Rumbling on
The headlines today are, well, challenging for the Beeb:
- My grandfather is distraught…now sack these sickos, says the Sun
- Brown turns up heat on Ross, at the Mail
- Brown demands action from BBC over lewd stars, says the Telegraph
- Clamour grows for BBC to act over radio insults, says the Times
And that’s just those that lead with it on their front page.
Much of the ire is, understandably, being directed at Ross and Brand, but for my money Iain Dale has it right here, where he points out that since it was pre-recorded much of the responsibility must lie with producer, editor and station controller. Sky also have a good interview with former DJ Roger Gale, arguing against making a scapegoat of out of a junior staff member. As he puts it, It’s the people at the top that set the trend, not those low down the food chain.
This Guardian piece also has some interesting background that helps explain why this could be be good news for those that want to see reform at the Beeb:
Unfortunately for the BBC’s director general, Mark Thompson, the furore has coincided with the endgame in a debate about the future of public service broadcasting post-2012. Ofcom will deliver its conclusions in January.
Critics said the BBC’s slow response and the confusing reviews now in motion showed the weakness of its regulatory system, which was overhauled after the Hutton inquiry, and its compliance regime, supposed to have been tightened after last year’s fakery rows and phone-in scandals.
Who knows, it could even lead to suggestions that the BBC actually monitor compliance with other charter commitments, such as to impartiality.
UPDATE: Brand and Ross have been suspended – and after three days the Beeb has managed to find Mark Thompson. The number of complaints has now topped 18,000. Even the Guardian’s Michael White suggests the Beeb tends to be a little slow to admit its mistakes.
UPDATE 2: Brand has quit.
UPDATE 3: Sorry, but just one final thought on this: the Beeb are making much of the fact that Radio 1 listeners don’t see what the fuss is about – it’s a generational thing, innit – the logic being that if enough people think it’s funny then it’s okay to ring up someone to inform them that you’ve f***ed their granddaughter. And then broadcast the results against their wishes. I think I understand the principle the Beeb is trying to develop, but I’m a little unsure of how it’s meant to be applied: is it only former cast members of Fawlty Towers we can do it with, or any license fee payer? And is it just granddaughters, or are they allowed to ring me to inform me that one of their staff members has f****ed by daughter – provided, of course, that the youth audience chortle?
Very sad to hear Richard Allinson – one of the DJs I have always liked – defending Ross/Brand (Radio 2 this morning, about 0655) on the grounds that Sachs’ granddaughter is a bit of a wild one.
What the whole affair has done is open up a vent hole for the millions who really dislike Ross and Brand for whatever reason: their stunning lack of talent, their pay cheques, their obsession with homosexuality, thier epitomisation of everything many of us loath about the BBC.
Let’s hope it achieves something.
Well, I just heard it live on BBC Breakfast from a fantastic counter-argument, washed (we who disagree with such as him are not… apparently), selection of media bubble humanity… Will.
Brilliant choice!
Now I am not, as he demanded, ‘getting over it’ and complaining to the BBC’s pointless Complaints system about this choice of defence interviewee and the ‘interviewers’ abilities in dealing with his specious arguments, and reading out others that were almost as offensive. This is all OK because the grand-daughter looks dodgy?
BBC… when in a hole… stop digging!
Plus the notion…you can only have a problem or opinion with what is broadcast if you hear/see it live and then complain then… through channels???? That will make for a short ‘news’ channel based on finding and sharing material that is dated.
My conclusion about the future of Public Broadcasting after 2012
“Stop Existing Please”
Why do I suspect that me and Ofcom won’t agree?
Just a hunch…
Looks like the BBC may already lining up a scapegoat.
Sky News’s reporter at Broadcasting House earlier (8.30ish)said that apparently it was a “junior producer – just 25 years old” who was responsible for allowing the offensive material to go to air.
The BBC has a history of rolling the heads of “assistants”
What pisses me off is how the left wing drug taking rent boy using leftist twats are out in force defending the BBC, yet don’t seem to understand that the BBC is funded by a forced tax.
I hate the BBC I despise it. Yet I’m forced ot fund it.
If Sky put out something I didn’t like, I can ring them up and cancel my subscription to them.
