OK folks, time for a new Syriza approved one of these. Just say OXI to BBC bias and detail it here. The comrades seem most unhappy with Osborne after his comments on Marr yesterday! Your thoughts?
START THE WEEK OPEN THREAD…..
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Did anyone catch the start of the British Grand Prix yesterday?
it featured our fragrant host Suzi Perry (I would) helicoptering over Silverstone, giving us a 10 minute potted history of the site, including all sorts of impressive special effects which included Halifax bombers passing under her ‘copter.
All very impressive, but how much did it cost, and was it necessary?
In the back of my mind is also this sneaking suspicion that they could show all races live if they didn’t indulge in this kind of expensive nonsense. If they haven’t got stuff to fill the hour before the race, start the program 15 minutes before, less is more.
Also what I found odd that the bBC presenting crew were more than surprised that in a recent poll Lewis Hamilton was not in the top three most popular drivers, where as Jenson Button and Kimi Raikkonen were. I know the reason and no Dez its not the one you think.
Like every other sport, Rugby included, F1 is now dumbing down, FFS we had Alesha Dixon sing the wrong words to the nation anthem in an American accent.
Exactly when we get the highlights which are more and more of the races they still have the whole team out at the venue that could easily be done from here. Most of the time you find the results out before the highlights any way.
Simple solution is to point your dish/add an LNB, point at 19.2 and watch on German channel RTL live.
The irony is that were I only to watch RTL live I would still need a licence!
Geoff wrote:
“it featured our fragrant host Suzi Perry (I would) “
So would I, but Mrs Pounce would chop my bollocks off and make me eat them if I even looked.
I must say I feel rather chipper after Osborne’s announcement yesterday morning, mostly due to being able to imagine the sheer horror of the luvvies.
It’s also interesting to see that after years of the left complaining about right wing bias at the BBC they are suddenly racing to its defence. You might have thought they’d have been as pleased as those of us who hold the opposite opinion. A cynical man might think they only said there was a right of centre bias to muddy the waters.
Mind you, the BBC can still entertain, albeit inadvertently. I’m pretty sure the BBC2 continuity announcer wanted to introduce the afternoon film the other day by telling us it was time to get the popcorn. Instead, she said it was time to get the “cock porn”.
Instead, she said it was time to get the “cock porn”.
Freudean slip perhaps.
In recording the Daily Politics I have recently been catching the last few minutes of the Victoria Derbyshire show.
The last item today was about Rihanna’s “controversial” new video, a piece replete with no less than four young hipster guests. It was like a feminist buzz phrase generator.
Rihanna was in fact “reclaiming issues” via a “narrative” of “economic disparity of wealth, power and status of black women.” She is a black woman “owning her sexuality” but within “misogynistic tropes”.
One poor girl’s father refused to watch the video because the first thirty seconds were too much for him. Nobody asked the question on the tip of my tongue: “Is your Dad mental?” Instead, nods of sympathy for the poor chap.
Even the sole “male” guest was infected. If this is what young blokes have to go along with to get laid these days I pity them.
I have a pithy buzz phrase for such achingly right on
items. Can you guess what it might be?
PS: I see the Daily Politics are now inviting the excellent ex-Sky News bod Tim Marshall into the studio on a regular basis. I like Marshall. No bullshit, no gilding the lily. He tells it as he sees it, and appears to deplore the endless speculation that has replaced the news. He’s a good booking for the Beeb, and the antithesis of Victoria Derbyshire.
And Tim was way too straight shooting for Sky to tolerate. Now they have “special forces” wannabe with shaved head and all as their new apologist for Islamic terrorism.
Perhaps she was speaking to Mrs Halfman’s husband.
Possibly the chipper feeling will diminish, Leamas, when you realise that the spineless bastards have allowed Auntie six years for full implementation – by which time Al Jazeera may well be the primary news source anyway. And those few over 75s still dementia-free will be unable to watch TV because the poor wretches only understand English.
Just watched Mr Whittingdale answering a question in the House of Commons re the BBC losing the government subsidy for over 75s who don’t pay the BBC Tax. I am not as happy about this as I was yesterday when the news broke. It looks as though the government has done a deal with the BBC such that the BBC picks up the tab for the over 75’s but is allowed to charge for I player use. Now when this was first announced yesterday I thought that it meant that the BBC could charge people who used I player ie a type of subscription service, which seemed a small move towards a fully commercialised BBC. But during the answer from Mr Whittingdale alarms bells began to ring. It wasn’t clear how the BBC was going to charge for I player use. I now wonder if the BBC are going to be allowed to charge an ‘ I player supplement’ on top of the current Tax ( LF) for ANY device that is equipped to run I Player whether it is used or not! As most devices now sold are probably capable of running I player this would be just the same as increasing the BBC Tax (LF) ! VERY BAD NEWS IF TRUE. So if you never watch the BBC nor ever watch BBC I Player, you would have to pay twice. That really is rubbing salt in the wound
In the answer there were a few encouraging signs in other aspects of charter renewal
a) the scope and reach of the BBC are to be reviewed, downwards naturally
b) it was noted that the web site and other BBC activities were crowding out newspapers and other commercial interests
c) the BBC Tax ( LF) will be adjusted as the scope of the corporation changes and it would only increase at the rate of inflation provided the BBC showed it was run efficiently.
We already know that OFCOM will take over oversight of the BBC. So some clipping of the wings of the BBC seems certain but I’m not happy if they can charge for I Player whether you use it or not.
I have five devices that can run iPlayer. If they want to charge a fee for each I might not bother putting my pithy buzz phrase away.
That said, I do get the feeling the government have the BBC in its sights, and that the BBC know it.
I would have thought a subscription for those overseas might generate a few bob. There must still be a few old duffers out in Mandalay who wouldn’t mind catching up with the old country before the rubber harvest.
They need the State TV propaganda power to deliver the population in the EU referendum. RTE in Ireland does this in all referenda. It’s a Faustian Pact. The BBC is lucky.
The Guardian says ‘jump’ and the BBC asks ‘how high?’
