Anyone catch Sir Philip Green having a go at John Humphrys on Today around 8.20am about the BBC’s annual £3bn windfall from us, the license-payers? It was good stuff and clearly Humphrys was taken aback by the persistence of Green who seemed determined to talk about why the BBC should be allowed to take this cash from us. It’s always a hoot to hear the BBC challenged about their massive annual cash-grab and Humphrys seemed far from comfortable in the attempted debate.
GREEN DAY!
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David Vance.
Yes, Sir Philip Green had a go at Humphrys and the BBC’s financially privileged position. The exchange is available here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/default.stm?survey=no&url=news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/default.stm&site=today&js=yes&uid=6449f1f68ba70369d957ed2ec1f384f13b99bc2d40509121829213c3b4e49555
He had a right go at Boris Johnson before 8AM though, I thought Boris handled it well despite the provocation of Humphrys acting as Labour’s mouthpiece and spinmeister.
Fantastic, George R! Worth listening right through to the end!
Humphrys sounded like nothing more than a triumphant schoolbully –he didn’t listen to what Boris was actually tryiing to tell us –the listeners –about London housing. As usual the BBC egomaniacs hijack the agenda –they are incredibly poor at their incredibly simple job which is to stick to the subject and ask the interviewed person for information. A sixth former could do a better job.
Yes, I had intended to make a comment about that but didn’t have time. John Humphrys was utterly unprepared for the attack which came from out of the blue, and could only admit he was glad the BBC didn’t have to seek advertising revenue.
Well worth a listen.
Sir Philip Green , get your coat and dont ever come back .
Before Boris we had a weepie about the shortage of “social housing”. In a country that might have some deserving cases (after all, there are apparently 4 million in the queue) “Today” – ably assisted I’m sure by Shelter whose raison d’etre it is to big up this shortage – chose a 16-year old unmarried mother to elicit our sympathy. The child (no, not the 16-year old, the 16-year old’s child) had to be left with her (ie the 16-year old’s) mother – the baby’s grandmother – because the 16-year old didn’t have a council house.
The interviewees for this item were the 16-year old and (for balance) a spokesman for Shelter. God forbid that Today should interview anyone who might say that throwing money, housing and sympathy at unmarried 16-year olds with children is not the best use of taxpayers’ money.
Humphreys came over as a pompous elitist “I’m so glad that I don’t have to lower myself to any form of grubby commerce”, but this is the attitude throughout the BBC and for that matter the Public Sector. I am myself a grubby little self employed right of centre bastard so hated by these high minded intellectuals. The battle lines are clearly drawn
On the topic of Beeb’s public windfall, I tried several times to post the following on the Question Time website (The public are invited to leave suggested topics for debate) It seems that a the site develped some sort of technical problem and my comment could not be uploaded. Funny that! Maybe other Biased Beeb readers would like to have a go. Here it is my unlucky comment:
The BBC is an shoody,tacky, left wing, pro-islamic, pro-terrorist, anti-Britiish, anti-American organisation that should no longer recieve money from those who are forced to pay on pain of imprisonment and threats of “we know where you live”.
Question Time’s obsession with Strictly Come Dancing demonstrates just how dumbed down the BBC has become
BBC should become a subscription service or raise funds itself from people who have a right whether or to to hand their money over.
John Humphrys, the biter bit
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/james_kirkup/blog/2008/11/20/john_humphrys_the_biter_bit
Get the impression that some cracks in the facade are showing?
‘Telling people what others are saying and trying to interpret the events in the best way we can’
ie: ‘Mainly sharing what we fancy (or not) from whom we fancy to shape the agenda, and then editing any of that that doesn’t fit just in case’.
Sweet when called on it.
Gotta love live links… while they last.
Baffoon Boris Johnson on BBC Today program
Boris Johnson walked right in to the John Humphrys set up this morning and undid six months Tory campaign work.. At the top of his voice John Humphrys was allowed to say “Gordon Browns financial plan is working” Johnson may as well have not been there.
Boris Johnson has become a liability to the Conservative Party
Humphrys accepted a challenge from Green to debate the funding of the BBC. Will we ever see that debate take place? I have my doubts, cynic that I am.
Green was excellent and did not allow that prick Humphreys to brush his question under the carpet. Well done Sir Phillip.
