Although its nonsense to suggest the freezing the licence fee is really making a difference to hard up families, at the same time BBC going full back to Wigan pier stuff when they still get £4bn a year, is a bit like MPs complaining about not getting a pay rise.
I imagine if they had raised the licence fee by £10 a year the public wouldn't be very happy.
Say the government had given the BBC an increase that met the inflation seen in programme production, which is apparenly quite high, would that save the BBC? No, not at all. A licence fee for a household to watch free-to-air broadcast progammes mainly shown on the BBC used to make sense when the BBC dominated viewing and broadcast television was the only way of watching television, but that world is ending. A licence for broadcast television made by the BBC when most people will be watching streaming video from other companies, and many of them will be using devices other than TVs and frequently viewing that video outside of the home just doesn't make sense. And if it doesn't make sense the already declining legitimacy and compliance with the licence fee will fall further.
The government and BBC need to answer three questions. What is the licence fee for? How is the fee collected? How are the things the licence fee pays for delivered? I'm sure that the answer is no longer to have a TV licence where we give almost all of the money collected to the BBC for broadcast television and radio. I don't know the answer, but the status quo is not it.
The only thing more worrying than a Russian invasion of Ukraine, is a UK response to one led by Johnson
There will not be a UK response, certainly not a military one as the Ukraine is not a member of NATO.
Only if Russia invaded Poland or the Baltic states for example, which are NATO members, would there be a UK military response. At most there would be some economic sanctions
You do know we are already providing arms to Ukraine
We will not be sending ground troops, tanks or fighter jets to defend Ukraine, a non NATO member state.
We sell arms to lots of countries
You are off your head with this analysis. It is not just annexing Ukraine that concerns most of us it is what happens next too.
If Putin takes Ukraine without so much as a whimper, why not all the former Soviet satellite states, plus Finland Sweden and Norway?
Finland and Sweden are not in NATO, so we would not be obliged to defend them either.
We would only be required to defend Norway and the Baltic states which are in NATO
You can't defend either Norway or the Baltic States without defending Sweden and Finland.
You can, if Sweden and Finland want to join NATO then we can defend them, not before. Same with non NATO Ireland.
Our terms of NATO membership do not prevent us from going to war to defend other countries if we wish.
Kuwait wasn't in NATO either.
Taking military action against Russia is a rather more tough proposition than taking military action against Iraq. The former leads to WW3, the latter does not.
Plus Russia has a permanent veto on the UN Security Council which Iraq did not, so UN approved action was easier when Iraq invaded Kuwait.
The main defence v Russia therefore remains NATO
There are concerns, according to BBC correspondent Mark Orban last, that the EU is about to soften its stance to Russia.
Orban claimed t on TV that in bolstering Ukraine's defences, British forces flying men and gear to the region were asked to avoid German and Dutch airspace. Germany is also reported about threats to freeze Russia out of the global payments system.
If naked aggression from belligerent governments is what works with the EU then maybe we should put 20,000 troops in South Armagh and post the Queen Elizabeth permanently in the Irish Sea.
If RAF fighter sorties over Dublin might get an agreement, perhaps we should do that.
Germany and France as NATO members would still be obliged to send troops to defend Poland and the Baltic states from Russia however, both are not only NATO but EU member states
Germany and France would defend Poland because they come next and next but one respectively.
Whatever you think of Germany's energy policy, there is no way, none at all, in which you can possibly blame Russian aggression on Germany. Russia is the bad guy here, let's keep that absolutely clear.
2016: "The EU started as a trading organisation but then became an all powerful superstate meddling with national affairs!!1!" 2022: "Why oh why hasn't the EU done more than just fiddle around with trade issues??/?"
1. I completely agree with your first comment. I've always viewed (well, for many years) as the Soviet Union Russia as the main threat to the UK and Europe generally (China number 2). 2. However on your second point, I see no contradiction here. The EU *Could* do something, but the main member state doesn't want to so it will instead wring its hands.
If anything, you make the point that the EU is dominated by Germany and what it wants it gets. It wants to stay well out of it, so the EU will stay well out of it.
Although its nonsense to suggest the freezing the licence fee is really making a difference to hard up families, at the same time BBC going full back to Wigan pier stuff when they still get £4bn a year, is a bit like MPs complaining about not getting a pay rise.
I imagine if they had raised the licence fee by £10 a year the public wouldn't be very happy.
Say the government had given the BBC an increase that met the inflation seen in programme production, which is apparenly quite high, would that save the BBC? No, not at all. A licence fee for a household to watch free-to-air broadcast progammes mainly shown on the BBC used to make sense when the BBC dominated viewing and broadcast television was the only way of watching television, but that world is ending. A licence for broadcast television made by the BBC when most people will be watching streaming video from other companies, and many of them will be using devices other than TVs and frequently viewing that video outside of the home just doesn't make sense. And if it doesn't make sense the already declining legitimacy and compliance with the licence fee will fall further.
The government and BBC need to answer three questions. What is the licence fee for? How is the fee collected? How are the things the licence fee pays for delivered? I'm sure that the answer is no longer to have a TV licence where we give almost all of the money collected to the BBC for broadcast television and radio. I don't know the answer, but the status quo is not it.
This is the core issue. The problem is the BBC won't entertain real change and the government a) looking for points scoring with their base and b) I don't think have any real plan nor the balls to actually go through with it. They should have put in motion the reforms needed last time around, rather than can kicking. 5+ years ago it was absolutely clear where this was going.
So instead its this silly proxy war. Government freeze it, BBC go its the end of the world as we know it, and the reality is its bumbles along, but doesn't address the fundamental change in the world. A licence fee attached to a physical property in the 21st Century is absolutely nonsense and unenforceable, while the entertainment industry is now truly globalised (rather than the old model of protected regions, that the plebs couldn't access easily).
Although its nonsense to suggest the freezing the licence fee is really making a difference to hard up families, at the same time BBC going full back to Wigan pier stuff when they still get £4bn a year, is a bit like MPs complaining about not getting a pay rise.
I imagine if they had raised the licence fee by £10 a year the public wouldn't be very happy.
Say the government had given the BBC an increase that met the inflation seen in programme production, which is apparenly quite high, would that save the BBC? No, not at all. A licence fee for a household to watch free-to-air broadcast progammes mainly shown on the BBC used to make sense when the BBC dominated viewing and broadcast television was the only way of watching television, but that world is ending. A licence for broadcast television made by the BBC when most people will be watching streaming video from other companies, and many of them will be using devices other than TVs and frequently viewing that video outside of the home just doesn't make sense. And if it doesn't make sense the already declining legitimacy and compliance with the licence fee will fall further.
The government and BBC need to answer three questions. What is the licence fee for? How is the fee collected? How are the things the licence fee pays for delivered? I'm sure that the answer is no longer to have a TV licence where we give almost all of the money collected to the BBC for broadcast television and radio. I don't know the answer, but the status quo is not it.
I almost never watch BBC. Even my 80 year old mother rarely watches it these days, but she does like to turn on the news and shout at the political interviewees because they are a shower of idiots
Boris Johnson saying no one told him the Downing Street gathering was against the rules is a new level of dissociation, almost like he’s spent two years watching someone else be prime minister and is now scratching his head about the decisions they’ve taken. https://twitter.com/IsabelHardman/status/1483431497751318530
I daresay so was the grieving Queen, alone in that Chapel at Windsor.
Do you think it was right that the Queen had to go through the funeral like that? Why didn't they test all attendees and drop the Covid theatre?
No it wasn't.
But the point is that while the Queen was respectful of the rules, even under such grave circumstances, more important people understood rules did not apply to them.
Boris Johnson saying no one told him the Downing Street gathering was against the rules is a new level of dissociation, almost like he’s spent two years watching someone else be prime minister and is now scratching his head about the decisions they’ve taken. https://twitter.com/IsabelHardman/status/1483431497751318530
WTF... is he an actual child (well a man-baby)??
He should be on top of everything nd know exactly whats going on.
A much smaller gap, though. That won''t please the remaining Johnson loyalists at all, and I'm increasingly wondering if Sunak is at greater risk of waiting too long than of acting too soon.
Boris Johnson saying no one told him the Downing Street gathering was against the rules is a new level of dissociation, almost like he’s spent two years watching someone else be prime minister and is now scratching his head about the decisions they’ve taken. https://twitter.com/IsabelHardman/status/1483431497751318530
WTF... is he an actual child (well a man-baby)??
He should be on top of everything nd know exactly whats going on.
Get rid of him!
He's spent his entire life wanting to be Prime Minister and he's realising his tenure might be shorter than the tenures of Gordon Brown and Theresa May (UTTER LOL).
I'm not surprised there are tears and childlike excuses.
The only thing more worrying than a Russian invasion of Ukraine, is a UK response to one led by Johnson
There will not be a UK response, certainly not a military one as the Ukraine is not a member of NATO.
Only if Russia invaded Poland or the Baltic states for example, which are NATO members, would there be a UK military response. At most there would be some economic sanctions
You do know we are already providing arms to Ukraine
We will not be sending ground troops, tanks or fighter jets to defend Ukraine, a non NATO member state.
We sell arms to lots of countries
You are off your head with this analysis. It is not just annexing Ukraine that concerns most of us it is what happens next too.
If Putin takes Ukraine without so much as a whimper, why not all the former Soviet satellite states, plus Finland Sweden and Norway?
Finland and Sweden are not in NATO, so we would not be obliged to defend them either.
We would only be required to defend Norway and the Baltic states which are in NATO
You can't defend either Norway or the Baltic States without defending Sweden and Finland.
You can, if Sweden and Finland want to join NATO then we can defend them, not before. Same with non NATO Ireland.
Our terms of NATO membership do not prevent us from going to war to defend other countries if we wish.
Kuwait wasn't in NATO either.
Taking military action against Russia is a rather more tough proposition than taking military action against Iraq. The former leads to WW3, the latter does not.
Plus Russia has a permanent veto on the UN Security Council which Iraq did not, so UN approved action was easier when Iraq invaded Kuwait.
The main defence v Russia therefore remains NATO
I'm not advocating war with Russia, but it doesn't necessarily lead to WWIII or a nuclear exchange.
It's unlikely that China would be involved, for starters. It would be a European war, and Europe is not the centre of the world in the way it was a hundred years ago.