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-33410692
Any chance of them responding so quickly to anything they might read in, say, the Daily Express?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3151139/BBC-licence-fee-rise-10-help-cover-650m-cost-free-TV-pensioners.html
So we are still going to get stuffed for these payments. Smoke and mirrors oh you paying tax for the DWP to pay the BBc for the over 75’s free licence will end. Instead you can pay more to the BBc so the BBc can take responsibility for the free licences. But wow instead people will need to have a licence to watch the crap on the I-player
License fee will increase by £10 http://tinyurl.com/o8gagqt
So guess who’s picking up the bill for the “free” licenses for the elderly? We are!
You will be elderly one day & the IPlayer will be pay as you go, to use it. So don’t use it, record the programmes you want to watch as they are shown,just like the old days when you first had a VCR. Most programmes are repeated 2 or 3 Times in a week anyhow now.
get_iplayer is my favoured solution.
I note, almost on a daily basis these days, the BBC’s obsession with advocacy and quasi-Union groups from the Health Sector (usually called something like ‘Royal College of….’, or whatever, to disguise any sort of possible inference that they are anything but an authoritative, unbiased and politically neutral organisation) bleating that more and more money needs to be spent on their particular field ofwork.
There is never any challenge from the BBC to these organisations along the lines of “… despite what socialists of every ilk believe, there is absolutely and categorically, no money tree from which we can crop an endless supply of funds to spend on everyone’s demands…. so for each of you who demands more money be spent on their pet project, we will ask you to nominate another part of the NHS where you believe the money can be abstracted from, in order to pay the bills you are advocating be met.”
Anyone want to bet against the view that the silence on that aspect would, of course, be deafening…..?
….which is, of course, precisely why the BBC will never, ever, provide any challenge, no matter how vaguely worded, of that sort.
But you will also conversely note that, at the slightest hint of a restriction on benefits, for instance, or public sector spending, there is a never-ending demand to know precisely where the money might be taken from.
Agree completely. They never ask these representatives of the Royal College of this or that whether any savings could be made, either. From what many people who work in the NHS say the scope for savings is immense, but always the response is that vital services will be cut (as a punishment).
I’ve always said the question the BBC will never ask anyone who advocates continued high levels of public spending in their field of (self) interest: ‘So what would you cut instead?’
That question wouldn’t work.
Those people are delusional and all think that other people’s money grows on trees.
And in a way they are right – up to a point.
It is beginning to look as if Whittingdale is to the BBC what Cameron is to IS.
You are right G.W.F., If anybody on here seriously believes that whittingdale and camoron have the balls to take down the bbc then you are deluded.
I posted a bog standard reply from whittingdale’s office lackey on here recently after sending a letter of complaint about the bbc bias, it was pathetic, I knew then that the socialists in blue would do nothing about the bbc.
The tories have basically tipped the bbc off as to what to do to toe the line and keep their tax in place “we are seriously considering decriminalization”? Big words to make people think they are getting tough, in reality it’s just bullshit.
It’s like a spineless boss telling an out of control, bullying employee that he will REALLY sack him/her next time they smack another employee…for the tenth time.
The only real change will come if, as the bbc admitted last week, more people just stop paying, what could the bbc do if millions stopped paying? Clog the courts up with prosecutions?
Waiting for any UK gvnmnt to make a difference is like waiting for the perfect life..it just ain’t going to happen.
Well said. That would sort it out just like that. If everyone just had the balls to stop paying, the courts wouldn’t even be involved because it would be a”crisis”. Problem is, lots of people are scared of the ramifications of non payment, I think in another generation that worry will be gone and so will bbbc.
I agree, but because in a generation we will probably be embroiled in a vicious civil war so noone will have time to watch TV anymore.
http://order-order.com/2015/07/06/bbc-staff-react-to-licence-fee-deal/#_@/IzzCFIuTievxyQ
Susan Calman forgets the rules of Just A Minute by working ‘my wife’ into her/his first two responses.
Not that she is pushing an agenda, you understand.
She does that on the News Quiz, too. Well, she used to, dunno about now, I stopped listening ages ago.
I noticed this too. It just made me very sad that a sometimes irritating, but often entertaining, format had been sucked into the maw of politicisation after all these years. The saddest thing was the silence from the other players, as though what she was saying was not the most blatant abuse of both them and the listeners. Permanent off button, I’m afraid. I guess if she ever gets onto I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue she’ll do the same there. A nasty, vindictive mind, she appears to have.
Calman did a podcast with Richard Herring a while ago. She genuinely sounds like a really nasty piece of work.
Not BBC bias but a real life story from an increasingly multicultural hell hole.
Some readers might recall the Pakistani Muslim neighbour who had me beaten up because I dared object to his planning application, and complained when he started building without planning permission.
About his plans to murder the other neighbour and how he arranged burglaries of other objectors homes and the vandalism of their cars.
About how he had access to confidential council held data via other Pakistanis who were either employees of the council or were councillors.
He’s been involved in a dispute with his other neighbour now, and the other night a couple of Pakistani youths came up to his front window and attempted to throw a brick through it. They were caught on CCTV, but despite damage being caused and the incident being reported as a race hate crime with intimidation the useless political correctness enforcement squad didn’t even record it as a crime !
They still didn’t record it as a crime when two subsequent complaints were made over their handling of it.
Two days later two young adult Pakistanis came up his drive at 3 in the afternoon and threw a brick through his car window. Again they were caught on CCTV and again it was reported in the same way, with the Police attending though not really taking it seriously.
Further incidents have happened until eventually the useless excuse for a Police force sent two officers who had previous involvement in the case and went and had a word with him.
Miraculously all the harassment has up to now ceased. We are taking here about a man in his 70s who doesn’t deserve to be put through this, and there’s no way if he was a senior Pakistani Muslim that the neighbour would have done this. That makes it a race hate incident.
Further down the road another Pakistani Muslim is off to Pakistan for 2 months and has removed her kids from school, ever seen a Pakistani prosecuted for doing that? Never happens, it’s always recorded as a ‘cultural visit’, white people are invariably prosecuted.
She wanted to leave her car on a neighbours drive so she didn’t have to tax it, the neighbour refused. She knew here neighbours across the way were away on holiday leaving a 90+ year old in the house. She then drove the car onto the drive and told the 90 year old that the son had changed his mind parked it up and went to Pakistan ! The son never changed his mind.
