It’s a curious way that they look at it. I refer to BBC outrage that it will be “ordered” to pick up the costs of TV licenses to those people over 75 years old. I would go further – the BBC should pick up the tab for the costs of all TV licenses – ie. let them pay their own way with their “world class” journalism!
THAT UNIQUE FUNDING
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You want world-class journalism from a bunch of global warming freaks? Ha! If you go here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/19/science/earth/19fossil.html?hp
you will see that not everyone in the world follows the man-caused panic line favoured by beeboids. Some even believe we’re in a natural cycle. Wonder of wonders!
It’s a start. The “outrage” is purely based on self interest. It is about money and only about money. The huge salaries and pension pots are in peril. The expenses are in peril. The taxis everywhere and the 1st class flights are in peril.
I doubt whether even the massed ranks of howling beeboids will be able to engender much sympathy from the general population. They will try no doubt and we can expect a crescendo of frothing and foaming over the “cuts”
The BBC will stand foursquare for the rights of all state leeches to continue leeching of the taxpayer.
If Cameron can pull this off it is a smart move.
IF the BBC is even half as loved and needed as they feel it is, they should have no problem at all increasing their revenues massively with a voluntary subscription service.
What are they afraid of?
Yes David, agree with this most strongly. Rather than wait in vain for the politicos to sum up the courage to disband the BBC, why don’t we do it for them. I cancelled my licence fee sometime back now – I have a recent post on my blog about my exploits and just how easy it is to do, with a little knowledge.
We only need a critical mass of people to make collecting the licence fee too costly and like New Zealand, the fee will be disbanded.
The BBC should go private and take all that money from those who claim to love it so much they say they’d pay much more for it.
It’s obvious the government avalanche of money with no questions asked days are well and truly over and they will never come back.
The coprporation’s cynical combination of 1930s style authoritarianism, 1960s student politics and pre-credit crunch bloated bureaucracy was never going to last much longer.
Listening to 5 Live Victoria Derbyshire this morning. Heard the vested interests attacking the cuts in defence spending, 4 out of 5 against cuts and the only one in favour was a nimby who didn’t want a tram for his area, hardly someone giving the legitamate economic case.
Then a load of people complaining about cuts in council housing, nobody of course was able to afford in the private sector and one of the listeners was insinuating they would be homeless with all their kids. No question over why they had so many kids they clearly couldn’t afford of course.
Oh, I’m sure they won’t be Sacha.
And if, in the unlikely event they were, would you like to hazard a guess as to where we would hear about it first ?
Would the BBC be attacking the defence cuts if it was a Labour government ? The BBC is beyond parody, a sick joke.
So, you’ve contributed your 0.00000063 per cent of the BBC budget for this year ( I presume) and now you’re infuriated that the BBC does not precisely reflect your half-baked hard right, hard Zionist, Europhobic, neoliberal free-market fundamentalist, Islamophobic political opinion at all times.
Aw widdums!
look mummy-a patronising left wing beeboid arsehole
yes son-it’s in their genes
the BBC
where anything to the right of Stalinism is “half-baked hard right, hard Zionist, Europhobic, neoliberal free-market fundamentalist, Islamophobic political opinion”
nice to have it confirmed in writing!!
“patronising”: I hold my hands up -the level of analysis on this blog deserves nothing more.
“anything to the right of Stalinism”: kinda proves my point, thank you. Anyone who believes the BBC propagates ‘Stalinism’ and, furthermore, believes it must be held to account for doing so, is deluded.
I have often found that those who mistake a fuzzy left-of-centre liberalism for ‘Stalinism -or alternatively “Nazism’ (depending on their mood) – are simply not equipped to identify ‘bias’ in anything, least of all the BBC.
“fuzzy left-of-centre liberalism”
that has got to be the most deluded quote of the day
there’s nothing remotely “fuzzy” or “left of centre liberal” about it
and I quote from the sidebar-
“It’s not a conspiracy. It’s visceral. They think they are on the middle ground”,
Jeff Randall former BBC Business Editor,
in The Observer, Jan 15th, 2006.
off you go and pay your tv tax to watch all that high quality entertainm………sorry- I meant COMPLETE CRAP
Simon,
Sorry, I clicked on “like” when I meant “unlike ” !
