Day in Day Out, some within the BBC produce a relentless drumbeat to accompany the narrative that the Coalition is wrong in everything that it does. Take these consecutive items ran on Today this morning. First up is the a report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) which claims that the government’s public sector pension reforms are unlikely to save money in the long term. It looks like we just have keep finding the unaffordable. Then comes the item that the government’s plans for NHS reforms have damaged and destabilised services. So, leave the dysfunctional NHS alone. This monotonous criticism of everything that the Government tries to do must be joy to Labour but hardly the mark of a balanced broadcaster.
THE RELENTLESS DRUMBEAT
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We all know that the Tories/Coalition are crap-but they are not Labour which is all that they have to be for the forseeable future.
Witness Ed Miliband yesterday, and Liam Byrne earlier-then remember who boasted about leaving the Treasury penniless , and who had hiked up our energy bills with his turbines tax-which is never cited as adding to the burdens of the squeezed middle.
Given that that we are left with Labor-lite in the form of Cameron/Clegg…how come that the BBC continually gloat and set up trouble for the Government every day? ( recall the attempt to wind up the police before Mays speech yesterday?… a damp squib this time, but the BBC will be back!).
How come too that Cameron is a Little Englander in December(the Man who`s killing the Euro)…but yeaterday is a U-turning weak willed carpet crawler before the almighty Merckel!
In short-it`s systemic shit and slurry chucking each and every day from the BBC. One continual dirty protest from Wood Lane, only smearing their shit onto our faces instead.
When the hell will the Tories forget their manners and screw the BBC, so Press TV get the franchise off this Enemy Within?At least Tehran are blatant and unpologetic for their crap-the BBC are just blatant, because they always get it about right( so they tell me!).
The only conclusion is that the Conservatives have decided that the continuation of the BBC as presently constituted does not disadvantage them. I (and you and many of the commenters on this site) think they are dangerously deluded about the BBC. However, that’s not the only thing about which this shower is dangerously deluded. That’s not to say that the LibDems and Labour are any better – they’re not – but expecting the coalition (or, were they alone, the Conservatives) to deliver anything substantially different from the shysters thrown out in 2010 is also a dangerous delusion.
There’s no way to change the BBC: the only option is to starve it to death by cutting off its money supply. Expecting the Conservatives to do anything to combat the bias of the BBC, let alone tackle the BBC’s wholesale intellectual corruption, is a recipe for disappointment. After all, the Conservative’s fell at the first hurdle of reining in the BBC by appointing Patten chairman of the BBC Trust.
Patten is the Platonic Ideal of a member of the political class: the class of which the BBC is such an efficient mouthpiece. Remember, as long as the BBC can rely on taxpayers to cough up, it’s “marketing” is aimed solely at that class since the political class is the one that ensures the continuation of the licence fee: hence the BBC’s politics and bias are reflective of the pieties of that class. Take away that fee and, AFAIAC, you can appoint anyone you like in place of Patten (or even keep him). Without the licence fee, the BBC will have to change its traditional posture and consider those punters who actually choose to pay. Without the whip of legal compulsion to guarantee its income it would be seriously dangerous for the BBC (or any putative alternative to Patten) to ignore its consumers.
Mind you, even if the BBC did become substantially a subscription channel, I wouldn’t expect it to become – or even occasionally to provide – a genuinely unbiased medium. You only have to consider how the MSM deals with and reports the CAGW scam to see how a nominally “free” press has failed to hold the corrupters of science to account at all our (considerable) expense. Getting rid of the licence fee is, however, better than keeping it: maintaining the BBC as one of the largest beneficiaries of the welfare state is not an option this taxpayer relishes.
Brilliant Umbongo!
Am about to consign “The World At One” to the bin for a while.
Never heard such a torrent of tripe and sly smarming from the BBC in regard of Cameron and his “acquiescence”(their word!) in the Euro froth and flotsam.
Only the BBC could gnash and wail about his being a Eurotoady today-after what they were calling him just before Christmas.
Still-look-Ed Miliband and Doug Alexander are pushed into the BBC car to pour scorn on the Tories for not sticking up for Britain or suchlike…and no News Quiz mocking birds to be seen anywhere!
Am reassured by Umbongos critique-“so f666 the BBC”
The propaganda is so pervasive that even Chris Evans has to get into the act every morning with the idiots guide to the nasty coalition with a smattering of voxpop nonsense.
Chris Evans is an arrogant, overpaid arsehole anyway. I would not listen to anything he does unless I had no choice.
Agreed, but Evans’ audience is, what, 8 million and many of those actually vote (although, with the greatest respect, opting to listen regularly to Evans and being qualified to vote is a contradiction in terms). Accordingly, the drip drip drip of propaganda slipped in between the “music” probably works a treat.
In this context one can perhaps understand the Left’s interest in lowering the voting age to 16.
All in the intersts of ‘fairness’ etc. etc.
All in the interest of the Labour Party, actually.
The BBC would then work its magic on this demographic…and, hey presto!, result.
“….lowering the voting age to 16”
Age or IQ?
Barry,
Has it not already been lowered to an IQ of 16 ?
Chris Evans is dreadful, I think if anything I preferred his “look at me, I’m an objectionable knob” routine from the 1990’s to the “dog thumping its tail too hard dying to be regarded as a national treasure” act he does nowadays. Out-and-out Labour supporter and donor guiding his listeners through the headlines each morning, great. With tedious sycophancy to Moira Stuart, portentously booming out radio 2’s drumbeat of slanted news headlines each morning.
‘Out-and-out Labour supporter and donor’
Just to check that is correct, as it would be unsurprising and unwelcome.