Most people would think it would be reasonable to tow the car away, but you’d be very wrong, in fact potentially you would be the criminal ! In fact you owe a duty of care to the owner while it is parked on your land ! If anything happens to it you are liable even if it isn’t your fault !
https://www.askthe.police.uk/content/Q441.htm
Both households are now wanting to move out of the area, in what the BBC leftie cretins call ‘white flight’, yet they never mention the actions which drive people to leave their homes to flee to other parts.
It’s a shocking indictment of the state of a wrecked country which both politicians and propagandists are able to turn a blind eye to.
Thank you for sharing that story with us. I am sure that there must be hundreds, if not thousands of others who have to put up with a nightmare life due to the barbaric enrichers colonising our once pleasant land. This is the kind of thing that needs to be rammed down the throats of the likes of the lefty trolls posting on here who love the multi cult utopia they claim exists all around them. One in particular loves having things rammed down his throat so no problem.
A very sad state of affairs in our once beautiful country, unfortunately this situation is on the rise and if you live in one of many Northern multicultural hell holes then you’ll see much worse.
These people are the ‘good’ muslims who the lefty liberal scum would have us believe are nothing to do with ISIS, trust me, once the numbers are sufficient they will be exactly the same as ISIS.
I hate the pakistani race, they are the rats of the human race, I have had enough dealings with them to be happy with how I feel and I have seen many friends leave this country for pastures new because they could see the writing on the wall and want a better life for their children, I don’t blame them one bit, I despair for this country.
Thoughtful…. I’ve seen it too. Ugly.
In the area where i grew up in a northern town. Once 100% white, middle-class, with immaculate maintained houses and gardens. Sundays the air buzzed with mowers and trimmers.
20 years of enrichment later, dilapidated houses, overgrown gardens complete with rotting furniture. The last few white people, often parents of old freinds, gentle kind people, were treated horrifically by the young of the new residents.
It ain’t just up north and in social housing, as many properties on private estates are BTL.
Its happening here in the SW, moved here in 1999, and rapidly since 2006 I have seen the area change, I cannot walk the dog now without some sign of enrichment.
Without massive bucks its going to get difficult if not impossible to escape it now.
Had I asked for such I wouldn’t have a problem, I didn’t and Blair is a cant…
What’s happening to whites in Zimbabwe, South Africa and Sweden is the blue print for what will happen here. There is one white country though that isn’t following the pattern of open borders and mass immigration and that’s Russia, can you imagine David Camoron saying this ? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSX2ALtIejw
Interesting. We could do with him here.
”Had I asked for such I wouldn’t have a problem,” No vote or referendum on multiculturalism or mass immigration / invasion, and they say we live in a democracy ?
Perhaps ‘Dez’ or the bus idiot would fancy leaving their ‘hideously white’ neighbourhood and purchasing these properties for full ‘enrichment’
Find someone with a tow truck and get them to move the car onto a parking space on a public road.
Then get someone unconnected to report it to DVLA as unlicensed / or just report it to as abandoned.
Job done.
And that will end you in court with a criminal conviction, plus a bill for towing the car away!
It just isn’t that simple, and I suspect that the Pakistanis know that full well.
wow at that story. Will the usual suspects comment on it? Doubtful
Much wailing and gnashing of teeth over at the BBC and Guardian over the government’s cruel decision to exempt over 75’s from the licence tax.
Chris Morris (Europe Correspondent, BBC News.) tweets…
The #BBC is to lose about 20% of its budget. We have more in common with #Greece than you might think.
Ha ha. Check out thechris morris tweet from this morning comparing BBC 20% cut in budget to the plight of the people of Greece. Check out the replies. Hilarious. Surprised he hasn’t deleted his tweet he has got so much stick. Screen grabbed.
Did anybody here catch that vile racist, one Sarfraz Mansewer, reviewing In Search Of Charlie Williams on Pick of the Week? It was the most disgusting character assassination I’ve ever had the misfortune to hear.
Among the highlights; ‘ Williams was a 70s comedian who appeared with the likes of Bernard Manning and Frank Carson, like them he wasn’t very funny’.
‘from today’s enlightened times you could say he was a coward for reinforcing white prejudice’.
‘But still he didn’t come across as a very impressive or inspiring’.
It’s on the iPlayer.(In case J̶i̶z̶, sorry, Dez accuses me of making it up)
I wish someone with the technology would put it on here so you could hear the hatred oozing over poor old Charlie.
Charlie was the funniest of the three you mentioned.
Charlie Williams on YouTube.
Died in 2006, dig him up and put him on any bbc ‘ comedy ‘ show especially HIGNFY and he will be far funnier than any of the politically correct morons around today.
and how many of them could, like Charlie, also play centre half for Doncaster Rovers?
I loved Manning, for the simple reason that he slagged the Pakistanis, rightly so in my book, i loathe them, no apologies. And that incident above is indicative of the horrible nature of them, i would be giving the police a hard time over that, the cowards.
Recently Channel Four Four had a recent series, I think called ‘Acceptable in the 70s’ where hand wringing young leftie comedians were aghast at the antics of our comedians in the decade.
There was a sketch featuring Bruce Forsyth, Kenny Lynch and some woman wearing a white dress, Forsyth made a comment to the woman, something like don’t stand too close it comes off (Lynch’s colour). The young trendies were shocked and horrified, but when Lynch was asked was it racist, he said ‘not at all, I think in context it was funny’ and still found it funny.
We need more genuine people like Lynch and Williams not shit stirrers like Lenny Henry, Darcus Howe and this chap Mansoor
I suppose the only way that stuff can be shown on tv today is to have a bunch of trendy people being shocked and horrified about it.
Imagine if they re-ran the Black and White Minstrel Show. It would be completely unacceptable. But if they ran it and then told us how awful and racist it was… Then hey presto it’s ok!
The hypocrisy of political correctness.
The black & white minstrel show started because British audiences wanted to experience the music and song of black people in America, except there wasn’t any genuine ones in Britain. You might say that it was the first tribute act, and it was done seriously, not in some derogatory way as the Fascists would have you believe.
^The actual programme wasn’t too bad but only because Charlie’s irrepressible good nature couldn’t be suppressed or hidden.
Unfortunately, a big chunk of it was handed over to some black celebrity? comedian? nonentity? who reckoned ‘Williams’ added to the trauma of the racist bullying that he endured in school.