If fighting was restricted to pushing Russia out of invaded territory then the chances of a nuclear escalation are much reduced.
Whatever you think of Germany's energy policy, there is no way, none at all, in which you can possibly blame Russian aggression on Germany. Russia is the bad guy here, let's keep that absolutely clear.
2016: "The EU started as a trading organisation but then became an all powerful superstate meddling with national affairs!!1!" 2022: "Why oh why hasn't the EU done more than just fiddle around with trade issues??/?"
1. I completely agree with your first comment. I've always viewed (well, for many years) as the Soviet Union Russia as the main threat to the UK and Europe generally (China number 2). 2. However on your second point, I see no contradiction here. The EU *Could* do something, but the main member state doesn't want to so it will instead wring its hands.
If anything, you make the point that the EU is dominated by Germany and what it wants it gets. It wants to stay well out of it, so the EU will stay well out of it.
It really doesn't matter. If France wants to help Ukraine out, it can do so. If EU countries want to have a defence union with an army, let them and we can think about how that ought to look. But they don't so, in terms of military intervention, the EU is not holding anyone back.
There's a real risk here that people get so distracted on old faultlines that it prevent clear thinking. This is a crisis for Ukraine and the European democracy. It should not be taken as an opportunity to attack the EU. Well, it should if one prefers Russia to prevail, but most of us probably don't.
The only thing more worrying than a Russian invasion of Ukraine, is a UK response to one led by Johnson
There will not be a UK response, certainly not a military one as the Ukraine is not a member of NATO.
Only if Russia invaded Poland or the Baltic states for example, which are NATO members, would there be a UK military response. At most there would be some economic sanctions
You do know we are already providing arms to Ukraine
We will not be sending ground troops, tanks or fighter jets to defend Ukraine, a non NATO member state.
We sell arms to lots of countries
You are off your head with this analysis. It is not just annexing Ukraine that concerns most of us it is what happens next too.
If Putin takes Ukraine without so much as a whimper, why not all the former Soviet satellite states, plus Finland Sweden and Norway?
Finland and Sweden are not in NATO, so we would not be obliged to defend them either.
We would only be required to defend Norway and the Baltic states which are in NATO
You can't defend either Norway or the Baltic States without defending Sweden and Finland.
You can, if Sweden and Finland want to join NATO then we can defend them, not before. Same with non NATO Ireland.
Our terms of NATO membership do not prevent us from going to war to defend other countries if we wish.
Kuwait wasn't in NATO either.
Taking military action against Russia is a rather more tough proposition than taking military action against Iraq. The former leads to WW3, the latter does not.
Plus Russia has a permanent veto on the UN Security Council which Iraq did not, so UN approved action was easier when Iraq invaded Kuwait.
The main defence v Russia therefore remains NATO
There are concerns, according to BBC correspondent Mark Orban last, that the EU is about to soften its stance to Russia.
Orban claimed t on TV that in bolstering Ukraine's defences, British forces flying men and gear to the region were asked to avoid German and Dutch airspace. Germany is also reported about threats to freeze Russia out of the global payments system.
If naked aggression from belligerent governments is what works with the EU then maybe we should put 20,000 troops in South Armagh and post the Queen Elizabeth permanently in the Irish Sea.
If RAF fighter sorties over Dublin might get an agreement, perhaps we should do that.
Germany and France as NATO members would still be obliged to send troops to defend Poland and the Baltic states from Russia however, both are not only NATO but EU member states
Germany and France would defend Poland because they come next and next but one respectively.
Russia isn’t interested in militarily occupying Western Europe, but we do know Putin is interested in a greater Russia controlling Transdneister, South Ossetia, Donbass etc. and a Russian sphere of influence over Eastern Europe. The question is over how far the former extends into the latter. Would he be happy with a Moscow-friendly govt in Kyiv, with eastern parts of the country and Crimea handed over to Russia, or would he prefer Ukraine to cease to exist as an independent nation?
Either way, he clearly doesn’t wasn’t a Western-facing Ukraine.
This is the core issue. The problem is the BBC won't entertain real change and the government a) looking for points scoring with their base and b) I don't think have any real plan nor the balls to actually go through with it. They should have put in motion the reforms needed last time around, rather than can kicking. 5+ years ago it was absolutely clear where this was going.
So instead its this silly proxy war. Government freeze it, BBC go its the end of the world as we know it, and the reality is its bumbles along, but doesn't address the fundamental change in the world. A licence fee attached to a physical property in the 21st Century is absolutely nonsense and unenforceable, while the entertainment industry is now truly globalised (rather than the old model of protected regions, that the plebs couldn't access easily).
Nobody seems to have a plan. This sort of thing happens in the computing world all the time, the incumbent dismisses the upstarts until it is too late, and usually ends up either dead or a shadow of its former self. You can see this happening with the BBC right now.
Boris Johnson saying no one told him the Downing Street gathering was against the rules is a new level of dissociation, almost like he’s spent two years watching someone else be prime minister and is now scratching his head about the decisions they’ve taken. https://twitter.com/IsabelHardman/status/1483431497751318530
WTF... is he an actual child (well a man-baby)??
He should be on top of everything nd know exactly whats going on.
Get rid of him!
He's spent his entire life wanting to be Prime Minister and he's realising his tenure might be shorter than the tenures of Gordon Brown and Theresa May (UTTER LOL).
I'm not surprised there are tears and childlike excuses.
Remember Boris is the sort of child who if asked does he have some chocolate would lie and say no even if it was in his hand melting and dripping through his fingers.
The saddest thing is that even though most people have learnt over the years that lies don't last he's always been able to bounce back..
Boris Johnson saying no one told him the Downing Street gathering was against the rules is a new level of dissociation, almost like he’s spent two years watching someone else be prime minister and is now scratching his head about the decisions they’ve taken. https://twitter.com/IsabelHardman/status/1483431497751318530
WTF... is he an actual child (well a man-baby)??
He should be on top of everything nd know exactly whats going on.
This is the core issue. The problem is the BBC won't entertain real change and the government a) looking for points scoring with their base and b) I don't think have any real plan nor the balls to actually go through with it. They should have put in motion the reforms needed last time around, rather than can kicking. 5+ years ago it was absolutely clear where this was going.
So instead its this silly proxy war. Government freeze it, BBC go its the end of the world as we know it, and the reality is its bumbles along, but doesn't address the fundamental change in the world. A licence fee attached to a physical property in the 21st Century is absolutely nonsense and unenforceable, while the entertainment industry is now truly globalised (rather than the old model of protected regions, that the plebs couldn't access easily).
Nobody seems to have a plan. This sort of thing happens in the computing world all the time, the incumbent dismisses the upstarts until it is too late, and usually ends up either dead or a shadow of its former self. You can see this happening with the BBC right now.
It reminds me a bit of like the car industry. The unions busy fighting the government etc, while the Japanese have better working practices, robots, and pumping out on average better cars, even if in isolation British engineers still have some highly skilled individuals and clever ideas and point to F1 as look at what we can do.
Although its nonsense to suggest the freezing the licence fee is really making a difference to hard up families, at the same time BBC going full back to Wigan pier stuff when they still get £4bn a year, is a bit like MPs complaining about not getting a pay rise.
I imagine if they had raised the licence fee by £10 a year the public wouldn't be very happy.
Say the government had given the BBC an increase that met the inflation seen in programme production, which is apparenly quite high, would that save the BBC? No, not at all. A licence fee for a household to watch free-to-air broadcast progammes mainly shown on the BBC used to make sense when the BBC dominated viewing and broadcast television was the only way of watching television, but that world is ending. A licence for broadcast television made by the BBC when most people will be watching streaming video from other companies, and many of them will be using devices other than TVs and frequently viewing that video outside of the home just doesn't make sense. And if it doesn't make sense the already declining legitimacy and compliance with the licence fee will fall further.
The government and BBC need to answer three questions. What is the licence fee for? How is the fee collected? How are the things the licence fee pays for delivered? I'm sure that the answer is no longer to have a TV licence where we give almost all of the money collected to the BBC for broadcast television and radio. I don't know the answer, but the status quo is not it.
This is the core issue. The problem is the BBC won't entertain real change and the government a) looking for points scoring with their base and b) I don't think have any real plan nor the balls to actually go through with it. They should have put in motion the reforms needed last time around, rather than can kicking. 5+ years ago it was absolutely clear where this was going.
So instead its this silly proxy war. Government freeze it, BBC go its the end of the world as we know it, and the reality is its bumbles along, but doesn't address the fundamental change in the world. A licence fee attached to a physical property in the 21st Century is absolutely nonsense and unenforceable, while the entertainment industry is now truly globalised (rather than the old model of protected regions, that the plebs couldn't access easily).
Every time the BBC tries to implement real change the government knocks them back & insists that innovation must come from the private sector. So the Beeb is damned if they do & damned if they don’t.
It reminds me of the story that BT offered to run a national fibre optic network to every home in the last century - they had the production facilities ready to go when the Thatcher government decided that this would be a terrible idea and they wanted to stimulate 'competition' by letting a bunch of cable companies tear up all the streets to install a second set of cables to every home instead. We ended up thirty years behind countries who did the sensible thing in the first place.
A much smaller gap, though. That won''t please the remaining Johnson loyalists at all, and I'm increasingly wondering if Sunak is at greater risk of waiting too long than of acting too soon.
Sunak needs to be PM before the NI increase appears in April. After that he has a problem (not an insurmountable problem but it's still a problem)
Although its nonsense to suggest the freezing the licence fee is really making a difference to hard up families, at the same time BBC going full back to Wigan pier stuff when they still get £4bn a year, is a bit like MPs complaining about not getting a pay rise.
I imagine if they had raised the licence fee by £10 a year the public wouldn't be very happy.
Say the government had given the BBC an increase that met the inflation seen in programme production, which is apparenly quite high, would that save the BBC? No, not at all. A licence fee for a household to watch free-to-air broadcast progammes mainly shown on the BBC used to make sense when the BBC dominated viewing and broadcast television was the only way of watching television, but that world is ending. A licence for broadcast television made by the BBC when most people will be watching streaming video from other companies, and many of them will be using devices other than TVs and frequently viewing that video outside of the home just doesn't make sense. And if it doesn't make sense the already declining legitimacy and compliance with the licence fee will fall further.
