Andrew Marr introduced his show with the words that ‘The BBC’s enemies are circling’, a narrative that David Dimbleby also used….that anyone who criticises the BBC or believes it is need of reform is an ‘enemy’…
“The BBC has enemies, it has powerful enemies. It has powerful enemies in the press and powerful enemies in Westminster. Some for ideological reasons, some for straight commercial reasons.”
Demonising anyone who raises the possibility of change at the BBC as an enemy is nothing more than a rhetorical trick designed to present the BBC as a ‘victim’ under siege from those who seek only to damage it rather than to improve it with those suggested reforms. The BBC is out to win the Public round to its own view of itself and its place in the world and its not shy about using every underhand tactic in the book to do so….and you might ask why the BBC is defending itself….certainly it can say what it does and what it won’t be able to do if it loses funding but making value judgements about the worth of its services and what the nation needs is not for the BBC to decide….suggesting that the BBC’s ‘enemies’ are enemies because of ideological reasons tells us that the BBC must therefore have its own opposing ideology….something that it is legally not meant to have and which it categorically denies having….but which this site and many other analysts repeatedly demonstrates it does have.
Lord Hall, being interviewed by Marr (21 mins in), seemed to be in almost total denial about the need for change with the licence fee….at most he would accept a bit of tinkering though he would be happy to have something along the lines of a household tax, which is essentially the licence fee but he wouldn’t have to bother collecting it, and it would raise more money….the impression given is that Hall far from accepting the need to rein back on the licence fee actually wants wants more money to be raised through the back door.
He claims that the Public are ever more supportive of the case for funding the BBC with a licence fee….but that doesn’t look to be true and hasn’t been for years…
From the Telegraph 2013: Seventy per cent of voters believe that the BBC licence fee should be abolished or cut, according to a new ICM poll for The Sunday Telegraph.
Nearly half of those questioned – 49 per cent – said the charge should be scrapped entirely, while a further 21 per cent said the current £145.50 price should be reduced.
There was wide support for the idea of the BBC developing alternative sources of income, such as through advertising, while ending its funding from the licence fee.
From the Mail in December 2014: BBC losing support over £145.50 TV licence fee as new poll reveals more would prefer alternative funding including adverts or subscriptions.
Even the Guardian has its doubts: At a time when many people willingly pay far more than the £145.50 per year licence fee for subscription channels and much BBC – and other – television is available, free, via your computer, the licence fee system looks archaic.
Hall says that this is a crucial time for the BBC and for the debate on its future….a debate that must include the Public’s voice….and yet he’s quite happy to ignore that voice, or actually make false claims about what the Public thinks, in his defence of the BBC licence fee.
The BBC’s record on listening to the Public is far from impressive…..immigration, Europe, climate change, politics, religion…all ‘crucial’ issues that the BBC completely ignores the Public discourse on.
The BBC got it completely wrong on the dominant national feel politically…the BBC are blaming the election polls but their coverage has been the same for the last 5 years so blaming the polls isn’t at all justified….and you might question why the BBC allows its coverage to be led by polls….is it not ‘independent’?
You just have to see what Labour politicians are saying now, and how the BBC ignores what they say, to judge how badly wrong the BBC got things…here’s Harriet Harman…
Many people felt Labour was not talking to them because it raised issues such as zero hours contracts, the living wage and food banks, she said.
Ms Harman believes a common problem all over Britain was that voters felt the party “doesn’t talk about me”. Labour was seen as supporting “people on benefits” but not those who “work hard.” She said: “It doesn’t matter how many leaflets you deliver if the message is not right.”
In an interview, Mr Burnham criticised the ‘spiteful’ plan for a mansion tax – saying even his mother was turned off by it. ‘My mum picked up the phone to me and said: “This never works, people don’t like it, it sounds like the 1970s,’ he said.
He said he had never been given the chance to argue against the proposal, saying it made voters think Labour was against anyone who succeeded and made money.
The BBC doesn’t seem too interested in raking over those issues…nor in challenging the Labour politicians volte face after having supported Miliband and his policies throughout the last five years. Indeed on Marr’s show as they looked at the newspapers one story was that Mail one about Burnham….Marr, instead of examining what Burnham said dismissed it, without saying what it actually was, as Burnham ‘veering strongly to the right’.
Nick Robinson recently targeted David Cameorn in a piece of BBC hatchetwork by claiming he had ‘threatened to close down the BBC’. Robinson claimed that this was seen as a veiled threat and put a lot of pressure upon BBC staff.
Just what does he make of Andrew Marr saying that BBC middle managers will be ‘culled’ and that there will be a ‘bloodthirsty slaughter of BBC staff’ as he spoke to Hall about cuts to BBC management jobs? Any stress or pressure arising from Hall’s looming cuts and Marr’s somewhat callous words….the threatened job losses being real and not some politicised apocalyptic fantasy dreamt up by a BBC reporter?
Marr’s guests cast their eye over the papers..Andrew Roberts, Historian, Rupa Huq from Labour and Marian Prentoulis from Syriza who for some reason was hotfoot from an anti-Austerity march in the UK.