With the BBC…………
somewhere on this site someone said that it was permissible to sack James Whale because he recommended Boris for Mayor– OK –but in 1997 I remember Chris Evans + others screaming about voting Labour –and several DJs have shown partisan allegiance since—Steve Wright,Ross,Maconie, Mark Lamarr etc etc in fact it gets embarrasing to hear radio turns telling us about their political allegiances–notice how many show open Democratic sympathies. These tendenies should be curtailed as impressionable people listen to their shite.
Just posted this on HYS:-
I’ve just emailed the BBC as follows.
“Dear BBC,
I currently pay licence fees for two properties at :-
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
and
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
I have today instructed my bank to suspend direct debit payments until further notice.
I will resume payment when I hear that these two individuals are:-
A No longer receiving payments from the licence fee.
and
B Repaying some of the monies they have received – in acknowledgement of their apalling behaviour.
Sincerely
XXXXX”
Don’t expect it’ll get past the 6000 odd in the mod queue – but it made me fee better.
Your BBC – “Nation shall spread filth unto nation”
I’m quite shocked to see that it seems fine for them to do what they did, as long as the public didn’t hear it. Why is the producer apparently being lined up to be sacked for it going out, when the problem is the act itself?
Andrew Sachs will probably be just as offended and upset regardless of whether it went out on air or not.
The likes of Ross and Brand have too much power and should be sacked.
Radio 5 is in dull defend the BBC at all costs mode. Endless BBC employees ringing up to defend their free meal ticket and the usual blame the Daily Mail lot.
Perhaps if you read the Daily Mail you should not have to pay the TV tax?
Brown should resign over this matter too! He’s head of the BBC really. The government effectively appoints the most senior BBC staff and the BBC is financed by a tax on a domestic appliance.
yes, the PM must resign. And where’s the EU and the UN in all of this?
yes, the PM must resign. And where’s the EU and the UN in all of this?
Oh Mike – that’s just pathetic. Is that your ‘defence’?
The EU gives cheap loans to the BBC so it can produce all the trash it does. Everyone knows that.
86 years of the BBC have come to this. Foul mouthed, millionaire presenters making abusive phone calls on air to a member of the public. How much longer do we have to put up with the governmnet’s pretence that the BBC is so wonderful it needs a tax and the criminal law system to ensure it is magnificently funded?
A citation from 1984: “And the Records Department, after all, was itself only a single branch of
the Ministry of Truth, whose primary job was not to reconstruct the past but to supply the citizens of Oceania with newspapers, films, textbooks, telescreen programmes, plays, novels — with every conceivable kind of information, instruction, or entertainment, from a statue to a slogan, from a lyric poem to a
biological treatise, and from a child’s spelling-book to a Newspeak dictionary.
And the Ministry had not only to supply the multifarious needs of the party, but also to repeat the whole operation at a lower level for the benefit of the proletariat.
…
There was even a whole sub-section —
Pornosec, it was called in Newspeak — engaged in producing the lowest kind of pornography ..”
I don’t understand why I have to finance the proles’ entertainment. Isn’t it enough that I finance their subsistence by the crippling income tax?
All the main parties support the licence fee. The queen
is yet to revoke the bbc’s charter. And everyone is leaping on this froth fuelled bandwagon. thumbs up auntie for uniting the nation
I say.
Hitler also united our nation, didn’t he?
Ross and Brand are just the tip of the iceberg. The problem is the coarsening of British culture (both popular and “high”) since the 60s with the BBC in the vanguard. Since Kenneth Tynan was feted by the intellectual glitterati for being the first person to say f**k on air it’s been a one-way street.
Forget the Ross/Brand juvenility: it’s the small change of what passes for entertainment on all the broadcast media. Apart from the occasional honourable exception, BBC programming has been conspicuous in its betrayal of serious culture (and no, what I mean by “culture” does not include getting down and dirty wiv da yoof on a sink estate in Lambeth). To appreciate the extent of this betrayal, all you have to do is watch the BBC’s Newsnight Review on a Friday night, listen to a Radio 3 downgraded by a surfeit of “world music” and see that even the Proms has to be “enlivened” by the use of so-called celebrities (not coincidentally from other BBC programmes) to “popularise” (ie bring down the level of discussion concerning) the music on offer.