The government and BBC need to answer three questions. What is the licence fee for? How is the fee collected? How are the things the licence fee pays for delivered? I'm sure that the answer is no longer to have a TV licence where we give almost all of the money collected to the BBC for broadcast television and radio. I don't know the answer, but the status quo is not it.
This is the core issue. The problem is the BBC won't entertain real change and the government a) looking for points scoring with their base and b) I don't think have any real plan nor the balls to actually go through with it. They should have put in motion the reforms needed last time around, rather than can kicking. 5+ years ago it was absolutely clear where this was going.
So instead its this silly proxy war. Government freeze it, BBC go its the end of the world as we know it, and the reality is its bumbles along, but doesn't address the fundamental change in the world. A licence fee attached to a physical property in the 21st Century is absolutely nonsense and unenforceable, while the entertainment industry is now truly globalised (rather than the old model of protected regions, that the plebs couldn't access easily).
The BBC has consistently made major changes and has been to the fore of responding to a changing landscape. iPlayer was a leader, for example. This characterisation of “bumbling” is groundless. If you had to pick who was bumbling, the BBC or the current Govt., I think most people would pick the Govt.
This is the core issue. The problem is the BBC won't entertain real change and the government a) looking for points scoring with their base and b) I don't think have any real plan nor the balls to actually go through with it. They should have put in motion the reforms needed last time around, rather than can kicking. 5+ years ago it was absolutely clear where this was going.
So instead its this silly proxy war. Government freeze it, BBC go its the end of the world as we know it, and the reality is its bumbles along, but doesn't address the fundamental change in the world. A licence fee attached to a physical property in the 21st Century is absolutely nonsense and unenforceable, while the entertainment industry is now truly globalised (rather than the old model of protected regions, that the plebs couldn't access easily).
Nobody seems to have a plan. This sort of thing happens in the computing world all the time, the incumbent dismisses the upstarts until it is too late, and usually ends up either dead or a shadow of its former self. You can see this happening with the BBC right now.
It reminds me a bit of like the car industry. The unions busy fighting the government etc, while the Japanese have better working practices, robots, and pumping out on average better cars, even if in isolation British engineers still have some highly skilled individuals and clever ideas.
It reminds me a bit of like the Conservative Party.
Nobody seems to have a plan. This sort of thing happens in the computing world all the time, the incumbent dismisses the upstarts until it is too late, and usually ends up either dead or a shadow of its former self. You can see this happening with the Conservative Party right now.
Although its nonsense to suggest the freezing the licence fee is really making a difference to hard up families, at the same time BBC going full back to Wigan pier stuff when they still get £4bn a year, is a bit like MPs complaining about not getting a pay rise.
I imagine if they had raised the licence fee by £10 a year the public wouldn't be very happy.
Say the government had given the BBC an increase that met the inflation seen in programme production, which is apparenly quite high, would that save the BBC? No, not at all. A licence fee for a household to watch free-to-air broadcast progammes mainly shown on the BBC used to make sense when the BBC dominated viewing and broadcast television was the only way of watching television, but that world is ending. A licence for broadcast television made by the BBC when most people will be watching streaming video from other companies, and many of them will be using devices other than TVs and frequently viewing that video outside of the home just doesn't make sense. And if it doesn't make sense the already declining legitimacy and compliance with the licence fee will fall further.
The government and BBC need to answer three questions. What is the licence fee for? How is the fee collected? How are the things the licence fee pays for delivered? I'm sure that the answer is no longer to have a TV licence where we give almost all of the money collected to the BBC for broadcast television and radio. I don't know the answer, but the status quo is not it.
This is the core issue. The problem is the BBC won't entertain real change and the government a) looking for points scoring with their base and b) I don't think have any real plan nor the balls to actually go through with it. They should have put in motion the reforms needed last time around, rather than can kicking. 5+ years ago it was absolutely clear where this was going.
So instead its this silly proxy war. Government freeze it, BBC go its the end of the world as we know it, and the reality is its bumbles along, but doesn't address the fundamental change in the world. A licence fee attached to a physical property in the 21st Century is absolutely nonsense and unenforceable, while the entertainment industry is now truly globalised (rather than the old model of protected regions, that the plebs couldn't access easily).
The BBC has consistently made major changes and has been to the fore of responding to a changing landscape. iPlayer was a leader, for example. This characterisation of “bumbling” is groundless. If you had to pick who was bumbling, the BBC or the current Govt., I think most people would pick the Govt.
iPlayer was never a leader. Poor tech based originally on flash. And now its really crap compared to state of the art.
Although its nonsense to suggest the freezing the licence fee is really making a difference to hard up families, at the same time BBC going full back to Wigan pier stuff when they still get £4bn a year, is a bit like MPs complaining about not getting a pay rise.
I imagine if they had raised the licence fee by £10 a year the public wouldn't be very happy.
Say the government had given the BBC an increase that met the inflation seen in programme production, which is apparenly quite high, would that save the BBC? No, not at all. A licence fee for a household to watch free-to-air broadcast progammes mainly shown on the BBC used to make sense when the BBC dominated viewing and broadcast television was the only way of watching television, but that world is ending. A licence for broadcast television made by the BBC when most people will be watching streaming video from other companies, and many of them will be using devices other than TVs and frequently viewing that video outside of the home just doesn't make sense. And if it doesn't make sense the already declining legitimacy and compliance with the licence fee will fall further.
The government and BBC need to answer three questions. What is the licence fee for? How is the fee collected? How are the things the licence fee pays for delivered? I'm sure that the answer is no longer to have a TV licence where we give almost all of the money collected to the BBC for broadcast television and radio. I don't know the answer, but the status quo is not it.
This is the core issue. The problem is the BBC won't entertain real change and the government a) looking for points scoring with their base and b) I don't think have any real plan nor the balls to actually go through with it. They should have put in motion the reforms needed last time around, rather than can kicking. 5+ years ago it was absolutely clear where this was going.
So instead its this silly proxy war. Government freeze it, BBC go its the end of the world as we know it, and the reality is its bumbles along, but doesn't address the fundamental change in the world. A licence fee attached to a physical property in the 21st Century is absolutely nonsense and unenforceable, while the entertainment industry is now truly globalised (rather than the old model of protected regions, that the plebs couldn't access easily).
The BBC has consistently made major changes and has been to the fore of responding to a changing landscape. iPlayer was a leader, for example. This characterisation of “bumbling” is groundless. If you had to pick who was bumbling, the BBC or the current Govt., I think most people would pick the Govt.
iPlayer was never a leader. Poor tech based originally on flash. And now its really crap compared to state of the art.
Speaks someone who’s never used the ITV one: that’s the state of crap in the field. Even the Disney+ one is poor compared to iPlayer.
This is the core issue. The problem is the BBC won't entertain real change and the government a) looking for points scoring with their base and b) I don't think have any real plan nor the balls to actually go through with it. They should have put in motion the reforms needed last time around, rather than can kicking. 5+ years ago it was absolutely clear where this was going.
So instead its this silly proxy war. Government freeze it, BBC go its the end of the world as we know it, and the reality is its bumbles along, but doesn't address the fundamental change in the world. A licence fee attached to a physical property in the 21st Century is absolutely nonsense and unenforceable, while the entertainment industry is now truly globalised (rather than the old model of protected regions, that the plebs couldn't access easily).
Nobody seems to have a plan. This sort of thing happens in the computing world all the time, the incumbent dismisses the upstarts until it is too late, and usually ends up either dead or a shadow of its former self. You can see this happening with the BBC right now.
It reminds me a bit of like the car industry. The unions busy fighting the government etc, while the Japanese have better working practices, robots, and pumping out on average better cars, even if in isolation British engineers still have some highly skilled individuals and clever ideas and point to F1 as look at what we can do.
Britain also had, and still has, a terrible record of long-term investment, and particularly in the 1970's, both feudalistic and adversarial management and equally adversarial unions, however. The class-bound, uncooperative decay was far from only being an issue with the unions.
The only thing more worrying than a Russian invasion of Ukraine, is a UK response to one led by Johnson
There will not be a UK response, certainly not a military one as the Ukraine is not a member of NATO.
Only if Russia invaded Poland or the Baltic states for example, which are NATO members, would there be a UK military response. At most there would be some economic sanctions
You do know we are already providing arms to Ukraine
We will not be sending ground troops, tanks or fighter jets to defend Ukraine, a non NATO member state.
We sell arms to lots of countries
You are off your head with this analysis. It is not just annexing Ukraine that concerns most of us it is what happens next too.
If Putin takes Ukraine without so much as a whimper, why not all the former Soviet satellite states, plus Finland Sweden and Norway?
Finland and Sweden are not in NATO, so we would not be obliged to defend them either.
We would only be required to defend Norway and the Baltic states which are in NATO
You can't defend either Norway or the Baltic States without defending Sweden and Finland.
You can, if Sweden and Finland want to join NATO then we can defend them, not before. Same with non NATO Ireland.
Our terms of NATO membership do not prevent us from going to war to defend other countries if we wish.
Kuwait wasn't in NATO either.
Taking military action against Russia is a rather more tough proposition than taking military action against Iraq. The former leads to WW3, the latter does not.
Plus Russia has a permanent veto on the UN Security Council which Iraq did not, so UN approved action was easier when Iraq invaded Kuwait.
The main defence v Russia therefore remains NATO
There are concerns, according to BBC correspondent Mark Orban last, that the EU is about to soften its stance to Russia.
Orban claimed t on TV that in bolstering Ukraine's defences, British forces flying men and gear to the region were asked to avoid German and Dutch airspace. Germany is also reported about threats to freeze Russia out of the global payments system.
If naked aggression from belligerent governments is what works with the EU then maybe we should put 20,000 troops in South Armagh and post the Queen Elizabeth permanently in the Irish Sea.
If RAF fighter sorties over Dublin might get an agreement, perhaps we should do that.
Germany and France as NATO members would still be obliged to send troops to defend Poland and the Baltic states from Russia however, both are not only NATO but EU member states
Germany and France would defend Poland because they come next and next but one respectively.
Russia isn’t interested in militarily occupying Western Europe, but we do know Putin is interested in a greater Russia controlling Transdneister, South Ossetia, Donbass etc. and a Russian sphere of influence over Eastern Europe. The question is over how far the former extends into the latter. Would he be happy with a Moscow-friendly govt in Kyiv, with eastern parts of the country and Crimea handed over to Russia, or would he prefer Ukraine to cease to exist as an independent nation?