Roberts was kept off partisan politics and looked at ISIS whilst Huq was given a free ride to spout Labour propaganda and Prentoulis came at everything from her own far left perspective. Marr said he would ‘come to Labour later’…but of course, as shown above, he quickly dismissed that story as Burnham turning out to be a closet Tory.
[Trying to think who Huq reminds me of….Anne Widdacombe springs to mind.]
Not exactly a rigorous programme in any way, the Truth may be out there but I think it’s pretty safe from any BBC search parties.
At least with inept or arrogant political parties, actual elections every few years can serve as valuable public feedback and reality check.
As broadcast herpes, the BBC does not have the same opportunity for introspection.
No wonder Lord Hall’s sole concern seems to be what means better secure or expand revenue to continue on its unique path.
Wheeling out the likes of Marr, Robinson, Dimbleby, etc to make vague claims about dark forces smacks of desperation.
The case for the LF is unsustainable for several reasons. The most powerful of those is that highly cost effective technology now exists for those who wish to watch its output to do so on a subscription basis. What have the BBC to fear about moving to a subscription service and doing away with the LF? If ,as the BBC constantly tells us, we all love it, then we will all subscribe to it.
Lord Hall said that the beauty of the LF was that by everyone paying everyone got something from the BBC output. Well that isn’t the same thing as saying that everyone got something that THEY WANTED AND WERE WILLING TO PAY FOR!
Of course we all know the truth is that the BBC knows that if we are free to choose a lot of people will choose not to subscribe to the BBC. So they much prefer to have the government impose this tax on us whether we want their service or not. I can understand the case for imposing taxes to pay for universal education and the NHS etc, but for a TV service you have to be joking!
The BBC should be the first to champion “Diversity”, and oppose any monopoly institution or group in society.
The other problem with the Licence Fee is its size. It is no longer a Licence Fee.
I cannot think what was in the Corporation’s thinking when they allowed it to climb so high, especially while paying vast amounts to ‘talent’, some of whom were trying to avoid Income Tax at the full PAYE rates. In this, they have sowed the seeds of their own demise.
It is obviously immoral to force people who maybe earn relatively little, to pay a substantial sum under threat of imprisonment while the amount they are forced to pay goes to enrich others who then avoid a straightforward payment of tax on the income they receive from the BBC.
However you slice and dice £140+ into £3 per week or forty-something pence a day, that is not far short of what a lot of the population have to feed themselves for one or two out of three meals – perhaps all three meals – a day.
The Licence Fee has to go back to being that: a £25 annual charge to use a television to receive real-time broadcasts.
There are now so many visual alternatives that cannot be truly watched and absorbed at the same time as television, ‘Television’ itself is in danger of extinction in our post-post-modern age. There is another new technology on the way that will only be an additional entertainment & leisure threat to television that could make TV almost completely obsolete.
A £25 annual charge – No thank you !
The unfair, unjust, and unaccountable tv poll tax should be abolished altogether. Simples !
Why do they all rush to defend the indefensible? Because their case is so weak. This is 2015. A regressive tax on all of us who wish to watch TV is absurd. Enforced by prison and fines? Insane. Not just absurd but actually malevolent.
It is the money of course. Highly paid useless executives and the ‘talent’ need regular injections.
Reform is useless. Extermination is the kindest optiion.
Setting free the genuinely young and talented to make their own shows is possible then.
The BBC is paid to educate, inform and entertain us, not to discuss its own future with us at our expense.
The government should ban the BBC from all such discussions.
But…. but… there are dark forces afoot!
Who will think of the pensions!
How on earth can the Head of Radio 4 be paid a lot more than the Prime Minister. She’s not even the Head of BBC itself!
She’s worked at the BBC since 1976 when she left University. What life experience does she have?
Troughing , brown nosing , groupthink , Gramscian long marching , refraction of real events , corporate eating events , selective broadcasting .
On the other hand the job may entail having to sit next to a plebeian on a bus on the way to work ( not all of them have limousines) , the occasional awkward person who disputes BBC output , breathing the same air as ordinary people , the Labour party not in government with the LibDims and Greens , champagne not at right temperature and tax avoidance schemes curtailed .
Would you want to do a job like that ?
I don’t pay the licence fee .
The BBC was “circleling ” with their allies TVL , magistrates courts , police , billboards , Post Office delivered This House Is Unlicensed etc , but I saw them off .
Perhaps the odds were against them !
High, girl!
While I realize my penname is quite morbid, yet,
you shall find in our 23 blogs a lottagobba (subliminal) moxie
which has taken this mortal sinner yeeers to compile:
I lay it ALL out for you, dear – neet, packaged, concise.
Nevertheless, wouldn’t ya love an endless eternity
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Here’s what the prolific GODy sed:
“Faith, hope, and love,
the greatest of these is love –
jumpy into faith…
and you’ll see with love”
Doesn’t matter if you don’t believe
(what I write);
God believes in you.
God. Blessa. Youse -Fr. Sarducci, ol SNL
Meet me Upstairs, girly, where the Son never goes down
(nonillions
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nonillions
of opportunities for excitement BTW)…