Come on guys, this is a serious blog exposing bias at the BBC. It should not be here to pander to the politically correct numpties in this country. Just because some actor is offended by comments about his grandaughter (who appears to be nothing more than a glorified pole dancer) does this mean we should join in with the politically correct feeding frenzy?? I am rather more concerned about the latest accusations levelled at Georgia:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7696119.stm
Surely that is more important than any offence that some ‘entertainer’ might have suffered?
Just after a piece in the Indy on the ‘prank’
Data protection breaches affect millions of lives
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/data-protection-breaches-affect-millions-of-lives-976911.html
‘the true scale of the misuse of personal information held by the state and private business’
‘Cases include the… misuse of sensitive information’
billybob: Point taken, but the BBC is down on its knees at the moment and I want to kick it in the head and the balls as hard as possible.
I’ve put in yet more complaint to Ofcom and more to the BBC over the reporting on 5 live today (totally one sided)
I’ve just read the most accurate comment made about the BBC in it’s attitude to complaints….
“Swaggering Disregard”.
Sums them up perfectly.
billybob: I think the point is that 95+% of the population find these two talentless and offensive. They have jobs at the BBC for a reason, the only reason I can think is because of their lefty views. Had someone like Jeremy Clarkson done these things, he’d be long gone.
But thanks should be said to the BBC for showing the world how thick and depraved your typical lefty is.
They certainly our talentless, but i find the politically correct ‘thou shalt not offend’ frenzy a little tiring. These ‘celebrities’ get more than enough air time, must we give them more? Our country is being brought to its knees by those that seek to protect us from offense. I am all for giving the BBC a kicking, but do we need to join the politically correct bandwagon just to do so??
I agree that they are not talented. I do, however, object to this politically correct feeding frenzy. I am all for the BBC a kicking, but do we really need to resort to the kind of political correctness that they are guilty of just to do so? I think not. Let’s concentrate on their news output, not a non-story about some ‘entertainers’.
Sorry, computer went a bit funny so it looked like I lost that post. Ooops 🙂
billybob: “Let’s concentrate on their news output, not a non-story about some ‘entertainers’.”
I think this is closely linked to their bias to be honest. For a start, their bias isn’t restricted to their news – its readily apparent in the views aired by their entertainers, as well as their drama and comedy.
This also serves a couple of useful purposes: it highlights their arrogant disregard for the norms of those outside the metropolitan elite, the same attitude that sees them brush off complaints of bias from the likes of this site but also the best read newspapers, such as the Sun, Mail and Telegraph. It also highlights the total absence of real controls and monitoring that allows that bias to continue.
I’d still obviously prefer the country to be whipped up into a frenzy over Justin Webb’s appalling reporting, but in the absence of that, this will do.
Hugh – Good point. It’s just that this whole ‘we must not offend’ thing sticks in the throat a little. I have always been against this kind of political correctness, whether it be aimed at old men, Muslims, foreigners, whatever. Where will it all end? We will barely be able to open our mouths without fear of offending someone. Heaven help us when that day comes.
billybob: Sorry but this is relevant. Robert Kilroy Silk got the sack for suggesting Arabs were twats in a newspaper article. But leftie twats never seem to get the sack for anything.
Remember the furore over Patrick Mercer, who was forced to resign over his statement over idle ethnic minority soldiers.
Now where do you suppose Ross & Brand would have stood on that one? Would they have said it was a mistake while he was testing the boundaries and leave at that? Or would they be amongst those calling for his resignation?
Brand recently called President Bush a “cowboy retard” at some awards event in the US. He’s not looking too bright himself now. (Gloat)
Asda: The point about Clarkson is that he’d never come out with this drivel in the first place.
how many complaints in the first week following it? 2
How many complaints once the mail on sunday got their nasty facist paws all over it? 18000. I would like to know how many of these people complaining have actually listened to what happened in context.
simon: Do you honestly believe leaving obscene, abusive messages can be ‘taken out of context’?
billybob: I detest the PC culture we live in. The vast majority of people do. But at the same time the vast majority don’t think this is anything to do with PC but gross vulgarity (a bit like Ross’ pay cheques).
