Douglas Carswell in the Telegraph suggests that:
The BBC’s mid-twentieth century TV poll tax should be consigned to the history books
Carswell thinks a subscription service might work…Mark Thompson thought not…or rather put the case for keeping the license fee/poll tax:
We want to build a digital world based on universal access, open standards and unencryption.
Encryption, subscription and other forms of digital exclusion lead to widespread welfare losses.
They may well have a role within the total broadcasting ecology, but the idea that they can successfully replace free-to-air public service broadcasting, we believe, flies in the face both of economic theory and our real-world experience.
There might be a case for keeping news and sport free to air but when the BBC is prosecuting thousands of people for not paying their license fee, and presumably they will be mainly the poorest people, Thompson’s claim that there will be ‘widespread welfare losses’ looks to be disengenuous….if you don’t pay the BBC’s license you don’t get the service now….officially anyway.
Do they watch the BBC’s socially and morally uplifting programmes anyway? Thompson knows full well most people aren’t interested, life’s too short and they won’t pay for them….and yet they still get charged for them now.
The trouble is that the BBC always feel free to rewrite those history books.
In Dreaming the Impossible: Unbuilt Britain – 2. Making Connections the BBC indulges in its usual trick of loading a programme about engineering with political and social messages…in this case about immigration and the dreadful people that oppose it.
In the first 5 minutes there were a couple of veiled references to what was to come and a couple of blatantly obvious markers for how the programme was going to lay judgement upon the British.
Olivia Horsfall Turner, architectural historian, tells us that one of the men who wanted to build a Channel tunnel had a ‘belief in a better world’…unlike those who opposed the tunnel who were full of intrigue and beset by xenophobia….those thinking of building the tunnel brought out the worst kind of rabid xenophobia in its opponents.
Never mind that this was originally at the time of the Napoleonic Wars…remember them? When the French were trying to take over the world…marching onto the gates of Moscow and the Pyramids in Egypt…never mind that the French had helped the Rebels in the Americas to defeat the British…or that Napoleon had plans to invade Britain.
It was just out and out xenophobia, racism by some very nasty people..
So the Channel tunnel was more than a spectacular feat of engineering it was a social and political experiment, a statement that broke down borders and prejudiced attitudes….as immigrants flooded in through it.
Douglas Carswell says that he had a Tweet from a Lefty saying that the BBC was needed because it ‘fulfils a social role’
The BBC fulfils a social role?…maybe, but how do you define that ‘role’ and what are its limits?
Its role was to educate, inform and entertain…..it has gone far beyond that…taking upon itself to not only tell us what is going on in the world but how to live our lives and to berate and pillory us when we don’t profess the same values and correct social attitudes that they desire us to have.
Mark Thompson claimed that: ‘The BBC is not a campaigning organisation and can’t be‘…unfortunately he also said:
The BBC was no longer just a broadcaster, the corporation was to be a social force in the land, he said. The corporation was an “important builder of social capital, seeking to increase social cohesion and tolerance”, which in future would try to “foster audience understanding of differences of ethnicity, faith, gender, sexuality, age and ability or disability“…
Really?
The Telegraph asked: Caring and sharing – is this what the BBC is really for?
Strangely when I’m watching a programme about engineering or how to dance strictly I don’t want messages, subliminal or otherwise, inserted into my consciousness telling me that a gay man, or even a French man, can make a brilliant engineer, or that everytime I drive my socially inappropriate 4×4 to buy the Sunday Newpapers I’m killing at least 3 Ethiopians and blighting the lives of many more as the climate changes, famine, plague and swarms of locusts scourge the land.
Its broadcasting has become value laden….it doesn’t just reveal the world to us but passes judgement on what is good, what is bad, directing us on what to think, policing our thoughts.
Anyone who steps out of line can expect a visit from the BBC and exposure in the BBC’s very own court for a public show trial intended to shame the blasphemous heretic and to terrify anyone else who thinks the same into keeping quiet.