Either way, he clearly doesn’t wasn’t a Western-facing Ukraine.
I have read that one Putin ambition could be a revival of the pre-1990 Soviet borders.
Although its nonsense to suggest the freezing the licence fee is really making a difference to hard up families, at the same time BBC going full back to Wigan pier stuff when they still get £4bn a year, is a bit like MPs complaining about not getting a pay rise.
I imagine if they had raised the licence fee by £10 a year the public wouldn't be very happy.
Say the government had given the BBC an increase that met the inflation seen in programme production, which is apparenly quite high, would that save the BBC? No, not at all. A licence fee for a household to watch free-to-air broadcast progammes mainly shown on the BBC used to make sense when the BBC dominated viewing and broadcast television was the only way of watching television, but that world is ending. A licence for broadcast television made by the BBC when most people will be watching streaming video from other companies, and many of them will be using devices other than TVs and frequently viewing that video outside of the home just doesn't make sense. And if it doesn't make sense the already declining legitimacy and compliance with the licence fee will fall further.
The government and BBC need to answer three questions. What is the licence fee for? How is the fee collected? How are the things the licence fee pays for delivered? I'm sure that the answer is no longer to have a TV licence where we give almost all of the money collected to the BBC for broadcast television and radio. I don't know the answer, but the status quo is not it.
This is the core issue. The problem is the BBC won't entertain real change and the government a) looking for points scoring with their base and b) I don't think have any real plan nor the balls to actually go through with it. They should have put in motion the reforms needed last time around, rather than can kicking. 5+ years ago it was absolutely clear where this was going.
So instead its this silly proxy war. Government freeze it, BBC go its the end of the world as we know it, and the reality is its bumbles along, but doesn't address the fundamental change in the world. A licence fee attached to a physical property in the 21st Century is absolutely nonsense and unenforceable, while the entertainment industry is now truly globalised (rather than the old model of protected regions, that the plebs couldn't access easily).
The BBC has consistently made major changes and has been to the fore of responding to a changing landscape. iPlayer was a leader, for example. This characterisation of “bumbling” is groundless. If you had to pick who was bumbling, the BBC or the current Govt., I think most people would pick the Govt.
iPlayer was never a leader. Poor tech based originally on flash. And now its really crap compared to state of the art.
Speaks someone who’s never used the ITV one: that’s the state of crap in the field. Even the Disney+ one is poor compared to iPlayer.
iPlayer has had a lot of iterations over the year - granted it stuck with Flash for slightly too long but that isn't the greatest of crimes given how hard HTML 5 video was to do in the early years.
Although its nonsense to suggest the freezing the licence fee is really making a difference to hard up families, at the same time BBC going full back to Wigan pier stuff when they still get £4bn a year, is a bit like MPs complaining about not getting a pay rise.
I imagine if they had raised the licence fee by £10 a year the public wouldn't be very happy.
Say the government had given the BBC an increase that met the inflation seen in programme production, which is apparenly quite high, would that save the BBC? No, not at all. A licence fee for a household to watch free-to-air broadcast progammes mainly shown on the BBC used to make sense when the BBC dominated viewing and broadcast television was the only way of watching television, but that world is ending. A licence for broadcast television made by the BBC when most people will be watching streaming video from other companies, and many of them will be using devices other than TVs and frequently viewing that video outside of the home just doesn't make sense. And if it doesn't make sense the already declining legitimacy and compliance with the licence fee will fall further.
The government and BBC need to answer three questions. What is the licence fee for? How is the fee collected? How are the things the licence fee pays for delivered? I'm sure that the answer is no longer to have a TV licence where we give almost all of the money collected to the BBC for broadcast television and radio. I don't know the answer, but the status quo is not it.
This is the core issue. The problem is the BBC won't entertain real change and the government a) looking for points scoring with their base and b) I don't think have any real plan nor the balls to actually go through with it. They should have put in motion the reforms needed last time around, rather than can kicking. 5+ years ago it was absolutely clear where this was going.
So instead its this silly proxy war. Government freeze it, BBC go its the end of the world as we know it, and the reality is its bumbles along, but doesn't address the fundamental change in the world. A licence fee attached to a physical property in the 21st Century is absolutely nonsense and unenforceable, while the entertainment industry is now truly globalised (rather than the old model of protected regions, that the plebs couldn't access easily).
The BBC has consistently made major changes and has been to the fore of responding to a changing landscape. iPlayer was a leader, for example. This characterisation of “bumbling” is groundless. If you had to pick who was bumbling, the BBC or the current Govt., I think most people would pick the Govt.
iPlayer was never a leader. Poor tech based originally on flash. And now its really crap compared to state of the art.
Speaks someone who’s never used the ITV one: that’s the state of crap in the field. Even the Disney+ one is poor compared to iPlayer.
Oh ITV Player is also crap, but that's like comparing Austin Allegro and Morris Marina. Disney have the best backend streaming tech, which many many leading companies use. The likes of twitch also have far better tech than the likes of BBC for streaming.
The BBC couldn't even cope to do a single 4k stream on iPlayer for Euro football final for the limited subset of people it was available, it crapped out.
This is the core issue. The problem is the BBC won't entertain real change and the government a) looking for points scoring with their base and b) I don't think have any real plan nor the balls to actually go through with it. They should have put in motion the reforms needed last time around, rather than can kicking. 5+ years ago it was absolutely clear where this was going.
So instead its this silly proxy war. Government freeze it, BBC go its the end of the world as we know it, and the reality is its bumbles along, but doesn't address the fundamental change in the world. A licence fee attached to a physical property in the 21st Century is absolutely nonsense and unenforceable, while the entertainment industry is now truly globalised (rather than the old model of protected regions, that the plebs couldn't access easily).
Nobody seems to have a plan. This sort of thing happens in the computing world all the time, the incumbent dismisses the upstarts until it is too late, and usually ends up either dead or a shadow of its former self. You can see this happening with the BBC right now.
It reminds me a bit of like the car industry. The unions busy fighting the government etc, while the Japanese have better working practices, robots, and pumping out on average better cars, even if in isolation British engineers still have some highly skilled individuals and clever ideas and point to F1 as look at what we can do.
Britain also had, and still has, a terrible record of long-term investment, and particularly in the 1970's, both feudalistic and adversarial management and equally adversarial unions, however. The class-bound, unco-operative decay was far from only being an issue with the unions.
It's notable that Britain has highly productive car factories now, still unionised IIUI but with international management. Weak management is the British disease across the whole economy.
Boris Johnson saying no one told him the Downing Street gathering was against the rules is a new level of dissociation, almost like he’s spent two years watching someone else be prime minister and is now scratching his head about the decisions they’ve taken. https://twitter.com/IsabelHardman/status/1483431497751318530
WTF... is he an actual child (well a man-baby)??
He should be on top of everything nd know exactly whats going on.
Get rid of him!
It was all so very predictable.
ScottXP is a prodigous poster, but I think this is the most he's ever made me laugh. Not even the mildly comedic observation at the end of the sentence, just the first 15 words. It's as if Boris is actively trying to alienate people. I'm quite a fan of excuses which may be technically correct but will go down extremely poorly. It's in the same category as 'it's crown property so the rules don't apply' (from the same source), and Gordon Brown's memorable 'no, I only promised to abolish TORY boom and bust'.
This is why Sunak and probably the Tories are going to be fecked at the next election.
Shit! The cheapest open market energy fix is now 76% more expensive than the current price cap.
It's far more expensive even than where the 50% April price cap will likely land, & than where it'll land when it likely rises AGAIN in Oct (if wholesale rates dont fall)
Some more easy savings for the BBC that nobody will notice. Get rid of Bellator Cage fighting deal. Even hardcore MMA fans don't really give a shit about what is the Vanarama National League equivalent of MMA and the BBC stick it hidden away on iPlayer.
That's a few more million quid saved.
Listing things you don't like so the BBC can spend more on things you do like is fine, except everyone will have a different list of things they don't like, that the BBC should cut.
Although its nonsense to suggest the freezing the licence fee is really making a difference to hard up families, at the same time BBC going full back to Wigan pier stuff when they still get £4bn a year, is a bit like MPs complaining about not getting a pay rise.
I imagine if they had raised the licence fee by £10 a year the public wouldn't be very happy.
Say the government had given the BBC an increase that met the inflation seen in programme production, which is apparenly quite high, would that save the BBC? No, not at all. A licence fee for a household to watch free-to-air broadcast progammes mainly shown on the BBC used to make sense when the BBC dominated viewing and broadcast television was the only way of watching television, but that world is ending. A licence for broadcast television made by the BBC when most people will be watching streaming video from other companies, and many of them will be using devices other than TVs and frequently viewing that video outside of the home just doesn't make sense. And if it doesn't make sense the already declining legitimacy and compliance with the licence fee will fall further.
The government and BBC need to answer three questions. What is the licence fee for? How is the fee collected? How are the things the licence fee pays for delivered? I'm sure that the answer is no longer to have a TV licence where we give almost all of the money collected to the BBC for broadcast television and radio. I don't know the answer, but the status quo is not it.
This is the core issue. The problem is the BBC won't entertain real change and the government a) looking for points scoring with their base and b) I don't think have any real plan nor the balls to actually go through with it. They should have put in motion the reforms needed last time around, rather than can kicking. 5+ years ago it was absolutely clear where this was going.
So instead its this silly proxy war. Government freeze it, BBC go its the end of the world as we know it, and the reality is its bumbles along, but doesn't address the fundamental change in the world. A licence fee attached to a physical property in the 21st Century is absolutely nonsense and unenforceable, while the entertainment industry is now truly globalised (rather than the old model of protected regions, that the plebs couldn't access easily).
The BBC has consistently made major changes and has been to the fore of responding to a changing landscape. iPlayer was a leader, for example. This characterisation of “bumbling” is groundless. If you had to pick who was bumbling, the BBC or the current Govt., I think most people would pick the Govt.
iPlayer was never a leader. Poor tech based originally on flash. And now its really crap compared to state of the art.
iPlayer is positively brilliant compared to the arse end that is Amazon Prime. Good programming but awful UI.
