I am sure that you, like me, will have been deeply moved by BBC “star” Lenny Henry’s moving words in defence of the Corporation in its print arm, The Guardian!
“Without its support, my career would have come to an early halt, I wouldn’t have set up my own production company … and it made me brave on diversity”
I think what Lenny is really saying is that he believes you MUST cough up the £145 a year in order to keep him in and his cronies in the style to which they have become accustomed. I find it amusing that the BBC cannot see that the glowing endorsements of all these left wing luvvies only makes our point that it is a profoundly left wing biased broadcaster!
Er…isn’t that the same ‘racist’ BBC that doesn’t give ethnic minorities a chance to bloom, flourish and fulfill their destiny?
Personally I blame Hughie Green and ITV.
I guess the commercial TV advertising cheque on behalf of Premier Inns comes in useful too.
Whatever would he have done without the BBC?
Plus, I suppose the large BBC cheques that his equally large ex-missus received must also have helped the family finances somewhat.
“…I find it amusing that the BBC cannot see that the glowing endorsements of all these left wing luvvies only makes our point that it is a profoundly left wing biased broadcaster!”
Isn’t the license fee the kind of thing lefties call ‘wealth transfer’ – taking money from the poor to give to trendy, rich North London t*ssers in the arts, TV and theatre..? Or did I get that wrong?
Mr Henry has had his bed nicely feathered for years, courtesy of the licence payers. I don’t think anyone should be surprised if he pops up singing its praises and extolling the virtues of a blatantly unfair, morally unjustifiable potentially criminalising poll tax on the poorest and most vulnerable, whilst having the arrogance and sheer hypocrisy to rattle the Red Nose tin in the other hand…
Left wing hypocrisy and arrogance knows no bounds.
The amount of talentless people that the BBC has ‘supported’ is sickening; in my opinion, they would have found it impossible to make it within the creative industries. Its comedy is appalling and saturated by egotistical lefties who equate slagging off Ukip with being funny; and its drama is simply atrocious. Also, I’m seeing a lot of ethnic and gender minorities (especially gays) on channels these days which is possibly out of proportion to their numbers in the make-up of society. Now, I have zero problem with any minority in a position of entertainment if they are talented BUT, sometimes I wonder whether they are there due to merit or diversity quotas.
Yes, a network of utterly talentless people, same old faces everywhere. Have a look at dramatic productions, musical events, in our local schools. See the talented kids coming along that you will never see on our TV screens.
Lord Henry(lol) must be stupendously unaware.
So we need to keep the bbc so he keeps getting paid? Beyond parody
He wants to man up, white up and try to crack Hollywood again instead…..the slacker.
I like the bit about setting up his own production company…..’Crucial Films’ was formed early 1990s but by 1999 were only making projects starring Lenny himself as they spectacularly failed to attract programme commissioning from any TV networks , including the BBC, from 1996 onwards.
A bit like when they ask people on benefits what they think about their benefits being reduced really.
It’s exactly like that, once you realise the licence fee is just welfare for luvvies’n’leftists.
I remember when Lenny Henry was funny..
Maybe not..
there are 2 classic camps now that are organising this quiet sly fightback in defending bbc bias and this illegal, immoral poll tax called the tv license,we have had it all week on radio 5 live phone ins with these posh sounding middle class university mummy and daddy boys types who who heap nothing but praise on the bbc and the jeremy corbyn camp type luvvies who love the bbc because they have an obvious pro labour party left wing bias,what is the bigger shame about all this is these leftists who love and can afford the tv licence are prepared to see every year 150,00 of the poorest in society dragged through the courts and fined and 100 of the poorest mainly single parent women jailed because they was to poor to afford to pay the tv license,i hope the left are proud of that,they disgust me.
Exactly this. But you pose the kind of argument against the license fee that they all know is indefensible, so they would rather you don’t make the point. Talk instead about ‘values’, about ‘quality’, about how the BBC ‘defines the culture of the nation’… but whatever you do, don’t ask them why they think it’s fair that everyone should be forced – by law – to pay for something they might not want.
James Purnell (upper-echelon BBC apparatchik, ex-Labour drone) thinks the BBC can be legitimately compared to Apple. He doesn’t understand that nobody is compelled, by threats or bullying, to pay for Apple products if they don’t want them.
This is the logic deficit – the real-world disconnect – at work in the top levels of the BBC.
Cognitive dissonance.