He also said something curious about certain types of black men who move near to, and relate better to (shock, horror) white people than their own kind. Something like that, whatever, it didn’t sound very multi-culti to me. I’d recommend the programme, though, for the pleasure of hearing a black man without a chip on his shoulder. It was a breath of fresh air.
The BBC will slag off Charlie Williams because he`s dead.
When Savile was alive, they made fairy hammocks out of the old sods string vests.
Only when he died, and had exhausted their tributes schedules, did the BBC begin to wonder about the kiddies trikes parked by his camper van in the Wood Lane car park.
Had Lenny Henry died after his “New Faces” ongoing Black and White Minstrels acts back then?-HE`D now be the “Uncle Tom”.
But Comic Relief was his making…and he`s Othello nowadays..a right thespian polymath.
A worthy tribute to the appalling Jonathan Miller is Lenny the Lamb-hotel bed hopper, and tester for posture springing now since he ditched Dawn.
Today this morning featured one Mike Wooldridge-globe trotting BBC hack of 30 years schlepping round Africa…so said Monty in the run up to the 7am news.
His piece was on how good old Labour wanted the word free of poor people by 2015-and how crap we`ve all been since then.
Yes, literacy up, more kids in school and less absolute poverty maybe…but as long as one tub lacks access to a winch and a Dominos voucher-then we`re all to blame says Mike.
After 30 years.
Well he doesn`t say that-but he DOES blame it all on no cycle tracks in Ugandan villages-oh, and pelican crossings without wheelchair-gripping tarmac in a rainbow flag pattern-no doubt.
Nor does he say that-but both bits of crap above are better reasons to blame Ugandan farmers for being rubbish that is Mikes take on it.
The reasons?…need you ask?
Soil erosion-a banker from the 60s O Level of course.
But Mike adds to this——“Climate Change”!
Africa still hot apparently…but not just because it`s by the Equator.
No-Climate Change.
Bloody Africans digging for coal and copper-no wonder the South Africans shoot them for this.
Well done BBC-will anybody tell me the next time the BBC do NOT blame Climate Change for anything.
Invasion of Syria anybody by Izal?…well as long as they dont` use the electric chair, or use fracked gas to kill, they`ll be just dandy with Mike and his BBC spuds.
Poor Greece-Humphrys always seems to get the gig there doesn`t he?
Wonder why!…he maybe knows the Greek for “polish the plant pots and chill the retsina Stavros”.
If only the BBC would fund ALL their pensioners holidays to Greece…or maybe a group deal to visit Islamic States beaches in Libya or Tunisia?
The Red Sea just goes on getting bigger with the BBC doesn`t it?
“…Well done BBC – will anybody tell me the next time the BBC do NOT blame Climate Change for anything?”
I don’t think there’s anything left that the BBC don’t feel is somehow linked to or the cause of ‘climate change’, tbh. The moment ‘global warming’ jumped the shark and became, as if by magic (for that’s what it was) ‘climate change’, progressives everywhere breathed a self-satisfied sigh of relief.
Now everything could be blamed ‘climate change’. And I do mean just about everything.
Found this Intelligence Squared US debate:
Global warming is not a crisis
It has three panellists for the motion and three against with questions from the audience and a vote at the beginning and the end.
We have never seen, and never will see, anything remotely resembling this kind of balance from the BBC – on this subject or any other.
Here you go – everything IS blamed on climate change (global warming, in old money!)
http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm
I heard Humphrys on R4 – his sone lives in Greece (married to a Greek). Probably uses the story as an excuse to fly out business class with a suitcase full of HP sauce and teabags.
He interviewed his son. His take was that the Greeks are ‘proud people’, so we need to give them more cash.
It was always going to be interesting to see how the BBC handled the Greek in or out vote, what with their sympathy for both Greek and EU guzzling at the trough.
On Outside Source today they made their decision by first oozing sympathy for the ex-Finance Minister, using the technique of quoting from his blog:
The referendum of July 5th will stay in history as a unique moment when a small European nation rose up against debt bondage….
[It will also be remembered as the day the Greek people wallowed in self-righteousness while complaining bitterly about the fact that debts generally have to be repaid.]
Then we hear from an unnamed individual who echoes the Finance Minister’s earlier bleat about “terrorists:”
…he’s not like the dictators, the European leaders who are instilling fear, like terrorists, in Europe.
Finally we hear from someone against the socialist consensus:
We have a Prime Minister who is …. pushing people on his own road. So I believe this is just a communications trick and they don’t want the bill.
‘Balance’ from the BBC.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02vw6gt#auto
Starts at one minute in. (It’s amusing listening to Chloe Tilley trying to pronounce the Greek Finance Minister’s name.)
http://grcade.co.uk/t:would-you-subscribe-to-a-bbc-subscription-service?f=7
I posted my reply thus:
The BBC should be a subscription-only service now. It’s an anachronism that in this age of multi-channel, online, cable and satellite TV we are all forced – by law – to pay what amounts to a poll tax to the BBC just to watch live TV, even if we don’t want to watch the BBC itself. Intellectually, morally and creatively there is no sustainable defence for keeping the license fee.
I don’t deny the BBC does some things extremely well. So does HBO, Sky, Fox, History Channel and Discovery to name but a few. The BBC doesn’t ‘own’ quality programming any more than do any of the multiplicity of other providers, although it wants us to think that somehow it does, by virtue of being a public service broadcaster. The fact that most of these other providers are paid for via subscription or advertising or sales (or some combination of them all) hasn’t somehow eroded the quality of their output. HBO manages to deliver everything from Band of Brothers to Game of Thrones, despite being a commercial operator in a fiercely competitive broadcasting environment. Sky’s own programme making is distinctive and award-winning – take something like Penny Dreadful – and their Arts output is frequently excellent (from operas and dramas to rock concerts and profiles of leading figures in all areas of the arts).
The BBC has to be forced to live in the real world, just like everyone else. At the moment it enjoys a unique – and uniquely unfair – advantage, to the tune of £3.5 – £5bn a year in ‘free money’ courtesy of the licence fee. This grossly disfigures the broadcast environment here in the UK (and even further afield).
