoose: Well I found out answers to all your questions and blow me the argument has moved on!
Still to go back a bit. Everything the club does is funded by members. Including the Yachts! The BBC does not subsidise the BBC Club.
That narrow boat does exist by the way, according to a member of BBC staff.
“I belong to the BBC Canal Cruising Club which owns a narrowboat. That boat is paid for totally out of membership subscriptions and the hire fee we all pay to use it. The boat is maintained by volunteers and enough money is raised to put into a fund to replace it every so many years”
Sounds a bit Socialist doesn’t it! But still no Licence Fees used here.
As for the golf;
Another member says “The BBC club has a golf society, but it costs £50 a day to play in their tournaments and certainly doesn’t grant free membership to any clubs.”
Hmmmm. As for MyDrive and Bupa discounts… well they exist and they’re exactly what any other big corporation could get for its staff. If they are good deals it’s because of the size of the BBC but not because it’s putting in any money.
And here’s what one member of staff had to say about MyDrive
“I’ve got a car through the MyDrive / Alphabet scheme and I can assure you the money leaving my pay packet each month isn’t “painless” !
There are no tax advantages whatsoever to the scheme, the money is not taken from my salary pre-tax.
It’s just convenient not having to sort out tax, insurance, etc. and I can just walk away at the end of each 2 year deal if I like.”
As for the clubs. Ahhh, the clubs. Well from an employers point of view clubs are a cunning way to work your staff harder and keep em on site longer. Does every major BBC site have them? No. We don’t in Birmingham for example, it was axed. The BBC Club website would talk the remainders up a bit wouldn’t it? It’s not really going to say they are grotty dumps. But since the clubs are paid for by members and not by the BBC it’s up to the members how well they are fitted out.
“Plush” though is not a work I would ever use. As for Champagne delivered by waiter… no.
Finally, what about market rents for the rooms occupied by the clubs? Well under John Birt’s internal market the clubs were charged the going market rate. I don’t know what happened when those reforms were curbed somewhat, I will find out.
So to finish up. All club activity is paid for by Staff. The BBC does not subsidise it.
The other benefits come from being a member of a large organisation like this. Not because the BBC subsidises them. And none of them have ever been a good enough deal for me to ever take advantage of them.
Sorry. Still I think the BBC Club website could make it clear that no Licence Fee Payers money goes to fund it. I’ll look into getting that changed.
The BBC, the Jews and half a story.
West Bank village faces demolition
When school began this month, the children of Akkaba in the northern West Bank did not just have the usual concerns of a new school year. The children of Akkaba in their soon-to-be-demolished school .The Israeli army says Akkaba is in a “militarised zone” and was built without planning permission. It therefore views the village as illegal and has handed out dozens of demolition orders.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/6993142.stm
So according to the BBC the reason the Jews are knocking down the village of Akkaba is because they can. (
And here is the UN version of the same story. Well it’s a picture.
Click to access map-part03.pdf
Why doesn’t the BBC mention that the security fence is the main reason for the disruption to the village?
The BBC, the Jews and half a story.
JR
Meanwhile, here are a few ties you claim don’t exist.
Ed Stourton’s father, Lord Mowbray, was a Conservative hereditary peer.
Jane Corbin (Panorama reporter) is married to John Maples, a Conservative MP.
Robbie Gibb, Deputy Editor of Newsnight, is the brother of Nick Gibb, another Conservative MP.
John Reith | 18.09.07 – 11:32 am | #
Really JR – all that licence fee funded Googling and you’ve come up with just one beeboid we’ve ever heard of who had a tory dad.
Sadly, no research is neccessary to come up with five or more BBC major figures and household names who have had labour affiliations:-
Shall we start with card carrying labour party member, nulab crony, ex- BBC Director General and later Downing St advisor – John Birt?
And his successor – card carrying labour member, donor and nulab crony (at the time) Director General Greg Dyke.
Not forgetting his boss – party member, millionaire donor and nulab crony, BBC Chairman Gavin Davies (whose wife Sue Nye ran Gordon Brown’s office at the time).
Moving down a notch we had Red Ken’s right hand man Bill Bush who became head of BBC Political Research before creeping back to the Downing St womb.
