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A Grieving widow has been hit with a £180 fine after her dead husband was summoned to court.

Maureen Davies was stunned to be told her husband had been hit with the fine for failing to appear in court – despite the fact he died five months ago….

Following a six-week stay in hospital, the 47-year-old returned home to find that Swansea magistrates had fined husband Leonard, even though he had passed away in May.

Mrs Davies had been married to husband Leonard for almost 28 years, but he became ill after a freak fall.

The accident left him with brain damage, and although he had spent the past two years recovering, the 50-year-old died in May this year following complications caused after he fell out of bed.

Shortly before his death, the family home had been visited by television licensing staff who had quizzed Mr Davies about the licence. Because of his condition he was unable to give them the details they wanted.

But Mrs Davies called them back the following day to claim that their TV licence was in her name, which she paid weekly to make sure it was up-to-date.

Just a couple of days after the death of husband, she received another letter in his name demanding payment and threatening prosecution.

“I called them and said I had already told them once that I pay for the licence, and that my husband had just passed away,” said Mrs Davies.

However, in June another letter arrived demanding payment,

The strain of the loss of her husband led her to have a nervous breakdown, and she was taken into hospital for care.

The bit that takes the biscuit though is this, near the end:

A television licensing spokesman apologised about the incident, but said that Mrs Davies still was unlicensed and urged her to make payments urgently.

Whatever the status of Mrs. Davies’ tellytax account, what business do the BBC’s goons have discussing it with a newspaper? Haven’t they heard of the Data Protection Act, or is anythimg that threatens individuals and intimidates everyone okay with the BBC?

Awful. The full force of the BBC law being applied to a depressed widow. Still, it’ll keep those Beeboid hearts warm on their picket lines…

Visit Letters from BBC Television Licensing to see a wide range of the BBC’s intimidatory letters. See also Jonathan Miller’s campaign against the tellytax. The website could do with an update, but their BBC Resistance Forum is usually quite lively.

Just for good measure, here’s a video, originally from Jonathan Miller’s site, of a BBC tellytax enforcement goon assaulting a disabled man, Ron Sinclair, on September 1st, 2004. Ron’s crime? He filmed the goon after he went next door to ‘interview’ Ron’s neighbour.

See here for more details. Curiously, neither of these tales have been reported on BBC Views Online.

P.S. Have you seen those irritating ‘talking sofa’ adverts that the BBC broadcast along with all the other BBC adverts? The irony of an empty sofa in front of an unwatched television threatening people with fines for non-payment sums up the BBC nicely: pay us whether you watch the BBC or not.

P.P.S. At night the BBC often repeats programmes from peak time with signing for the deaf, and, yep, you guessed it: they have a ‘talking sofa’ ad with sign-language just to make sure the deaf are fully intimidated too.

Thank you to Biased BBC reader dai bando for the newspaper link.

Today, Jon Craig, late of the BBC, asks How many BBC men…?

On the day the BBC announced cuts and job losses, even the Prime Minister’s mild-mannered and quietly-spoken press spokesman, Mike Ellam, couldn’t resist a little dig at the number of the corporation’s senior correspondents attending the EU summit in Lisbon.

At a briefing about Gordon Brown’s so-called “red lines” in the controversial new EU treaty, Mr Ellam was asked for the Prime Minister’s view on the BBC’s announcement about job cuts.

“I could address that to the…” he said mischievously, pointing to each of the BBC journalists in front of him in the UK briefing room in the Lisbon Media Centre.

For the record, representing the BBC at the No 10 briefing were:

• Political Editor Nick Robinson

   

• News 24 Chief Political Correspondent James Landale

   

• Newsnight Political Correspondent David Grossman

   

• Radio 5 Live Political Correspondent John Pienaar

   

• Europe Editor Mark Mardell

Most, if not all, have their own producer at the summit and there is a team of BBC journalists here from Brussels as well as Westminster.

Incidentally, Sky News, ITN, Channel Four and Five News, each has just one correspondent at the summit.

Mr Ellam said, diplomatically, that the BBC cuts were a matter for its governors and licence payers, before adding, perhaps ominously: “They are entitled to value for money in the same way that taxpayers are.”

Quite.