No – we want BALANCE.
Which the BBC is legally required to provide, but fails to provide.
Simon :
Your sums are wrong, I’ve contributed as much to the BBC as you have to grown up debate.
And that Simon is 0%.
I hope you can get your head arond that !
Whereas you, who has (presumably) also contributed etc. etc.%, can bask in the satisfaction that your money has been used to reflect your (- raw, anti-Zionist, Euro-/Islamo-philic etc etc) political opinion at all times.
That’s what this site is all about. Bias! Aw widdums.
I do not ‘bask’ in any political stance broadcast by the BBC. My political opinions have been formed without having them spoon-fed to me by the BBC, which, in many respects, can be infuriating in that regard.
Evidently, the same can be said for all those who comment on this blog. Which raises the question: what are you all scared of?
Frankly, a glance at the label cloud of this blog says all that need to be said about the species of ‘balance’ that is being demanded.
It is not very convincing.
To put it bluntly, more often than not, I find the BBC isn’t half ‘left’ enough.
And if you lot that find that hard to fathom, I suggest you get out more.
“My political opinions have been formed without having them spoon-fed to me by the BBC,[….] the same can be said for all those who comment on this blog.”
You have a point there, i.e., if we are smart enough to see past the BBC’s bias and manipulative reporting, why shouldn’t everyone else be, too?
But you weaken your point when you add:
“To put it bluntly, more often than not, I find the BBC isn’t half ‘left’ enough. “
Oh. So you’d like the BBC to be *more* something, which is exactly
what you allege we want. Only we want the BBC to be impartial, you want it to be more left.
Balance doesn’t come in different species by the way. Partiality does.
What are we all scared of? Well, we’re a minority. Most people are susceptible to being spoon-fed, that’s what.
If you haven’t been influenced by the BBC, then by who?
Aw Widdums, I’m not clear whom you were addressing but anyway, I thought this thread was about older people and the licence fee. It is primarily an issue of money and what is the right and responsible thing to do, in the same way the MPs’ expenses scam was. I don’t believe pensioners aged 65 and over, never mind over 75, should be subsidising a greedy profligate organisation just because the BBC has grown fat, corrupt and shameless and has been allowed to get away with it up until now. That man Thompson is a disgrace and should resign or be sacked.
Hey we’ve got a lefty here. Do not feed the lefty!
Martin,
I disagree. Feed the lefty and let him dig his own hole !
Simon ( although I feel he will not return),
How would you feel if by law on pain of imprisonment you had to pay a subscription to the Conservative Party ?
Surprise!
Well, your proposition is faintly absurd, so I don’t know how to answer that concisely.
However, I can see what you’re driving at. You proposition rests on the idea that you pay a license fee (on pain of imprisonment) only to be fed left-wing propaganda (full marks to me)
I would suggest that, in fact, what is being fed to us is actually -all things considered- an apolitical diet of consumer-centric fluff, programmed -admittedly- by vaguely left-of-centre arts and humanities graduates (who where ‘trendy’ twenty years ago) in competition with advertiser-driven content, bolstered mainly by US imports and sports.
That said, I’m happy to pay my license fee because it pays for programming devoid of commercial advertising.
I cannot convey adequately how much that means to me.
ah good
you’re back to answer the questions you were asked yesterday but decided to leave hanging in the air like all good trolls do,then?
thought not
Your question? Remind me.
Simon,
You got off on the wrong foot with aw widdums, but I welcome dissenting voices if they debate.
You have conceded that the BBC is suffused with vaguely left of centre ex-trendies, wouldn’t you agree that if broadcasting is approached from the one perspective it is bound to permeate the whole output – the subject matter and content? We’ve just seen some blatant lefty conspiratorial tweeting that illustrates this narrow mindedness.