Or how about the highly groomed education minister Ben Bradshaw who slithered seamlessly into parliament while still on the BBC payroll.
Or perhaps ex Roy Jenkins aide Caroline Thompson, now BBC Chief operating officer and married to Labour apparatchik and former Blair adviser Roger Liddle.
And finally (only ‘cos it’s getting boring) Chairman of the new shiny spotless and arms length independent Board of BBC Trustees – ex Labour Councillor Michael Lyons.
Balanced & impartial? – Honestly, JR – I don’t know how you keep a straight face when you type this stuff (if you do).
A couple of things I would like to raise:
Allaboutme makes a valid comment, why is JR allowed so much freedom to spout his BBC line?, what possible benefit does that bring to the debates?, as Allaboutme mentions by allowing JR to use this site to spike valid debate you are doing the job of the BBC for them.
Secondly, I cannot understand how this site only goes after the BBC for it’s coverage of web and TV reporting, you really need to start taking a look at the BBC World Service, this communication channel is heard by a lot more people then the TV medium, and is a hell of a lot more biased then that heard or read on the websites.
Finally, as a Dutch speaking and French speaking person, I can hopefully put some peoples minds at rest, the BBC is not the voice of Britain that many left wing commentators think, indeed if you listen to European radio or read European newspapers you would find that the BBC is treated with distaste with it’s left-wing reporting which does not reflect the Europe that the UK is now part of.
The Dutch and French cannot understand the BBC’s fetish with attacking the US and Israel, indeed, during the recent Lebanon war between the IDF and Hezbollah the Dutch newspapers published extracts from the BBC and extracts from other national news outlets around Europe and clearly show a clear bias towards Hezbollah by the BBC and a neutral reporting by all the other national news outlets.
“US student debater stunned by Taser”.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/player/nol/newsid_7000000/newsid_7000800/7000832.stm?bw=nb&mp=wm&asb=1&news=1
note the word ‘debater’.
Watch the video, draw your own conclusions.
Another lie being vomited at everyone by the BBC at this very moment on the news front page. The BBC have posted an abrdiged clip (remember our lesson from last time?) about the student who has just been tasered and arrested while trying to ask failed Presidential candidate John Kerry some leftoid questions. Link is here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/
It’s the first one in the “Video and Audio News” section.
The voiceover is lying to you. Our BBC journo tells us the student “Was trying to ask a question when this happened. Up to four officers tried to remove the student who had reportedly been speaking for some time. He had been asked to stop and his mic was cut off.” She then tells us that he was asking Kerry why he hadn’t contested the election results when he lost to Bush last time, and why Kerry hadn’t called for Bush’s impeachment. The BBC reporter is clearly telling us that the kid was suppressed for having asking an anti-Bush question.
This is not what happened. Meyer jumped to the front from further back in the queue, after everyone was told “last question”. The last question had been asked, and Kerry was in the middle of answering it when this drama queen leapt to the mic and asked Kerry about contesting the election and impeachment. Kerry even tried to ask him to stop until he (Kerry) had a chance to finish answering the first kid’s question. Not having any of it, Meyer became belligerent, and you can see what happened next.
The BBC report as it stands is false. Now before any Beeboid gets on and tells me that other people are showing the same version of this video, let me tell you that’s no excuse. The BBC are supposed to be responsible. The advert blared at me for the BBC World News informs me that you are supposed to get the facts right first, then tell the story. The BBC junior producer has not done that here. No, instead, well, here is the complaint I just sent to the website, in which I have included a link to the real story (surprise, surprise, it’s on a right wing blog):
“You are getting the story wrong about the Andrew Meyer tasering incident. Whoever produced this little gem obviously did not do any research and chose to make a false report about the incident.
The full facts of the incident are that Meyer rushed to the microphone from back in the queue and interrupted Kerry while he was answering another question from the student whose turn it was at the time. Kerry asked him to wait until he finished what he was saying, and that he would then answer Meyer’s question. Meyer at that point became belligerent, and his subsequent actions led to his being tasered and arrested.