I am aware of a biotech rich guy of the same name who is a donor to the party of ‘certain’ people, but not our cuddly ginger cheeky chappie, who I had thought was just a gallery performer, albeit unidirectional.
Actually I’m amazed Dez hasn’t already corrected me on this. The £200,000 donated by Chris Evans (the DJ, I’m aware of the other guy whose donation was in no way linked with the prospect of a peerage) was to Ken Livingstone at a time when he wasn’t in the Labour Party. But Evans certainly attended Labour’s HQ election night parties in 1997 and 2001 with Trevor Nunn, Mick Hucknall and possibly some people even more irritating.
No correction intended. Simply wanted to check.
Which you have clarified more than well (if to a worrying new level on the ‘relationship’ between public treasures of all forms).
Thank you.
The other big Labour supporter at Radio 2 is Dermot O’Leary, whose experience hosting Labour Party rallies left him eminently qualified to host BBC’s first-time voters’ version of Question Time.
Agreed, but Evans’ audience is, what, 8 million ….
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The Rajar figures which the droid like to quote (leastwise when they sound good) always refer to the amount of listeners per week not per day.
So when Moyles or Evan or DG Thompson brag about ‘7 million listeners’ or whatever, you have to divide that figure by five to get an audience number. Just another one of the little white lies ie steaming great porkies they use to try and fool the little people.
I mean did you really believe Gameshow Nikk and his, ‘C’mon, there’s three million listeners out there’.
“I mean did you really believe Gameshow Nikk and his, ‘C’mon, there’s three million listeners out there’.”
Who knows? However, I am (more or less) constantly at odds with my neighbours and friends – who don’t, I think, regularly listen to Evans or his colleagues – concerning the “unbiased” reportage pumped out by the BBC. The endless repetition by the BBC of its lies and/or omissions concerning CAGW, Israel, “child poverty”, the “cuts” and so on has a deleterious effect on the opinions of those I would expect to be both intelligent and aware.
So whether it’s 1 million or 8 million who listen to Evans’ drivel, if the BBC’s propaganda has a noticeable effect on those with an IQ above 100 then the effect on those with, I guess, a substantially lower one might be even more marked. Having said that, I recall – I think – Orwell who said, about a number of fairly obviously nonsensical political positions, that only an intellectual would be dumb enough to believe them, then maybe Evans’ political crapola is ignored by his listeners in favour of the music he publicises.
Oh I’m certain I’m sure that your final point is on the money.
And I noticed the excessive use of ex-Labour ministers again today on the Today – Blunkett on education at approx 8.20 and Vaz at 8.40on ….well to be honest I cannot remember what he was on about …I was just so cross at hearing more of the has-beens I stopped listening.
And Thought for the Day this morning – all about Stephen Hester’s bonus and how relieved everyone struggling upand down the country will be that he is not being paid it.
And then into the car. Yesterday morning at that time I had the chance to hea Paul Mason’s account of the uprisings in Egypt on Start the Week. Today on the Long View I had the chance to hear Paul Mason’s account of the uprisings in Greece on The Long View. I expect Libby Purves has him booked ready to discuss the London riots tomorrow.
And on Thursday, Comrade ‘Penny Red’ Mason will be booked into the Castro-Guevara-NKVD secure unit at the Maudsley Psychiatric Hospital, after one ‘uprising’ too many. A team of shrinks has prepared a special total-immersion room, in which Mason will be subjected to 12 hour bursts of film loops from Grosvenor Square 1968. If the aversion-therapy doesn’t work, & he keeps hearing ‘uprisings’, & confusing psychotic looters with ‘political trailblazers’ it’ll be the rubber cutlery brigade for the BBC’s man in Havana. Sad loss. Never mind.
Hester…Leveson…the EU…the cuts!
No wonder the BBC bang the same drum for so long!
We`re clearly thick…no remorse or altered consciousness from any of us yet.
Let`s play the record one more time then…OK?
I thought the drumbeat lessened on this first item – “the report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) which claims that the government’s public sector pension reforms are unlikely to save money in the long term.”
The Today mentions earlier on the issue had been low key. Remember BBC staff are all on top-dollar public sector pensions and would not want to draw too much attention to this IFS report that spoke the truth.
Next to no savings will be made on public sector pensions as a result of the changes. Those who have to work longer will simply go out early on (enhanced) ill health benefits. Many will get more.
What won’t be mentioned is the BBC Trust’s recent decision to take £905 million out of licence fee income (about a third of a year’s take) and pass it to the BBC Pension Scheme to help it meet its deficit. That’s a billion out of programme making.
That’s a billion out of programme making
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That’s BBC’s version of the ‘but children will die as a result’ pretrendy-leftie knne-jerk response to anuthing the Coalition does.
Boohoo programme-making will suffer boohoo.
The tragedy is that they’re as crap as making programmes as they are at everything else.
Humphrys kept trying to put words into the IFS guy’s mouth. “We might even end up out of pocket.” Er, no. Corrected by his guest once again. The actual report was that the pension reforms might not be enough. Yet Humphrys and his producers wanted you to think it was all bad and the nasty Tories just made it worse and they shouldn’t have bothered.
Still, I hope everyone enjoyed hearing Paul Johnson tell Humphrys that despite all this, public sector pensions are still much more generous than anything in the private sector. Not that any Beeboid will listen and change their tune because of it.
BBC no the writings on the wall,BBC iplayer to be available on sky.
I have stopped sending emails to Mr Hunt about the beeb as i get no sensible reply.I thought Mr Major was bad but DC beats him by miles.
The EU fiasco will be the death of him,hope someone has balls to take the beeb/EU/Labour head on or we are doomed.