Monthly Archives: June 2009

FAT CATS…

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I read that the astonishing salaries and expenses claims of the BBC‘s most senior executives are revealed for the first time today.

They show the corporations’s 50 highest earning executives take home up to £13.8 million in taxpayers’ money between them. The salaries of the executive board members of the publicly-funded corporation range between £310,000 and £650,000 excluding bonuses.

Should Sir Fred Goodwin apply for a job? Nice to know where your license-tax goes, isn’t it? It’s that “special link” that the BBC are SO keen to keep!

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Bleep Bleep Corporation

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Bleeping out, (or should I say redacting) strong language is a bit ****ing ridiculous if you ask me. Which you didn’t.

It’s not so much the ****ing gratuitous bad language that the BBC ought to be ****ing-well worried about, it’s the general decline in quality and morality.

For one thing, this token exercise merely draws unnecessary attention to something wretched, and for another…. I think that one’s ebleepingnough for now.

Will ‘toning down sex and swearing’ be enough to reverse the moral decline? No it will not.

“Viewers also expressed concern about pre-watershed programmes, including EastEnders, which often dealt with adult themes.”

Why call themes featuring self-obsessed misfits and retarded, immature, maladjusted inadequates with narcissistic personality disorders, ‘adult’?
Enough about Newsnight, as Bruce Forsythe might quip.

‘Adult’ is clearly a euphemism, a bit like ‘gay’. By all means let’s have adult themes in the old fashioned sense, i.e. for adults with a brain. And before, after and during the watershed, introduce quality, originality, wit, wisdom, entertainment, information and substance. Surely someone somewhere is capable of providing that for all the £illions we fork out.

Ann Widdecombe thinks the BBC should reduce bad language, (not bleep it out) implement the watershed, (not merely treat it as the go-ahead for violence, titillation and inanity) and NOT put stuff before (or after) 9pm that most of us do not want to see, and show families that are ‘together’ instead of drug taking, broken and dysfunctional.” My words are in brackets, above.

If they do that, as far as I’m concerned, the swearing will take care of itself.

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NO SUCH THING AS A FREE LUNCH?

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It’s not JUST MP’s who like to take our taxes and lavish them in entirely unsuitable directions;

The BBC is poised to provoke a fresh row over expenses by refusing to disclose how much its executives spend on entertainment for their stars. Days after MPs caused public outrage by blacking out details of their expenses, the BBC is refusing to reveal how much is spent on hospitality and gifts for its best-paid celebrities.

Ah yes, the old hospitality business. I have to be honest here and say that during all MY time in BBC studios, hospitality has not extended beyond a coffee and a sandwich! (But then again, I’m no star.) So just HOW MUCH is being spent to entertain the celeb culture with which the BBC is so pathetically infatuated?

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THE GRAND PLOT?

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I wonder what you make of BBC DG Mark Thompson’s suggestion that there is an ideological plot behind plans to “topslice” the television licence fee…..

In an impassioned attack on the proposals, Mark Thompson said that the Corporation was the victim of a clique of Labour policymakers who want it to hand over £130 million a year from the levy to prop up regional news bulletins on ITV. In a surprising display of rhetorical aggression, the BBC’s boss said that they were “ideologically focused” on attacking the Corporation’s funding structure.

Well, I have to say that I take an ideological position on the BBC license tax. I think that it is outdated, inappropriate and unfair. In the 21st century we do not need a State broadcaster as currently manifest by the BBC and it’s not a question of “top-slicing” it, it is question of AXING it? Oh, and it’s not the BBC which is the victim of a clique of Labour policymakers – it is the people of the United Kingdom.

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NO QUESTION TIME ….

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Given current circumstances, I just cannot bring myself to do the weekly QT liveblog tomorrow night. It has always been a (fun) part of my week and Geoff has been central to making it work. It will return when things improve. Hope you understand.

This is the update on Geoff….

He is intubated, on a ventilator and sedated, the next 24/48hrs are critical.

Please continue to spare a thought and a prayer to help him through his darkest hours.

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THE OXLEY MORON?

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Here is an item looking at Australian immigration in the 1990’s and how it dealt with “far right” parties. How can this be applied in the UK with the rise of the BNP, asks our wonderful BBC? It is a demolition job on Pauline Hanson and her “One Nation” Party and I have little interest in her but the thing that struck me was the sneering of Nick Bryant at the end and the consequential snickering of Sarah Montague. Listen to the last twenty seconds.