WWL 1205
This is the only bandwagon available to jump on. It would be better if the furore was about the BBC’s political bias, but they disregard the daily complaints because they already have our money and they stick two fingers up to the people who are forced to pay them.
Hopefully now a lot of people will refuse to pay the licence fee.
I have a relative who’s married to a beeboid.
Through this source I am informed that every pre-recorded radio programme has associated with it an electronic “compliance form” that must be filled in by the producer.
The form requires details of …among other things… any taste/bad language/controversial aspects of the programme. The form also has to be signed off by a senior editor.
These compliance forms are an OFCOM requirement.
So – all the required info is immediately available at the press of a button both to BBC management and OFCOM.
Why then are ‘enquiries’ taking so long?
Simon – well, if those complaining haven’t listened to it that makes 18,000 people who just seriously hate the Beeb. Now, what could it possibly have done to stir up such resentment?
The two complaints before the Daily Mail whipped the thing up were both about bad language i hear, not about the nature of the call.
Susan F – I agree this issue is being used as a pretext for giving the bbc a kicking. This is what is driving the Mail’s coverage and News Corp’s too. The public are being played.
The woman involved has now flogged her distress to the Sun through Max Clifford. Few other than Sachs, and Don Foster per above comment (a brave thing to say), come out of this with their integrity intact.
mikewineliberal: And why’s the Mail want to give them a kicking btw? And are those columnists at the Guardian, Independent and Times, who also reckon this was in appalling taste, being played by those wily chaps at the Mail as well? Could it be that few complained initially because not many heard the thing?
mikewineliberal: So what. I hate the BBC. I love giving the BBC a kicking. They are a bunch of stuck up left wing twats who need to remember who pays their wages.
If they don’t want people complaining, then go over to a digital subscription based service where you pay for what you watch.
Plenty of peole don’t like Sky, so at least they have a choice. With the BBC we don’t get any choice.
Hugh: That’s the point. Just because most of us don’t watch this purile shite doesn’t mean to say we shouldn’t be allowed to complain.
So long as I’m forced to pay for these leftie twats I will stick the boot in.
I have no sympathy for those two fucking wankers.
Oh and as I commented earlier it appears these two arseholes did say even worse stuff that was cut. The Daily Mail has another transcript. It’s disgusting.
400,000 people heard the thing. Otherwise, spot on.
The Daily Mail is anti-BBC; always has been always will be. As is newscorp (times). The Mail is the constant focus of derision from Brand too, so this is a perfect storm for them. The issue isn’t whether or not the incident was ok or not (it was clearly worthy of serious censure). The issue now surely is that this has blown wildly out of all proportion; beyond the significance of the incident. Sachs seems to want to close the thing down; Voluptua not so, but perhaps her motives are somewhat dubious.
“Very sad to hear Richard Allinson – one of the DJs I have always liked – defending Ross/Brand (Radio 2 this morning, about 0655) on the grounds that Sachs’ granddaughter is a bit of a wild one.”
yeah – i’ve heard that disgusting argument being made.
its VERY similar to those “she deserved to be raped because of the way she dressed” arguments from years ago in court cases…
utterly puke inducing.
Frankos | 29.10.08 – 10:33 am |
“it gets embarrasing to hear radio turns telling us about their political allegiances–notice how many show open Democratic sympathies. These tendenies should be curtailed as impressionable people listen to their sh*te.”
Quite. Opinionated celebrities, – do shut up.
Newspaper review on R4’s Broadcasting House with guests eco-warrier Marcus Brigstocke and famous ex Blue Peterist Janet Ellis who sounds as if she is impersonating the way a small furry animal would talk, if it could.
Boy, do they hate Sarah Palin.
Brigstocke’s fake Billy Bragg style vowels alone convey to us that he hates David Cameron, George Bush, John McCain, the Telegraph etc., without him having to actually say so; but he does, with awe-inspiring confidence that all right-on thinkers share his views.
In that case they were invited to spout their predictable opinions. But Julie Walters, funny as Mrs. Overall, and hysterical in ‘Two Soups,’ revealed typical inverted snobbery in her autobiography, a recent Book of the Week, inevitably mocking some ‘Hooray Henries’ and throwing in a conspiratorially reverential plug for the Labour party for good measure.
