Did you see the prominence the BBC has given to the Competition Commision’s imminent report into the alleged monopoly of the “Big Four” supermarkets here in the UK? With a 74% market share between them, it seems that tough questions must be asked but at least free competition exists to regulate what they do. Can you imagine if there was a State supermarket chain? Do you think the Competition Commission would be interested in its behavior? Can you imagine shoppers outrage if that State Supermarket could insist that money be spent in its stores, even if poor value and shoody goods were all that was on offer? Even worse, imagine if because of the State supermarket’s power, it’s rivals struggled to sustain their own operations. Might it be that some monopolies are OK?
4 legs good, 2 legs bad.
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Could you imagine if there was a Supermarket chain (lets call it the CCD) that demanded £140 per year off of everyone, even if you didn’t want to shop there?
All the products would be over priced and poor quality. The staff would earn £100,000 minimum wage and be horribly white (excpet for the cleaners)
All those that didn’t like shopping there would be treated like scum by those that did and those that did shop there (and worked there) demanded that ever more money be given to them to subsidise their expensive inferior products.
Shares in supermarket companies can go down as well as up. The Beeb’s share price, were one to exist, might provide a salutary measure by which its management could gauge progress.
Of course at present it would be starting as a penny share – it’d be a long punt without the tellytax.
Where’s the bias, or is this just one of your hobby horses, David?
It’s the most important business story of the day. Are you suggesting that because the BBC is funded by a licence fee it shouldn’t cover the story?
Robert Peston blogged this story as “Tesco Triumphs” – is this indicative of the anti-company BBC mentality you think the BBC is showing in its coverage of the story?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/robertpeston/2008/02/tesco_triumphs.html
And four companies taking a high market share would be, if anything, an oligopoly not a monopoly. Funnily enough only anti-Tesco protesters call this situation a monopoly.
p and a tale of one chip: Do you think the BBC would be happy to be told that its monopoly of the TV tax was being taken away so as to give smaller TV companies a chance to make prgrammes?
Of course not. The BBC has always taken an anti Supermarket stance (more evil Capitalists)
Martin,
Correct. There is a Statist mindset which delights in these “investigations” into the private sector. Meanwhile the likes of the BBC and the NHS, the monoliths that consume our taxation and always demand more, sail on serenely.
Do you think the BBC would be happy to be told that its monopoly of the TV tax was being taken away so as to give smaller TV companies a chance to make prgrammes?
You do realise that this happens already, don’t you?
Click to access the_bbc_and_production.pdf
The BBC has requirements under the Communications Act 2003 and the BBC Agreement of 25th January 1996 (amended by the agreement dated 4th December 2003) with respect to its position as a commissioner and producer of programmes. The Communications Act 2003 states that 25% of qualifying programmes1 on BBC television broadcasting services must be independent productions.
Regarding the 25% indy quota, this is a joke. It usually goes to ex-Beeboids who produce the same crap, only worse. One big, jolly, vile club.
Kill it now!
It’s a salutary exercise to scale up the size of the BBC monopoly to the biggest media market of all – the USA.
The Beeb’s total revenue is approaching £4 billion to cover a population of 60 million.
Scaling up by a factor of five, for the US population of 300 million, this would equate to a £20 billion or $40 billion dollar enterprise.
This would exceed the combined size of the four biggest US broadcasters.
The Americans would fall about laughing if anybody even suggested a 20 billion dollar public broadcaster.
Why do we need it?
David Vance
Yes all true but thats not really the point.
A world dominated by very large corporations is only OK for the common people under certain circumstances.
Very preferably when the ruling class don’t get their grubby corrupt hands completely on the media, all levels of government, the monopolies commission, the banking system,,the planning authorities, and just about everything else that controls what should be a FREE market. Or should I say, as FREE as practically possible?
We DO NOT have a free market and have not for some considerable time. We also DO NOT live in a FREE liberal democracy, and never have done.