Lots of incomplete versions of this video have been posted all over the place, and your junior producer found an extremely abridged version and did not do the proper research to learn the full story. You can learn the full story and see the full video for yourself here:
http://michellemalkin.com/2007/09/17/student-tasered-at-john-kerry-forum/
To report, as your girl does here, that the student was stopped because he was trying to ask Kerry about conspiracy theories involving President Bush stealing the election and having him impeached, is a lie. The words your presenter uses in the voiceover totally misrepresents what happens. Watching this, any reasonable person would assume that Meyer was repressed simply because he asked an anti-Bush question. This is not at all what happened, and if you people had taken the time to do your jobs properly you would know that. Instead, you leapt at a chance to show what appeared to be an instance of authority suppressing anti-Bush sentiment.
Please do the proper research and either show the entire video with the full story, or just remove what you have now and be done with it.”
Come on, somebody tell me it was just done in haste, the way things are done online these days. This doesn’t show a predisposed attitude on the part of anyone at the BBC?
Joeseph Maastricht The Nether
I second ALL of that with knobs on.
Here is the knobs.
Europe may be a bit Anti-American Anti-Israeli, Anti-Free Market Capitalist Anti-conservative and Anti-semitic sometimes.
But ‘BBC THINK’, is NOTHING like representative of any type of general political consensus present anywhere in the Free World.
NOBODY does authoritarian socialist propaganda as ‘well’ as the BBC, they are the best of the best there has ever been at it. They are the grand daddies of state spin, and true masters of the art of graft.
Its nice to see that you dont blame the British people for the BBC.
However I am not quite so charitable, to the stupid thick bastards. If the British people can not smell obvious propaganda when its under their very noses 24/7, then they will fully deserve what they bloody well get.
This is not true as you say for the rest of the world who have done nothing evil enough to deserve the BBC buggering up their countries as well.
Come to think about it.
May I say a very BIG sorry on behalf of B-BBC for any damage the BBC has done to free honest balanced debate in your country.
Joseph: “Allaboutme makes a valid comment, why is JR allowed so much freedom to spout his BBC line?”
Everyone is free to spout their line, for or against, so long as it’s not too far off-topic, lengthy, ranty, profane etc.
Joseph: “what possible benefit does that bring to the debates?”
Debate is an exchange of views. It wouldn’t be much fun if we limited participation to just those who agree with us.
Joseph: “by allowing JR to use this site to spike valid debate you are doing the job of the BBC for them.”
In what way does he spike debate? He may counter arguments, but people are free to argue back. And if you really can’t be doing with JR, just skip over his comments – that’s one of the reasons we have names at the top and bottom of each comment.
Joseph: “Secondly, I cannot understand how this site only goes after the BBC for it’s coverage of web and TV reporting, you really need to start taking a look at the BBC World Service”
If only I or my colleagues had the time – unfortunately we have lives to lead and families to provide for, so time spent on Biased BBC is a luxury as it is. Believe you me, there’s a lot more stuff I’d like to write about – there’s at least a dozen potential stories from the last couple of weeks that I haven’t had time to write up or edit clips for.
But! Maybe you can help us – if you want to alert us to bias lurking on the World Service then we’d be happy to hear about it – either as a comment here or by email if you want to write it up. Remember though that the World Service is mostly paid for out of general taxation rather than from the tellytax. It’s still a legitimate area of enquiry though.
Thank you for your observations about how the BBC is seen on mainland Europe, and thank you for participating in Biased BBC. I hope we’ll hear more from you.
David Gregory/Andrew
You really don’t get it do you – either of you.
When I ran businesses I was happy to give people nice company cars,subsidised BUPA, generous expenses, free lunches, after work drinks – even share options.
Good for motivation and retention, as you say Andrew, and not expensive when it’s coming out of profits they have helped create.
Problem is you don’t generate any profit at the BBC. You just spend the cash and send Capita round to threaten the licence payers till they cough up.
Can’t you see that puts a completely different complexion on how the money is spent?
It’s public money, obtained in a very draconian fashion – often from people much less well off than the beeboids telling each other they need the motivation while they enjoy the perks.