Lords watchdog launches inquiry into Michelle Mone over ‘VIP lane’ contract Investigation into Tory peer relates to PPE company awarded £203m in government contracts
The commissioner confirmed that the investigation would be for “alleged involvement in procuring contracts for PPE Medpro, leading to potential breaches” of three provisions of the Lords code, which cover the requirement that peers publicly register “all relevant interests”, and prohibit them from lobbying for a company or a person in which a peer “has a financial interest”.
The commissioner also stated that Mone would be investigated under the more general provisions of the code’s paragraph 9, which includes that peers “should always act on their personal honour”; must never accept “any financial inducement as an incentive or reward for exercising parliamentary influence”; and “must not seek to profit from membership of the house by accepting or agreeing to accept payment or other incentive or reward in return for providing parliamentary advice or services.”
Pretty sure Money will now be consigned to that ghastly Johnson type of Toryism with which the SCons have absolutely no connection.
Will be fascinating seeing the election material the Scottish Conservatives are shortly going to print up. They’ll use blue, but I bet the word “Conservative” is conspicuous by its absence, as will any reference to them being in power in London.
Will they continue with Ruth Davidson’s moderately successful ‘No Surrender’ strategy? Initial intelligence ( @Carnyx ) suggests not.
Certainly the List MSP leaflet I got the other day was a total contrast to the usual text of No to Indyref No to Indyref No to Indyref No to Indyref No to Indyref No to Indyref even at parish council level (if we had parish councils up here) and with 'Conservative' in the smallest possible script compatible with Electoral Commission law and the wavelength of light.
It was all about roundabouts and only the fetching Sevco FC Blue colour scheme really drove it home it wasn't the local council's LD candidate.
Union? Us advocate union and subordination to that thing in No. 10? Oh no dear me, no siree.
Perhaps our other PBScots could report back on any other sightings?
The Union seems to have become a topic the principal Unionist party seems unwilling to advocate unless pressed. Klaxons should be sounding at BritNat central office.
I'd like to hear of other sightings before we draw conclusions - but there should be enough of us PBScots over a wide enough area with eg @RochdalePioneers@Farooq@Eabhal@malcolmg and @DavidL for instance to report back to confirm if there really is a change of approach. This is of interest well beyond individual affiliation.
I'm unlikely to help. In a tenement and seldom get any literature at all (even during the election last year).
What Ross does if Johnson doesn't go will be pivotal. The CSU idea. I just can't think of a good name - unionist is rubbish.
Surely if Johnson doesn’t go then Ross will have to go?
If the name “Unionist” isn’t inappropriate for the principal Unionist party then the movement is finished.
What’s the alternative? The Loyalist Party? I think not. The Britain Party? Perhaps.
I’ve genuinely got a great and novel suggestion, but I’m not going to give it. For obvious reasons.
The Unionist Party for the Scottish party would be fine, it worked in the 1950s
Did then, but that was when Scottish politics was in substantial part Unionist Protestant middle and upper working class Tory nativist vs labouring RCs from Ireland who voted Labour, with the LDs leftovers from Gladstone in the crofting and smallholding district.
And Unionist meant the Craigavon kind.
You were never in Edinburgh in the 1950s and 1960s to see and more importantly hear the street preachers at the foot of the Mound.
Today, the LDs are in part still leftovers from the GOM and Crofting Acts era, but Unionist remains hopelessly ambiguous.
This is the core issue. The problem is the BBC won't entertain real change and the government a) looking for points scoring with their base and b) I don't think have any real plan nor the balls to actually go through with it. They should have put in motion the reforms needed last time around, rather than can kicking. 5+ years ago it was absolutely clear where this was going.
So instead its this silly proxy war. Government freeze it, BBC go its the end of the world as we know it, and the reality is its bumbles along, but doesn't address the fundamental change in the world. A licence fee attached to a physical property in the 21st Century is absolutely nonsense and unenforceable, while the entertainment industry is now truly globalised (rather than the old model of protected regions, that the plebs couldn't access easily).
Nobody seems to have a plan. This sort of thing happens in the computing world all the time, the incumbent dismisses the upstarts until it is too late, and usually ends up either dead or a shadow of its former self. You can see this happening with the BBC right now.
It also happened with home video taping, Napster, DVDs etc etc.
The entertainment industry is terrible at catching on to new innovations.
Although its nonsense to suggest the freezing the licence fee is really making a difference to hard up families, at the same time BBC going full back to Wigan pier stuff when they still get £4bn a year, is a bit like MPs complaining about not getting a pay rise.
I imagine if they had raised the licence fee by £10 a year the public wouldn't be very happy.
Say the government had given the BBC an increase that met the inflation seen in programme production, which is apparenly quite high, would that save the BBC? No, not at all. A licence fee for a household to watch free-to-air broadcast progammes mainly shown on the BBC used to make sense when the BBC dominated viewing and broadcast television was the only way of watching television, but that world is ending. A licence for broadcast television made by the BBC when most people will be watching streaming video from other companies, and many of them will be using devices other than TVs and frequently viewing that video outside of the home just doesn't make sense. And if it doesn't make sense the already declining legitimacy and compliance with the licence fee will fall further.
The government and BBC need to answer three questions. What is the licence fee for? How is the fee collected? How are the things the licence fee pays for delivered? I'm sure that the answer is no longer to have a TV licence where we give almost all of the money collected to the BBC for broadcast television and radio. I don't know the answer, but the status quo is not it.
This is the core issue. The problem is the BBC won't entertain real change and the government a) looking for points scoring with their base and b) I don't think have any real plan nor the balls to actually go through with it. They should have put in motion the reforms needed last time around, rather than can kicking. 5+ years ago it was absolutely clear where this was going.
So instead its this silly proxy war. Government freeze it, BBC go its the end of the world as we know it, and the reality is its bumbles along, but doesn't address the fundamental change in the world. A licence fee attached to a physical property in the 21st Century is absolutely nonsense and unenforceable, while the entertainment industry is now truly globalised (rather than the old model of protected regions, that the plebs couldn't access easily).
The BBC has consistently made major changes and has been to the fore of responding to a changing landscape. iPlayer was a leader, for example. This characterisation of “bumbling” is groundless. If you had to pick who was bumbling, the BBC or the current Govt., I think most people would pick the Govt.
iPlayer was never a leader. Poor tech based originally on flash. And now its really crap compared to state of the art.
Speaks someone who’s never used the ITV one: that’s the state of crap in the field. Even the Disney+ one is poor compared to iPlayer.
Oh ITV Player is also crap, but that's like comparing Austin Allegro and Morris Marina. Disney have the best backend streaming tech, which many many leading companies use. The likes of twitch also have far better tech than the likes of BBC for streaming.
The BBC couldn't even cope to do a single 4k on iPlayer for Euro football final for all that wanted it, it crapped out last summer.
And a UI that makes it difficult for me to go to the next episode of Hawkeye when I want to. Or I can watch Netflix where it’s almost impossible to stop it from playing the next episode.
Some more easy savings for the BBC that nobody will notice. Get rid of Bellator Cage fighting deal. Even hardcore MMA fans don't really give a shit about what is the Vanarama National League equivalent of MMA and the BBC stick it hidden away on iPlayer.
That's a few more million quid saved.
Listing things you don't like so the BBC can spend more on things you do like is fine, except everyone will have a different list of things they don't like, that the BBC should cut.
You are wrong, I am a massive MMA fan, and I watch Bellator. But I am probably about one of a handful watching it.
It actually a good example of the BBC deciding it HAD to get into a sport that the is big in youth culture, but can't afford to buy the UFC rights, so rather than say well we can't get into that sector, they paid money for a second / third tier offering. It is absolutely tiny niche appeal.
Although its nonsense to suggest the freezing the licence fee is really making a difference to hard up families, at the same time BBC going full back to Wigan pier stuff when they still get £4bn a year, is a bit like MPs complaining about not getting a pay rise.
I imagine if they had raised the licence fee by £10 a year the public wouldn't be very happy.
Say the government had given the BBC an increase that met the inflation seen in programme production, which is apparenly quite high, would that save the BBC? No, not at all. A licence fee for a household to watch free-to-air broadcast progammes mainly shown on the BBC used to make sense when the BBC dominated viewing and broadcast television was the only way of watching television, but that world is ending. A licence for broadcast television made by the BBC when most people will be watching streaming video from other companies, and many of them will be using devices other than TVs and frequently viewing that video outside of the home just doesn't make sense. And if it doesn't make sense the already declining legitimacy and compliance with the licence fee will fall further.
The government and BBC need to answer three questions. What is the licence fee for? How is the fee collected? How are the things the licence fee pays for delivered? I'm sure that the answer is no longer to have a TV licence where we give almost all of the money collected to the BBC for broadcast television and radio. I don't know the answer, but the status quo is not it.
This is the core issue. The problem is the BBC won't entertain real change and the government a) looking for points scoring with their base and b) I don't think have any real plan nor the balls to actually go through with it. They should have put in motion the reforms needed last time around, rather than can kicking. 5+ years ago it was absolutely clear where this was going.
So instead its this silly proxy war. Government freeze it, BBC go its the end of the world as we know it, and the reality is its bumbles along, but doesn't address the fundamental change in the world. A licence fee attached to a physical property in the 21st Century is absolutely nonsense and unenforceable, while the entertainment industry is now truly globalised (rather than the old model of protected regions, that the plebs couldn't access easily).
The BBC has consistently made major changes and has been to the fore of responding to a changing landscape. iPlayer was a leader, for example. This characterisation of “bumbling” is groundless. If you had to pick who was bumbling, the BBC or the current Govt., I think most people would pick the Govt.
It is not a binary choice.
IPlayer was hardly a leader, it was a 30 day catch up service until relatively recently. They did want to do more with it from the offset but couldn’t.
The BBC pioneered buy to own dowloads with the ill fated BBC store at a time live steaming was storming ahead. It closed after a couple of years and lost a pot of cash.
They dropped the ball with Lonely Planet. They set up a team in the US headed by Jane Tranter and RTD to develop programmes with a view to cashing in on the US market and their sole return was a pisspoor 10 episode Torchwood story produced in conjunction with Starz.
Although its nonsense to suggest the freezing the licence fee is really making a difference to hard up families, at the same time BBC going full back to Wigan pier stuff when they still get £4bn a year, is a bit like MPs complaining about not getting a pay rise.
I imagine if they had raised the licence fee by £10 a year the public wouldn't be very happy.