Whats worse, we certainly do not have an unregulated FREE media to keep a watchful eye on what small amounts of these things we still have left. As I am sure most contributors to this site have already worked out for themselves.
We have the BBC SKY TV and an assorted bunch of other corporations in the press sucking up to corrupt government and other even larger corporations.
Understand this and you understand much.
The question is what do we do about it?
Answer;
There is nothing much we can do about it. However we could try to organize our own personal counter revolution.
If nothing else it would seriously naf these fascists off, and maybe, just maybe, they may start to stop taking the merry piss out of the general public, quite so much and quite so often.
Dont buy anything from the bastards for one thing. Buy from your local shops and independent small businesses.
Start one yourself and tell the big boss to go and stuff his job where the sun dont shine.
Go on a permanent strike. Or dont do overtime and dont take that promotion you always used to think you wanted.
Live cheap and get used to it.
Soon you will not have many choices left anyway.
“It’s a salutary exercise to scale up the size of the BBC monopoly to the biggest media market of all – the USA”
The exercise is based on a false premise. Self-evidently, the cost of broadcasting doesn’t increase in direct proportion to the size of the audience.
Dr R:
Regarding the 25% indy quota, this is a joke. It usually goes to ex-Beeboids who produce the same crap, only worse. One big, jolly, vile club.
Kill it now!
Dr R | 15.02.08 – 4:31 pm | #
Spot on.
Most of the indies are ex-beeboids or wives/ husbands, sons/daughters of beeboids.
They make a packet in the indie sector getting business from their friends/relations – and then, if times get hard, they end up back at the beeb in their twilight years for the public inflation-proofed pension.
Only politicians can match them in getting their snoughts in the trough.
Makes you yearn for old Mao’s cultural revolution – put ’em all to useful work in the fields.
The exercise is based on a false premise. Self-evidently, the cost of broadcasting doesn’t increase in direct proportion to the size of the audience.
p and a tale of one chip | 15.02.08 – 4:54 pm | #
I’m guessing you work in the public sector, Chippie.
It may be “self evident” to you but back in the real world the size a broadcaster can grow to depends on the advertising revenue it can attract – which in turn depends on the size and disposable income of its audience.
The point is, even 300 million of the world’s wealthiest people haven’t found the need for a behemoth like the BBC – which we are told is so essential to our wellbeing it has to be funded by confiscation.
It’s a sick joke, played by a lot of self indulgent parasites – on the poorest sector of society.
Here’s a question for you then p and a tale of one chip.
If the government decided that they would DOUBLE the cost of the television licence tomorrow, do you think there would be a single manager or employer of the BBC who would say:
“No, no, that’s quite enough money, we don’t need it.”
Of course they wouldn’t. The BBC and it’s employees are amoral, shameless and avaricious money worshippers who couldn’t care a damn who they take money from or how much.
I would.
p and a tale of one chip:
The 25% is still spent on BBC programming.How about giving 25% of the licence fee to anyone that wants to make a programme that has merit. It could then be shown by either the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 or 5.
The 25% you mention still gets spent by the fat BBC.
TPFJ
Remember the BBC is not a government quango or a democratically elected accountable to anyone operation. Least of all any share holders, because it does not have any.
It is a public corporation. With its own bank account and ability to borrow money from the markets. Secured by the most secure thing there is. Which is virtually a whole nation of intimidated potential jail birds, namely the British TV owning public.
Therefore there is not a bank, financial institution,or private contractor, that will not give the BBC just about anything it wants.
It is more powerful then any public or otherwise corporation known to mankind. More powerful then even our own government. With no exceptions I can think of.
Whats worse it is a MEDIA organization capable of not only affecting elections in this country but now other countries as well.
When LABOUR and other politicians talk about spreading democracy around the world. Remember it is the BBC that will be used, and is being used, to promote such a highly dangerous clearly Imperialistic New World Order Fascist project.
No wonder our Muslim brothers are a bit pissed right now, who can blame them?