I won’t re-rehearse my political arguments against the BBC here; you all know them by now. Putting that aside, the case for the BBC, for me, is one of simple commercial realities and fairness. Why should I be forced under threat of sanction to pay the BBC £145 a year? Even if I choose never to watch any of its output I am still compelled by law to pay for it – this has to be wholly unjust and indefensible.
If the BBC is even half as much the ‘national treasure’ it insists it is, then it should have no trouble at all attracting a large enough paying audience as a subscription-only channel, just like Sky. Arguments over quality and the potential ‘harm’ to the BBC brand that would be caused by having to exist on the proceeds of advertising are red herrings and entirely without merit.
You’ll have to register there to make your own reply, but be warned: this is a predominantly young (30s and under) website and they are (if the results of a recent poll on the site are anything to go by) a majority leftist audience – and the moderators there are extremely ban-happy.
If the BBC is even half as much the ‘national treasure’ it insists it is, then it should have no trouble at all attracting a large enough paying audience as a subscription-only channel, just like Sky.
Spot on, Phil.
The Beeb steps in to rescue the Greek economy.Yes folks, not only is the Beeb going to eliminate the UK’s debt by helping the aged to watch their lovely TV repeats for free, they have also sent their entire news reporting department to Athens to kick-start the Greek economy and fill local piggy banks with hard currency generously donated by British licence payers. The Beeb votes OXOOXI for the end to austerity.
I don’t suspect that many people will know this, but ISIS are on the back foot at the moment. The Kurds are only 30 Miles from their capital city and the Yanks have degraded their offensive capability something rotten. Yet if you only subscribed to the bBC, you’d think that ISIS are on a roll.
Its the same with Boko HAram and AL Shabab all these peaceful Islamic charity groups have received a good kicking, yes they are kicking back, but they are really on their last legs. I’m not saying they will go away, but their ability to advance and capture huge areas are behind them. But according to the bBC, ISIS is the place to be.
Just watching Newsnight. What a f*cking disgrace. No anti-BBC voices, what a surprise!
Report on the survivors of the London bombings. Guess what? They don’t blame Al Quiada: they blamed foreign policy.
Sack the researcher, it is too close to the BBC line.
‘
But as well as usual symptoms, Dr d’Ardenne and her team began to discover some unexpected psychological reactions, unique to 7 July survivors.
“We found people were not angry. They did not blame al-Qaeda [which later claimed responsibility for the attacks]. They did not blame the bombers.
“The people they blamed were quite curious. They blamed the government and foreign policy. And they blamed themselves. For example, I had one person who was having an affair at the time, and thought they were being punished.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-33393468
That’s disgusting. Have they no shame?(GWF)
Despite a changing of the guard in Athens (Kuensberg for Davis) it was business as usual on Newsnight. Pro EU line being pushed especially by choosing the appalling Guy Verhofstadt for interview.
Most hilarious was the extended piece on changes to BBC funding. An absolute disgrace said Steve Hewlett of Radio 4 and some other luvvie had the audacity to say it could well effect the editorial impartiality of Al Beeb’s reporting. By editorially impartial I assume he meant pedalling the same old discredited left wing liberalism. If tonight’ s Newsnight is anything to go by he has nothing to fear
“… say it could well effect the editorial impartiality of Al Beeb’s reporting.”
That seems to come from the same professional mindset that accepts a nurse unable or unwilling to provide water to a dehydrated patient will have value if sent for retraining.
If money is what it takes to be impartial, £4Bpa and pensions that can only go up as well as up should have done the trick. Clearly not.
http://www.theguardian.com/discussion/p/4adcq
Not all comments as supportive as may be imagined.
The par-for-the-course “Conservatives”:
“John Whittingdale, the culture secretary, has confirmed the BBC would take on the phased payment of free licences for the over-75s from 2018 as its contribution to £12bn of welfare cuts in this week’s Budget. Free licences are currently funded by the Department for Work and Pensions.
In return, the BBC would in future be allowed to charge for its iPlayer catch-up services, which can be watched without a licence at present. It would also benefit from guaranteed increases in its £3.7bn licence fee income, in line with inflation measured by the consumer price index.”
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/922ac97a-23ea-11e5-bd83-71cb60e8f08c.html#axzz3f9ddv4bZ
This wretched government has not got a real conservative thought in it’s collective head. Maybe a few individual members are conservative but the cabinet? Dream on.
There is no justification for the compulsory tax in 2015. As for it being a criminal offence not to pay that is iniquitous and an affront to a free society.
As goes this government’s subservience to the liberal left dominated BBc so will go it’s subservience to the EU. WE will be stiched up good and proper.
This is a dreadful government . The more so because it professes to be a conservative one. It is nothing of the sort and I would have preferred Milleband. At least you knew where you were with that old lefty.
Blessed relief, that poor, demonised, radicalised “family of twelve” may not have put themselves in harm’s way after all:
http://www.newsbiscuit.com/2015/07/02/family-of-twelve-feared-to-have-travelled-to-margate/
Anyone see this Newsbeat report on why a man carrying a flag through Westmnister shouldn’t be arrested? I guess they’re going to start arguing for the rights of people to march with Nazi or “homophobic” banners.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/33410837/why-this-man-wrapped-in-an-islamic-state-flag-was-not-arrested-in-central-london
And a hate preacher directly connected to the Tunisia attack lives on £48,000 benefits in a half million house while all the time Sgt Blackman is serving life for killing an enemy combatant. The judge at his trial totally ignored all the mitigating circumstances. Our fastest growing demographic had to be reassured that a #Talibanlivesmatter. There’s a great piece on that at: http://john-moloney.blogspot.com/2015/06/free-sergeant-blackman.html
It’s a report on why a man carrying a [ISIS] flag though Westminster WASN’T arrested. Which is a very different thing of course.
If he’d been carrying a Confederate flag he’d have been in real trouble.
*Breaking News*
HM Government rolls over and has tummy tickled by BBC. Licence Fee to rise substantially. A Government spokesman says “We are increasing the tax to get less in.”
Irony free zone on the BBC this morning as the corporation decries monopolistic utilities that rip off millions of complacent consumers – particularly the vulnerable poor – and so many not sufficiently motivated to ‘switch’ whilst the efforts of regulators seem to count for nothing – gosh, something should be done.