Most of us who are pro-Israel are obliged to defend that view whenever we dare to express it. When Miriam Margolyes was on Desert Island Discs her self confessed desire to shock and admiration for nonconformity suddenly evaporated when the subject turned to Israel. She expressed her lefty “luvvie” disapproval of Israel’s conduct from a privileged position – being enveloped in the security-blanket of assured approval from colleagues, and probably assuming that the entire audience would be nodding in group approval.
Because she is a celeb who often says she’s proud to be Jewish, she owes us the courtesy of clarifying her throwaway remarks, especially as she boasts about her courageous lack of deference to authority.
She was particularly proud of a cheeky appearance on a Graham Norton show. I saw it on Youtube and all she was boasting about was a huge fart she had done, and some chatter regarding arseholes.
However I don’t feel so threatened by such views, even when they’re expressed with eloquence or wit, that I feel compelled to denounce the perpetrators altogether. Jeremy Hardy and Andy Hamilton are often funny and imaginative. Too bad that their politics and the targets of their witticisms can instantly wipe the smile off one’s face.
Another thing. Too many telly experts are not all that expert on their own subject let alone on other random ones. Alvin Hall on art comes to mind. Once they find someone who’ll do, the commissioning department is too lazy to seek anyone else. These personalities are, as someone said of Simon Schama, usually ‘up themselves’ – that’s how they get noticed in the first place. Their T.V. longevity relies on our ennui and gullibility.
Whoever happens to be the current favourite presenter pops up in every other programme until every pip has been squeezed out and they’re eventually dispatched into T.V. oblivion. Whoever signs them up must have no imagination at all.
Carol Vorderman – Adrian Chiles – and many more, on a conveyor belt slowly chuntering past our eyes on the road to obscurity or Al Jazeera.
Put Brand and Ross on an Arab station. That’d shut them up.
Sorry about the long post, but, as they say, I didn’t have time to write a short one.
“Because she is a celeb who often says she’s proud to be Jewish, she owes us the courtesy of clarifying her throwaway remarks”
If you’re Jewish but non-Zionist you ‘owe the public the courtesy’ of explaining why? What kind of antisemitic nonsense is that…?
“its VERY similar to those “she deserved to be raped because of the way she dressed” arguments from years ago in court cases.”
No it isn’t. It’s the difference between being a private individual, who clearly shouldn’t be mocked on the radio, and a famous stripper. It doesn’t excuse the harassment of Sachs, but it is a different case from if Voluptua were solely Sachs’ granddaughter. Just like it’d be tactless and odd if Brand had said “I shagged Jodie Marsh”, but much worse if he’d said “I shagged Sandra Jones of Acacia Avenue, Leigh-on-Sea”.
It wasn’t that vulgar – he just said that he’d f****d his granddaughter!! His granddaughter works as a stripper for Satanic sluts – I’m sure she’s heard worse!!
It’s a joke – just a joke – that’s all. If you don’t like it don’t listen to it.
simon | 29.10.08 – 3:53 pm | #
If you don’t like it don’t listen to it.
Good luck with the logic of that argument.
Glad to see that, unlike all the Daily Mail readers, you’ve been keeping up with the full story on this site.
Whitewine: “The Daily Mail is anti-BBC; always has been always will be.”
But I asked, why?
“The issue now surely is that this has blown wildly out of all proportion; beyond the significance of the incident.”
Yes, the incident has been blown out of proportion, but much of that I would suggest is because despite the fact it was indefensible, the BBC’s initial reaction – ‘We are not aware of having received an official complaint from Mr Sachs’ – and subsequent inaction was so appallingly arrogant. As usual.
Unfortunately, it seems to take 18,000 complaints, several front pages and condemnation across the political spectrum to induce even a sliver of self-doubt in the corporation.
Listen, idiot commenting at 3:53
1) We are forced to pay for it though, whether we like it or not. Or in my case forced to evade paying.
2) If you think that making a phonecall like that wasn’t beyond the pale then you must be about 12 years old, or a socialist.
3) As I mentioned elsewhere I like South Park even though it sometimes offends me a bit. I know what I’m getting though when I choose to watch it. Trey Parker and Matt Stone don’t phone me up out of the blue to take the mickey.