Good old Sky – always first with the news…

Please use this thread for comments about the BBC’s current programming and activities. This post will remain at or near the top of the blog. Scroll down to find new topic-specific posts. N.B. this is not an invitation for general off-topic comments, rants or use as a chat forum. Space here is competitive – comments may be reactively moderated.

about proposed BBC budget savings, including a filmed report by Liz McKean, Paxman interviewing Sir Michael Lyons, Chairman of the BBC Trust and the best bit, a studio discussion with Stuart Murphy, former Controller of BBC3, Jeff Randall, former BBC Business Editor and Paxman.

Liz McKean’s package started off informing us that “[The BBC is] having to do so with less, £2 billion pounds less of the public’s money”, then a pause, then the truth, “than it wanted…”. This was followed by a snippet of David Cox, a former ITV executive, stating what is obvious outside of London W12:

The BBC’s priorities ought to be to do those things that commercial broadcasters don’t do. There’s no reason why single parents or old age pensioners should be forced at gun point to pay for something that could be perfectly well done by commercial broadcasters, supported by advertising or by subscriptions paid by the people who actually want to watch those things.

…followed by the heartwarming though ridiculous sight of five-thousand, sorry, five Beeboids ‘protesting’ half-heartedly on the street:

Save our BBC!

…which is of course part of the problem – they regard it as their BBC rather than the public’s BBC. Liz intoned gravely that “it’s expected that in news alone 500 jobs will be cut”, then a union rep. threatened strike action (bring it on!), then back to Liz: “the digital era is ushering in new platforms and the BBC is committed to occupying them all” – occupy, got that? And the sad news that “I understand that staff will be told tomorrow that the BBC’s vast website, six million pages, will be hacked back” – which I expect really means it just won’t grow so fast, so less of quality stuff like this then.

Liz then interviewed a BBC fan, followed by Mr. Richard D. North, author of Scrap the BBC!*, who is not a fan:

Mark Thompson can make all the reforms he likes and they are doubtless necessary and good reforms, but in the end, the game is up. There is simply no rationale for a compulsory fee funded BBC.

…then cut to a fluffy quote from noted broadcasting expert and recipient of BBC largesse, actress Joanna Lumley:

This is the gold standard. This is the one blue-chip company we’ve got in this country. The one!

…well, I guess turkeys don’t vote for Christmas Joanna, do they. We then headed back to the studio for the delicious irony of Jeremy Paxman declaring:

Well, at this point, the BBC has required me to declare an interest because I’ve spoken out about how the BBC’s cuts might affect Newsnight.

…before starting his interview with Sir Michael Lyons, which starts at exactly five minutes into the first video clip (I’m too tired to transcribe it in the early hours, so you’ll just have to watch it):

The best part of Newsnight’s coverage was the studio discussion, see second clip, with Stuart Murphy, the former Controller of BBC3, deliciously and preciously defending his inconsequential and expensive little bit of the BBC against obvious barbs from Paxman and Randall. Randall, as ever, was on the money:

An illustrative excerpt:

Randall: “I think this requires some really big bold judgements from management, not asking every department to lose a little bit, forget Newsnight, let’s look at the Today programme, £5 million annual budget, that’s less than the BBC pays Jonathan Ross in one year, and that’s not to be nasty to Jonathan Ross, but it puts into perspective the kind of pressures that are on news”

Murphy: “But it’s really difficult making those comparisons, isn’t it, I mean, when you look at the talent cost of Jonathan Ross I think licence fee payers expect, the main thing is, licence fee payers expect there to be maximum value from the licence fee, licence fee payers also, won’t come to the BBC, unless the BBC has major talent they love, and it’s a balancing act, you need to pay big stars big wages or they won’t be at the BBC”

Absolutely classic Beeboid drivel Stuart – most folk couldn’t care less if Woss was on ITV or the BBC – the more so when they realise just how extravagant the BBC was in paying him so much over the odds for his so-called talent.

Please try not to weep too much (in mirth or despair) in the comments…

* available in hardback direct from the publishers, The Social Affairs Unit, for a bargain £4.00 plus £2.75 postage via Amazon Marketplace (look for seller omm-sau).

Thank you to Biased BBC reader Lurker in a Burqua for the Telegraph link.

Although I really hate to say this on the week that the BBC bosses will announce job losses in news and current affairs (why don’t they merge BBC3 and BBC4 instead of cutting the very heart of what the BBC should be about?), there was yet another example of massive over-staffing today.

When Chris Huhne launched his Lib Dem leadership bid, our cameraman took the trouble to count the number of BBC people present.

There were TWELVE of them

Sky and ITN had three each.

Nuff said.