7/7 memorial BBc Breakfast drags in an iman from Leeds who has done work in the community. Any surprises when he brings in young muslims being targeted blah blah blah. Still nice to see that they managed to clear the memorial of migrants. Wonder if they’ll be back after the cameras have gone? http://www.express.co.uk/pictures/galleries/2822/Migrant-crisis-in-Europe/East-European-migrants-set-up-camp-at-the-7-7-bombing-memorial-in-Hyde-Park-63431g
Wimbledon 2015: Nick Kyrgios calls Dawn Fraser a ‘blatant racist’
An interesting story/ non story. After all, Dawn Fraser unreservedly apologised as BBC SPORT acknowledges. Apparently Dawn is not a BBC favoured person or the headline would be Olympic great apologises for offensive remark.
What the BBC omits which suggests they haven’t done any research is that Ms. Fraser was famous for misbehaviour. At the Tokyo Olympics she was accused of stealing an Olympic flag from a flagpole outside Emperor Hirohito’s palace. She was arrested but released without charge. In the end she was given the flag as a souvenir. If memory serves she was sent home! She went back to where her father came from 🙂
I guess she is in many ways lucky not to come under the BBC ambit. At 77 (why her advanced age wasn’t a defence is unknown) the headline could be Non license payer accused of racism
I wonder, when or indeed if the BBC will report on this story? Lyse Doucet? Probably never. That would require research and possibility of never being allowed back to Gaza.
US Expert: Hamas, not Israel, Killed Boys on Beach in Gaza War
Given the amount of time before the BBC acknowledged the Gaza casualty figures might have been fudged or Mohammed Dura might have been Pallywood I won’t be holding my breath.
In case you missed Pat Condell on Thought for Today this morning (or any morning for that matter) here he is with a message for progressives. He manages to nail every BBC belief.
Really funny and straight to the point. It is completely useless engaging with liberals but fun to wind them up.
Try it and see their shocked looks.
Bias straight to the iPlayer. I’ve not watched Frankie Boyle’s Election Autopsy, but Ben Logan of the Guardian loved it:
By that, I mean that Boyle, a comedian, is actually – whisper it – expressing a political preference on a BBC comedy show. And he’s not doing so under his breath: the whole show is delivered unapologetically from the point of view that the Tories are sociopathic. Maybe Boyle’s getting away with it because, while anti-Tory, he’s not actually pro-anyone. (He says he doesn’t vote.) In fact, he acknowledges a slight preference, grudgingly, for the Labour party – for whom guests Sara Pascoe and Katherine Ryan don’t disguise their sympathy – and the SNP. Incidentally, on how many networked TV comedy shows would 100% of the guests be female?
Yes, far leftist Boyle grudgingly lends his support to Labour and the SNP because a party more in line with his beliefs – such as the SWP – has no chance of being elected – ever. Anyway, should you have the stomach to watch this, you can do so here : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1lJU90tV_w
My word, a group of so-called comedians having a left wing circle jerk. How edgy.
People still listen to this charlatan? If I mix every other word in my sentences with “fuck”, “cunt”, “arse” and “shit” and make fun of people with Down’s syndrome, can I be rich and famous too?
Humphrys was on his best “indignation” form this morning on Today as he interviewed his boss about the new BBC licence fee
stitch-upagreement between the BBC and the government. It occurred to me that this apparently ill-tempered discussion had been more or less rehearsed. Why? Because it’s pretty obvious that Hall played a blinder with the so-called “anti-BBC” Whittingdale.If the reports are correct, the BBC’s got what it wants: a continuation of the licence fee system: this time inflation-proofed and extended to cover non-contemporaneous viewing of BBC. Yes the over-75s will continue to be relieved of payment of the fee (at the BBC’s apparent “expense” although this is well compensated for by the fee coverage extension) but only until 2020 when the BBC will have the discretion to charge them and/or change the conditions for exemption.
And in return? AFAIAA there has been nothing in the agreement to deal with the disgraceful BBC complaints “system”. The noises about removing oversight of the BBC from the BBC Trust to Ofcom disguise the reality that Ofcom is drawn from the same reservoir of bien pensant slime as the Trust. What’s Humphrys angry about? Apparently he considers that the over-75 bit draws the BBC into politics by doing the government’s dirty work. In one sense this is true but, unusually for the BBC – and the government – the over-75 issue would be transparent. Accordingly, any “damage” to the BBC’s much vaunted “independence” would be in the range of zero to very slight.
The upshot of all this? Despite Osborne’s stated but disingenuous “concern” about the BBC’s imperial ambitions, the BBC remains an unaccountable monolith and the left’s not-so-secret weapon in the war against truth and objective relaying of facts. It also occurs to me that this deal with the BBC is just a dry-run for Cameron’s “negotiations” with the EU pre a referendum. If the government can get away with this agreement with the BBC, the likelihood of any substantial change – let alone an exit from the EU post 2017 – is vanishingly small.
Yes indeed. A major victory for the BBC. A well rehearsed moan from the BBC, so Tory supporters will think the Government is standing up to the BBC, and then business as normal. Thank you Dave and all from the BBC, we will continue to work with you in support of the EU and back your Quisling Government over its appeasement of Islam
Apparently he considers that the over-75 bit draws the BBC into politics by doing the government’s dirty work.
It’s all Labour’s dirty work. When Labour decided over-75s should get a free licence, it should have been just that – free. But Labour know where their bread is buttered and so compensated the BBC with taxpayers’ money.
I always predicted Whittingdale would be useless – and so it has proved. The BBC must be chuffed. They can make pathetic noises about ‘cutz’ imposed by the Tories, but we all know the Champagne will continue to flow down the corridors of upper-echelon BBC executive suites.
It’s Toy Town money, after all, isn’t it? The BBC has never earned an honest penny in its filthy, sponging, bullying life. Just a crying shame that ‘witless’ Whittingdale missed a rare chance to strike a killing blow on the hateful Corporation.
But somehow very few, if any of us, ever thought he really would.
Alas.
Now the talk is of abandoning moves to decriminalise non-payment of the licence fee, whilst the license fee goes up by a further £10. £155pa just to own a TV and watch live TV – even if you never actually watch the BBC. This is blatantly unjust. Still, it should keep the criminal courts busy for the next decade.