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NO BAN ON THE BURQA

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I’ve covered this issue elsewhere BUT the BBC have chosen to run an item critical of the speech by French President Sarkozy in which he suggested that it would be a good idea to ban the Burqa in France. He sees it as a symbol of oppression and I entirely agree with him. In fact I see it as much more than that – it is a way in which Islam tries to assert its primitive values on our culture, imprisoning women in walking shrouds. Anyway, cue BBC and up pops a human rights lawyer who spends his time fighting cases of Islamophobia in France, to slap down Sarkozy. Naturally no counter-view was allowed. It’s pathetic to see the BBC continually waste our taxes finding new and more exciting ways to excuse the pathology of Islam. Dhimmis to a man.

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ONE IN A MILLION

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I listened with incredulity to this item on the BBC this morning. It concerns the utterly farcical Home Office scheme to help failed “asylum seekers” (Welfare tourists) return home that has resulted in just one family leaving the country, whilst costing us, the Brits £1m. Listen to Evan Davies blithely dismiss the waste of £1m on “an idea that was good” on this “pilot”. It’s all about “being nice” to “children”, you see.

The BBC brought on some liberal bozo from the Children’s Society on to argue that more time should have been given and more should have been spent on this madness. And where was the counter-balance? Oleaginous Labour spiv Keith Vaz was there to to superficially criticise the particular scheme but simultaneously shill for Labour’s risible immigration policy. To listen to Vaz one could be forgiven for wondering WHICH government has been in power since 1997?

Most bizarre of all was Evan Davies constant refrain about the need to be “nice” and not “nasty” when it comes to dealing with welfare tourists, sorry, I mean children. How about having someone on to comment who believes that the bigger issue is how these people get INTO our country in the first place and then how can government recklessly waste £1,000,000 of our money? I guess those dimensions fall outside “the narrative”?

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LEADING THE JIHAD

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Abu Ghraid is SO 2004. It’s 2009 and time for a new onslaught on US forces abroad and so the BBC is heading Today this morning with an item which promises “uncovered allegations of abuse the US-run Bagram military base in Afghanistan. Correspondent Ian Pannell reports on former inmates’ claims that they were beaten, deprived of sleep, threatened with dogs and hung from the ceiling.” I understand the American military eat their own babies too. As a propagandising arm for the Taliban, you just can’t beat the BBC. Every captured Jihadist knows the form by now; Allege the most hideous crimes of torture and humiliation against US armed forces and a BBC reporter wanting to believe such pigswill will appear, microphone in hand, prepared to provide an echo chamber for the enemy.

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A Tale of two Censures

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The BBC reports that Ofcom has censured George Galloway over five shows broadcast on Talksport during the Gaza conflict. Ofcom says he crossed the line from legitimate and provocative debate to one “calling listeners to action,” but “did not break the rules on offering opposing views.”

Was that the same kind of ‘not breaking the rules’ as in the ‘I’ve done nothing wrong’ kind of ‘not breaking the rules?’

Or in the sense that fading out counter arguments on a radio debate is somehow within the rules of ’offering opposing views’ (Well, Galloway did offer them, it’s just that he happened to make them inaudible.)

Because that is what happened to Oliver Kamm who appeared on one of his programmes, and he didn’t seem to like it very much.

When Jeremy Bowen was censured for breaching impartiality rules Oliver Kamm supported him, rather bizarrely according to many people.

Kamm said he believed that scrupulous impartiality was not necessary from Bowen, citing other notable journalistic precedents.

Though he disagreed with some of Bowen’s views, he concluded:

“Objective reporting means that, while being aware of your partial information, you describe the world as you see it. This is the responsibility that Bowen has, and it’s one that he has discharged.”

Furthermore he doesn’t seem to think Bowen is the sharpest knife in the box.

“I watched the BBC programme this evening, and I have to acknowledge that its presenter, Jeremy Bowen, whose greatest admirers would be hard put to identify in him the sharpest of inquiring minds, didn’t do a bad job.”

But he’s the BBC Middle East Editor! Of course he has more of a responsibility than just describing the world as he, the Palestinians and Hamas, see it.

So Bowen is Biased AND thick, but Galloway is beyond the pale. The fact that the BBC lets him get away with so much speaks volumes; it’s time he was faded out altogether.

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