Wouldn’t you agree that the BBC has an obligation to be impartial?
If you think it doesn’t matter, then I put it to you that you haven’t really thought about it. I would hate a wholly right-wing BBC as much as one that assumes a nationwide lefty consensus.
Can’t you see that in a kind of perpetual motion, the BBC reflects, creates, reflects, creates public opinion, and has considerable power which it doesn’t deserve. It’s just not up to it.
I agree that it would be better to watch quality programmes, should any reappear, without ads.
You prefer to sneer rather than address the point, which is that you accept fuzzy leftyness as balance, and can’t see why we don’t.
People call you a troll when you talk loftily about the ‘level of analysis on this blog’, when you’ve probably only read the rude replies to your attack.
Firstly, I would that suggest a vaguely left-of-centre liberalism is virtually useless in terms of agitprop- or whatever one calls it. Especially in today’s world. In effect, it conspires merely to be inoffensive. I mean, what actual harm does it do?
In fact, the BBC does precious little to examine or question the basic assumptions that inform Britain’s business-led and run society or our foreign policy. I would be surprised if it did. The BBC would probably argue that that is not in its remit.
That said, I would question whether the BBC really is the monolith of leftiness, anyway. I would suggest there is a confirmation bias at work here. I would suggest there is plenty to satisfy right-wingers on the BBC.
‘obligation to be impartial’
Yes, I would agree there is an obligation there. But such a thing is almost impossible to calibrate to everyone’s satisfaction. take its reporting on the Middle East. I often think its coverage on this strives not so much to report the facts as to avoid offending anyone -which is not the same thing. And it almost always fails, anyhow, judging from this blog.
‘perpetual motion’
For all its ‘considerable power’, the BBC has failed to deny the Tories a government and has signally failed to stop the largest ideologically-driven rollback of public services within living memory -if not ever.
It has failed to stop the complete dissolution of the socialist agenda in this country. Instead, it projects the concerns of a comfortable and complacent middle-class. (that is, after all, what vaguely-lefty creative professionals end up being -you know, the ones who were trendy 20 years ago)
My basic point is that ‘impartiality’ and ‘balance’ is not the problem for this blog. This blog just thinks the BBC isn’t right-wing enough. I think that’s pretty clear.
Simon,
You’re right that the BBC has failed to maintain everlasting universal support for the labour government in Britain. Public opinion was inevitably overcome by disillusion, despite the BBC’s best efforts to pretend otherwise. The labour party’s ostrich-like attitude towards Muslim immigration and the country’s welfare dependency and similar problems were bothering voters but no-one dared confront it for fear of the, partly BBC-driven, taboo; being thought a bigot or a racist.
The present government is hardly Tory. The BBC, in their P.C. straitjacket lags behind the public, maybe because the complacent past-it ex-trendies in the BBC are stuck in a stagnant pool of immaturity or something. However, their pernicious influence is everywhere.
If you do read this blog, you’ll know that my particular grievance is the BBC’s demonisation of Israel, and the perpetuation of antisemitic ‘tropes.’ If you know your history you’ll know that this is not harmless.
This blog is not homogeneous. Most contributors have largely right wing views, but not all. If you have a problem with the BBC, you could contribute too. If you don’t, then you could take up some of the specific points that people have made.
I disagree that the BBC strives not to offend anyone, because it doesn’t strive not to offend ME.
There are particular groups it does strive not to offend, and those particular groups most certainly do not reciprocate. That is what I call bias. Sinister, ominous, and dangerous.
“You’re right that the BBC has failed to maintain everlasting universal support for the labour government in Britain”
I didn’t say that. I didn’t mention the Labour government at all.
I mentioned the dissolution of the socialist agenda, which progressed most markedly under New Labour, aided and abetted by the BBC, you might say. Even the phrase ‘socialist agenda’ seem trite these days.