Via Guido.

– the usual mush of dumbed down right-on BBC output. Highlights included, in no particular order:

• a report on the appearance of Northern Rock executives before parliament, including mention of criticism of the BBC for their part in precipitating the run on the bank, followed by a fairly lengthy studio discussion with Robert Peston justifying the BBC’s role. Naturally enough, this was countered by someone with an opposing view, er, except it wasn’t;

   

• continuing coverage of the Metropolitan Police Health and Safety trial over the shooting of “the innocent Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes”. If only I had a penny for the number of times the BBC has reminded us of the unfortunate Mr. de Menezes innocence – innocent of being a terrorist for sure, not so innocent of overstaying his visa, possessing a fake immigration stamp in his passport, working illegally and, it turns out today, having traces of cocaine in his urine. Can’t we just have the facts about the case without the constant tag of ‘innocence’, unless the BBC wishes to specify what the unfortunate Jean was innocent of and what he was not. Sky News seem to manage fine without the constant use of the ‘innocent’ prefix;

   

• a report on the return of the Royal Anglians from Afghanistan and the joy of the soldiers and their families at being home. All well and good. Then mention of their 12 comrades who died on service in Afghanistan, as is right and proper too. But in doing so, rather than showing a photo of each soldier and reading out their names and ranks, we get a sexed-up BBC version, a black screen with black and white pictures fading ponderously to black and ponderously back again between each photo, with the sound fading in and out too. All that was missing was the intonation of “killed by Tony Blair” between each picture;

   

• Nick Higham on Mark Thompson’s plans for the BBC, due to be announced tomorrow, previewed to 120 odd BBC executives last night. Talk about the merging of television news, radio news and online news into one news operation (sounds sensible – we don’t need three BBCs), job cuts and savings of £200M, more repeats (not a bad thing in my view in our hectic times, so long as they are good repeats). What wasn’t pointed out was that these saving are savings on planned expenditure – not current expenditure (i.e. ‘cuts’ being the implication);

And, while I remember, one snippet from Monday’s Ten O’Clock News, with Fiona Bruce informing us that, yes, a ship going from Britain to Japan via the Panama canal sails “14,000 miles”, whilst going via the Northwest Passage (clear for the first time, natch) it could “save two weeks”. Aaaaaarrrrrrrrgggggghhhhhhh! Useless as ever.

Update: Re. Jean Charles de Menezes: the BBC could say “Jean Charles de Menezes, the Brazilian mistakenly shot by…”, which is just as accurate and informative, but a lot less emotive than Fiona Bruce et al repeatedly intoning “Jean Charles de Menezes, the innocent Brazilian shot by…”. None of this of course is, in any way, a justification for his killing – far from it. See the comments for more than enough discussion of this subject.

From the BBC News Search engine (which has lost a lot of functionality in the last couple of months. Gone is the ability to search by date range or by news area. It didn’t always work properly, but the current search is pretty minimalistic) – Eid has just passed, Navratri is still with us, so compare :

Your 7 pages for Lent.

Your 23 pages for Ramadan.

Your 1 page for Navratri.

Catching up on some summer posts that I didn’t quite finish at the time, there was an interesting article in Private Eye no. 1191, 17-30 Aug. 2007, giving “the full story of Channel 4, the CPS and the lies told by West Midlands Police” about the recent to-do over Channel 4’s Undercover Mosque programme broadcast in January.

Although Undercover Mosque was a Channel 4 programme it is pertinent to Biased BBC on at least two counts:

Firstly, that the BBC seems unwilling and unable to make undercover hidden camera programmes about anything that doesn’t fit the BBC’s definition of ‘bad’ (e.g. supermarkets, private security contractors, the police, the BNP etc.) – not that these aren’t worthy of investigation, but there are many other organisations and groups that also need to have their private deeds exposed to the glare of public scrutiny too (see the second part of this post, BBC Newspeak: Four legs good, two legs bad, for a few suggestions from a couple of years back Beeboids);

Secondly, the complete indifference of BBC News and BBC Views Online to the original broadcast of this programme. As with the first point, undercover programmes (including those from Channel 4) that the BBC approves of are covered, whereas those that aren’t approved don’t get covered. Undercover Mosque was barely mentioned by the BBC until August, when BBC Views Online opined C4 ‘distorted’ mosque programme, cheerily reporting criticism of the programme – the very criticism that Private Eye completely demolishes:

Playing silly burkas

The silliest of all this summer’s silly season stories broke last Wednesday, when the West Midlands Police and the Crown Prosecution Service issued a joint press release attacking Undercover Mosque, a Dispatches programme broadcast in January by Channel 4.