Say the government had given the BBC an increase that met the inflation seen in programme production, which is apparenly quite high, would that save the BBC? No, not at all. A licence fee for a household to watch free-to-air broadcast progammes mainly shown on the BBC used to make sense when the BBC dominated viewing and broadcast television was the only way of watching television, but that world is ending. A licence for broadcast television made by the BBC when most people will be watching streaming video from other companies, and many of them will be using devices other than TVs and frequently viewing that video outside of the home just doesn't make sense. And if it doesn't make sense the already declining legitimacy and compliance with the licence fee will fall further.
The government and BBC need to answer three questions. What is the licence fee for? How is the fee collected? How are the things the licence fee pays for delivered? I'm sure that the answer is no longer to have a TV licence where we give almost all of the money collected to the BBC for broadcast television and radio. I don't know the answer, but the status quo is not it.
This is the core issue. The problem is the BBC won't entertain real change and the government a) looking for points scoring with their base and b) I don't think have any real plan nor the balls to actually go through with it. They should have put in motion the reforms needed last time around, rather than can kicking. 5+ years ago it was absolutely clear where this was going.
So instead its this silly proxy war. Government freeze it, BBC go its the end of the world as we know it, and the reality is its bumbles along, but doesn't address the fundamental change in the world. A licence fee attached to a physical property in the 21st Century is absolutely nonsense and unenforceable, while the entertainment industry is now truly globalised (rather than the old model of protected regions, that the plebs couldn't access easily).
The BBC has consistently made major changes and has been to the fore of responding to a changing landscape. iPlayer was a leader, for example. This characterisation of “bumbling” is groundless. If you had to pick who was bumbling, the BBC or the current Govt., I think most people would pick the Govt.
iPlayer was never a leader. Poor tech based originally on flash. And now its really crap compared to state of the art.
iPlayer is positively brilliant compared to the arse end that is Amazon Prime. Good programming but awful UI.
Netflix is the player to beat still.
The poor quality of Amazon Prime streaming I find interesting, they have loads of money, but poor execution. And they own Twitch, which has incredible scale in their streaming offering.
Bamtech is the one that has the battle tested massive scalable mass watched streaming capabilities.
Although its nonsense to suggest the freezing the licence fee is really making a difference to hard up families, at the same time BBC going full back to Wigan pier stuff when they still get £4bn a year, is a bit like MPs complaining about not getting a pay rise.
I imagine if they had raised the licence fee by £10 a year the public wouldn't be very happy.
Say the government had given the BBC an increase that met the inflation seen in programme production, which is apparenly quite high, would that save the BBC? No, not at all. A licence fee for a household to watch free-to-air broadcast progammes mainly shown on the BBC used to make sense when the BBC dominated viewing and broadcast television was the only way of watching television, but that world is ending. A licence for broadcast television made by the BBC when most people will be watching streaming video from other companies, and many of them will be using devices other than TVs and frequently viewing that video outside of the home just doesn't make sense. And if it doesn't make sense the already declining legitimacy and compliance with the licence fee will fall further.
The government and BBC need to answer three questions. What is the licence fee for? How is the fee collected? How are the things the licence fee pays for delivered? I'm sure that the answer is no longer to have a TV licence where we give almost all of the money collected to the BBC for broadcast television and radio. I don't know the answer, but the status quo is not it.
This is the core issue. The problem is the BBC won't entertain real change and the government a) looking for points scoring with their base and b) I don't think have any real plan nor the balls to actually go through with it. They should have put in motion the reforms needed last time around, rather than can kicking. 5+ years ago it was absolutely clear where this was going.
So instead its this silly proxy war. Government freeze it, BBC go its the end of the world as we know it, and the reality is its bumbles along, but doesn't address the fundamental change in the world. A licence fee attached to a physical property in the 21st Century is absolutely nonsense and unenforceable, while the entertainment industry is now truly globalised (rather than the old model of protected regions, that the plebs couldn't access easily).
The BBC has consistently made major changes and has been to the fore of responding to a changing landscape. iPlayer was a leader, for example. This characterisation of “bumbling” is groundless. If you had to pick who was bumbling, the BBC or the current Govt., I think most people would pick the Govt.
iPlayer was never a leader. Poor tech based originally on flash. And now its really crap compared to state of the art.
iPlayer is positively brilliant compared to the arse end that is Amazon Prime. Good programming but awful UI.
Netflix is the player to beat still.
I use iPlayer Beta on our main 4K TV and it's definitely trying to get up there with Netflix. Feels a lot smoother and also has the "Skip Intro" option that the other players have had for a while.
Never had a problem with the live or recorded 4K content on iPlayer either, whereas Amazon Prime Video's 4K stream fell over during their last set of Premier League games for me.
Anyone else seen that New Zealand quietly closed their borders last night Aaron Dahmen @dahmenaaron On Twitter, at 7.47pm on a Tuesday night, the country of New Zealand effectively shuts its border. No one, other than those with an MIQ room already secured/emergency allocations, can come home. And there’s no fixed end date. Inconceivable.
You can't travel without an MIQ quarantine room booked so unless you've already got one allocated you aren't going back to New Zealand for a (long) while.
Can he or @Isam come to the PB get together on March 2nd if they are banned?
Please can we stop banning people for naff all.
Sadly, risking libel actions against the site is probably something that cannot be overlooked.
As a matter of curiosity has there ever been such an action or a serious threat of one?
My standard boring reminder that the site may have a bit of residual liability but the person principally at risk is the individual poster. The more identifiable and well heeled the poster, the more self-interest should temper their exuberance. For the less identifiable OGH is entirely at liberty to hand over their email and IP address to buy himself out of trouble.
ETA but yes rcs and tse do apparently hear from Carter fuck from time to time
C & Ping over liberally from the Times also attracts the attention of the legal prof
Watching Boris interview on Sky he looks broken and I would not be surprised if he did resign on the publication of the report
He isn't that self aware. Must be a bit of a shock to him that he is suddenly so unpopular. Perhaps he can get in touch with Tony Blair on how to deal with it
Boris Johnson saying no one told him the Downing Street gathering was against the rules is a new level of dissociation, almost like he’s spent two years watching someone else be prime minister and is now scratching his head about the decisions they’ve taken. https://twitter.com/IsabelHardman/status/1483431497751318530
WTF... is he an actual child (well a man-baby)??
He should be on top of everything nd know exactly whats going on.
Get rid of him!
It was all so very predictable.
ScottXP is a prodigous poster, but I think this is the most he's ever made me laugh. Not even the mildly comedic observation at the end of the sentence, just the first 15 words. It's as if Boris is actively trying to alienate people. I'm quite a fan of excuses which may be technically correct but will go down extremely poorly. It's in the same category as 'it's crown property so the rules don't apply' (from the same source), and Gordon Brown's memorable 'no, I only promised to abolish TORY boom and bust'.
Politicians need to realise that they are held to a higher standard, so "it's technically legal" doesn't wash.
The only thing more worrying than a Russian invasion of Ukraine, is a UK response to one led by Johnson
There will not be a UK response, certainly not a military one as the Ukraine is not a member of NATO.
Only if Russia invaded Poland or the Baltic states for example, which are NATO members, would there be a UK military response. At most there would be some economic sanctions
You do know we are already providing arms to Ukraine
We will not be sending ground troops, tanks or fighter jets to defend Ukraine, a non NATO member state.
We sell arms to lots of countries
You are off your head with this analysis. It is not just annexing Ukraine that concerns most of us it is what happens next too.
If Putin takes Ukraine without so much as a whimper, why not all the former Soviet satellite states, plus Finland Sweden and Norway?
Finland and Sweden are not in NATO, so we would not be obliged to defend them either.
We would only be required to defend Norway and the Baltic states which are in NATO
You can't defend either Norway or the Baltic States without defending Sweden and Finland.
You can, if Sweden and Finland want to join NATO then we can defend them, not before. Same with non NATO Ireland.
Our terms of NATO membership do not prevent us from going to war to defend other countries if we wish.
Kuwait wasn't in NATO either.
Taking military action against Russia is a rather more tough proposition than taking military action against Iraq. The former leads to WW3, the latter does not.
Plus Russia has a permanent veto on the UN Security Council which Iraq did not, so UN approved action was easier when Iraq invaded Kuwait.
The main defence v Russia therefore remains NATO
There are concerns, according to BBC correspondent Mark Orban last, that the EU is about to soften its stance to Russia.
Orban claimed t on TV that in bolstering Ukraine's defences, British forces flying men and gear to the region were asked to avoid German and Dutch airspace. Germany is also reported about threats to freeze Russia out of the global payments system.
If naked aggression from belligerent governments is what works with the EU then maybe we should put 20,000 troops in South Armagh and post the Queen Elizabeth permanently in the Irish Sea.
If RAF fighter sorties over Dublin might get an agreement, perhaps we should do that.
No request was made for a flight over Germany, so none was refused:
Trouble with the BBC issue is that most people would agree the funding model needs a rethink, but entrusting this to Nadine Dorries is not most sensible people's idea of a solution. It's the same problem any Tory government will have with NHS reform, but at least they generally avoid putting people in charge of health who are actively hostile to the NHS.
Some more easy savings for the BBC that nobody will notice. Get rid of Bellator Cage fighting deal. Even hardcore MMA fans don't really give a shit about what is the Vanarama National League equivalent of MMA and the BBC stick it hidden away on iPlayer.
That's a few more million quid saved.
Listing things you don't like so the BBC can spend more on things you do like is fine, except everyone will have a different list of things they don't like, that the BBC should cut.
You are wrong, I am a massive MMA fan, and I watch Bellator. But I am probably about one of a handful watching it.
It actually a good example of the BBC deciding it HAD to get into a sport that the is big in youth culture, but can't afford to buy the UFC rights, so rather than say well we can't get into that sector, they paid money for a second / third tier offering. It is absolutely tiny niche appeal.
Although its nonsense to suggest the freezing the licence fee is really making a difference to hard up families, at the same time BBC going full back to Wigan pier stuff when they still get £4bn a year, is a bit like MPs complaining about not getting a pay rise.
I imagine if they had raised the licence fee by £10 a year the public wouldn't be very happy.