“the BBC’s demonisation of Israel, and the perpetuation of antisemitic ‘tropes.’ “
hmmm,
I’m tempted, but this probably isn’t the thread for that. No doubt the moment will arise! 😉
BTW, I’m currently working nights, so if i leave questions hanging it porbably means I’m asleep.
In fact, I should be asleep right now
well
mine was if Obama wanted to kill off the kenyan conman story dead in its tracks,why didn’t he present all relevant documents,instead of spending around $2 million (so far) on keeping birth certificate,school records 😛 etc etc etc hidden from the public
others asked more questions-I’m sure you can find them if you look hard enough
Ah yes- the birther conspiracy theory.
I’m not privy to the workings of President Obama’s inner council, so it is rather difficult for me to answer that one.
Oh, how I laughed and cheered and threw my hat in the air at David Cameron pulling that one out of the bag. You’d have to have a heart of stone not to laugh, as I think Oscar Wilde said about the death of Little Nell.
From The Guardian:
BBC executives are particularly unhappy that the broadcaster may be asked to pay for a perk that it did not introduce – or ask to be introduced – and one that benefits all elderly licence fee payers regardless of their family or individual income. But the broadcaster is hoping that ministers will drop the proposal in last-minute horse trading.
===========================
Hark at the poor me, poor me, poor hard done by me, bloated greedy Beeboid Corporation howling like a whipped dog at the thought of those evil pensioners having the cheek to benefit from something the Beeboids didn’t ordain and which might make a slight dent in their luxurious unearned featherbedded existence.
Such an edifying spectacle.
Oh, how I would love to be a fly on the wall to see the £800,000 a year Beeboid sitting opposite the £140,000 a year Prime Minister, arguing how hard up the Greedy Corporation is.
Murdoch’s poodle jumping through the hoops.
Abolish the BBC and Murdoch would be in deep trouble, The last thing Murdoch wants is for Comcast/GE NBC Universal, Vivendi, Disney/ABC/ESPN, Time Warner/HBO, Viacom/MTV National Amusements, Bertelesmann, et al to be able to compete on an equal footing with Sky. Open up all that Freeview space to commercial competitors other than Sky and ITV and you’d have a plethora of deep pocketed media firms able to compete.
The dark secret for beeboids (many of whom work/ed for Sky) is that Murdoch likes the status quo, despite the ludicrous WWE style verbiage. Abolish the BBC and Murdoch would have far less power, not more.
Who cares what happens to Murdoch? Going by most posters on here, they seem intelligent enough to be able to work out what is happening in the world without a media tycoon telling them what to think. Whereas those who slavishly follow the BBC line….
Didn’t think it would be long before Murdoch cropped up.
Bill O’Reilly (‘Fox News’) cuts the politically ineffective, dhimmified ‘left’ down to size:
http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/oreilly/index.html
For INBBC, and its apologists:
“Islamophobe (is-slahm-o-fohb) – A non-Muslim who knows more than they are supposed to know about Islam.”
“Islamophobia”
http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/Pages/Islamophobia.htm
or an alternative def.
islamophobic – anyone who objects to having their transport blown up on the way to work.
http://www.di2.nu/files/Lefty.html
Michael “stranger to shampoo” Prick is apparently throwing the toys out of the pram on his blog
can’t happen soon enough to the money grabbing gits
Oh dear, I can see a renewed push for the AGW dogma coming on, if only to boost the pension pot. If they’re cornered like rats, they’ll only fight dirtier…
that could be difficult,as they are lower than whale dung as it is
Oh I do hope that the cost of the over 75 licences goes to the BBC – a really good hit.
Here is an organisation that spent £1 milliion for a studio in South Africa for the football world cup. It needed something to make its employees understand the value of money.
Why should anyone be obliged to pay a license fee for a non-essential national broadcaster ?
Guido has a survey about what should happen to the BBC licence. Vote early and vote often!
I notice the new defender of the indefensible isn’t interested in actually debating any specific charge of the BBC’s failure to be impartial. Too bad.