As for the perks reflecting the size of the organisation – it’s only that bloody big ‘cos you keep growing it. If it cost 30 million a year instead of three billion we wouldn’t need this argument.
It’s still very opaque to me, by the way, whether all these recreational facilities are truly financially “arms length”. Does the Bush House club really pay London City rental and business rates on it’s floorspace – what’s the membership fee?
Where are the BBC Club accounts published?
Atlas Shrug: “If the British people can not smell obvious propaganda when its under their very noses 24/7, then they will fully deserve what they bloody well get.”
You realise, I presume, that this is the same logic that Bin Laden and sundry others use to justify their atrocities?
i.e. ‘You’ (collectively) voted for (or put up with or didn’t protest against) ‘it’, so ‘you’ (individually and at random) “deserve what [you] bloody well get” – for various values of ‘you’ and ‘it’.
It doesn’t stand up to much scrutiny does it?
If foreigners wish to complain about the BBC then they should complain to the BBC directly and to the British government, either individually or through their governments, or through the media and the press (here and abroad) – but Brits as a whole, collectively, or individually, cannot justifiably be held to blame for the BBC, and certainly shouldn’t have to put up with what you or anyone else thinks ‘they’ “bloody well deserve”.
Foxgoose | 18.09.07 – 10:16 pm
Oh Foxgoose, I misunderstood. When you wrote:
…close ties between a large number of key BBC news and current affairs people with the labour party…
I presumed you meant present-day links involving people who actually work for BBC News and current affairs.
Not retired director generals or trustees. Or desk-wallahs from corporate strategy.
But if such folk are allowed then I reckon I can match any Labourite you care to mention with a Tory:
The current chairman, Michael Lyons, is indeed a former Labour councillor. Gavin Davies was a Labour man too.
But then former chairmen of the Governors Marmaduke Hussey and Sir Christopher Bland were both Conservatives. As was Lord Ryder (who was Davies’s deputy). And as is Dermot Gleeson (the current vice-chairman). Patricia Hodgson, another current trustee, is a former Conservative parliamentary candidate.
Bill Bush who became head of BBC Political Research before creeping back to the Downing St womb.
Well, there’s the BBC head of public affairs Andrew Scadding, formerly head of broadcasting for the Conservative Party.
Or how about the highly groomed education minister Ben Bradshaw…?
Not quite so presentable as ex-Today reporter Michael Gove or former economics correspondent Damian Green.
There is, of course, another ex-BBC man in the government whom you’ve been careful not to mention: Shaun Woodward. Perhaps that was because he was a Tory MP first and a Conservative while at the BBC.
Or perhaps ex Roy Jenkins aide Caroline Thompson, now BBC Chief operating officer..
Yes she does (roughly) the job that former Conservative candidate Patricia Hodgson (see above) used to do. And perhaps covers some of the work once performed by the former BBC corporate affairs supreme, Howell James, who went on to become John Major’s Political Secretary.
No Tories in the White City media village?
Honestly Foxgoose, I don’t know how you keep a straight face when you write this stuff (if you do).
JR, can you send me an email please – biasedbbc@gmail.com, anonymously I presume, and in confidence. Thank you.
JR
Blimey! Your scraping the bottom of some very old barrels aren’t you?
Dukey Hussey was put in by Maggie in ’86 specifically to try and counter the lefty majority – he failed (too many of ’em).
Patricia Hodgson says she’s had nothing to do with the tories for over 25 years (why did she need to point that out before her recent promotion?)
Andrew Scaddings is just a PR man – and I must have blinked while Michael Gove was at Today. I listened to it for 20 years every morning and still have Humphrys and Naughtie’s wingeing voices ringing in my ears – but I don’t ever recall hearing Gove.
How about some tories in proper jobs like DG? I guess you’d have to go back to your namesake who was a bit too far in that direction I’ve heard.
Why does Newsnight keep interviewing John Bolton? Is it to keep them on their toes or is there a subversive buried in the massed liberal left ranks who keeps getting him on.Tonight was classic.He made mincemeat of Essler over the Israeli action in Syria.Very enjoyable.By the way it took the Beeb a long time to get around to this story.I mentioned it here some days ago.
Never satified!