Say the government had given the BBC an increase that met the inflation seen in programme production, which is apparenly quite high, would that save the BBC? No, not at all. A licence fee for a household to watch free-to-air broadcast progammes mainly shown on the BBC used to make sense when the BBC dominated viewing and broadcast television was the only way of watching television, but that world is ending. A licence for broadcast television made by the BBC when most people will be watching streaming video from other companies, and many of them will be using devices other than TVs and frequently viewing that video outside of the home just doesn't make sense. And if it doesn't make sense the already declining legitimacy and compliance with the licence fee will fall further.
The government and BBC need to answer three questions. What is the licence fee for? How is the fee collected? How are the things the licence fee pays for delivered? I'm sure that the answer is no longer to have a TV licence where we give almost all of the money collected to the BBC for broadcast television and radio. I don't know the answer, but the status quo is not it.
This is the core issue. The problem is the BBC won't entertain real change and the government a) looking for points scoring with their base and b) I don't think have any real plan nor the balls to actually go through with it. They should have put in motion the reforms needed last time around, rather than can kicking. 5+ years ago it was absolutely clear where this was going.
So instead its this silly proxy war. Government freeze it, BBC go its the end of the world as we know it, and the reality is its bumbles along, but doesn't address the fundamental change in the world. A licence fee attached to a physical property in the 21st Century is absolutely nonsense and unenforceable, while the entertainment industry is now truly globalised (rather than the old model of protected regions, that the plebs couldn't access easily).
The BBC has consistently made major changes and has been to the fore of responding to a changing landscape. iPlayer was a leader, for example. This characterisation of “bumbling” is groundless. If you had to pick who was bumbling, the BBC or the current Govt., I think most people would pick the Govt.
iPlayer was never a leader. Poor tech based originally on flash. And now its really crap compared to state of the art.
iPlayer is positively brilliant compared to the arse end that is Amazon Prime. Good programming but awful UI.
Netflix is the player to beat still.
I use iPlayer Beta on our main 4K TV and it's definitely trying to get up there with Netflix. Feels a lot smoother and also has the "Skip Intro" option that the other players have had for a while.
Never had a problem with the live or recorded 4K content on iPlayer either, whereas Amazon Prime Video's 4K stream fell over during their last set of Premier League games for me.
Remember though you are comparing apples with oranges. 4k offering on BBC is a) tiny amount of content and b) hardly anybody is eligible, there is no scale. As soon as it gets demand, it falls over too e.g Euro Finals.
And the iPlayer 4k offering has been in "beta" for how many years now? I believe they first showed 4k content 5 years ago....And still not progressed to its being a full product available to everybody.
SA Data update randomness is absolutely wacky. Initially it looked like the data for week 2 was going to be rather bad (Admissions flat, deaths up) now it looks like we'll have admissions down a full 25% week on week and deaths down 8%.
But just to show the dangers of lagged data and why everyone confidentially proclaiming "SA shows it's just a cold" when I stopped tracking week 52 deaths they were at 703, now with lagged data in week 52 deaths are 1012. That's over 25% of their Delta peak (and SA excess deaths figures shows they are massively undercounting Covid deaths).
Boris Johnson saying no one told him the Downing Street gathering was against the rules is a new level of dissociation, almost like he’s spent two years watching someone else be prime minister and is now scratching his head about the decisions they’ve taken. https://twitter.com/IsabelHardman/status/1483431497751318530
WTF... is he an actual child (well a man-baby)??
He should be on top of everything nd know exactly whats going on.
Get rid of him!
It was all so very predictable.
ScottXP is a prodigous poster, but I think this is the most he's ever made me laugh. Not even the mildly comedic observation at the end of the sentence, just the first 15 words. It's as if Boris is actively trying to alienate people. I'm quite a fan of excuses which may be technically correct but will go down extremely poorly. It's in the same category as 'it's crown property so the rules don't apply' (from the same source), and Gordon Brown's memorable 'no, I only promised to abolish TORY boom and bust'.
Politicians need to realise that they are held to a higher standard, so "it's technically legal" doesn't wash.
Yes, but he's parsing to the nth degree to avoid the lethal 'lied to the house' charge being proved beyond all doubt.
Anyone else seen that New Zealand quietly closed their borders last night Aaron Dahmen @dahmenaaron On Twitter, at 7.47pm on a Tuesday night, the country of New Zealand effectively shuts its border. No one, other than those with an MIQ room already secured/emergency allocations, can come home. And there’s no fixed end date. Inconceivable.
You can't travel without an MIQ quarantine room booked so unless you've already got one allocated you aren't going back to New Zealand for a (long) while.
Thanks for that
I was not aware of it and my son was hoping to revist NZ later this year where he lived from 2003 - 2015 and was caught up in ground zero in the Christchurch earthquake
Boris Johnson saying no one told him the Downing Street gathering was against the rules is a new level of dissociation, almost like he’s spent two years watching someone else be prime minister and is now scratching his head about the decisions they’ve taken. https://twitter.com/IsabelHardman/status/1483431497751318530
WTF... is he an actual child (well a man-baby)??
He should be on top of everything nd know exactly whats going on.
Get rid of him!
It was all so very predictable.
ScottXP is a prodigous poster, but I think this is the most he's ever made me laugh. Not even the mildly comedic observation at the end of the sentence, just the first 15 words. It's as if Boris is actively trying to alienate people. I'm quite a fan of excuses which may be technically correct but will go down extremely poorly. It's in the same category as 'it's crown property so the rules don't apply' (from the same source), and Gordon Brown's memorable 'no, I only promised to abolish TORY boom and bust'.
Politicians need to realise that they are held to a higher standard, so "it's technically legal" doesn't wash.
Yes, but he's parsing to the nth degree to avoid the lethal 'lied to the house' charge being proved beyond all doubt.
Not knowing the rules and when he sees a party?! Is he a sentient being? The flat-coated retriever puppy in a story on dog intelligence currently in the Graun could do better than that.
Can he or @Isam come to the PB get together on March 2nd if they are banned?
Please can we stop banning people for naff all.
Sadly, risking libel actions against the site is probably something that cannot be overlooked.
Yeah - Ok - one was a baddie but I genuinely cannot see why Isam was banned (and still is).
Both of these posters have been banned on several occasions in the past. Whilst I'd like to see them both back, there must to be some limit to how often someone gets banned before it becomes permanent.
Can he or @Isam come to the PB get together on March 2nd if they are banned?
Please can we stop banning people for naff all.
Leon should have been banned long ago. The abject dishonesty. The unacceptable personal abuse. The racism and sexism. The vulgarity, and ignorant alarmism.
Sadly, too many find his schtick mildly amusing and hence he gets away with it. Which, really, is a sad commentary on us.
Never mind lying, there's signs of early onset dementia here. He said that in retrospect he should have said that everybody should go back inside. The rule was not against al fresco events.
Biblical vibe to all this talk of denying things in gardens.
Anyone else seen that New Zealand quietly closed their borders last night Aaron Dahmen @dahmenaaron On Twitter, at 7.47pm on a Tuesday night, the country of New Zealand effectively shuts its border. No one, other than those with an MIQ room already secured/emergency allocations, can come home. And there’s no fixed end date. Inconceivable.
You can't travel without an MIQ quarantine room booked so unless you've already got one allocated you aren't going back to New Zealand for a (long) while.
This is the end game for zero covid. At some point you have to accept that you are going to have an epidemic, or you shut out the world.
Some more easy savings for the BBC that nobody will notice. Get rid of Bellator Cage fighting deal. Even hardcore MMA fans don't really give a shit about what is the Vanarama National League equivalent of MMA and the BBC stick it hidden away on iPlayer.
That's a few more million quid saved.
Listing things you don't like so the BBC can spend more on things you do like is fine, except everyone will have a different list of things they don't like, that the BBC should cut.
You are wrong, I am a massive MMA fan, and I watch Bellator. But I am probably about one of a handful watching it.
It actually a good example of the BBC deciding it HAD to get into a sport that the is big in youth culture, but can't afford to buy the UFC rights, so rather than say well we can't get into that sector, they paid money for a second / third tier offering. It is absolutely tiny niche appeal.
Doesn't stop them endlessly tweeting about it.
Its because MMA is a big sport among the young male working class demographic. But its an example of the BBC trying to get into something they don't really understand. They are trying to big up a promotion that every hardcore fan sees as a secondary promotion, where there is the odd "superstar" and big fight, but really it is full of those who can't make it in the big show.
Its a bit like buying the rights to the Challenge Tour in golf or rather than IPL in cricket you buy the Caribbean T20 league. Is that really the best use of the BBC money, especially when the commercial sector already caters to MMA fans.
"I have lost count of how many times recently I have to had to explain the meaning of the English term “straw man” to my European allies. That is because the best living, breathing “straw man” at the moment is the Kremlin’s claim to be under threat from NATO. In recent weeks the Russian Defence Minister’s comment that the US is “preparing a provocation with chemical components in eastern Ukraine” has made that “straw man” even bigger."
BTW, I think he is a potential "dark horse" candidate for the leadership, with similar appeal to Penny Mordaunt.
That is indeed a very good piece, and worthy of note that it was published on the government website, rather than given to a newspaper.
Does anyone think Wallace might run for leader? I don't see him doing so - I think he's got the job he wants at Defence. He'd be well up my list though if he did run.
Can he or @Isam come to the PB get together on March 2nd if they are banned?
Please can we stop banning people for naff all.
Leon should have been banned long ago. The abject dishonesty. The unacceptable personal abuse. The racism and sexism. The vulgarity, and ignorant alarmism.
Sadly, too many find his schtick mildly amusing and hence he gets away with it. Which, really, is a sad commentary on us.
Yes. I am deeply ashamed, Beth, and wish to apologise most humbly to the site for having inadvertently suggested that this poster was in any way amusing.
Can he or @Isam come to the PB get together on March 2nd if they are banned?
Please can we stop banning people for naff all.
Leon should have been banned long ago. The abject dishonesty. The unacceptable personal abuse. The racism and sexism. The vulgarity, and ignorant alarmism.
Sadly, too many find his schtick mildly amusing and hence he gets away with it. Which, really, is a sad commentary on us.
Is that like the old (Jewish?) joke of one guy asks the other how was dinner at the new restaurant the night before, and the other guy said it was dreadful, almost inedible. And the portions so small...
If you are so distressed at how sad we all are there is always the self-banning option.
EDIT: In fact, not just watchable - actually enjoyable. I'd rather have an evening with that lot to choose from than an evening with the whole of iplayer.
