We cough up 145 beer/irn bru tokens every year for the privilege of being patronised and manipulated but what has the BBC ever done for us?
Is it worth the cost? Does it do anything useful?
Here, via the Telegraph, is a site that provides, at no cost whatsoever and completely unadulterated by political spin, a sterling public service of immense usefulness:
http://www.fixmystreet.com/
How to get potholes repaired
Honest John hears of a very efficient way to get potholes repaired
‘My village crossroads had a very bad pothole that left a manhole cover’s steel frame exposed. I emailed a digital image to fixmystreet.co.uk, then had a reply from Cornwall County Council within an hour and, subsequently, a message to say the repair would be carried out within two days. Lo and behold it was, and to a very high standard.’
LG, Penryn
Phenomenal. It proves that these privately run public service sites are the way to get action. But congratulations also to CCC for its alacrity.
A privately run public service site? Perish the thought.
This has been a public service broadcast by Biased BBC on behalf of the People.
Very nice site, but filling a pothole is a somewhat simpler prospect than filling every second God sends with programming. Forever.
Look, it is plain to see that there are certain parts of the BBC that need urgent action, and those aspects involve what are clearly poor journalistic standards led by a liberal groupthink, and the demands of rolling news, the most evil invention of the post-war period, including the atomic bomb.
Five Live, for example, are, by dint of the sheer amount of airtime dedicated to it, an absolute bastion of unchallenged left wing opinion. From Campbell and Burden on a Monday morning to Stephen Nolan on Sunday night its non-sport output picks up and runs with issues taken straight from the Guardian’s Comment Is Free section to fill in the time between Labour talking points and press releases from left of centre think tanks and charities.
Biased BBC exists to point out these sorts of issues. This apparent conflation of all private sector is good and all public sector bad is simply bias in the opposite direction.
It is noticable that the one BBC employee who is regularly praised here is Andrew Neil. He is the last remaining example, now Paxman has given up the ghost, of the sort of BBC journo I grew up watching. Neil disdains our political classes equally. That is exactly how it should be. I don’t want leftwing bias replaced by rightwing bias. I want evenhandedness. I accept such things are in the eye of the beholder, but the BBC used to be far better at it, if never perfect.
I don’t expect to watch a BBC news programme and see someone who should be impartial and should take professional pride in being so seemingly wilfully abrogate that responsibilty to push their own agenda. It is the anithesis of what the BBC should be.
I’m going to come out and say it. I like the BBC. For the most part it fulfils its remit. It shows many programmes I personally don’t like. My wife does, and my children do. The BBC have to be all things to all people, and away from the news output broadly do so.
No, I don’t think it is realistic for every British Army General, senior police officer or High Court Judge on Doctor Who to be by default black, but nor is it realistic for a one thousand year old alien to be chased around the galaxy by sentient pepperpots.
My point is this. Many of us on this site seem to see ourselves as representative of all of society. For good or ill, and the jury is still out, that simply isn’t the case. There are things on the BBC that simply aren’t meant for me and you. We would disagree amongst ourselves as to the good and bad. The thing that the BBC do for everyone, the news and current affairs, however, are in a parlous state. That is the battleground, not whether lessons can be learnt for the BBC from a potholes hotline. (The answer, by the way, is “No”.)
The BBC doesn’t need a wreath, it needs a Reith. Now, where you find one, perhaps standing next to the modern day Churchill over there, is a different matter.
Well, I do not consider myself to be a representative of anything. With regard to the BBC, the issue, for me, is quite simple. I do no wish to pay for something I do not want. Come to that I do not wish to pay for something that I despise.
If others want to pay for it fine, let them. The BBC I grew up with has gone. Dead,. Buried. Like Churchill, like Reith.
You don’t need a privately run public service for this.
I reported a pothole to Tunbridge Wells Borough Council via their website. They also phoned me and told me when the pothole would be repaired and two days later it was.