A final word from the BBC:
“The BBC doesn’t make judgments – what it does is to provide a forum for debate.”
It’s Humpty Dumpty time again. The BBC isn’t a campaigning organization: it’s just an organization which does a lot of campaigning.
‘Its broadcasting has become value laden…’
Hypocritical. The left spent the 70s, 80s and 90s getting us to divest ourselves of our values. It was not correct (or compliant) for us to hold any.
Of course what the Marxists meant was that OUR values were wrong.
With the typical hypocrisy that defines the left, it was ok for them to have their values, values which we would all share in. They were fine, as the left, according to La Toynbee were nicer and more intelligent people.
Mark Thompson claimed that: ‘The BBC…. would try to “foster audience understanding of differences of ethnicity, faith, gender, sexuality, age and ability or disability“…
Is there a prize if we guess what’s missing from that list?
How about a bit of tolerance for folks who think Keynes was full of it or the NUT are kooks?
Any chance? At all?
Meanwhile, I’m thinking about how exactly you build ‘social cohesion’ by producing 744 dramas in which racist police officers beat innocent black guys to death while quoting from the Gospels and Nigel Farage.
“The BBC doesn’t make judgments – what it does is to provide a forum for debate.”
***
Interesting modding on ’em often, mind.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/aboutthebbc/posts/The-BBC-and-plurality-in-the-media
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/aboutthebbc/posts/helen-boaden-director-of-bbc-news-at-the-lse
Ever get the feeling that if what’s ‘About the BBC’ isn’t to the BBC’s liking, the BBC is not averse to showing who controls the edit suite?
Propaganda backed by censorship and state compulsion is seldom pretty.
If you’re a licence fee payer, then you may or may not know that if you cancel your direct debit today, it’ll be 6 months before you don’t have a licence because of the way they front load the payments. So cancel the DD, and for those 6 months see if you can live with the radio and catchup. I found I could easily, so all you need put up with is Crapita’s threats, ignore those you don’t need a licence to watch catchup. If everyone did this (dream on) they’d implode
Why do they do it, how much more interesting does it have to be you know building a tunnel from England to France in the 19th century for gods sake without having some spurious reference to xenophobia and racism,i turned it straight off and watched new girl on 4 od
They are most peculiar references. At first it’s clearly the nasty British that are to blame but then Napoleon III has a quick go. Surprisingly as this was for a French scheme, (potential UK invader?), one would have thought the xenophobia would have been the other way.
Then when Watkins has a go we are back on the British xenophobia kick again, (some of the opposition being from the ‘luvvies’ of the day, if you can read the list of petitioners fast enough!).
Reaching the 20th century the project is ‘go’ again, but then stopped by more xenophobic politicians from an unspecified left-leaning, international socialist party.
Then the project is back on again but puzzlingly by the ‘eurosceptic’ Margaret Thatcher. But then she went for the wrong scheme as she should have gone for the scheme that would have cost twice as much so as to keep all the steel workers in a job.
No mention of course that Margaret called it right, insisting on private funding. Even that ‘cheap’ scheme failed to cover its debt and the shareholder losing 90% plus of their capital and dividends only being paid out in the last few years.
So busy are they in pushing the xenophobia line that the concept of practicality gets completely ignored. Are we seriously expected to believe that a wooden-lined, candle-lit, horse-powered tunnel could have been built?
As an aside I’m intrigued to know how someone taking surface samples could possibly determine the sub-subterranean rock structures. Modern tunnellers do multiple vertical test bores and even then they say the only way to be sure is a horizontal bore along the axis of the tunnel and of the same diameter!
“The BBC is not a campaigning organisation and cant be.”
Mark Thompson
Really?
Who was the Social Affairs Editor at the BBC (1988–1995)
…Polly Toynbee. The self important left wing social commentator. I’m sure she left her politics at the front door.