I don't know if they spent more per programme in those days and did fewer programmes, or were just - you know - better. Eastenders is unchanged of course. But I'd have avoided that back then as assiduously as I avoid it now.
Anyone else seen that New Zealand quietly closed their borders last night Aaron Dahmen @dahmenaaron On Twitter, at 7.47pm on a Tuesday night, the country of New Zealand effectively shuts its border. No one, other than those with an MIQ room already secured/emergency allocations, can come home. And there’s no fixed end date. Inconceivable.
You can't travel without an MIQ quarantine room booked so unless you've already got one allocated you aren't going back to New Zealand for a (long) while.
Thanks for that
I was not aware of it and my son was hoping to revist NZ later this year where he lived from 2003 - 2015 and was caught up in ground zero in the Christchurch earthquake
Our former neighbours were due to emigrate to NZ in 2020 - they brought flights forward but missed the border closure by - I think - three days, so never went. Still intend to go and they still have a shipping container of their posessions in NZ and they had some hope when the borders were reopening. They'll be gutted by this.
Can he or @Isam come to the PB get together on March 2nd if they are banned?
Please can we stop banning people for naff all.
Sadly, risking libel actions against the site is probably something that cannot be overlooked.
Yeah - Ok - one was a baddie but I genuinely cannot see why Isam was banned (and still is).
Both of these posters have been banned on several occasions in the past. Whilst I'd like to see them both back, there must to be some limit to how often someone gets banned before it becomes permanent.
I thought the site was generally against the three strikes and you're out policy.
OGH manages the site as he wishes.
As for the two posters concerned, @Isam's voice was vital if uncomfortable to many on here.
As for Leon I think it might already be a case of Le Roi est mort...
Comments
The government and BBC need to answer three questions. What is the licence fee for? How is the fee collected? How are the things the licence fee pays for delivered? I'm sure that the answer is no longer to have a TV licence where we give almost all of the money collected to the BBC for broadcast television and radio. I don't know the answer, but the status quo is not it.
PM says that he only saw the Martin Reynolds email "the other day, when it emerged."
Beth repeatedly asks PM if Cummings warned him.
Keeps saying "nobody warned me that it was against the rules." Isn't quite same thing as someone warning it wasn't wise.
https://twitter.com/lewis_goodall/status/1483430015610073088
Soviet UnionRussia as the main threat to the UK and Europe generally (China number 2).2. However on your second point, I see no contradiction here. The EU *Could* do something, but the main member state doesn't want to so it will instead wring its hands.
If anything, you make the point that the EU is dominated by Germany and what it wants it gets. It wants to stay well out of it, so the EU will stay well out of it.
London L44 C27 G12 LD11
Rest of South C43 L34 LD14
Midlands L42 C38
North L57 C24
Scotland SNP50 L20 C18 LD10
Wales L40 C22 PC18 LD11
GB L41 C32 LD11
(Fieldwork 12-16 January: sample size = 4,292)
https://twitter.com/Samfr/status/1483430385400885253
So instead its this silly proxy war. Government freeze it, BBC go its the end of the world as we know it, and the reality is its bumbles along, but doesn't address the fundamental change in the world. A licence fee attached to a physical property in the 21st Century is absolutely nonsense and unenforceable, while the entertainment industry is now truly globalised (rather than the old model of protected regions, that the plebs couldn't access easily).
https://twitter.com/IsabelHardman/status/1483431497751318530
Labour 40%
Sunak led Tories 36%
LDs 9%
https://twitter.com/GuidoFawkes/status/1483422884630573056?s=20
But the point is that while the Queen was respectful of the rules, even under such grave circumstances, more important people understood rules did not apply to them.
No one warned him that categorical denial meant he was lying.
He should be on top of everything nd know exactly whats going on.
Get rid of him!
I'm not surprised there are tears and childlike excuses.
It's unlikely that China would be involved, for starters. It would be a European war, and Europe is not the centre of the world in the way it was a hundred years ago.
If fighting was restricted to pushing Russia out of invaded territory then the chances of a nuclear escalation are much reduced.
If EU countries want to have a defence union with an army, let them and we can think about how that ought to look. But they don't so, in terms of military intervention, the EU is not holding anyone back.
There's a real risk here that people get so distracted on old faultlines that it prevent clear thinking. This is a crisis for Ukraine and the European democracy. It should not be taken as an opportunity to attack the EU. Well, it should if one prefers Russia to prevail, but most of us probably don't.
Hugo Rifkind
@hugorifkind
No Tory government has been brought down by somebody who wasn't Dominic Cummings since 1997.
Either way, he clearly doesn’t wasn’t a Western-facing Ukraine.
Doing nothing is not an option for the Conservatives.
The saddest thing is that even though most people have learnt over the years that lies don't last he's always been able to bounce back..
It reminds me of the story that BT offered to run a national fibre optic network to every home in the last century - they had the production facilities ready to go when the Thatcher government decided that this would be a terrible idea and they wanted to stimulate 'competition' by letting a bunch of cable companies tear up all the streets to install a second set of cables to every home instead. We ended up thirty years behind countries who did the sensible thing in the first place.
Nobody seems to have a plan. This sort of thing happens in the computing world all the time, the incumbent dismisses the upstarts until it is too late, and usually ends up either dead or a shadow of its former self. You can see this happening with the Conservative Party right now.
Can he or @Isam come to the PB get together on March 2nd if they are banned?
Please can we stop banning people for naff all.
The BBC couldn't even cope to do a single 4k stream on iPlayer for Euro football final for the limited subset of people it was available, it crapped out.
I'm quite a fan of excuses which may be technically correct but will go down extremely poorly. It's in the same category as 'it's crown property so the rules don't apply' (from the same source), and Gordon Brown's memorable 'no, I only promised to abolish TORY boom and bust'.
Shit! The cheapest open market energy fix is now 76% more expensive than the current price cap.
It's far more expensive even than where the 50% April price cap will likely land, & than where it'll land when it likely rises AGAIN in Oct (if wholesale rates dont fall)
https://twitter.com/MartinSLewis/status/1483109641429082113
Netflix is the player to beat still.
And Unionist meant the Craigavon kind.
You were never in Edinburgh in the 1950s and 1960s to see and more importantly hear the street preachers at the foot of the Mound.
Today, the LDs are in part still leftovers from the GOM and Crofting Acts era, but Unionist remains hopelessly ambiguous.
The entertainment industry is terrible at catching on to new innovations.
It actually a good example of the BBC deciding it HAD to get into a sport that the is big in youth culture, but can't afford to buy the UFC rights, so rather than say well we can't get into that sector, they paid money for a second / third tier offering. It is absolutely tiny niche appeal.
Beth Rigby
Looks a broken man.
IPlayer was hardly a leader, it was a 30 day catch up service until relatively recently. They did want to do more with it from the offset but couldn’t.
The BBC pioneered buy to own dowloads with the ill fated BBC store at a time live steaming was storming ahead. It closed after a couple of years and lost a pot of cash.
They dropped the ball with Lonely Planet. They set up a team in the US headed by Jane Tranter and RTD to develop programmes with a view to cashing in on the US market and their sole return was a pisspoor 10 episode Torchwood story produced in conjunction with Starz.
Bamtech is the one that has the battle tested massive scalable mass watched streaming capabilities.
Me: you fucking idiot, it shouldn't have needed anybody to tell you - you made the fucking rules and announced them day after tedious day.
Apologies for the poor language, but honestly......
Never had a problem with the live or recorded 4K content on iPlayer either, whereas Amazon Prime Video's 4K stream fell over during their last set of Premier League games for me.
Anyone else seen that New Zealand quietly closed their borders last night
Aaron Dahmen
@dahmenaaron
On Twitter, at 7.47pm on a Tuesday night, the country of New Zealand effectively shuts its border. No one, other than those with an MIQ room already secured/emergency allocations, can come home. And there’s no fixed end date. Inconceivable.
You can't travel without an MIQ quarantine room booked so unless you've already got one allocated you aren't going back to New Zealand for a (long) while.
ETA but yes rcs and tse do apparently hear from Carter fuck from time to time
C & Ping over liberally from the Times also attracts the attention of the legal prof
https://twitter.com/JulianRoepcke/status/1483409346260353025?t=w4Vh_u-fpeSr--10HLmyVg&s=19
And the iPlayer 4k offering has been in "beta" for how many years now? I believe they first showed 4k content 5 years ago....And still not progressed to its being a full product available to everybody.
SA Data update randomness is absolutely wacky. Initially it looked like the data for week 2 was going to be rather bad (Admissions flat, deaths up) now it looks like we'll have admissions down a full 25% week on week and deaths down 8%.
But just to show the dangers of lagged data and why everyone confidentially proclaiming "SA shows it's just a cold" when I stopped tracking week 52 deaths they were at 703, now with lagged data in week 52 deaths are 1012. That's over 25% of their Delta peak (and SA excess deaths figures shows they are massively undercounting Covid deaths).
https://www.samrc.ac.za/reports/report-weekly-deaths-south-africa
I was not aware of it and my son was hoping to revist NZ later this year where he lived from 2003 - 2015 and was caught up in ground zero in the Christchurch earthquake
Sadly, too many find his schtick mildly amusing and hence he gets away with it. Which, really, is a sad commentary on us.
Biblical vibe to all this talk of denying things in gardens.
Its a bit like buying the rights to the Challenge Tour in golf or rather than IPL in cricket you buy the Caribbean T20 league. Is that really the best use of the BBC money, especially when the commercial sector already caters to MMA fans.
https://twitter.com/mjs_DC/status/1483434822580244481
If you are so distressed at how sad we all are there is always the self-banning option.
Actually a pretty watchable evening's entertainment.
https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/schedules/service_bbc_one_london/1990-01-18
https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/schedules/service_bbc_two_england/1990-01-18
EDIT: In fact, not just watchable - actually enjoyable. I'd rather have an evening with that lot to choose from than an evening with the whole of iplayer.
I don't know if they spent more per programme in those days and did fewer programmes, or were just - you know - better.
Eastenders is unchanged of course. But I'd have avoided that back then as assiduously as I avoid it now.
I am not sure I completely trust him to manage something important, say the Russia standoff or the cost of living crisis.
When is a war
partynot a warparty?OGH manages the site as he wishes.
As for the two posters concerned, @Isam's voice was vital if uncomfortable to many on here.
As for Leon I think it might already be a case of Le Roi est mort...