Yes exactly David — like a typical troll he doesn’t counter any of the many specific examples of BBC bias featured on the threads here, resorts instead to tedious high-school debating tactics
prpw,
“High school” ? Surely you mean Primary School ?
Anyone note Jim Naughties rather selective quoting of this story as it appeared in his review of the morning papers?
I heard him splutter over his words so went to check the original quote…apparently the nasty Coalition want to punish the Beeb for paying their ..er…executives too much. This is the reason why the Beeb might have to pony up for all those “vulnerable” licence fee payers.
Jim managed to omit the bit about PRESENTERS as well as executives being overpaid…must have had a bit of freshly buttered croissant in his eye at the time eh boys and girls!
All hail those fearless seekers of the unvarnished truth and honest verbatim quoters on the hoof that are Naughtie, Humph(far from free Mr Humphrys!), Monty Webb and Tinsel.
How much DOES Nightie get by the way?…more than he scribbled for the Groiniad?
I think Cameron has been quite smart.
Remember when the DG went to No. 10 to brief on how the BBC would cover the cuts?
I reckon he was encouraged to think that the Government was anxious to get the message across to the public repeatedly to prepare them for the bad news.
DG thinks ‘wow, carte blanche to Tory bash’
Which they then proceed to do at every opportunity.
Even the least attentive of the sheeple are then aware that there are going to be cuts.
When Hunt bowled the over 75 googley at DG, how can he squeal ‘Not us, everyone else, but not us!’
In the enthusiasm to Tory bash, it was overlooked that EVERYONE would be aware that there was going to be swingeing cuts, and even the dimmest would point out that the BBC is not being picked on, as everyone is being affected, and why should Aunty be different.
The master-stroke was choosing the vulnerable in society; Who most people would be surprised to know didn’t get the licence for free, but from the Government who PAID the BBC! So the BBC are the bogey men, who don’t waive the fee, but get someone else to pay them. Brrrilliant!
Hoisted by their own petard!
Been listening to (red star) five live, three good bits of news. The BBC is going to have to pay for the world service itself. The licence fee has been frozen for six years. And Sir Alex Ferguson is really miffed.
“Two senior sources – in Downing Street and the Foreign Office – have told me that a deal has now been done where in future the cost of the BBC World Service – currently £272m a year – will have to come from the licence fee rather than the Foreign Office budget.”
“They concluded with a deal today which freezes the BBC licence fee at £145.50 for the next six years.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/newsnight/michaelcrick/2010/10/world_service_costs_to_come_fr.html
So says the handsome Crick. If he is right seems the Conservatives are not planning a scrapping of the licence fee just yet.
This is going to happen. The Tories just leaned on the BBC and said that they had to take cuts just like the rest of the public sector. Part of the Government’s cuts will remove the Foreign Office subsidy for the World Service.
They can combine Radios 2 & 5, and TV 3 & 4. If done right, nothing of value will be lost and they can absorb the cost of the World Service and Welsh language stuff. They can then easily share more content across the spectrum and stop acting like little fiefdoms with star presenters making individual reports about the same thing for different channels.
The BBC are like British Steel in the 1970s, too many staff with nothing to do. Why does it take about 5 people to present the news on Radio 5. Two read the news, one does the travel news, another sport, yet another the weather. And sometimes they have a wide cockney geezer doing some financial “analysis”.
They could probably cut staff by a half and still the whole organisation would be overstaffed.
6 year freeze on BBC tax , next subscription,next change of law on non payment,next lay offs…toenails,crick,dumblebore,preston,etc to name a few
Like I said overnight – this is the best news all week. I like the idea of the World Service costs being chucked at the BBC – it is mostly derivative programming anyway.
As suggested above – for the BBC to fight the idea that THEY should pay for the over-75’s is astute. They’d have an uphill job politically saying that it is unfair.
Don’t like the idea that the fee shoulod be frozen for 6 years – that suggests it continues. When it ought to be replaced by subscription. But that is a battle down the road. Right now the BBC is being told to sort itself out, stop splurging our money.
