Got to love the way the BBC lobbies for “change” on the basis there must be no change.
Licence fee payers should be given a vote on any attempt by ministers to cut the BBC down to size, the corporation’s director-general will say today.
Oh really? Gosh, that’s a very brave thing to say. Except….
In a speech to business leaders, Lord Hall will propose any major changes to the broadcaster must be approved by a two-thirds majority in both houses of parliament, plus an online public poll, in a “dual lock” to prevent fundamental changes to the BBC taking place without public consent.
So, in other words, Lord Hall is seeking to construct multiple levels of defence for his bloated biased organisation. It then gets worse…
Lord Hall will call for an 11-year charter, so that discussions no longer coincide with general elections, “stopping the corporation from planning or investing in any long-term, sustainable way”. He will warn the BBC’s independence has suffered “20 years of gradual erosion” and add: “We can still offer our audiences a better BBC for less. But not if we are bound down. Not if, having cut our money, the Charter also cuts our creative freedom.”
What Lord Hall wants is immunity from any sense of responsibility and the chance for the broadcasting arm of Labour to freely agitate with impunity against this and the next Conservative government at OUR expense. I’ll be chatting to Jon Gaunt about all of this later this morning and my point is that the BBC has been protected for far too long, it remains a bloated monstrosity that needs forcibly detached from the drug of the license tax it imposes on us.
All this is on top of the setting up of commercial off-shoots and charities that, because they are not taking licence money, do not feel bound by what parliament or the people want.
Of course the commercial off-shoots and charities make free or preferential use of material and resources that are funded by the licence.
These weasels will fight tooth and claw to maintain their ‘right’ to help themselves to £billions of cash bullied out of the general public every year using menaces (the threat of criminalisation or even, quite possibly, imprisonment). The license fee is an indefensible anachronism; there is no moral case for it whatsoever in this multi-channel digital age, yet the Corporation persists in its belligerent, self-entitled insistence that it is somehow ‘special’, a ‘national treasure’ and (even more mystifyingly) ‘unique’.
Never has the BBC behaved more like a political advocacy group – left wing, fiercely pro-EU, pro-CAGW, pro-multiculturalism, anti-Conservative, anti-UKIP, anti-British (with a special venom reserved for the English and anyone who dares speak out for them) and completely unaccountable, unstoppable and incessant in its socialist-lite bullshittery 24/7 (and truly egregious when set free on the World Service to propagandise at will). It sees itself a ‘nudger’ of public opinion, an engineer for societal change; its agenda is the same as that of Brussels, of New Labour (yes, they’re still there – back there in the shadows, waiting for the right moment) and of common purpose everywhere.
BBC local News is little more than a nightly 5 minutes of hate directed against anyone who isn’t left wing, politically allied to the importance of public services and an unquestioning disciple of the Church of the NHS. In my neck of the woods (Bedfordshire) the local BBC TV News is fixated around the NHS and ‘educashun’ and how nasty those Tories bastards are – and there is a marked over-representation of ‘cultural enrichment’ all over the shop which simply does not reflect real life around me.
The BBC – a job creation scheme for leftie middle-class ‘meeja’ grads – must become a paid-for digital subscription service and stop scrounging, stealing and profiteering off the general public via the discredited license fee. Those who want the BBC’s particular brand of toxic left wing nuttery should be happy enough to pay for it – the rest of us should be left alone to pass by unmolested.
What a post that was! Throughly enjoyable, fact based, reality statement on everything that is wrong with the BBC.
Like all left wing media, or social bodies the BBC sees itself as the Oracle for all, and the guardian of all that is good and righteous. They are free to spout about unadulterated spending for all, because like everything hijacked by the liberals, they do not pay for it. They know best how to spend our money. They alone know what we think and believe. If you ever try and hold them to account on anything they say, or try to push another argument to their agenda, its instant, North Korean style sensorship or vilification for being a right wing hooligan or social leper.
The sooner the BBC has its parasitic lifeline removed from the public, the better.
Well said, ObiWan!
Great post Obiwan
On Educashun
Modern Educahun
Those with a sufficient level of masochism might have noticed, in the texts accompanying QT on Thursday, the frequency of the pleas to ‘keep our red button’. The plan to axe this service is simply a part of the self-induced ‘erosion’ that will see many more relatively valuable, or popular, or even both, features axed in the name of government imposed ‘savings’. Imagine the outcry when ‘Strictly’ joins the list of losses to those loutish commercial channels…
Meanwhile, any suggestion that pay scales and management levels might be cut to represent actual value for money will be shelved for possible consideration – in the future.