You can almost feel the sneer of contempt emanating from Broadcasting House.
Typical Cameron policy but many of us have noticed and are prepared for the EU stitch up to be sold to us as a triumph of the Cameron will.
There is no possible justification for the BBC’s theft of the nation’s money and as for criminalising non payment that is so iniquitous that it is beyond belief.
Cameron was always going to be the man he has become and why on earth the BBc attacks him is something beyond me. He is one of the hive and the hive thinks it has won again.
Bad news for freedom and bad news for the nation.
Oh please, surely Wimbledon 2Day is worth the licence fee all on its own?
Yes good post, the biggest question has to be how will they charge for the IPlayer?
Does this mean that older equipment (TVs, DvD players and PVRs) with the app will become redundant? As in most cases manufacturers stop firmware updates after a couple of years. My 3 year old Sony TV has already lost the ability to show YouTube videos.
Will it be yet another case of needing new equipment required to view?
I won’t be paying.
Is it Google which retains for 1 year all info in respect of searches made via its search engine? Analogously I wouldn’t underestimate the ingenuity of our rulers (for our own good of course) to persuade/force ISPs to disclose details of anyone who gets online access to iPlayer. I suspect this will go with a tightening of the process whereby those viewing TV through cable will have their details disclosed to the BBC by the cable companies (if it isn’t done already). I guess a comprehensive online surveillance system is already in place but restricted, for now, to identifying any so-called Islamic fifth columnists out there: the system will just be aimed at a far greater threat – licence fee refuseniks! Whatever, the great British public will pay more for faux-impartiality and assorted dross whether they like it or not.
I hate to be the one to tell you, but all phone conversations are recorded and saved. All SMS messages are recorded and saved. All emails are recorded and saved (actually US law that all transatlantic calls are recorded and has been for a very long time). All search history is recorded and saved. All online comments are tracked and saved. They don’t need to ‘force’ ISPs to do anything. Once you filter out the images, video, streaming content, etc, the actual text content of people’s web activities aren’t that ‘big’. GHHQ and the NSA are performing massive levels of intrusion on any traffic that passes through their jurisdiction.
Dear BBC ..And the difference is?
http://tinyurl.com/o8t2zqm
http://tinyurl.com/p3o2ktq
“Those of us who have television licences will pay more; over-75s will see no change; and although the BBC will take a short-term hit, it will continue to benefit from a continuation of the licence fee. It will also benefit from a proposed change that will allow it to charge people for the use of iPlayer, whilst at the same time refusing to contemplate funding by subscription….”
http://www.axethetvtax.net/the-freedom-associations-axe-the-tv-tax-campaign-responds-to-todays-announcement-by-the-culture-secretary-on-bbc-funding/
John ‘safe pair of hands*’ Whittingdale, eh?
Interesting that even the Press Gazette, often tenacious on BBC obfuscation, especially on FOI and Press Office BS, seems to have swallowed the Kool-Aid on core concerns in favour of industry self-interest, beyond its choice of image:
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/bbc-news-website-under-attack-ahead-charter-review-newspapers-call-behemoth-be-tamed?
The one commenter thus far has an interesting avatar to go with his affection for the BBC.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Question_of_Loyalty
*’The next day, Hacker is giving his evidence to the Committee. Having received the Minister’s prepared statement, the chairman allows questions from the committee members, and Betty Oldham is one of the most tenacious. She asks Hacker about a book written by an ex-Assistant Secretary of the DAA, a man called Rhodes, who has alleged a huge waste of public money in the department. Hacker hasn’t heard of it and consults his officials: they advise him to stall. Meanwhile, Oldham reads him several examples of supposed extravagance and Hacker’s replies are unconvincing. The committee agrees to put the allegations to Sir Humphrey, who is due to present evidence the following week.’
Some may recall how Angie Bray tried to raise awkward questions in The Future of the BBC Committee, but the Chair shut her down, bless him. Seems even committees can be relied upon now.
On the day we remember the 7/7 atrocity, we should never forget it was Labour who spun. lied and coerced the Parliamentary vote to radicalise millions living in this country by backing that idot Bush.
Like most of the other major problems we face in this country, Labour chickens come home to roost:
A lot of Americans take their children out of the education system and home school them because of the brainwashing, 2+2=5 kind of thing as this clip demonstrates.
Absolutely hilarious. While discussing which children’s books should be removed from the school library:
“It’s a little bit sexist because the girl [tames the wild horse] by giving it sugar. She doesn’t tame it, or overcome it, in the way that a male would”
“She used her mind over her muscles. Would you rather Jennifer punched the horse between the eyes?”
“I’d rather she had the choice”
No complaints, or grumbles, just a recommendation:
R4 this a.m. @ 9.00a.m.: A Life Scientific – Dorothy Bishop
Enjoy.
Maybe more ‘careful how truth gets dafter than fiction’ at current rates?:
http://conservativewoman.co.uk/kathy-gyngell-at-this-rate-the-female-quota-obsessed-bbc-will-make-clare-balding-its-political-editor/
Clare Balding tennis expert ” What do you think of men with beards ? ” John McEnroe ” Why are you asking me that question for ? “
A quicker wit might have replied “do you like women with beards?”
bBC contract annualled….
Or “Do you like Mary Beard, the esteemed historian and presenter who used the word ‘piss’ in her pre-watershed documentary about Pompeii in preference to ‘urinate’ or even ‘pee’.”
In comparison to that completely unsexist tweet that has got the feminazis and Beeboidfascists in a lather about the womens’ football team, this was clearly more sexist.
And the woman with scary eyes on Sky’s Paper Review last night was condemning this inoffensive (and actually positive) tweet but virtually wetting her knickers whern talking about the sexiness of the Greek minister. Double standards??? Not ‘arf!
If I have to pay for the BBC iplayer, I won’t use it. There’s very, very little on it worth watching.
I’m sure there are several million viewers out there who agree with me.
The IPlayer, unlike terrestrial TV and recordings (assuming your equipment is not connected to the web) tells the BBC lots of information about you, the programs you watch, your interests, even your policial leanings.
Once the BBC is equipped with your name and address from your IPlayer contract, they can sell that information just like supermarkets do from your loyality card use.
More big brother.