If they were doing this to us, which they are now anyway, we would also be pissed, which we are now anyway.
( “But the BBC claims not to be in favor of Imperialism” I can here you all say. But remember the BBC tells VERY BIG lies, its their job. Whether most working at the BBC know this to be the case, or not)
So what does democracy western style now mean, so we have a better understanding of what we are really talking about here. Off the top of my head, it is now the following.
Not democracy at all for a first thing and certainly not a classic liberal or libertarian one in any shape or form.
Mass unemployment in the private sector.
Government regulations and interference covering every thing from your kids tooth paste to the hours you personally work.
Mass employment using non jobs in the public sector, just to keep the people dependent, frightened and completely under our ruling elites thumb.
Media that lies and runs fascist agendas while claiming at our expense (JR and all) that it not doing anything of the sort. However obvious it is to the free thinker that they are doing EXACTLY that.
A controlled regulated media, by people you would not trust to baby sit your children.
Feminism.
Gay minority domination in just about every field of politics religion media and the arts.
Destruction of normal family life, whatever it takes.
Mass never ending uncontrolled and uncontrollable immigration that not even immigrants want.
One parent families as the norm.
An education system that teaches bullshit, not known facts or real useful information. Deliberately to repress its own people. Then just makes the exams become so easy a dead person could pass them. When that is people start to notice their little Johny has no idea where France is by the age of 14.
False democracy, of the type which would leave the American founding fathers and the leaders of the chartist movement both spinning in their graves.
A propaganda created world MMCO2=global warming religion. Which bares no relationship to the real or scientific world whatsoever. If for no other reason, but to despotically demonstrate that they can and have, completely fucked up our free minds. So again demonstrating they can do so again at their will, and get away with it. While they simply carry on polluting just as much or if not more then ever before in some places.
Deliberately created wars causing civil disorder, disunity, poverty, confusion and very profitable arms, reconstruction and illegal drugs contracts for the people that organized them. That would make the likes of Adolf Hitler green with envy.
Corruption at all levels of the executive and big business, that would make Al Capone blush from head to foot.
Economic disasters, deliberately created to cause disorder, disunity, poverty, confusion, and very profitable cheap buy-outs for the people that organized them. Along with the inevitable booms and busts in the housing market.
In short; every single thing the BBC promotes without shame, every single second of every single day, on every single thing it produces. Whether you understand or can bare to understand this, or not.
Sorry to have missed out anything. I cant go on forever, but most likely could really if I had the energy.
Excellent post Atlas shrugged. You have truly hit the nail on the head.
The modern media has taken on the role of world leader where once before it was down to the heads of state.
The BBC is the new Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini all rolled into one. Only they aren’t preaching to us the advancement of our nation and the end to others. It is the end to ours and the advancement of all others.
If the BBC was a supermarket it would be the worst of them all. 99% of the floorspace would be taken up with cheap cider, turkey twizzlers, crisps and frozen pizza, all government certified as nutritious. Somewhere in a remote corner would be Melvyn Bragg and Michael Berkeley’s range of speciality foods for the more discerning customer.
“The Communications Act 2003 states that 25% of qualifying programmes1 on BBC television broadcasting services must be independent productions.
p and a tale of one chip | 15.02.08 – 3:50 pm | # ”
I bet those who commission the programmes are salarymen,oops sorry,salary persons.
No p,not good enough,you should all be digging ditches.
Atlas shrugged: SPOT ON!!!!!
So glad this is in pink.
My eyes would hurt otherwise.
webby see an optician mate, i’d say it was more Lilac than Pink
😆
When I was at school you’d lose marks on your essay if it didn’t answer the question. David, because you haven’t actually pointed to an incident of bias, but simply reported a news story and given your opinions on it, I’m afraid I can’t give you more than a D for this post.
Webby
You’re possibly red-green colour blind like I am.
AYA,
What do you mean “when” you were at school?