Meanwhile………….
Will online BBC One and Two end the licence fee?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1087475/Will-online-BBC-One-Two-end-licence-fee.html
Indeed frankos
I heard both items. I though Bojo was rather good and won the joust.
It is a truth universally acknowledged (in beeboid la la land), that it is the inalienable right of every 16 year old , to get pregnant and jump straight to the top of the social housing list.
I have employed several of the fruits of the second generation of the ‘permissive society’, so beloved of our intellectual ellite. God help society, because they are IMHO verging on being dysfunctional. We are actually paying for a growing underclass to perpetuate itself , at ever shorter intervals
People should play back Simon Mayo’s show today (from about 13:30 onwards)
They had a debate about the new plan by the BBC to put their channels out on live streaming.
It was quite obvious from the arsehole beeboid that the BBC would like to extend the licence fee and that although he denied that the BBC want to tax ANYONE I repeat ANYONE who has a broadband connection, he didn’t rule it out. He simply said it’s up to the Government. Well guess what. If the BBC help the corrupt twats called Liebour win the next election, guess what the reward for the BBC will be?
The twats that run the BBC have to be stopped.
“the BBC want to tax ANYONE I repeat ANYONE who has a broadband connection”
Good luck to them. Anyone stupid enough to pay the licence fee, regardless of circumstance, deserves all they get.
As much as I despise the BBC, I equally despise those so weak willed and spineless that they would automatically pay whatever they are told to pay.
Yes it was really good to hear Phillip Green demolishing Humphreys. Like all bullies, they all back down when they are challenged. The best approach to the indignant Beeboid inquisitor is to ask a question in return. Hateful pricks.
Why not just have a computer licence too.
More non jobs in admin, more nazi enforcers, more computer databases which cost a few million to set up but they charge tax payer billions, more gdp growth for gordon
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/recession/3490172/Biggest-deficit-since-records-began-reveal-state-of-public-finances.html
Read this + weep
Kill the Beeb: You won’t have a choice. You have to pay a rental fee for a telephone, so you will for a broadband connection.
Peston has now decided that Brown was lying about the bank bailout?
http://cassiuswrites.blogspot.com/2008/11/is-peston-admitting-gordon-got-it-wrong.html
Seems like the BBC have run one of their opinion polls that could come back to bite them
A return to voluntary subscription could work
Returning to the voluntary subscription system with which the BBC started • as recommended by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport’s own advisory panel, chaired by Lord Burns in 2005 • has growing attraction, especially as the BBC’s own studies have shown that it would be financially viable.
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/tv_and_radio/article5193507.ece
the BBC must have polled too many loons who proclaimed that they would gladly pay many times more for the BBC.
Today had a lengthy item this morning about links between somali pirates and Al qaeda. Some dude’s done a report on it. used the term “islamist” did Humphries. You’d have been proud of him.
But did Diddy David Vance mention it? My fat one did he.
What the Beeb failed to mention though was the link between the reemergence of pirates and the reverse in global warming; and in turn the ramifications for education in Kansas.
According to the beeboid on Mayo’s show if you don’t own a TV but only watch live TV shows from say ITV or Channel 4 (no live BBC streaming) on your PC you will still need a TV licence.
Beeboid was insistent on this.
BBC looking to take over control of the internet in the UK.
Backwoodsman
I slightly disagree, I think the BBC would put illegal immigrant islamic terrorists further up the housing queue than native pregnant 16 year olds.
The bbc might one day go for a subscription scheme once we are all digital. Others have suggested a volentary scheme. That would not work too many people like me would think that theu have already paid the bbc more than enough to cover the rest of their life and then some.
BBC bods, when they get to Television Centre or Broadcasting House tend, it has been admitted, to become weak at the knees, overwhelmed by all the stars, equipment, offices etc. that, SO keen to fit in, they do, even if that means abandoning closely held views.
Humpy this morning was just Humph wasn’t he? No different from any other morning: attack and interrupt Tories and let Labour get on with it.
Boris however, was brilliant. His bluster worked a treat, being more interesting and sustained than Humph could manage.
Mr Green having a pop as he did will simply confirm BBC bods’ concrete views of capitalists. Expect no soul searching at the BBC.