BBC1 10pm News had a report on illegal immigrants creating a Sangatte Mk2 at Cherbourg.
Nice, I thought, knowing the BBC’s love of the segue, we will go straight to the Lib Dem amnesty policy.
But no, the BBC chose to totally ignore the Lib Dem conference.
The carbon footprint of a … crisp!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/check/player/nol/newsid_7000000/newsid_7002000?redirect=7002000.stm&news=1&nbram=1&nbwm=1&bbwm=1&bbram=1
It doesn’t tell me what the carbon footprint of an audio download report on the carbon footprint of a crisp is, but I bet it’s a yeti sized one…
Peachy.
Foxgoose: “It’s public money, obtained in a very draconian fashion – often from people much less well off than the beeboids telling each other they need the motivation while they enjoy the perks.”
You seem to be slipping into a slightly different argument here. So lets restate. No money from the Licence Fee subsidises any BBC Club activity or staff “perks”
Now onto your slightly new point. How well should the BBC treat staff? Should we sit in a barn or in a pleasant office? What about Christmas parties? Corporate entertaining? etc etc. Good point for debate, but a very different one to where you started.
And as for the money we get increasing, well EVERY BBC department is looking at cuts this year and in every year to come.
David Preiser | 18.09.07 – 11:05 pm
University officials said he exceeded his allotted time and became disruptive after his microphone was cut off.
Left wing/right wing; pro-Kerry/anti-Kerry? Seems a rather excessive way to ‘control’ someone who was disruptive rather than a danger to himself or anyone else?
Some uniformed goon overreacted to heckling. Without the presence of John Kerry and a good video (if it bleeds it leads) this would be a non-story even on the BBC.
And finally of course, the BBC DOES make money! BBC Worldwide made £189M last year. That would buy staff a lot of yachts. But every penny goes back into programme making.
Jordan jihadis vow fight to the end
It was not easy to get into contact with Jordan’s jihadis. Crackdowns by the secret police here make getting to Iraq extremely difficult.
It’s not easy but Katya Adler BBC News, Amman persevered. I wait expectantly for her article from the Jordanian authorities giving a counter view 😉
Interesting isn’t it. Jordan’s Jihadis are a product of Life is dusty and bleak in the downtrodden townships around Jordan’s capital, Amman.
You see boredom, resentment and frustration everywhere. This is fertile ground for spreading radicalism.
Strange isn’t it that the leaders of Al Qaeda come from luxury in Saudi Arabia (bin Laden) and the educated middle class (Ayman al-Zawahiri)? The BBC always fails to see the elephant in the room.
On JR’s contributions, I find them rather enjoyable. JR (the BBC) posts and his highly selective argument is demolished by B-BBC’s contributors. Simple
And as for the money we get increasing, well EVERY BBC department is looking at cuts this year and in every year to come.
Mr Gregory what a spectacular non-sequiter, your spin doctor training shows promise.
AFAIK the BBC is not getting a cut in income, but an increase in the License Fee, at least in line with inflation. In other words no cut either in real terms or in monetary terms. What is happening is a cut in expectations, i.e. the BBC is not getting the increase that it expected and I assume anticipated. If it had been managed like any private sectr company, there would be no need for any cuts, since there is to be no reduction in income
I was thinking a couple of days ago, as the BBC blame sub prime lending in the USA for the demise of Northern Rock, “how long is it before they start to create US stories to fit the Beeboid worldview on this?”, e.g. a racist/victim angle. Well there it was on Today this morning with the Wall Street behaving irresponsibly/African Americans being targetted story. In other words, greedy and moral-free white American fatcats are conning po’ black people to sign up to ridiculous borrowing deals.
As with many BBC-spun stories these days, I am not sure whether this is really true, or rather that in the sub-prime field, African Americans represent a large part of the recipients of the deal? Or is the BBC story just a bit of hearsay, cobbled together in its quest to blame the wrong type of American for all the world’s difficulties? This is the problem with the BBC these days – what is truth (P.Pilate AD 33), and what is creative BBC newsmaking?
Arthur Dent, the “cuts” arguement was one that the Unions and the Labour party (amplified by the BBC) used regularly during the Thatcher years when any increase in spending was less than the expectation not less than last years figure plus inflation.