Come on Beltane.
You have to pay big money to get the best organisational managerial talent like………. errr………Yentob.
I clicked on that article this morning thinking I would find an over-due but welcome admission that the BBC has become a Left Wing monstrosity.
However as I read down through the article it rapidly became nothing to do with the real problem and was just (yet)another attempt by the BBC to control the parameters of the forthcoming review.
It seems they will stop at nothing and my guess is they will become more desperate and panic-stricken the nearer the review comes.
I can’t wait!.
The ‘heads we win, tails… oh, who cares, we win anyway’ mantra still alive and well at BBC market rate central.
I see four reasons for stopping – or at least rapidly phasing out – the licence fee.
First, as ObiWan says, it is an anachronism, and a very regressive tax on poorer people. It is ridiculous to have a huge body like the BBC provided with compulsory funding even if one does not use its service or seldom uses it.
The second reason is that as a multi-billion pound entity the BBC is crap. Every week on Friday evenings I scan the 4 main BBC channels on iPlayer looking for stuff I could watch while looking after some grandkids for the evening. The schedules are mostly rubbish – endless repeats, yards of dross programmes, very little quality sport, virtually no films. I seldom find more than one or two programmes worth watching. In other words – the BBC is appalingly bad value, and has no right to rely on compulsory funding. The licence fee may have made sense years ago – both technically and because a worthwhile broadcasting service was being offered. These days much of the BBC output is poor, no-one can honestly argue that it represents value for money compared with what we used to receive.
The third reason is that any organisation that is funded by compulsory taxation is axiomatically inefficient. Time after time the BBC has been shown to be grossly overmanned, and wasteful on major projects.
Finally the BBC is endemically biased on many major public issues, and this bias seeps through all its genres of programming and all its internet presence.
I like this triple lock system that actually doesn’t mean democracy . What if two thirds of the general public want the BBC to be changed , but two third of parliament doesn’t ? Or two thirds of Parliament want the Beeb to change but two thirds of the voters don’t ?
N
This 2/3 is the best demonstration of the Al Beeb hubris.
A simple majority suffices for the creation of normal legislation.
The BBC is so self-important they demand special treatment not granted to any other organisation.
A child of ten could produce the BBC output on half the money, assuming all the resources spent on the left wing conspiracy to destroy the UK was cut.
Just kill it
Who the hell is Hall to tell us how to run our democracy. He is the epitome of an arrogant, ignorant , fascist Beeboid. 2/3 majority. Asshole !
‘Licence fee payers should be given a vote on any attempt by ministers to cut the BBC down to size, the corporation’s director-general will say today’
A modest proposal. Licence payers should be given a HYS topic on this subject, with moderation only applied to obscene comments.
Obscenities and foul language are, of course, key debating strategies of the BBC supported left
There are over 85 non-BBC channels listed in the Radio Times. Why does Hall think the BBC deserves any special treatment? We don’t have tax payer support for steel companies, ship builders, aircraft manufacturers or mining companies, so why do we need it for broadcasters? Do Reuters and Bloomberg complain about government interference with their news reports?
I’m afraid I have to agree with Lord Hall on this 2/3 idea. I disagree with which side the 2/3 has to be for.
Lord Hall is right! License Fee payers should be given the choice of whether they want to pay for the BBC or not.
I don’t remember anyone at the BBC calling for a vote when New Labour decided to give the BBC a series of inflation busting licence fee increases.
The BBC and its bosses were quite happy for politicians to decide that.
The BBC likes political interference from its friends.
With Jezza moving ever left and completely barking there is obviously a gap on the centre left.
So why don’t the bBBC just come clean and just announce the formation of the BBC Party.
We all know the policies. Pro-EU, pro-open door immigration, left-liberal, priority for endless numbers of minorities, status quo public sector (no reforms), probably pro-NATO, centralised and collectivist but not extreme left economically, more Brownite high spending but leaving the private sector just enough freedom to make taxable profits.
It’s not my thing but it is a defensible platform. So why continue this fiasco of pretending to be impartial?
Good interview with Gaunty there David. Shame he got the name of the site wrong right at the end but maybe your plug at the start might get some extra people to take notice.
Cheers! Jon has been keen to discuss the BBC with me but I’ve been laid low with a heavy cold and had lost my voice so only just getting back in the swing
I do agree with Lord Haw-Haw’s idea that there should not be another 10-year review of the bBBC. He wants 11 years but far better would be to kill it now.
BBC license fee should only be levied if 2/3 of the public vote for it. The referendum should be carried out every 5 years.