It’s why liberals can supposedly hate state interference (unless it’s Labour) and big corporations whilst simultaneously supporting a state controlled multi-billion pound corporation like the BBC
The chief officer of the County Council where I live has a habit of calling Council Tax payers “customers”.
I have pointed out several times to this person that we are not “customers”. A customer is someone who has a choice, a choice whether or not to purchase a particular product or service, and a choice of which supplier to use.
I wasted my time, not only do this overpaid dick still use the term it has spread to his subordinates.
Local Government, another group that would not survive in the real world.
‘…about how the BBC ‘defines the culture of the nation’
The BBC shouldn’t be defining anything, but it does. As in ‘The BBC definition of the Arab-Israeli conflict’. Or ‘The BBC definition of climate change’. Or ‘The BBC definition of terrorist’ (I think that should be ‘miltant’ – Ed.). Etc.
Quite. The moment the BBC can be said to be ‘defining’ anything, it places itself into the ring, as a protagonist for a cause. It should be holding that ring, not entering it.
I would like to be perfectly clear on this – I would personally be extremely happy to pay quite a lot more than £145 pa for a national broadcaster that was demonstrably impartial as an organisation. I would not care if its output was opinionated or partisan, as long as it was clearly labelled as such and strongly differentiated from news and reporting output which should be synoptic, comprehensive and, in its correct sense, inclusive. News should be fearlessly bland, so much so that the only compaint that could be levelled against it would be that blandness.
If the BBC wishes to determine its ‘nett direction of bias’ by weighing up the ‘balance’ of complaints it receives according to some yardstick of political leaning, then it should at least disaggregate this score for individual programme outputs. It should aim, under this regime, for a balance of hours of output (or indeed output-hours x viewing population) versus the nett direction of complaint. This would be a more interesting measure, I think.
In any case, I would like to emphasise that I don’t think that biased output is the same thing as a biased BBC. Not at all – what makes the BBC unacceptably biased is its tacit endorsement and promotion of particular biases by refusing to admit (a) that they exist, or (b) that where they exist, they are indefensible in a publicly-funded body (eg 28-gate).
Remember: you can have a partisan broadcaster; you can have a publicly-funded broadcaster; but you cannot have both embodied in the same organisation. You have to give up one or the other.
The key point here, Phil, is “everyone should be forced – by law – to pay” is not for a common good, as with income tax for schools, hospitals, armed forces, etc., but is for mere entertainment. Then, if that is not bad enough, that “everyone should be forced – by law – to pay” not only enriches people who are paid by it but we find it also enables them to speculate with investments (which is not illegal), to avoid paying their taxes, take drugs, perpetrate horrible activities, etc., etc., all of which ARE illegal.
If I voluntarily choose to pay for a good or service then what the provider or seller does with my money after the deal is done is none of my business, although if I knew that they will do something bad or wrong I may (and would choose to) refrain from giving them my custom. Which would be a boycott, a personal boycott.
Seem to recall from somewhere that the ‘hard Left’ like a good boycott . . . .
. . . . a curious disconnect, then, in the thinking of ‘those of that persuasion’ at the BBC and others who are rushing to support the Licence Fee remaining or increasing in future.
And then there is the little matter of the very near 1 Billion pound BBC wage bill as part of Lord Haw Haw’s austerity cutback that never really happened as the LUVVIES simply reapply to get their old job back at higher rate or stuffed into BBC Promotions (who’d vote for the BBC now)! Another lot on six figure salaries winners for 31 BBC ‘whoopee winner’ managers and no real jobsworth redundancies either but an INCREASE of 18,000 in a SINGLE year (under Lord Haw Haw’s command).. Time for the License to be scrapped entirely (or reduced to £15 payable in old Luncheon Vouchers). Bloody Hell even 74 BBC self-styled ‘captains of industry’ managers earn more then the PM does. As does Lenny Henry who along with other actor luvvies can rely on a bit of a bung from the BBC when asked.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3160808/BBC-claims-slashing-staff-increased-payouts-stars-boosted-total-wage-bill-hired-people.html?ITO=1490&ns_mchannel=rss&ns_campaign=1490
if the poor could afford to pay the tv license fair enough,but they cant.
it made Lenny Henry ‘brave on diversity’! The same hypocrite that demanded and got a programme exclusively devoid of white people?
“Without its support, my career would have come to an early halt, I wouldn’t have set up my own production company … and it made me brave on diversity”
Does that mean that Blacks cannot make it on their own without financial and publicity support from institutioanally racist Whitey institutions.
Yes.