The film showed preachers at various “moderate” British mosques – notably the Green Lane mosque in Birmingham – delivering wild rants against kuffaar (non-muslims). “We hate the people of kufr, we hate the kuffaar”, Abu Usamah of Green Lane mosque declared, adding that although he didn’t agree with terrorists “at the same time they’re closer to me than those criminals of the kufr… He’s better than a million George Bushes, Osama bin Laden, he’s better than a thousand Tony Blair’s because he’s a muslim”. Murtaza Khan, a teacher from Essex who preaches at many UK mosques, denounced non-muslims as “filthy” and “accursed”.

Last week’s press release quoted Bethan David, a lawyer from the CPS, who alleged that the film “completely distorted what the speakers were saying”by quoting them out of context. It revealed that Inspector Knacker, a.k.a. Anil Patani MBA, Assistant Chief Constable (Security and Cohesion) for the West Midlands force – is now making a formal complaint to Ofcom that the programme was unfair and misleading.

Had Patani bothered to check the [Ofcom] website beforehand he’d have realised that, under the legislation governing Ofcom, complaints about unfairness can come only from “the person affected”, i.e. someone who has been personally traduced in a programme or by someone offically authorised by that person to act for them. Since the West Midlands Police fits neither category, the “formal complaint”looks like a non-starter. It appears to be little more than a silly season publicity stunt – though quite an effective one, as it was duly and widely reported the next day by newspapers hungry for more tales of TV fakery.

The Eye asked the West Midlands Police why they hadn’t read the rules before lodging the complaint. A spokesman told us that they had “liaised”with Ofcom in advance and been assured that they were following the correct procedures. But is this true?

“No”, said an Ofcom spokesman. Ofcom saw the press release a mere ten minutes before it was issued. Did you “liaise” with the police? “We certainly didn’t”.

The police also told the Eyethat the formal complaint to Ofcom came jointly from themselves and the CPS. Again, this turns out to be untrue. But the confusion is understandable, since Bethan David of the CPS certainly aided and abetted the stunt.

Did the police or CPS discuss their criticism of the film with C4 before issuing the press release? No. (As one bemused C4 executive observed: “This isn’t what a proper police force does. It’s the sort of thing Alastair Campbell does”).

Even more surprisingly, neither Patani nor David has produced one shred of evidence – in the press release, or in simultaneous letters to C4 and Ofcom – to back up their serious allegations.

Even the Eye wouldn’t accuse a film-maker of “completely distorting”the truth without giving chapter and verse – and we’re not an official branch of the criminal justice system. So could the CPS please cite some examples of of complete distortion that support Bethan David’s defamatory attack on the film-makers’ integrity?

“No”, a CPS spokesman told us. “We don’t go into that level of detail”. Or indeed any detail at all. The same goes for the West Midlands Police.

But Knacker may eventually have to justify wasting public money on this media stunt when he could have been tackling real criminals. He and Bethan David may also find themselves having to defend their unsubstantiated allegations in a court of law: Channel 4 and HardCash Productions, the company behind the film, are considering suing the police and CPS for libel.

To their credit, BBC Newsnight did a great piece along these lines last week (one of several great Newsnight pieces recently – perhaps there’s hope yet), revealing, if I recall correctly, that West Midlands Police have spent £14,000 of taxpayers money on this investigation excluding staff costs, and that the investigation was started after they received precisely zero complaints from the public. I’ll try to find it and Youtube it later. You can view the original Undercover Mosque programme via Google Video.

courtesy of Youtube, here are excerpts from last night’s BBC Ten O’Clock News and Sky News at Ten programmes, their respective headlines and their coverage of the award of the Nobel Peace Prize jointly to Al Gore and the UN climate change panel:

Unfortunately I don’t have time just now to transcribe both sets of headlines and reports and write up a comparison – leaving an opportunity for a spot of DIY, and perhaps collaborative, comparing and contrasting in the comments. Have fun.

Please use this thread for BBC-related comments and analysis. Please keep comments on other threads to the topic at hand. N.B. this is not (and never has been) an invitation for general off-topic comments, rants or use as a chat forum. This post will remain at or near the top of the blog. Please scroll down to find new topic-specific posts.