I understood from news reports that the use of any catch up service such as the ITV player will require a licence. Is this correct and, more to the point, how the hell do they intend to police it?
Yes – even if you use ITV catch-up but no BBC – you would still have to pay the BBC.
Has anybody else noticed how, over the last few years, the Left have been repositioning cricket as a ‘posh’ boy’s game?
The BBC were at it again with Desert Island Discs where Frddie Flintoff was the guest. Granted, I only heard a trailer so there may have been more to it in the body of the programme but the trailer itself was unambiguous.
The narrative went something like this: Freddie played cricket which was very unusual for a working class lad it being a tad elitist and only played at private schools so how come he took it up as a kid? How did he feel walking through a council estate in his cricket whites?
This line is backed up by a Telegraph article on Flintoff:
When Andrew was born, the family lived in Preston itself, in Lauderdale Road, a few streets from Greenlands County Primary School, and less than five minutes from Ribbleton Hall High School. The cricket-mad boy was unable to indulge his passion at the two schools. There were no cricket teams. Today, the area has a feel of decadence and decay, surrounded by large council estates where gangs of youths hang listlessly on street corners, and smaller ragamuffin kids play games in the narrow one-way roads.
Fair enough. But how did this happen? Listening to the BBC the last couple of generations would think it was always thus, the way the BBC and their Leftist chums gleefully scream ‘elitist’ whenever the lack of opportunity for young lads (and lasses) to play it comes up for discussion (Kirst’s tone was one of amusement, bordering on sneering at the sheer snobbery of it all).
But the reality couldn’t be further from the truth. As a council house lad growing up in the fifties cricket was widely played by kids from all backgrounds and at every state primary in the borough, whose teams played each other just as they did at football in the winter. In your street the wicket was a garden gate or chalked on the wall and lots of lads had cricket bats, usually by way of eagerly-anticipated birthday presents. If there was no bat available, a battered tennis racquet would be used (yes, horror of horrors, working class lads had tennis racquets!).
So why are the BBC so keen to perpetuate the ‘elitist’ myth rather than encourage a return to how things were, when lads from all backgrounds were as mad about cricket as they were about football? Is it part of their ignorance of the working class, seeing them only through the prism of their middle class, elitist education and upbringing mixed with their Marxist ideal of what the working class should be? Or do they view cricket as the preserve of the Lords Taverners with their eccentric ties and blazers, one of the last bastions of the upper class that must be destroyed?
Whatever it is, these out of touch bastards are doing cricket and young lads (and lasses) no favours at all.
Not really, Sky is off limits in this household, all I’ve seen on the bBC is them bigging up the English WG Grace look a like ‘ish’ as you would expect…
For that reason and the frequency of the event, for the first time I’m not really getting into the Ashes this time around.
http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/jul/07/bbc-considering-move-news-channel-online-only?
The BBC declined to comment.
http://order-order.com/2015/07/07/chris-bryants-bbc-drivel/
While Mr. Whittingdale seems bent on selling the public down the river, his shadow appears to be unable to locate it other than by falling in.
Amazing who gets handed Ministerial positions these days.
Whittingdale is a snake-oil salesman, Joe bloody public will end up paying more for this bbc crock of shite that he doesn’t want.
Gradually moving content on-line strategy, BBC tell government we need a BBC Internet Licence, government will oblige, the fee is added to your broadband monthly by your ISP. Goal achieved everyone pays.
Liberal Marxist freeloaderscrafty thieving b*stards will always find a way to get at other people’s money.The obvious BBC online payments will be hopefully like any other online subscription which you have to pay for before access is given to the programmes.
That will do me in preference to any other payment method since I will not have to pay if I do not want to subscribe online.
There was no ‘Loophole’ when the BBC introduced the BBC Iplayer free on-line in 2007 at a cost £6 million to develop. The ‘BBC-Trojan’ planted, first step for the introduction of the BBC Internet Licence had begun.
One of the current arguments against bBC subscription is that it would mean viewers would need another ‘set-top box’, as per Sky, to do so and the prohibitive costs of doing so are always pushed to the fore.
There are no such ‘real estate’ barriers to running an online subscription service. Make iplayer a subscription service, then those who watch pay.
I don’t watch the bBC and can therefore see no reason I would ever watch iplayer.
The empire is falling (hopefully)
It is unwatchable for many reasons but It’s the loud drums between news items that makes me switch to Sky.
BBC Online News today.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-33424229
Israeli children have bomb shelters.
Palestinian children don’t.
Lyse Doucet fails to ask why not?
Is it because Hamas have failed to invest in shelters with their abundant foreign aid?
Perhaps it doesn’t fit the BBC’s ‘victim Palestine’ narrative?
Perhaps its because Hamas needs child victims as propaganda?
..
Perhaps it’s because Israel doesn’t deliberately target children?
Lyse Doucet also fails to ask why Israel needs bomb shelters for its children.
Of course the Palestinians have bomb shelters. They just call them tunnels.
Can any of the usual defenders of the BBC who visit this website please explain how having a separate BBC Asian Network facilitates integration?
Black is white. Left is right. Truth is lie. ‘Integration’ is promotion of newly arrived, alien, minority cultures and disparaging native British ones. Simples!
‘Integration’ is a dirty word amongst progressives. Has been for a while, which probably explains why there has been so little of it about. ‘Integration’ apparently offends everyone, with its overtones of ‘forced assimilation’ or some such nonsense.
This is why, instead, we have all had to suffer the idiocy of ‘multiculturalism’ (‘celebrating the differences’). Asking people from other cultures who come here to settle to ‘integrate’ with their host country is considered ‘racist’.
Ho hum.
PF
Ask them … to integrate. if you wish.
I ask them to emigrate.
The Tories have now shown they have no intention of sorting out the bBC. A dirty deal based on financing the £500M, in exchange for letting the bBC fleece more money out of us to pay for the OAPs.
Tories have no intention of sorting out the BBC. Yes. We are slowly learning that the BBC pulls the strings behind the Tory Party. Here and in the US we speak of a liberal/left media with a bias in favour of ‘progressive’ politicians. I believe we are seeing a change in the UK story: the BBC is no longer the servant of the so-called progressive politicians; the politicians are the servants of the BBC which is becoming the central political force in the country. The Whittingdale scam over BBC finance is a good indication of this.