Humphries did say that Sir Phillip Green`s question was for some other time. Then it was suggested it should be aked in another programme.
Is there any way we could build the pressure up to make that happen ?
mikewineliberal | 20.11.08 – 1:07 pm |
I heard both items. I though Bojo was rather good and won the joust.
Any comment on bias? Or just another dance around it? Declaring Boris the winner doesn’t have anything to do with whether or not the BBC interviewer was biased. You’re not offering a counterfactual here, however you define it.
Humphrys never dismissed one of Red Ken’s policy statements by saying that it would just be good for him politically. He throws that at the current Mayor of London, though, and gets pissy when Boris calls him on it.
And it’s one thing to ask Boris tough questions (which is what’s supposed to happen), but it’s another thing entirely to defend Mr. Brown. Humphrys was clearly playing defense as well as challenging Boris’s statements.
Umbongo | 20.11.08 – 11:04 am |
Before Boris we had a weepie about the shortage of “social housing”. In a country that might have some deserving cases (after all, there are apparently 4 million in the queue) “Today” – ably assisted I’m sure by Shelter whose raison d’etre it is to big up this shortage – chose a 16-year old unmarried mother to elicit our sympathy. The child (no, not the 16-year old, the 16-year old’s child) had to be left with her (ie the 16-year old’s) mother – the baby’s grandmother – because the 16-year old didn’t have a council house.
The interviewees for this item were the 16-year old and (for balance) a spokesman for Shelter. God forbid that Today should interview anyone who might say that throwing money, housing and sympathy at unmarried 16-year olds with children is not the best use of taxpayers’ money.
I heard that. This is just an excuse to push for more off-the-books PFI expenditure. The CEO of the National Housing Federation said it straight out. It’s also an excuse to re-employ all those housing industry people who were only living off the housing bubble.
The NHF guy even suggested that because of the current economic scene, more people will be forced to move into “affordable housing”, and that’s why they need to build more. It’s brilliant: free one home up so they can make a profit on it (which is how housing associations make a living, no?), and then get tax money to build the other one while merely shuffling bodies from one to the other. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Martin:
“Kill the Beeb: You won’t have a choice. You have to pay a rental fee for a telephone, so you will for a broadband connection.”
Pre-emptive crap Martin. Do you lie awake dreaming up ways the state could forcibly extract taxes from you. If so, kindly explain how they will enforce this fee upon free wireless internet, the Cloud Network and 3G.
It’s utterly unenforceable, yet people like yourself love crying “wolf” on behalf of the companies you despise so much.
You should work for TVL Martin. You have such a handle on scaremongering nonsense.
Just heard Sir Phil doing his bit of Beeb/Humphries-bashing just now. Very enjoyable, good on him.
Too many people allow themselves to be intimidated by the BBC and their stupid questions. What is surprising is how easily he seemed to crumble when Sir Phil countered with a belligerent question of his own.
He never actually did answer Sir Philip’s question, because deep down he knows (they all do) they would not stand a cat’s chance in hell in a commercial environment.
Kill the Beeb | 20.11.08 – 8:49 pm |
If the new tax is on buying a monitor or a new cellphone capable of streaming video, then wireless networks don’t enter into it.
That’s not much of a stretch, really. The license fee is for buying the TV: the hardware on which you receive the signal, not on the antenna or satellite dish or cable connection. A cellphone and a computer monitor can be considered in the same way. The division between a TV and a monitor has been blurred beyond distinction anyway. For now, one can supposedly get an exemption from the license fee if one proves to the jackboots that one’s computer monitor is not set up to receive a TV signal.
Once enough people start to watch on the iPlayer, even that will be out the window.
David Prieser
“Lather, rinse, repeat”
You’re so right – the “social” housing merry-go-round just keeps on turning.
David – Humphrys interviewed Purnell this morning. The classic Humphrys interview: interruptions, incredulity, condecension. It’s been said on here before that he metes out this treatment to all, and i think that’s right. Personally, i don’t much like his style, but he applies it equally. He’s famous for it.
Martin – don’t get into a fight with KTB. He wished death on me earlier. That cat’s mean.
“It is a truth universally acknowledged (in beeboid la la land), that it is the inalienable right of every 16 year old , to get pregnant and jump straight to the top of the social housing list.”
Is it? How do you know this? I don’t think you do.