Olivia Horsfall Turner did say xenophobia a lot, but could not explain Thatcher’s pro Common Market phase. Nor did she suggest that a tunnel would be far to vulnerable to worry about being used for an invasion, compared to an invasion using boats.
In fact I remember her saying as though Britain was isolated from the rest of the world without a tunnel, I was wondering how Britain was able to build a Global Empire?
The BBC does seem to find these idealistic idiots somehow, it must have been through an advert in the Guardian.
“Threat to the TV licence as BBC reveals more watch programmes online fuelling fears thousands are legally dodging fee.
“iPlayer received 242million hits last month – up 38 per cent on last year .
“Two million watched Top Gear online and many watched Wimbledon live.
“People who watch online legally avoid £145.50 annual licence fee.”
By ALASDAIR GLENNIE TV CORRESPONDENT
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2400593/BBC-iPlayer-Threat-TV-licence-BBC-reveals-watch-programmes-online-fuelling-fears-thousands-legally-dodging-fee.html
Latest comment (that I agree with – the DM reporting stance is dire):
‘With words like ‘dodge’ and ‘loophole’ littered throughout your article, I wonder whos side you’re on? I prefer ‘legally exempt from the licence fee’. If the £4.6bn per year (including EU funding) BBC wanted, they could make their iPlayer service either subscription only, or provide it to licence payers via registration like Sky does with its apps. If I pulled in £13m per day in tax free, you wouldn’t believe how much better my service would be. The BBC do not have a divine right to £145 from every household and, believe it or not, there are many many people who don’t watch live TV OR iPlayer. You are also legally exempt if you use a TV for DVDs, video gaming or radio via sky for example. Articles like this worry me as they seem to facilitate some budding new kind of terrifying secret agenda such as computer tax/licence or worse (if that’s possible!).
– dwesty, England, United Kingdom, 24/8/2013 11:34
The actual system is even more outdated. Prior to TV existing the BBC Radio Reception Tax was created, using the identical measure of collection and enforcement as the current TV Licence, almost a century ago, when the world was very different.
Incidentally the BBC was originally a private company called the British Broadcasting Company before to was seized by Parliament and, in effect, subjected to Nationalisation.
The fledgling TV broadcasts, virtually an experiment, ran from 1936 to 1939 when it was abandoned for the period of WW2. By the end of the War TV had made advances, particularly in the US where development had continued.
In 1946 a separate TV Reception Tax was created which ran in addition to the Radio Reception Tax. Later a Colour TV Reception Tax was added to the mix and, by the early 1970s the Radio Reception Tax was incorporated into the TV Reception Tax.
The whole setup was originally nothing more than a panic by our Political Leaders that, without such draconian measures there would be no control over what the could listen to and that they simplest method of control was to seize ownership of all broadcasting which the end user would be forced to finance.
Once the BBC had a monopoly on broadcasting it could use that position to strike a terror of change, with lurid tales of evil doom and destruction, in much the same way as they still do by attacking and trying to destroy those who challenge their position or differ in their outlook to the present day.
The BBC screamed, stamped their feet and threw tantrums in an attempt to block and then to destroy Commercial TV when it was first created to challenge their monopoly in the late 1950s and with even more venom when Commercial Radio was introduced because, horror of horrors, they would only play the music the lower orders wanted to listen to instead of having their cultural appreciation raised to a higher level more in line with that of their betters in society. I kid you not, it wasn’t the exact words the BBC ever dared utter but that was precisely what they were getting at with their attacks on the whole idea.
The BBC still, although they would deny it totally, in the Class Ridden World of the early to mid 1900s and believe it is their right and, indeed, their duty, to improve the lot of the plebs and that they, and only they, are capable of doing that and without their continued existence, in their current State Enforced, well provided for existence, the whole of civilised society would be destroyed.
Their arrogance knows no bounds and the time for it to be ended is long gone.