It amuses me now to see how this Labour government have reduced expectations by fiddling the inflation figure to exclude mortgage interest, council tax etc. A masterstroke of political and economic deceipt.
Given the bad news from the opinion polls today for the Conservatives:
http://www.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/
Perhaps the Brown-loving BBC are being very canny. You see, if we can blame the US and its “appalling” policies for the crisis with Northern Rock, then MacAvity gets away with it. In fact, with the darling white hared one bailing out all concerned with taxpyaer’s money, bingo! your opinion rating will go up, ready for a snap election. Really the BBC have given the Govt a pretty easy run on what is happening – the darling one should be mincemeat by now – imagine how the BBC’s fangs would be out if it was Cameron and Osborne in charge.
It’s still very opaque to me, by the way, whether all these recreational facilities are truly financially “arms length”. Does the Bush House club really pay London City rental and business rates on it’s floorspace – what’s the membership fee?
Does it? Don’t know. I do know it doesn’t need to. Why? Because the BBC’s lease on Bush House is – until next year – pretty much a peppercorn rent! The BBC’s been in there so long that the rent is almost nothing.
That’s one of the reasons why Auntie is moving out of Bush House soon. The current rental agreement expires, and the owners want to make a bit more money off it. So the BBC moves out.
Bush House is a different case. Most other big BBC buildings in London have been BBC owned for decades.
I also love your argument that because the BBC gets generated income from the licence fee, the BBC doesn’t need to treat its staff well, nor try to keep them.
I take it a different view. All licence fee payers are paying for the organisation. As a licence fee payer myself, I want to know that I’m getting good value from what I pay. The less money that is spent replacing annoyed staff who leave every five minutes, the more money we can spend on programmes.
Your option gives people less programmes. It delivers less value for the licence fee payer. Perfect argument if you’d like the BBC destroyed, but not good value for your taxes!
Where are the BBC Club accounts published?
Probably presented to BBC Club members at the AGM – which was recently IIRC – like it would be for any private members club which are, unless I’m very much mistaken, not legally required to publish their accounts for non-members. Not to say if you didn’t ask them, they wouldn’t let you see. They might. They or they might not.
Abandon Ship!:
I was thinking a couple of days ago, as the BBC blame sub prime lending in the USA for . . . . .
. . . . is the BBC story just a bit of hearsay, cobbled together in its quest to blame the wrong type of American for all the world’s difficulties? This is the problem with the BBC these days – what is truth (P.Pilate AD 33), and what is creative BBC newsmaking?
Abandon Ship! | 19.09.07 – 9:17 am | #
I think it is possible to let conspiracy theories get to you. In my reading of the wider press I’ve not come across anyone who doubts that the present turmoil in financial markets is because of the real prospect of a collapse in US markets arising from the unstable mess that the sub prime market has been allowed to develop into. And concerns such as these have been around for months or even longer.
The line that this has caused Northern Rock’s main funding sources to dry up seems to be pretty much the consensus too.
It might all be a Beeb conspiracy – but if so it has taken in Mr bush and the chair of the US Fed.
I prescribe reading a little more widely.
Andrew | Homepage | 19.09.07 – 12:14 am |
You can send a message via
vrtzirwubl99h4c@temporaryinbox.com
anytime in the next hour. If you miss the window, I’ll get back to you.
MattLondon
Thanks for that, but actually I was referring to the African Americans being specifically targetted because of their colour as possibly being the hearsay….I fully accept that the subprime loan thing has caused the problems with Northern Rock. Sorry I wasn’t clearer.
MattLondon
I agree with you, but it does not excuse the total absence of any questions being raised about the Government’s role in this vis-a-vis their reliance on debt; and it certainly doesn’t excuse uncritical platforms being offered to those who are saying it’s the Tories’ fault over 10 years ago.
Do you honestly think the Government would get off so lightly were it a conservative one?
Blackwater
They are American, they are a private company, they are in Iraq…………
……….they must be evil.