At my old school. I’m at big school now. As an Academy of Directionless Islamocommunist Rhetoric, it doesn’t mark you down for failing to answer the question, so long as a minimum of fifteen per cent of paragraphs refer to George Bush as Satan or accuse Israel of covering up the Holocaust.
Now how is this news item actually an incident of bias? You neglected to mention that important fact.
Unwitting sense from the BBC? I giggled when I read this:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7247370.stm
“America has spent $15bn (£7.5bn) fighting Aids overseas since 2003, and Mr Bush has recently asked Congress to double that amount.”
“More than one million people in sub-Saharan Africa have life-saving anti-retroviral drugs thanks to the policy.”
“However the policy has been criticised by some for focusing on encouraging people not to have sex in order to stop the spread of Aids – unrealistic critics say.”
I assume the Beeboid meant “which critics claim is unrealistic”. Their illiteracy, however, means that they believe the critics themselves are unrealistic. Typically, of course, the BBC doesn’t say who these critics are…
That typo would have been funnier if you hadn’t spelt it out.
I thought I’d help you out, Alex
FFS, if you want to know why the beeboid mentality on reporting of the evils of the supermarkets, is so wrong, go and look at the centre of any small rural town. The high street will largely have been decimated, thanks to the arrival of a damn great Tesco’s on the outskirts. ( Selling the cheapest imported food and clothes they can source.
None of this registers with a beeboid in Islington.
Kind of you, but you have to remember this isn’t a serious blog, so quality comic delivery is everything.
So, which left-wing hate-sheets would you consider as “serious blogs” then?
Rob | 16.02.08 – 1:13 pm,
Good question. I assume the angry young one is spending a lot of time on Google to try to find one.
BBC illiteracy hs become quite noticeable in the past few years. They are going from bad to worse.
“p and a tale of one chip”,
When do stupid little children like you ever learn? You deserve 5 ASBO’s.
If you want ANYONE to take you seriously then convince your BBC bum chums to scrap the TV licence. Face it: The BBC is a mafia enforced propaganda machine and people like you defend it. End of.
If you want something in life these days under NuLiarBore, then you have to earn it… you included (and the BBC).
Your higher education has no place here… only common sense prevails. Join your NuLiarBore rat friends in the sewer while you can… before the next General Election.
… I await your next typical childish response with laughter. I, like your leader Gordon “Liar” Brown, will simply ignore it.
TheTruth:
Don’t take the Beeboid apologists on this forum to heart. They are only religiously defending their beloved broadcasting Fuhrer because they feel threatened. If they lost their jobs they wouldn’t have that state funded teat to suck dry anymore. They would be cast out into the real world to find proper jobs, meaning doing real work and no protection of their nepotistic pack to help them.
Remember, your true lefty is someone that’s making a good living off the backs of the causes they promote. Without minorites, feminists, global warming and gay rights your Beeboids would have absolutely nothing to write about/or make doccos about. Therefore all that money they are creaming in off the backs off the marganilized would dry up. And then they might have to LIVE in the society they have created for us.
And we can’t have that can we?
This is priceless! You think everyone who disagrees with you is planted by the BBC! What right-wing ideologue planet do you live on?
Angry Young Alex | Homepage | 17.02.08 – 11:40 am | #
What right-wing ideologue planet do you live on?
Planet Vance.
Angry. Do try to read before you post responses.
The term Beeboid I apply to anyone who works for the BBC. If you are not one then I will happily disregard all your posts in future. Because you are just wasting mine and everbody else’s time by being here. This blog is about BBC bias. It’s not the Uni debating society.
If you happen to disagree with the ‘politics’ on this blog, why don’t you piss off and find a political blog you can wave your student union credentials at that might be more welcoming to your particular brand of group-think rhetoric.
Why don’t we get more investigations into the NHS from the BBC?
I know a bit about this and the sheer scale of waste in the organisation is staggering. The organisation is also about 3 times more PC than the BBC – which is quite incredible.