No doubt they will come up with what the Treasury calls “Blleding Stumps” cuts – damaging cuts in services. It won’t wash. What they will eventualy have to do is cut out all their extraneous stuff, eg BBC 3 and 4, Radio 1 and maybe 2, chop the website back to size or charge for it ……. plus internal economies. Start doing some zero-base budgeting.
I think the BBC currently employs well over 20,000 people. Don’t kid me it could not get by with 15,000 – or less.
That is the problem: they will cut services and programmes rather than waste as such and they will blame the government when people criticise them for the cuts in programming.
Not so good. It looks like the pensioners costs will still be met by DHSS, instead the BBC pays the tab for the World Service and S4C. So – about £300 million, not the £500 million suggested overnight on over-75’s licence fees.
Still a tidy “cut”.
I really don’t like the idea of the licence fee being extended for 6 years, frozen or not. Surely Ministers are not pre-empting the licence fee review due in 2 years’ time ?
sorry – here is the latest theorising :
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/bbc/8074341/BBC-licence-fee-frozen-as-broadcaster-picks-up-bill-for-World-Service.html
http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKTRE69I4S220101019
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/nickrobinson/2010/10/bbc_funding_fut.html
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/240a1ab8-db4c-11df-ae99-00144feabdc0.html
Looks like 16% cuts overall. But as most at the BBC expected to get off scot-free, not too bad for the time being. And shoving the costs of the World Service and S4C (£100 million a year for that crap !!!) slight;ly reduces the need to impose cuts on the real public services.
Looking forward to the BBC spinning their way out of this dilemma…if only the Tories nail them to it.
1. Bloody Thatchs kids are screwing the poor-the old and the vulnerable-and this is wrong!
2. Yet we the Beeb rely on Thatchs kids to subsidise our monopoly on truth as disbursed to said vulnerable victims of the coming savage cuts(is there any other kind,except when Labour do it?)
3. We the Beeb therefore continue to expect the state to prop up the vulnerable-but we are the elite,and are surely not exempt from the coming cuts…for if we are, how will we begin to address the “fairness” agenda we spout on about everyday?
4. Easy-we are the BBC and YOU pay for our liberal consciences to be assuaged. Just pay up shut up and don`t you DARE question our air miles,our fat cat salaries and pensions…or indeed our fitness to spoon feed you wet tissues from our cow eyes! Won`t somebody PLEASE think of the criminal,the thug and the illegal asylum seeker…indeed we at the Beeb think of little else as long as Tuscany and Jocastas pony rides are amply padded!
Day trip to Doncaster anyone?-the serfs are paying much as they ever do-and did-but for how much longer?
This is going to cause hell with the BBC unions. (The BBC is heavily unionised the way Fleet Street used to be). There’ll be trouble.
Fine by me.
The more trouble, the more public criticism of the BBC – the sooner people take off the rose-tinted glasses, the sentimental and unwarranted fondness of the BBC – or rather what the BBC used to be.
Why are the public subsidising TV licences for the elderly anyway; the vast majority can more than afford it and its another burden on the younger generation subsidising the underpaying retired.
Glad about the licence fee freeze, Beeboids looking rather downcast on BBC News just now, as if they had some god given right to ever increasing funding
The lefties at 38degrees have done a tool to email your MP with messages against the changes.
Always being a fan of using the enemy’s weapons against him it turns out you can change the wording of the email and say you support it (or in fact say anything you like)!
Well I’ve had a bit of fun with that for 10 mins….
good idea,have just sent mine saying i agree to the cuts…etc
Thanks
I suggested that the cuts are a good first step ….. but that whole principle of a licence fee needs to be reviewd ASAP. I asked that Treasury Ministers should be asked to stand absolutely firm on these initial decisions on the BBC.
I think that if the Treasury and other Ministers realise that there is no massive public outcry about the BBC cuts, they will hopefully realise that the BBC is not somehow untouchable.
I’ve sent one suggesting full privatisation is the only way forward as the bBC is irredeemably biased.