To confirm this, why not get Hugh Sykes to selectively interview a few Iraqis in Baghdad who will readily confirm that the evil Americans wantonly murdered those Iraqis? So it went on PM last night. On the basis that Hugh Sykes has never interviewed anyone who has a positive thing to say about the USA, I was a trifle concerned in the willingness of those interviewed to spill out the details, which naturally made the Blackwater employees seem more like an Einsatzgruppe unit operating at Babi Yar than a security firm. They may have been telling the truth, but then again they might not, or Sykes may have only included the interviews of those who said the “right” thing. Who knows? That’s the problem with the BBC these days.
Hugh Sykes is a sort of a John Pilger for the airwaves – as soon as I hear his dulcet tones I know what the story will be…
Abandon Ship! | 19.09.07 – 10:06 am
But Blackwater does have a history –
Last Christmas Eve, an inebriated Blackwater employee shot and killed a security guard for an Iraqi vice president, according to Iraqi and U.S. officials.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070917/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq
BBC HYS:
“Do police need more money to cope with migrants?”
http://newsforums.bbc.co.uk/nol/thread.jspa?threadID=7435&&edition=1&ttl=20070919110927
No mention in the article of the rather obvious question:
“Should we import fewer migrants?”.
http://ws.collactive.com/points/point?id=JPoztP4vAdhI
PROOF IRAN & SYRIA ARE IN CAHOOTS
Dozens of Iranian engineers and 15 Syrian soldiers were killed in an explosion while conducting a top-secret experiment – providing new evidence that the two countries are working together to develop weapons of mass destruction, it was reported yesterday.
This happened in July. How come the BBC has not reported?
Glauca | 19.09.07 – 11:28 am
This happened in July. How come the BBC has not reported?
Syria doesn’t allow the BBC (or any other Western media outlet) to station staff on its territory. It, on occasion, invites them in for , short time, heavily supervised story opportunities. If, for all that, the resulting story is unfavourable to the Syrian Government i.e. not exactly what the Syrian PR would have written, the media personnel are not invited back.
Does the BBC have Syria experts, as they once had China experts, who specialise in finding the news from hints, rumours, contacts, years of study, reading between the lines, analysing non English language sources, etc. from a country determined to prevent news coverage? If so who are they?
One day Syria will realise how counter-productive this is. Provide fixers, loyal local crew and the current crop of BBC adrenalin junkies will generally report exactly as desired.
I’m just beginning Jeremy Bowen’s War Stories. In the Prologue he sets off with a fixer/driver who “knew everyone from the bearded and serious men at the offices of the Islamic resistance, Hezbollah … to the head waiters in the best fish restaurants”, and BBC camera man, a Lebanese Shia Muslim former gunman in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
Who needs to exclude Foreign Correspondents when the BBC is on tap?
What should the BBC cut in order to save money?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?view=BLOGDETAIL&grid=F11&blog=yourview&xml=/news/2007/09/19/view19b.xml#comments
Comments (70)
Heron | 19.09.07 – 10:04 am | & others
When you compare this to how they treat Lamont’s actions on ‘Black Wednesday’ …
Wikipedia recknons we lost £3.4Billion due to that fiasco. This was a forced error due to an attack on the ERM by speculators.
But Gibbo Brown lost over £4 billion selling 60% of our gold reserves off cheap to China. This was a voluntary ideological sale, no pressure was on him to sell at the time. Where is the indignation at that?
Heron:
MattLondon
I agree with you, but it does not excuse the total absence of any questions being raised about the Government’s role in this vis-a-vis their reliance on debt
I’m not sure I agree. While the government is open to attack on public debt (basically bending its own rules) I’m not clear that that is a significant factor in the current crisis. Even their depending on unrealistic levels of private debt to fuel growth, though unwise and worrying, is not necessarily a major cause of the NR fiasco
and it certainly doesn’t excuse uncritical platforms being offered to those who are saying it’s the Tories’ fault over 10 years ago.
To be fair, in R4 interviews I’ve heard interviewers seem to be becoming aware that they can’ let ministers get away with that one any more.
Do you honestly think the Government would get off so lightly were it a conservative one?
On past performance, no I don’t – but over the last day or so, on this topic, I’ve not found as much as usual to be critical of.