NHS managers are the most incompetant bunch you could imagine but I almost feel sorry for them having to deal with the medics every day.
NHS medics are the most arrogant group of people in the country outside of those up on the 4th floor of TV centre. I include the British doctors amongst them, although there are precious few of them left now.
My advice to joe public – get insurance !!
To the BBC – get investigating. So far we have only had a couple of half hearted efforts.
The BBC loves the NHS.
“Planet Vance.”
Shit name for a planet. How come he gets a planet and poor Pluto gets demoted? PC gone mad.
“The term Beeboid I apply to anyone who works for the BBC.”
Yep. And you assume everyone on here without a chip on their shoulder and a tin-foil hat on their head is one. I did wonder if you just used it for BBC fellow travellers, but clearly not.
“This blog is about BBC bias. It’s not the Uni debating society.”
And I have, on every single one of my posts, discussed or attempted to discuss, BBC bias or the absence thereof. I admit Biodegradable’s Ghost may have led me off-topic at times, but I usually attempted to relate things back to the BBC. I have also deliberately kept my own political ideas out of the discussion, unlike the incoherent and permanently-enraged Mr. Vance.
If you want to discuss BBC bias, so do I, and I may at times disagree with you. If you want a one-sided paranoid right-wing circle-jerk, then please stop expecting Aunty to take anything you say seriously.
“tin-foil hat”
Oh christ, the mark of the Beeboid.
Angry Young Alex, don’t forget to use the rest of the hackneyed BBC lefty rhetoric.
“The BBC don’t always get it right.”
“You just don’t understand journalism.”
A job awaits you in broadcasting house, if you’re not already working for “young labour”.
“With a 74% market share between them, it seems that tough questions must be asked”
What?
A monopoly used to mean a legal ban on competition to the monopolist.
Then it meant a 100% market share, regardless of whether it was legally enforced or not.
Then it meant just a “large” market share.
Nowadays, it means a medium market share (ie. the “Tescopoly” campaign which believes Tesco’s ~30% share to constitute a monopoly).
Are we now to believe that even a stalwart champion against anti-market propaganda like B-BBC believes that several companies together holding a sub-100% market share constitutes a monopoly? Utterly ludicrous.
There are only two convenience stores in my nearest village and both are owned by the Co-op. As I consider the Co-op to be an organistion funding war-criminals viz. the Labour party, I am unable to shop in this village.
So when is the BBC going to report on this monoply situation, which is not unique?
“And four companies taking a high market share would be, if anything, an oligopoly not a monopoly. Funnily enough only anti-Tesco protesters call this situation a monopoly.”
How about a quadropoly?
“If the BBC was a supermarket it would be the worst of them all. 99% of the floorspace would be taken up with cheap cider, turkey twizzlers, crisps and frozen pizza, all government certified as nutritious. Somewhere in a remote corner would be Melvyn Bragg and Michael Berkeley’s range of speciality foods for the more discerning customer.”
Dread to think what ITV would be like. Not even the small section (methinks a little bigger than you make out) of decent stuff would remain.
I somehow wonder at the sort of rhetoric here displayed. Sure, the compulsory TV license is unfair. But at least it allows for a place on the channel line-up where one doesn’t get ads shoved down one’s throat every 5-10 minutes. Sure, it’s biased at times, but not completely. There is an easy alternative to the ‘tellytax’- you’re looking at it now (i.e. the Net). (You don’t pay compulsory fees for it, the radio, or just watching DVDs.)
“FFS, if you want to know why the beeboid mentality on reporting of the evils of the supermarkets, is so wrong, go and look at the centre of any small rural town. The high street will largely have been decimated, thanks to the arrival of a damn great Tesco’s on the outskirts. ( Selling the cheapest imported food and clothes they can source.
None of this registers with a beeboid in Islington.”
Seems to contradict itself. Is it meant to be sarcastic?